Bollywood’s Pre-Poll Hindutva Film Spree Is Being Funded and Promoted by BJP People
With the 2024 Lok Sabha Polls scheduled in April and May, we found that several films released since January 2021 were directed or produced by individuals with links to the BJP — and in one case, even the RSS. Some of these films are yet to release but their teasers have already amassed massive viewership.
JNU: Jahangir National University
The film is being pitched as a critique of Left wing student politics and the title is a not-so-subtle reference to Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.
The film has been produced by Mahakaal Movies Private Limited. One of the directors in this company is Vishnu Tantia. He happens to be a business associate of Gopal Goyal better known as Gopal Kanda, a Haryana politician in alliance with the BJP in the state.
Tantia and Goyal are directors in a number of companies together, such as MDLR Airlines, MDLR Steel and MDLR Infrastructure. In several other companies, Tantia is a director along with members of Gopal Kanda’s family.
The film’s release date has reportedly been postponed.
Swatantra Veer Savarkar
This biopic on hardline Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar has been directed by Randeep Hooda, who also plays the titular role. It had a theatrical release on 22 March 2024.
One of the producers of the film is Anand Pandit, who by his own admission has been a member of the BJP for over 30 years. According to this report by Dainik Bhaskar, he was the treasurer of the Maharashtra BJP.
Pandit was also the producer of PM Narendra Modi’s biopic, starring Vivek Oberoi. Incidentally, that film was also released in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.
Pandit is known to be a close aide of PM Modi and was one of his point persons in the film industry during the latter’s days as Gujarat CM.
In 2013, Pandit was being probed by the Enforcement Directorate regarding a FEMA violation case. Nothing seems to have happened in that case.
His name also figured in the database of offshore account holders released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Pandit, whose full name is Anand Kamalnayan Pandit, is listed as having accounts in British Virgin Islands since 2008.
