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Heroes are very, very good, and villains are horrid. This is a basic rule of television and film, especially in India. Typecasting has narrowed and hardened there in recent years. Under Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister since 2014 and a promoter of Hindutva (an ideology that equates Indianness with Hinduism), Bollywood’s bad guys tend to be Muslim or, better yet, Pakistani. The good guys? They probably work for the Indian government, preferably in uniform.
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This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Bad boys”
Culture September 28th 2024
From the September 28th 2024 edition
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