Bollywood: What’s in a name?

What’s in a name? Well, in the case of the term, Bollywood, a lot. Description, history, misunderstanding, offense. It’s all there.

From an etymological point of view, Bollywood is an amalgamation of the names Bombay, a city with immense cultural influence within India, and Hollywood, a suburb of Los Angeles that plays much the same role in the United States. Interestingly, in a trend seen across India to rid city names of their colonial origin, Bombay was renamed Mumbai in 1995.

As first alluded to here, cities are important for Indian cinema, because many of them are home to film industries producing in the predominant language of their residents, which makes them linguistically unique from one another. Bengali films largely hail from Kolkata (renamed from Calcutta), Tamil films from Chennai (renamed from Madras), Telugu films from Hyderabad, and so on. Interestingly, Bollywood proves an exception, because while located in the commonly English-speaking city of Mumbai in the predominantly Marathi-speaking state of Maharashtra, it produces mostly in Hindi. Despite such differentiations, however, in the West, Bollywood is often used as a catch-all term for Indian cinema, in all its forms.

Importantly, even if one succeeds in applying the term Bollywood correctly, the application may land badly regardless. This is because to some, the term, in alluding to Hollywood, implies that the Indian film industry is a mimic industry as opposed to a bone fide creative one in its own right.

For example, Irrfan Khan, a highly acclaimed Indian actor, has said: “I always object to the word Bollywood…I don’t think it’s fair to have that name. Because that industry has its own technique, its own way of making films that has nothing to do with aping Hollywood.”

Speaking to the common use of Bollywood as a catch all term and a generalization, the late Om Puri said: “Bollywood. Whenever Western people refer to it, they mean Hindi films, they say, ‘Oh those song and dance films’. So it is a derogatory term.”

Despite such objections, the term is used extensively within India and across the world, with many people intending no negative connotation. In the next few years, as Indian cinema (in all its diversity) continues to expand across international markets, this term may solidify or dissipate in use. Only time will tell.

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