Ganpati Bappa and the Movies

How Mumbai’s studios and streets celebrated cinema Mumbai: Mumbai’s Ganesh Utsav has always been more than a religious celebration. For generations, it has also intersected with the city’s other great passion-cinema. Long before photographs of stars welcoming Ganpati Bappa at home became an annual fixture on television and social media, the festival had a presence inside Mumbai’s film studios. Beyond the studio gates, Ganesh mandals were also bringing movies directly to neighbourhood...

min read

How Mumbai’s studios and streets celebrated cinema Mumbai: Mumbai’s Ganesh Utsav has always been more than a religious celebration. For generations, it has also intersected with the city’s other great passion-cinema. Long before photographs of stars welcoming Ganpati Bappa at home became an annual fixture on television and social media, the festival had a presence inside Mumbai’s film studios. Beyond the studio gates, Ganesh mandals were also bringing movies directly to neighbourhood audiences by turning ordinary streets into makeshift theatres. Veteran film journalist and analyst Dilip Thakur, who grew up in Girgaon and has observed Mumbai’s film culture over several decades, remembers both worlds. “Ganesh Utsav and cinema have had a very old relationship in Mumbai. It wasn’t only about film stars bringing Ganpati home. The studios, the workers and even the neighbourhood mandals were all part of this culture,” says Thakur. Ganpati Tradition Thakur points to V. Shantaram’s Rajkamal Studio while recalling the early relationship between Mumbai’s studios and Ganesh Utsav. The tradition, he says, can be linked to the period of Navrang, when an elaborate set involving a Ganesh idol and elephants was created at the studio. What began in the world of filmmaking subsequently developed into an annual studio celebration. “During Navrang, a grand set was created with Ganpati and elephants. That became an inspiration for the Ganesh festival at Rajkamal Studio, and the tradition continued,” Thakur recalls. The importance of the celebration lay not merely in its association with a celebrated filmmaker. Studios of that era had large permanent communities of technicians, craftsmen and other workers, and festivals became occasions for everyone connected with the premises. “Studios in those days were like families. Actors, technicians and workers celebrated together. Ganpati was not merely a celebrity occasion—it belonged to the entire studio,” says Thakur. Entry to Devotees Raj Kapoor’s RK Studios in Chembur developed its own distinctive Ganpati tradition. The studio’s Holi celebrations became legendary in the film industry, but its Ganesh Utsav also drew people from outside the film fraternity. The Ganpati was installed close to the main studio building, and devotees could enter the premises for darshan. “People always talk about RK Studios’ Holi, but its Ganpati celebration was also very special. The idol was installed near the main building, and ordinary people could come inside the studio for darshan,” Thakur says. For a movie fan, this meant something unusual: an opportunity to enter the premises associated with Raj Kapoor and some of Hindi cinema’s most famous films while participating in a festival shared by the wider city. The immersion procession added another dimension to the tradition. Different generations of the Kapoor family participated over the years, from Raj Kapoor to Randhir Kapoor and Rishi Kapoor, and later Ranbir Kapoor. The procession travelled from Chembur towards Girgaon Chowpatty, passing through parts of central Mumbai along the way. As round-the-clock television news expanded, cameras increasingly followed the Kapoor family and the procession. “The procession would travel from Chembur towards Girgaon Chowpatty through areas such as Kurla and Sion. Once television news channels began covering it extensively, the RK Ganpati visarjan became a major media event,” says Thakur. The connection survived beyond the studio’s heyday. Thakur recalls that people associated with RK Studios continued the Ganpati tradition for some time even after regular studio activity had ceased. “Even after the studio stopped functioning as before, people who had worked there continued the tradition for some time. That tells you how emotionally connected the workers were to the RK Ganpati,” he says. Mumbai Galli Thakur’s most vivid memories, however, come from outside the studios. Ganesh Utsav once provided an unusual second life for films that neighbourhood audiences had missed during their theatrical runs. During the 1960s and 1970s, local Ganesh mandals organised outdoor screenings with 16mm projectors. A screen—or sometimes simply an available wall—could transform a narrow lane into a neighbourhood movie theatre for an evening. “We called it ‘Galli Cinema’. A 16mm projector would arrive, a screen would be put up, and the entire lane would become a cinema hall,” Thakur recalls. Growing up in Girgaon, he experienced this culture first-hand. Films featuring stars such as Shammi Kapoor and Dev Anand were among those he remembers watching during Ganesh festivities in the 1970s. “I watched many films like this in the 1970s. If you had missed a movie when it was released in theatres, Ganpati celebrations sometimes gave you another opportunity to see it,” he says. There was no streaming, satellite television or instant access to a vast film library. A neighbourhood screening could therefore become an event in itself, attracting families, children and film enthusiasts from surrounding buildings. “There was a different joy in watching a film with the entire neighbourhood. Ganpati brought everyone together, and cinema became part of that celebration,” Thakur says. It was entertainment, but it was also a form of community movie-going that belonged to a particular period in Mumbai’s cultural history. Stars Power As the film industry changed, so did the visibility of its Ganesh celebrations. Home Ganpatis hosted by stars increasingly attracted media attention. Madhuri Dixit, Shilpa Shetty, Salman Khan and Sonali Bendre are among the film personalities whose celebrations became familiar to audiences. Thakur also sees the growth of television as an important turning point. As Mumbai’s entertainment industry became broader and more diverse, Ganesh Utsav was embraced by artists from different backgrounds. “Earlier, you saw the tradition particularly among Maharashtrian artists and film workers. Later, as the industry expanded—and especially with the growth of television—artists from many different backgrounds began bringing Ganpati home,” he observes. Television brought cameras into celebrations that once remained largely private. Social media pushed that transformation further, making celebrity Ganpati arrivals, pujas and immersions instantly accessible to fans. Pull of Girgaon Some film personalities, however, have a relationship with the festival that predates stardom. Thakur points to veteran actor Jeetendra and his enduring association with Girgaon, where the actor spent his early years. “Jeetendra has never forgotten his Girgaon connection. On the first day of Ganesh Utsav, he has continued to visit the area and seek Bappa’s blessings. That relationship goes back to his early years,” says Thakur. For him, such connections are significant because they reveal how a festival can link a star back to the neighbourhood and community that existed before fame. “It is not always about publicity. For many artists, there is a personal memory attached to Ganpati—the building they lived in, the mandal they knew or the neighbourhood where people watched their films,” he says. Khetwadi’s Culture Filmmaker Manmohan Desai was similarly surrounded by the sights and sounds of Ganesh Utsav. His association with the Khetwadi-Bhatkar Street neighbourhood placed him close to an area renowned for elaborate public Ganpati celebrations. “Manmohan Desai lived in an area where Ganpati celebrations were everywhere around him. Khetwadi had that energy—the crowds, decorations and huge pandals. He was also a devotee who would visit Lalbaugcha Raja,” Thakur recalls. The scale, colour and crowds of Mumbai’s public celebrations were part of the cultural environment in which filmmakers lived and worked. It was only natural that some of that energy would eventually make its way onto the screen. Silver Screen Hindi cinema has repeatedly turned to Ganesh Utsav for music, drama and spectacle. “Deva Ho Deva Ganpati Deva” from Humse Badhkar Kaun became one of the songs closely identified with Ganesh celebrations, while “Deva Shree Ganesha” from Agneepath gave a later generation a powerful cinematic Ganpati anthem. “Cinema takes from society, and Ganesh Utsav is such a strong part of Mumbai that it naturally entered our films,” says Thakur. Much of the world he remembers has changed. The 16mm projectors no longer routinely turn Mumbai’s lanes into movie theatres. The old studio system has faded, some historic studios have disappeared, and celebrity celebrations now reach audiences instantly through phones. But the larger relationship between Mumbai, movies and Ganpati Bappa has endured. “From Rajkamal and RK Studios to the gallis of Girgaon, Ganpati and cinema have travelled together for generations,” Thakur says. “The way we watch films has changed and the way stars celebrate has changed, but Mumbai’s emotional connection with Ganpati Bappa has not.”

The Fascism of Higher Humanity

Christoph Ernst

Jul 12

7 min read

The Gaza war has stripped away the veneer of the Western Left to reveal a rotting core of cultural Marxism, civilizational self-hatred and an unholy alliance with the architects of group barbarism.

**Pro-Palestinian rally at Brandenburg Gate**

In 1933, as the shadow of totalitarianism lengthened across Germany, the aging painter Max Liebermann surveyed the political landscape and remarked, “You can’t eat as much as you’d like to puke.” Nearly a century later, watching the intellectual and political elites of the Western world capitulate to a toxic alliance of radical Leftism and imported Islamist extremism, one is seized by that very same visceral disgust.

The Gaza war has exposed a terrifying reality far deeper than mere geopolitical division: beneath the slogans of intersectionality and higher humanity, the Western Left has become the submissive, useful idiot for an Islamist vanguard seeking the total obliteration of the modern world.

History does not repeat itself mechanically, but its echoes are deafening. This time around, the fascists do not wear brown shirts; they dress up as ‘anti-fascists.’ They spread their hatred not in the name of racial purity, but under the banner of “higher humanity,” intersectionality, and social justice. They are transgender-friendly feminists and climate activists battling the “oppressive rule” of the West. Yet, the ideological glue binding this disparate coalition together is something ancient and ugly: a deep, seething hatred for Western modernity, wrapped in old-fashioned Jew-hatred.

The Unholy Alliance

In France, this phenomenon has earned a precise name: l’Islamo-gauchisme - the unification of the radical Left with radical Islam. Whether observing the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) targeting progressive Jewish politicians for failing to adopt an absolute anti-Israel line, or watching activists march through Brussels, Paris, and Berlin, the pattern is identical. Literally a day after the horrific October 7 pogrom (long before any Israeli soldier had set foot in Gaza), state-run European television networks were already frantically working to reverse cause and effect, agonizing over the impending fate of the Palestinians. On the streets of Berlin, Muslim migrants celebrated the slaughter of Israeli civilians, handing out candy to children, waving Hamas flags, and honking horns in celebratory convoys.

The Western response to this open display of barbarism has been an act of frightening submission. It is as if our elites are treating Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission not as a dystopian warning, but as a step-by-step blueprint for their own suicide, driven by a paralyzing fear of death. Western leaders are feeding the crocodile, hoping it will devour them last. In Germany, citizens are left choosing between plague and cholera; Britain teeters on the brink; France and Spain head for the abyss. At the core of this civilizational crisis is a cancerous combination: a brainless, self-destructive, anti-working-class Left operating in a functional alliance with imported Islamist conquerors, fully enabled by decadent, post-modern, ‘globalist’ rulers.

Intellectual Rot

How did the West become so thoroughly decoupled from reality? The irony is thickest in France, the birthplace of the two most influential deconstructivist thinkers: Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. Foucault’s structural analysis of language and power was lifted from the largely forgotten sociologist Karl Mannheim, the left wing of the Frankfurt School, and the nihilistic cultural pessimism of Friedrich Nietzsche. As an oppressed gay boy sent to a strict military school, Foucault harboured an ardent hatred for the French bourgeoisie and his own European heritage - a resentment so deep that it led him to become a fervent admirer of Ayatollah Khomeini during the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Today, we inhabit a world largely engineered by Foucault’s deep-seated resentment and the perfections of cultural Marxism. From the bureaucracies of Brussels to the universities of New York, our institutions are staffed by compliance-driven disciples of this creed. They have nurtured what can only be described as a contemporary ‘Israel-Derangement-Syndrome,’ an ideological virus that preys upon the alienation and identity crises of a younger generation brainwashed by grievance politics.

Postcolonial demagogues have successfully linked the mundane, daily woes of confused Western youths to the supposedly evil machinations of Israel. If a young person feels victimized by high rent or college debt in New York or California, they are handed a cosmic scapegoat to steer their frustration against. They are instantly ‘empowered’ by joining a ritualistic solidarity movement against a non-existent ‘genocide’ in Gaza. It is an updated, highly effective version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, specifically targeting young, deeply ignorant, and highly resentful individuals. Tricked by their academic handlers into believing they possess superior moral wisdom, they have been deprived of a genuine education, transforming them into an intellectual Lumpenproletariat.

Weaponization of Language

Defeating this ideological cult requires an absolute insistence on the precise, non-ideological use of language. If the wording of a political claim presupposes a lie, it is not semantics; it is brainwashing.

To gain historical perspective, consider the true monsters of the twentieth century. Pol Pot committed an undeniable genocide. Mao Zedong engineered the slaughter of millions in his Great Leap Forward. Joseph Stalin instigated the Holodomor, organized purges by quotas, and enslaved ten million Russians, yielding a body count that topped even that of Adolf Hitler. Hitler succeeded in destroying European Jewry, a vast portion of the Romani people, and - with the help of his temporary ally Stalin - millions of Poles, Belarusians, and Ukrainians.

By contrast, Israel is waging a defensive war against an asymmetric foe that deliberately uses its own civilians as human shields and counts its fallen combatants as “innocent civilians.” The figures emanating from Hamas and UNRWA are preposterous fabrications designed to feed Western propaganda machines, and the Islamist-Leftists devour them raw. The Battle of Berlin in the final weeks of the Second World War produced far more dead civilians than the war in Gaza. No sane historian calls that a Allied genocide. Nor does anyone label the gruesome, post-war eviction of millions of Germans from Prussia, Silesia, and the Sudetenland (which cost between one and two million lives) a genocide, though it explicitly sought to eradicate a millennium of German culture.

Yet, in Berlin today, the head of the Left Party—the direct ideological descendant of Stalin’s Socialist Unity Party—celebrates herself for using the word "genocide" as if it were an act of heroic liberation. This proud, blonde ‘anti-Zionist’ marches arm-in-arm with the Muslim Brotherhood and pro-Mullah imperialists against the "root of all evil" in Palestine. While obsessively focused on Gaza, she and her followers completely ignore the 20,000 to 40,000 Iranians murdered by their own regime just this past January.

The uncomfortable truth is that Europe has imported thousands of active members of ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

**Posters of hostages taken by Hamas after October 7 attack, Tel Aviv**

Israel makes mistakes, certainly. The radical settlers - frequently holding American passports - often re-enact a toxic, localized game of cowboys and Indians. But the entire scenario is distorted beyond recognition by a state-run, left-leaning media ecosystem. In Germany, every household is forced to pay a mandatory €220 annual broadcasting tax. We are legally compelled to underwrite the very propaganda that turns our stomachs and strengthens the political forces seeking our destruction.

When put into objective global perspective alongside the actual genocidal displacement of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, the systematic slaughter of Christians across Africa, or China's draconian policies in Xinjiang, Israel’s military conduct is astonishingly moderate.

The fundamental disconnect between the comfortable Western intellectual and the reality on the ground is a failure to understand that the other side genuinely means business. Civilized, hyper-educated Westerners, suffering from a collective case of cultural Stockholm Syndrome, wilfully ignore the fact that the enemies of Israel hate the West in its entirety.

You cannot play a ‘win-win’ game with an adversary who considers it a religious virtue to smash your head and bury it under his heels. Billions upon billions of dollars in international aid have been poured into the West Bank and Gaza over decades. That capital could have financed thriving, modern communities. Instead, it financed a permanent architecture of war.

The Verdict of History

The hatred of Jews is the mental heroin of the contemporary Left. No matter how desperately left-leaning Jewish intellectuals like Bernie Sanders, Judith Butler, or Naomi Klein try to appease, accommodate, and signal their solidarity with these movements, it will not spare them. They are in for a catastrophic surprise, because this is an identity-cult based fundamentally on the ritualistic sacrifice of its perceived enemies.

For now, the destruction of roughly 35,000 armed Hamas fighters has made life in Israel a fraction safer, and it will take Iran’s Revolutionary Guards time to regroup. This buys Israel - and by extension, a dormant Europe - a little time. Perhaps the American center-left will come to its senses; perhaps the Arab world will fully realize that Iran and China pose a far greater existential threat to their survival than Israel ever could; perhaps Europeans will finally tire of the bureaucratic buffoonery in Brussels.

I am not inherently optimistic, yet I have seen walls crumble that were built to last for an eternity. I live less than a mile away from the former Berlin ‘death strip,’ where rows of barbed-wire fences, watchtowers, guard dogs, and landmines were deployed to ensure nobody escaped the East German socialist paradise. Today, those watchtowers are gone, the mines are cleared, and the fences have been recycled by local farmers. Nature has reclaimed the no-man’s-land, triumphing over human folly. The ideological disputes that cut Europe in half, destroyed families, and drove people insane are now so distant that they elicit only uncomprehending looks from the younger generation.

That erasure is a blessing; nobody needs to know the smell of an interrogation cell. But we must retain our perspective. War is inherently ugly, and self-defence is frequently terrifying. In the dark currents of history, the only ethics available to a civilized society is the tragic, clear-eyed prayer that we may choose the lesser evil over the absolute barbarism threatening to consume us.

(The author is an historian and novelist. Views personal.)

Ganpati Bappa and the Movies

The Fascism of Higher Humanity

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