However this is the twist no one noticed coming. Within the many years that adopted, the individuals who formed on a regular basis Hindu tradition most deeply weren’t clergymen, politicians, or pandits. They have been two leisure juggernauts: Karan Johar and Ekta Kapoor. Between them, they turned ritual into spectacle, household into theatre, and home Hinduism into the nation’s most beloved cleaning soap opera.
Karan Johar reinvented the Indian wedding ceremony. Earlier than DDLJ, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, and the chiffon-drenched glory of K3G, weddings have been charmingly regional, gloriously chaotic household affairs with uncles arguing about seating, aunties weeping on cue, a harried priest, and a buffet operating out of paneer by 9 pm.
After Karan Johar? Each wedding ceremony wished to be a film. The sangeet grew to become obligatory. Cousins began rehearsing for weeks. Dance instructors received booked stable. Bride entries demanded slow-mo and a wind machine. Mehendi stretched right into a three-day manufacturing with coordinated outfits, drone pictures, and an Instagram hashtag. The groom’s baraat acquired pyrotechnics. Even the pheras began wanting suspiciously well-lit. Immediately younger {couples} may be seen adopted by digicam crew, and wedding ceremony invitation playing cards appear like movie posters.
North Indian Punjabi rituals went viral the old style approach: cinema. The mustard fields of DDLJ, the dhol-heavy mehendi of Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!, the chiffon-saris-in-Switzerland mother-daughter moments, all of it grew to become ritualistic experiences. Quickly Bengali, Tamil, Gujarati, and Telugu weddings have been borrowing the lot. There needed to be now the sangeet nights, choreographed couple dances, film-set florals, designer lehengas, and a minimum of one tearful household speech timed to a swelling violin. A Tamil bride in Coimbatore now does a sangeet her grandmother by no means heard of, as a result of Karan Johar made it appear like love itself.
Cinema rewrote ritual aesthetics. The lehenga grew to become nationwide bridal armor. Karva Chauth grew to become a romantic blockbuster scene, full with moonlit terrace, sieve, husband holding water glass, soft-focus tears. The household puja grew to become emotional choreography. Moms grew to become sacred emotional anchors, ideally backlit and clutching a thali. Crystal chandeliers, marigold cascades, embroidered saris, Manish Malhotra silhouettes, and tasteful temple corners grew to become the common shorthand for “Indian custom” even when grandma’s precise custom concerned a metal tumbler, a folding chair, and a transistor radio taking part in M. S. Subbulakshmi.
If Karan Johar conquered the marriage, Ekta Kapoor annexed the family. Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii, and Kasautii Zindagii Kay turned each day home life into ritual theatre, full with thunderclap zoom-ins on suspicious in-laws and a background rating that handled each look like a Supreme Court docket verdict. Tens of millions tuned in nightly to soak up Karva Chauth fasts, Tulsi worship, Raksha Bandhan, Diwali pujas, ancestor rites, sindoor moments, and griha-pravesh ceremonies carried out with the gravity of state capabilities. Regional customs went nationwide, one dramatic background rating at a time. A Tulsi vivah scene on Star Plus did extra to popularise the ritual than 100 discourses.
The sari-clad daughter-in-law emerged because the period’s true superhero: emotional anchor, ritual professional, household CEO, ethical compass, occasional avenger. The kitchen and the puja room changed Kurukshetra as the true battlefield of dharma. Inheritance disputes? The brand new mythological wars. A bahu lighting the night diya grew to become a extra recognisable picture of Hindu advantage than any scripture.
Ekta additionally standardized the visuals. The outsized dwelling temples lit like movie units, glittering puja thalis, competition outfits with their very own gravitational pull, gold jewellery as id, and sindoor daring sufficient to be seen from house. A pan-Indian, upper-caste, middle-class Hindu aesthetic was born, transcending language and area.
The “Indian household” these creators constructed was nearly completely upper-caste, North Indian, Hindi-speaking, and affluent. Muslim, Christian, Dalit, Adivasi, and working-class households hardly ever walked into these dwelling rooms. And after they did, normally as facet characters or sentimental detours. The consequence was a quietly highly effective equation: to be visibly “Indian” on display screen was to be visibly Hindu, upper-caste, and well-off. Custom grew to become one thing Sabyasachi might promote you. There was room for the cow, not cockroaches.
Nonetheless, the achievement is plain. Collectively, Bollywood and tv pulled off one thing no sermon ever might: they made ritual fascinating. Glamorous. Singable. Aspirational. They created participation by means of pleasure, not preaching.
So when the Sanatani institution grumbles, frets and fumes about Bollywood being too Westernized and Islamicized, there is a scrumptious irony. Trendy Hindu visible tradition — from baraat choreography to Diwali décor — owes its existence to the very dream factories that carried custom into the age of satellite tv for pc TV, liberalization, and the worldwide wedding-industrial complicated.
