Slamming the ‘Bollywood film industry’ for holding the English language high in regard and ignoring Hindi, actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui on Saturday stated that the ‘Bollywood’ industry lacks in maximising creative talents because the communication among the artists is never clear which leads to confusion in the execution of the required actions.
He was speaking at the special session named ‘Aspiration to Action’ at Times Network India Economic Conclave on April 23.
“The directors and producers make the film in Hindi but prefer to communicate in English on the sets. Even the scriptwriters, costume designers, production designers, and screenwriters speak in English. Sometimes they all tend to discuss the same character but fail to understand each other’s point. The actor also gets confused. Performance gets affected”, he said highlighting the need for usage of the Hindi language on the film sets.
The video of the incident got viral over social media on Tuesday where the actor could be seen stating the importance of clear communication for superlative results. When asked about what aspects would he like to change in the ‘Bollywood film industry’, he said that the first and foremost thing everybody must do is call it a ‘Hindi film industry’. “What is the point in making a Hindi film if nobody in the practical job even speaks Hindi”, he reiterated.
“Aap Hindi mein film bana rahe ho lekin director bhi assistance bhi saare english mein baatein kar rahe ho” #NawazuddinSiddiqui
— Bollywoodirect (@Bollywoodirect) April 25, 2022
Courtesy- TimesNow NavBharat pic.twitter.com/E94N3wrltr
He compared the Hindi film industry to the Tamil or Kannada film industry and said that ‘those films are best in performance as they all proudly speak in one local language’. “The directors, producers, make-up artists, screenwriters, actors, all speak the language in which the film is made. This helps everybody working on that project to understand every minute detail. No doubt, those films work well on the creativity graphs”, he added.
Scripts have to be in Devanagari
Siddiqui stated that while the movies are made in Hindi, the scripts the actors get are printed in ‘Roman letters’. He added that he would prefer to read scripts written in Devanagari, which is the common script for so many Indian languages.
Siddiqui also stated that many of the talented actors who come from the theatres, are not from the posh urban backgrounds and are not comfortable in spoken modern English. He added that if everyone on the set communicated in Hindi, it would be really easy for the actor to understand what is required of him in terms of performance.
Siddiqui meanwhile also commented on whether films have become a novel political tool or not. “Film is a Film. All kinds of films were made in the past, are made, and will be made in the future. It depends on the audiences how they perceive it, how they take it”, he said. He also said that he was disappointed by the kind of films that succeeded at the box office in recent times.
It is important to note that Home Minister Amit Shah also had pressed upon the usage of Hindi over English on April 9. “People of different states should communicate with each other in Hindi, and not English. Now the time has come to make the official language an important part of the unity of the country. When citizens of States who speak other languages communicate with each other, it should be in the language of India”, he had said.
He had also clarified that Hindi should be accepted as an alternative only to English, and not to local languages. “Hindi should be made more flexible by accepting words from other local languages”, he had suggested.
