Next week on New Year's Day, Netflix will release a horror anthology film called Ghost Stories. Starring the likes of Janhvi Kapoor, Sobhita Dhulipala, and Mrunal Thakur, it comes from directors Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Karan Johar, and Zoya Akhtar. But while Netflix is bringing in 2020 with a scary feature, scarier things are happening across India, with over 25 people killed, hundreds in jail, and thousands in custody over protests against the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the possible ramifications in combination with the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC).
Critics have accused Bollywood[1], especially influential personalities, for largely keeping quiet on the matter. While some of them have voiced their concerns in the past week, others have taken a diplomatic approach that's been accused of being tone deaf. With Ghost Stories'[2] Kapoor, Kashyap, and Johar speaking to Gadgets 360 last Friday, we asked them how they think they can contribute in times like these.
Kapoor said: “I think artists can encourage people to educate themselves because I understand that in a democracy, the government has a lot of responsibility but so do its citizens and I think that we're exercising it but we have many rights, and to exercise those rights, I think we need to be properly informed and educated. So I think that's where we need to start, is to get to know as much as we can about what's happening, and form opinions that that are honest to who we are as a nation.”
Johar said: “I think artists basically have the ability of reaching out to many millions of people, especially in this day and age of social media, where artists engaging with those platforms have millions of followers and thousands of...