Fight cultural invasion

It is unfortunate that the Indian film industry's reported lobbying with the ministry of information and broadcasting to ban Hollywood from dubbing its blockbusters is being labelled as a protectionist measure. If anything, our filmmakers have raised a legitimate concern that the availability of Hollywood blockbusters in local languages is eating into the revenue share of indigenous cinema at the box office.The fact that the Hollywood studios have big budgets for promotions — which our filmmakers can only dream to match even in the long term — puts them in a disadvantaged position.
Bollywood is an industry that employs many, and is an important source of India's soft power. It is the government's responsi-bility to ensure that Bollywood is not put out of business by rampaging Hollywood moguls keen to capture the Indian market. We have no problems protecting agriculture because of the critical importance of this sector. Should we not protect our culture too?
A ban on dubbed films will ensure that our filmmakers, particularly smaller ones with limited budgets are not exposed to unfair competition from Hollywood biggies. More importantly, it will give sufficient time to our fragile film industry to deal with future competition on a level playing field. To construe it as a protectionist measure is missing the point. After all, there are no restrictions on Hollywood films playing in English. That's a lot better than China, which radically restricts its intake of Hollywood films. There can be no gainsaying that our filmmakers have the first right over our mother tongues. It's legitimate to take some steps to protect ourselves against cultural invasion — the French do it too. A ban on dubbing would preserve Hollywood's interests as well, as most of its movies dubbed into Hindi are bad advertisements for Hollywood.