Illustration of Religious Minority Symbols in Bollywood Films: A Descriptive & Semiotic Approach

Abstract

Bollywood Cinema has extended fame on the global streets and gained enormous clout through its massive audience. This current research discovers the religious symbols in thirty Hindi Films with regard to the top three minorities in India i.e. Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs. The study theoretically connected with Pierce's theory of symbol and representation theory by Stuart Hall.Qualitative descriptive semiotic analysis was applied to identify the religious symbols and reveal the underlying meaning associated with the minority characters. The symbolic analysis exposed the agenda of the Bollywood films that the symbols associated with the three minor religions like Muslim beards, caps or veils and the concept of Jihad, Sikh turbans and Christian cross were represented in a distorted and negative way. The research is a humble opinion to provide more awareness of movie makers, directors, and producers toward minority religions before making films pertaining to religious minorities.