The Economist October 30th 2021 Asia 67The Tatmadaw is struggling. Between
February and September, “conflict inci
dents”, from battles and bombings to de
fections, took place in 250 out of Myan
mar’s 330 townships, according to Mat
thew Arnold, an independent analyst. To
put out these fires, the army has spread it
self thin. More than 1,700 soldiers were
killed by anticoup forces in the three
months to September, according to the Na
tional Unity Government, a shadow cabi
net made up of deposed lawmakers. Some
1,500 troops have defected, and the army is
struggling to recruit officers. That alone
should not hurt the Tatmadaw, which may
have as many as 300,000 troops. But many
are poorly trained and equipped. Morale is
low. Forced, in effect, to cede swathes of
the country to rebels, the junta “is facing
an existential crisis”, says Mr Arnold.
Yet things may soon look up for the ar
my. Since August, it has been sending rein
forcements to the country’s northwest,
where resistance is fiercest, in anticipation
of the dry season, which has just begun.
The Tatmadaw is said to be preparing for a
long campaign there. It may be planning to
conduct “clearance operations”, a tacticused against the persecuted Rohingya mi
nority in Rakhine state, in which soldiers
raze villages, forcing civilians to flee, in or
der then to hit exposed rebels with over
whelming firepower. “The scale and geo
graphical breadth of the impending cam
paign is...arguably unprecedented” in the
Tatmadaw’s already bloodstained history,
writes Mr Davis.
There is a strong chance resistance in
this region will be crushed. But that still
leaves all the guerrilla fightersinthe rest of
the country. A long and bloodycivil war
increasingly looks inevitable.nI
f bollywood isIndia’s secular reli
gion, then the Khans—Aamir, Salman
and Shah Rukh—are its holy trinity. The
three actors, who are unrelated, have for
three decades sat at the top of India’s
colossal Hindilanguage film industry,
their films, their characters and their
personas wallpapering the country’s
imagination. They are, perhaps as much
as the prime minister and the captain of
the national cricket team, the most rec
ognisable faces in India. They also hap
pen to be Muslim.
For most Indians, to the extent they
think about it at all, that is a source of
pride: the Khans’ preeminence a sign of
the country’s tolerant secularism. But it
sticks in the craw of Hindu chauvinists,
who are well represented by the govern
ment of Narendra Modi, the prime min
ister, and his Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp).
All three Khans have faced criticism from
bjpfigures in recent years, along with the
usual gibes that they should “go to Paki
stan”. By the debased standards of Indian
political discourse, where even the use of
the indigenous Urdu language is seen as
“Abrahamisation”, that is not surprising.
What is odd, however, is that the
government’s assault on Bollywood
has—after a drumbeat of harassment
against smaller figures and lesserknown
producertypes—reached the very top of
the industry. On October 3rd, the Narcot
ics Control Bureau (ncb), a national
lawenforcement agency, arrested sever
al people in a drug bust on a cruise ship
off the coast of Mumbai, where the in
dustry is based. Among them was Aryan
Khan, the 23yearold son of Shah Rukh
Khan, arguably the bestloved of the
trinity. The ncbclaimed to have seized
lots of drugs, though it has since ad
mitted that none were found on Aryan.
He was nonetheless remanded in custody and denied bail, even as it was granted
to others. News channels have been run
ning blanket coverage. Politicians from
across the country have weighed in.
The whole stink has a familiar tang to
it. Last year, as cases of covid19 were
rising in India’s first wave and the bjpwas
preparing for elections in the poor eastern
state of Bihar, a young actor called Sushant
Singh Rajput—a Bihari—committed sui
cide in Mumbai. Progovernment news
channels—ie, most of them—ran hyster
ical items about Bollywood’s drug culture,
and accused Rhea Chakraborty, the dead
man’s grieving girlfriend, of ensnaring
him with the demon weed. The ncbar
rested Ms Chakraborty, who spent a
month in prison before being granted bail.
This time it is in Uttar Pradesh that
elections are looming. The bjp’s campaign
has spun its own version of a preposterous
Bollywood plot, casting the state, one of
India’s most backward, as a shining bea
con for the rest of the country. Since that is
hardly guaranteed to work, it is also rely
ing on its old strategy of stoking tensions.
The circus around Aryan’s arrest is a sequel of last year’s drama.
That the target this time is Muslim is
only an added bonus. Harassing Bolly
wood carries more important benefits for
the bjp, including annoying the govern
ment of Maharashtra, a rich western
state of which Mumbai is the capital.
That antipathy dates from 2019, when the
local Shiv Sena, itself a proHindu party,
broke its longstanding alliance with the
bjp. Mr Modi and his cronies have never
forgiven their erstwhile allies.
Yet there is a more fundamental
reason for the bjp’s assault on Bollywood
than electioneering, political point
scoring or the sheer joy of bashing Mus
lims. Since coming to power in 2014, the
bjphas demolished the national opposi
tion, coopted independent institutions,
tamed India’s oncevibrant press and
obstructed free speech. It is building a
cartoonish personality cult around Mr
Modi, printing his picture on everything
from sacks of governmentsubsidised
rice to covid vaccination certificates.
Bollywood may well be the last in
dependent source of influence in India.
It is inherently patriotic, its superstars
mostly apolitical and, after the past year,
most of its members terrified of speaking
in any manner that might attract Delhi’s
attention. But that is not enough. The
fact that its movies show Hindus and
Muslims—and all sorts of Indians—
getting along, that it tackles issues of
social injustice, and that its characters
and the reallife people behind them
espouse liberal values, is simply too great
a threat to Mr Modi’s narrow vision of a
Hindu nation. If ensuring that Indians
can imagine themselves only on the bjp’s
terms means destroying one of country’s
great cultural and commercial successes,
that is a price the party and its prime
minister seem willing to pay. What does India’s government have against its film industry?Banyan BJP v Bollywood