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LIKE millions of households all over the world, my family nearly choked over
breakfast at the recent news that Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad,
has decided to ban Bollywood films on TV.

They are, he reckons, linked to real violence and decadence. And he wants to
commission research to see if he’s right.

Now as we all know, Bollywood is Bombay’s hugely successful movie industry,
highly popular all over the world, but particularly among Asian communities. It
churns out musicals with strong moral plots where good triumphs over evil and
true love wins out in the end. They’re the kind of films you could watch with
grandparents or grandchildren. In fact, many families do.

A typical storyline runs like this: sophisticated rich girl from the city
meets rural hick boy, falls in love. They run away to marry in rich girl’s
yellow sports car. Rich dad gives chase wearing white suit and shades. Big fight
scene in nightclub. Rich dad gets hurt in the fracas, but blesses the wedding
before breathing his last. In between, there’s plenty of songs and colourful
choreography, covering just about every emotion you can imagine.

And of course Bollywood films are violent. Characters are forever getting
into fights. Baddies are kitted out with automatic weapons, and most leading men
know a thing or two about martial arts. It’s not just on screen. At least one
leading star has been jailed for possessing weapons. And there are rumours of a
Mafia-style operation in parts of the industry.

However, no one has ever suggested that watching Bollywood movies might have
something to do with violence and decadence in Asia or Asian communities. But Dr
M, as the Malaysian leader is usually known, might be onto something. Asia is,
after all, one of the world’s most troubled continents. Could Bollywood explain
Phoolan Devi, India’s legendary bandit queen, wars between Pakistan and India,
military rule in Burma and the violent Taliban in Afghanistan? I wonder.

A starting point for Dr M’s proposed research could be to compare crime
statistics in India and Malaysia, asking which is the more violent society. If
it’s India, we’d know how to take the research forward. Naturally, a proper
scientific investigation would need a control sample of crime figures from a
population that has little contact with Bollywood films. Try the US, Russia, or
even Northern Ireland.

Then again we could try peering into the mind of the Bollywood fan by taking
MRI scans of a cohort of Bollywood junkies watching a violent scene from a film.
The trick would be to compare the results with MRI scans of both convicted
serial killers and other violent criminals while they watch the same
scenes—and with ordinary folk with no criminal record.

But why stop at violence? If Bollywood is as influential as Malaysia’s PM
seems to think, surely its impact extends into other areas of life. Is there a
greater incidence of young men picking fights with large groups of heavily armed
people—and winning? Or a higher than average number of unmarried city
women driving open-topped yellow sports cars? And do the majority of urban
fathers-in-law wear white suits?

I can’t wait to find out.