[mitra]

Originally Posted by princesspink

Check your facts...Bombay is in Western India. The geography is important because the entire industry is based there. If bollywood was a north indian film industry it would have been based there...its a simple business rule.

If Hindi is the national language of India, it is more than obvious why a pan-Indian film industry will make films in Hindi. And if Hindi is specifically a North-Indian language why is it the national language? Google comes to my rescue again, its because hindi is spoken in almost all parts of the country besides the local languages, thus making it the only binding language.

My conclusion : Bollywood is not a North Indian film industry.

In India there is no national language. Hindi is an official language along with Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Gujarati etc......All indian languages are official languages in India. Hindi is spoken predominately in Northern India. Your conclusion is wrong ask any indian, don't try to be a know it all, just get the facts straight.

Post on another forum:

1) Bollywood is representative of NORTH INDIANS. The others such as bengalis, south indian tamils and
malayalees have their own regional cinema. People in the South of India don't even watch Hindi things with as much fervour as was demonstrated by the last season of Indian Idol where the most talented singer Karunya from the South lost out to Rajasthani Sandeep Acharya because of the lack of voters(and viewers) from the Southern states. This is why not a SINGLE actor/actress working in the southern movie industries has light eyes. You can look at these websites for proof.
http://www.idlebrain.com/movie/photogallery/index.html
http://www.totaltollywood.com/
"Bollywood and the other major cinematic hubs (Tamil, Marathi, Bengali, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada)
constitute the broader Indian film industry, whose output is the largest in the world in terms of number of films produced and in number of tickets sold"

2) Bollywood is aimed at the Indians living in the states of the North such as Punjab, Rajasthan, Kashmir,
Himachal Pradesh, UP, Gujarat and Bihar and also Maharashtra but that is a western Indian state technically.
Bihar has also been classified by some people as being an eastern state rather than northern. UP-ites also have their bhojpuri cinema and Maharashtrians have Marathi cinema. Most people who come into bollywood have families in the business. Most of these families have historically been punjabis of the Khatri caste(Kshatriyas who are now said to have the most Aryan blood out of the four castes even more so than the Brahmins which makes sense since Kshatriyas are the warriors). The Roshans(Hrithik), the Khans who have ancestors in Afghanistan(feroz khan, fardeen khan), The Kapoors, the Kumars etc. all have roots in Punjab, Afghanistan and/or the region that used to be part of Pakistan and they are all Khatris or Pashtuns. This could be because Bollywood used to be based in Lahore before Partition. Now after 50+ years Bollywood isn't punjabi khatri dominated anymore and you see more bengalis, southies, marathis coming in but the older families of bollywood are not going anywhere either.