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Read the first part of this series here.
On the evening of September 21, 2025, as Bollywood celebrities arrived at Mumbai’s Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre for a grand musical tribute to Narendra Modi, a man in a plain white kurta-pyjama moved swiftly through the arriving crowd – greeting actors, holding their hands, positioning them before the paparazzi, guiding them through the media line. Ranbir Kapoor, Vicky Kaushal, Akshay Kumar, Tiger Shroff, Raveena Tandon, Janhvi Kapoor, Rajkumar Hirani, Ashutosh Gowariker – one after another, they followed his cues.
Inside, as the formal inauguration began, another man stood on stage in a blue kurta, sharing the dais with Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and BJP national general secretary Vinod Tawde during the ceremonial lamp lighting. He was not some renowned politician, not a star. Yet he appeared entirely at ease at the centre of power.
These two men were Mahaveer Jain and Hitesh Jain.
No, they were not related by blood. What connected them instead was something perhaps more durable: a shared ecosystem built over the last decade at the intersection of Bollywood and the BJP, one that has seemingly reshaped how Hindi cinema engages with political power and, increasingly, how it tells its stories.
