Many of us who grew up in the 1990s learnt about love and romance by watching Hindi films made during that decade. Our ideas of what an ideal relationship should look like were probably shaped by these movies, and even today, our romantic fantasies and dreams are a reflection of the conditioning watching these films resulted in. However, these films weren’t exactly the most progressive and smart. They often portrayed women poorly, and reinforced regressive gender stereotypes. So, here we list five popular yet problematic Hindi films which gave an entire generation of Indians the wrong idea about fairytale romances.

‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’ gave the whole country the idea that marriage and love only happen once. Here’s why that’s messed up.

“Hum ek baar jeete hai, ek baar marte hai, shaadi bhi ek baar hoti hai … aur pyar ek baar hi hota hai.”

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Image Credit: Dharma Productions

How many of us are still in a relationship with our first boyfriend or girlfriend? How many of us would rather date the first person we ever loved, than the person we chose after becoming mature enough to make an informed decision about the kind of relationship we want? Haven’t most of us grown and learned more about relationships by dating multiple people? This film’s premise about not moving on from your first love gave a lot of us the wrong impression about relationships.

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Image Credit: Dharma Productions

Internalising such ideas prevents us from moving on from past heartbreaks, and is a waste of our lives. We spend time wallowing over people because they were our first love, and think we can’t possibly fall in love again. Isn’t that sad?

The funniest part is, Rahul basically contradicts himself when he says this, because he literally falls in love with Tina and Anjali, and marries them both. Clearly, even for him, pyaar aur shaadi sirf ek baar nahi hoti hain.

‘Dil Toh Pagal Hai’ reduced Nisha and Pooja to ‘types’ and created a woman to cater to a man’s fantasies.

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Image Credit: Yash Raj Films

When it comes to Dil Toh Pagal Hai and its portrayal of women, we see the origins of the manic pixie dream girl in Madhuri Dixit’s character. Pooja is a woman who is an extension of Rahul’s imagination. The writer took the idea of a man’s ideal woman and made her a character that no real woman is. “Woh kaam kya karti hai?” “Khwabon mein aati hai.”

Worse, Nisha, who is a real woman who is upfront about her desires, is the foil to Pooja. Nisha wears miniskirts and Pooja wears salwar-kameez. Nisha doesn’t beat about the bush when it comes to her affection for Rahul, while Pooja is the ideal amount of hesitant– just the lack of consent Indian men dream about.

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Image Credit: Yash Raj Films

The fact that false, sexist ideas about womanhood and purity are the pillars on which Pooja’s character is built and idealised, makes this film’s voice on “ideal” femininity suspect. This Yash Raj heroine is not the epitome of romance. Her existence is proof of how men dream of women who can service them, not be their own person.

‘Maine Pyar Kiya’ single-handedly gave a whole generation the wrong ideas about friendship and love.

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Image Credit: Rajshri Films

Dosti ka ek usool hai madam, no sorry no thank you.”

Ek ladka aur ek ladki kabhi dost nahi ho sakte.”

First of all, friends do need to apologise to each other when wrong, and they do need to express their gratitude towards each other. Maine Pyar Kiya, despite being one of Salman’s better films, got a lot of things wrong about relationships. Although it had its heart in the right place, and intended to show what selfless love is like through this quote, it neglected to mention the fact that this is poor behaviour in real life. In a film, it’s fine if you don’t thank each other or don’t apologise. If you or your partner did that in real life to each other, you wouldn’t feel so good about how you treat each other. It would feel like a thankless, mean equation.

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Image Credit: Rajshri Films

The second problem with this film is the second quote, said by the film’s villain and actualised by the narrative, thanks to which the main leads actually end up as lovers, not friends. It’s getting late and we need to normalise male-female friendships instead of sexualising them. Need we explain why?

‘Mohabbatein’ propagated toxic concepts of love being painful, which would convince people to stay in bad relationships.

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Image Credit: Yash Raj Films

“Mohabbat bahut khoobsurat hoti hai … toh kya hua agar woh apne saath thoda sa dard laati hai.”

“Mohabbat bhi zindagi ki tarah hoti hai. Har mod aasaan nahi hota, har mod par khushi nahi hoti. Par jab hum zindagi ka saath nahi chhodte, phir mohabbat ka saath kyun chhodein?”

Mohabbatein, technically a 2000 release, was made at the end of the 90s, and is also a can of worms in terms of what could be problematic in a movie like the other films in this list. But, here we will only focus on the relationship-related subjects it gets wrong. Not only does it promote the idea of stalking through Uday Chopra and Shamita Shetty’s relationship, but it also glosses over its toxic nature. She doesn’t like him, he is aggressive and rude to her, and somehow this tension is supposed to be… romantic? Imagine what ideas of love and passion a generation that idealised this film grew up internalising.

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Image Credit: Yash Raj Films

That’s not all. When you read some of this film’s famous quotes, it’s clear that it glorifies pain. It makes love seem like something which is inevitably going to involve suffering. There are so many people who stay in toxic and abusive situations, painting a rosy picture over their truth by lying to themselves about the unhappiness being a symptom of true love. Mohabbatein pushes that idea. It even romanticises the suicide of Aishwarya Rai’s character!

‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’ is a love story only because Simran felt the same way. If not, it would be a crime story.

 

Image Credit: Yash Raj Films

Raj’s twisted character is the hero a lot of Indian women grew up idolising, because the narrative voice of this film favoured him and painted his shady actions in a positive way. He is creepy towards Simran, thinks lying to her about having intercourse while intoxicated is funny.

But women aren’t the only people who got the wrong ideas from DDLJ. Raj tells Simran how he would never take advantage of her because she’s a “Hindustani ladki,” indicating that women who aren’t Indian are less respectable. What does this teach young boys about respecting all women? After all, Raj pursues her into a different country based on the assumption that after a month of spending the summer together fighting, both of them like each other. SO many men harass women thinking she likes him back, without any indication from her suggesting this.

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Image Credit: Yash Raj Films

What if Simran hadn’t liked him back? He had no way of knowing if she did. Imagine a guy who annoyed you throughout summer, stalking you halfway across the world. Imagine if you were marrying a guy you actually liked, and this delusional Raj wanted to break it up.

The film’s conditions make Raj’s actions seem alright in most cases, but many people don’t view things portrayed in films with context, and just internalise things shown in movies without question.