“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the society”, said Percy Bysshe Shelley in 19th-century England while critiquing the many colonial projects his motherland was going strong with. Sitting in the House of Lords, Shelley and his friend Byron critiqued the policies of England towards the colonies as well as at home. It may have achieved precious little other than bolstering the faith that the custodians of culture also had a conscience.

Looking around today, nothing appears further from the truth.

Cinema, the most popular vehicle of culture in India, is dealing with an existential question: Where does my loyalty lie? The question is more biting for the Mumbai-based Hindi cinema industry because of its scale; it’s relevant to other languages, too. But let’s not write yet another lament piece on it. This act has become tedious.

We need to talk about what George Orwell called a “courageous mouse”. Artists trying their best to maintain conscience, their own and that of society. Courageous Mouse Kathryn Bigelow’s latest release on Netflix, A House of Dynamite, has divided not just the........

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