‘Bollywood’ is technically a slur which the West coined for ridiculing Hindi Film industry, or a Bullying term at best. So thanks to a friend who told me about an expansive discussion actress Ratna Pathak Shah started when she was invited at a fest in IIT-Madras last year...(1/8)

So in 1950s, Hindi film industry was producing excellent content from the house of Raj Kapoor (who became a big phenomenon in Soviet Union), Rajendra Kumar, and so on. Indian films were indeed becoming India’s soft power.

So now that Hollywood had a competition in terms of creativity quotient, they just coined something which rhymed with them, and used it as a slurry address for Indian filmmakers. Indians accepted that slur, almost formalised it...

...and now it is synonymous with Hindi Film industry’s identity as whole.
Hollywood is a place in Los Angeles, there’s no place like 'Bollywood' in Mumbai or anywhere in India.
Coming to the politics of it:

India despite being ‘non-aligned’ was close to Soviet Bloc in 1950s and 1960s, and back then, our movies were more popular than Hollywood creations in the countries that formed Soviet Bloc (that’s how it became our soft power).

There are many credible inputs that ‘Mother India’ was sidelined in Academy Awards because of the same reason. It's no coincidence that no Indian won an Academy Award until Bhanu Athaiya for designing costumes in 'Gandhi', and then Satyajit Ray in 1993 when cold war was over.

You'll NEVER see any big-time celeb addressing Film industry as Bollywood. Go to the twitter timeline of @ZoyaAkhtarOff , or watch @iamsrk, @SrBachchan, or @aamir_khan's addresses anywhere. 'Bollywood' is never used as an address, because at its very core it’s not meant to be.

So whenever you use the word ‘Bollywood’, remember it is a ridiculing slur in the first place. Rather we can go for Hindi Film industry or Hindi Cinema while addressing what we usually refer to as ‘Bollywood’.
@FarOutAkhtar, @ayushmannk, @juniorbachchan (8/8)