Bollywood celebrities vote in the Indian election

Mumbai: The six-week national elections began on Monday with voting in Mumbai, India's financial center. Much of the megacity's business and entertainment elite threw their support behind Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 

When the votes complete early next month, it is widely expected that the 73-year-old leader, who has actively supported the predominant Hindu faith in India, will win a third term.

Large corporations have contributed a significant amount of money to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Bollywood celebrities have endorsed the party's ideological promise to reconcile the country's politics and majority religion. 

Modi's carefully constructed image as a defender of the Hindu faith has kept the population interested, not the persistently high unemployment and income inequality in the economy.This year, he presided over the ceremonial opening of a temple in the town of Ayodhya that is devoted to the god Ram.

The centuries-old mosque was destroyed in 1992 by extreme Hindus, and the temple now stands on the place of the mosque. The construction of the temple fulfilled a long-held goal of Hindu activists across the country, which was accompanied by simultaneous national media coverage and public celebrations.

Stars in the film industry are well known for being ardent backers of Modi's administration since his election a decade ago. A number of films that are extremely combustible and explosive from an ideological perspective have also been made by filmmakers in order to conform to the dividing rhetoric of the national government.

Critics contend that this intentionally denigrates India's Muslim minority, which numbers over 200 million people. The Kerala Story was heavily backed by the BJP last year, but it also took a lot of heat for fabricating the story that hundreds of Hindu women had been coerced into joining the Islamic State by Muslims.