Capitalising On Nostalgia: Bollywood And The Never-ending Resurgence Of The Past

A reel with a split screen, one showing Rohit Saraf in an all-black outfit: pants, coat, high neck, and sunglasses, descending from a black helicopter; the other featuring Shah Rukh Khan’s helicopter entry scene from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham went viral following the trailer release of Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari (2025). The vitality of K3G’s iconic track, underscoring both visuals, made the connection almost unmistakable. The film, starring Varun Dhawan, Jahnvi Kapoor, Sanya Malhotra and Rohit Saraf, evokes the early 2000s’ sensibility through this very scene. Produced by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions, also the banner and brain behind K3G, the trailer and clips of the film gained attention and circulation precisely because of their deliberate invocation of that cinematic memory. This strategic insertion of the past is no longer incidental; it has become a deliberate trope in contemporary filmmaking—one that is acutely aware of the cultural capital of past cinema, trivia, or even controversy. It seeks to influence that memory, hooking audiences through nostalgia and turning recollection into a marketing instrument.

Yet, such creative recycling also lays bare a more discomforting question: what does this say about the state of imagination within contemporary Bollywood? This deliberate invocation of past glory may serve as a promotional tactic, but it also exposes a creative fatigue at the industry’s core. In an appearance on Aleena Dissects, actress Kalki Koechlin stated bluntly that Bollywood is facing a recession, “Recession ho raha hai…does everyone know that? There is a Bollywood recession; that’s why they are re-releasing everything. There is no content. Whatever they make is not working…that’s why everything is stalled.” This articulates what many insiders and critics may have long suspected. The recycling of cinematic moments, melodies and aesthetics is not merely a tribute but an act of generating interest. It is the symptom of an industry grappling with a creative drought, where filmmakers are leaning on the nostalgia economy to manufacture engagement.

The case of Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari demonstrates this clearly. Beyond the K3G visual echo, the film reintroduces Sonu Nigam’s “Bijuria”, a song that once defined early 2000s pop culture. This reappropriation capitalises on both the song’s intrinsic nostalgic pull and Nigam’s cultural legacy. As Nigam himself remarked in an interview with Hindustan Times, “Sometimes, remakes spoil a song, but a lot of times they bring old melodies back and create nostalgia for people who grew up with them.” His comment encapsulates the ambivalence of this nostalgia economy; it operates both as revival and as rebranding. The act of revival is aesthetic, emotional, and strategic all at once.

Nostalgia may have become one of the most powerful currencies in Bollywood’s contemporary marketing apparatus. It fuels virality, meme culture, and the cycle of online discourse that determines a film’s visibility long before its release. Whether audiences respond with affection or contempt becomes secondary; the fact that they respond at all validates the strategy. Yet, this also raises the critical question: is nostalgia being used to connect, or to compensate? Does it serve as a bridge between generations, or merely as a prop for a stumbling creative imagination?

This tendency is hardly new. Bollywood has a long history of remaking old films, remixing songs and re-staging iconic scenes. The memory of Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan on the bike in Sholay (1975), the remake of Madhuri Dixit’s “Ek Do Teen”, or the insertion of Divya Bharti’s “Saat Samundar Paar” in Kick (2014) and now the highly criticised remake with Kartik Aaryan, all exemplify this self-referential turn, where the interest towards the film is generated through the very presence of these insertions. Most recently, the resurgence of “Duniya Haseeno Ka Mela”, central to The Ba***ds of Bollywood (2025), demonstrates how nostalgia not only leads a narrative but also drives digital engagement. The song’s post-release resurgence, with over five million views, is proof of how the past can be algorithmically revived. More strikingly, the series’ inclusion of the infamous Ananya Panday-Siddhant Chaturvedi roundtable moment indicates how nostalgia now extends beyond cinematic texts to encompass viral pop-cultural memory itself.

The effectiveness of such memory lies in its dual function; it is at once collective and deeply personal. Actor Rajat Bedi’s recent resurgence is a notable example of this. The renewed attention to his past roles in Koi Mil Gaya (2003) or Jaani Dushman (2002), triggered by his casting in The Ba***s of Bollywood, blurs the line between parody, homage,and reparation. His own statements, claiming that his character reflects his personal struggles in the industry, introduce an additional layer: nostalgia as self-reflexive performance. The renewed circulation of his old scenes and songs, such as “Tu Qatil Tera Dil Qatil” from Do Hazaar Ek (1998), reveals how nostalgia not only revives content but also resurrects forgotten personas. “I am overwhelmed,” Bedi told Siddharth Kannan, “I just want to say thank you all because of the love and affection you all are giving me from my show, my performance, or maybe from the nostalgia that has been created from the past. Hundred percent goes to Aaryan for getting that nostalgia back.” His statement unintentionally reinforces the very critique: it is nostalgia, not novelty, that is generating relevance.

Nostalgia, then, is no longer an accidental sentiment but a calculated mechanism, an aesthetic and commercial strategy consciously deployed by filmmakers, marketers and streaming platforms alike. The rise of the reels economy and the logic of virality have amplified its function. The revival of Bijuria, the circulation of Duniya Haseeno Ka Mela, and the memefication of Rajat Bedi’s scenes exemplify how the past is algorithmically repackaged for the present. This nostalgia economy ensures visibility, traction, and conversation—but it also signals an exhaustion of risk and imagination. Bollywood’s obsession with the past may indeed generate immediate attention, but it also risks confining the industry to a recursive loop, where memory becomes a substitute for meaning and revival replaces reinvention. In the end, what remains is a cinema that thrives not on innovation but on recollection; a cinema that capitalises on nostalgia for circulation and virality.