Almost the entire Muslim community underwent a massive sense of collective guilt thanks to Partition. There is a fundamental reason why Muslim actors and artists in Hindi cinema adopted Hindu names: remember Muhammad Yusuf Khan? Hamid Ali Khan? Mumtaz Jehan Begum Dehlavi? Mahjabeen Bano? They are respectively, Dilip Kumar, Ajit, Madhubala, and Meena Kumari. From that era to the steady but sure transformation and near-total takeover of Bollywood by Dawood Ibrahim, there is a direct parallel to the dominance of secularism in Indian politics and public discourse.
