What’s In a Name? This ‘Dadasaheb Phalke Award’ Is Not THE Dadasaheb Phalke Award

The hashtag #DadaSahebPhalkeAwards2023 used by filmmakers, news agencies and news organisations, gives the impression to a reader that the awards are the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, India’s highest honour in the field of cinema and given by the Union government. But it’s not.

New Delhi: On February 21, the hashtag #DadaSahebPhalkeAwards2023 began trending on Twitter, along with news reports, news agency tweets and individuals’ posts on Vivek Agnihotri’s controversial film The Kashmir Files having won best film.

The hashtag “DadaSaheb Phalke Awards 2023” gives the impression that the awards are the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, India’s highest honour in the field of cinema and given by the Union government.

Except it is not.

Agnihotri’s film and other films and performers have won ‘Dadasaheb Phalke International Film Festival Awards’ in a ceremony held at Mumbai on February 20.

The awards’ official website says the Dadasaheb Phalke International Film Festival (DPIFF) was founded in 2012 and established in 2016 “to carry forward the legacy of Late Shri Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, lovingly known as Dadasaheb Phalke”. The website identifies the DPIFF as “India’s only independent international film festival.”

The website says that the awards were founded by businessman Anil Mishra. Mishra’s page on the online film database IMDb notes that he was ‘advisory board member of CBFC’ however his name is not in the current list of board members displayed on the CBFC website.

The website also lists Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, former President of India Ram Nath Kovind, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla as “well wishers.” It also displays a letter from Amit Shah offering good wishes for the 2023 Awards.

The Awards appear to have as jury president, Chandrasekhar Pusalkar, identified as Dadasaheb Phalke’s grandson.

DPIFF also says that these awards are “supported by” the Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya, inaugurated in 2022.

In all, these awards are independent of the annual Dadasaheb Phalke Awards which were instituted in 1969 and are given to one outstanding contributor to Indian cinema each year. Earlier recipients include Asha Parekh (2020), Rajinikanth (2019), Gulzar (2013), Adoor Gopalakrishnan (2004), Satyajit Ray (1984), Prithviraj Kapoor (1971) and Devika Rani (1969).

The official Dadasaheb Phalke awards are given by the Directorate of Film Festivals under the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

In 2018, Hindustan Times had reported on the naming woes suffered by the Dadasaheb Phalke awards. The report had cited the confusion triggered by two independent awards in Phalke’s name – ‘Dadasaheb Phalke Excellence Awards’ and ‘Dadasaheb Phalke Film Foundation Awards’.

In the present case, the confusion was aided and exacerbated by celebratory tweets released by the likes of Agnihotri.

“ANNOUNCEMENT: #TheKashmirFiles wins the ‘Best Film’ award at #DadaSahebPhalkeAwards2023. “This award is dedicated to all the victims of terrorism and to all the people of India for your blessings”,” tweeted Agnihotri.

For an ordinary reader who does not have India’s film awards calendar in mind, the tweet has nothing that can denote that this honour is distinct from the more famous awards named after the same luminary.

Notably, some news channels also used this hashtag, mentioning nothing in their tweets about the distinctness of these awards. While some reports that tweets led to did have mention of the full name of the awards, many news organisations went with headlines that mentioned only ‘Dadasaheb Phalke awards’, leading to reports on the Dadasaheb Phalke International Film Festival Awards dominating Google searches of the term ‘Dadasaheb Phalke awards.’

Among those news organisations which did not clarify that the awards were not the annual government awards were ANI.