TOP TEN INDIAN TWITTER CELEBRITIES
If there was ever any doubt as to how important Bollywood is to the average Indian, this fact ought to seal it: out of the top ten Indian Twitter celebrities, only one is not from Bollywood. And that one person – ranking at eighth – answers to the name of Sachin Tendulkar, Bharat Ratna, probably India’s biggest sporting hero, and probably one of three best batsmen ever to play the game of cricket.
Amitabh Bachchan, the baadshah of Bollywood, comes in first on Twitter, with the most number of followers. Expectedly, Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan and Aamir Khan follow him in second, third and fourth places respectively. Places five and six go to the A-list female Bollywood celebs Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone, though Katrina Kaif is a strange omission here. Perhaps the average Indian does not look at Katrina as ‘belonging to India’.
Hrithik Roshan comes in at seventh place, rounding off the top stars in Bollywood, and at ninth and tenth we have Akshay Kumar and Shahid Kapoor.
For anyone who proclaimed that cricket and Bollywood are India’s biggest passions, this list suggests that cricket is perhaps a distant second when compared to Bollywood. The fact that movies – and escapist entertainment masquerading as movies – hold such a sway over public opinion is an indictment of the social conditions in the country.
Twitter celebrities don’t wield as much power as we give them credit for, but they do tell us something about the people following them. It is as they say. In India, the only thing that matters is Bollywood.
