by Javed Naqvi
Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan claim to have secular credentials, and that makes it dangerous when they speak approvingly of someone as questionable as Modi. –Photo by Reuters
It’s easy to fuse the real-life characters of cinema icons with the roles they have played over the years. So when those heroes with whom we have laughed and cried and lived and died display their banal, often bigoted feet of clay it’s hard to mask one’s shock.
We celebrated Charlton Heston as Ben-Hur and also the fact that the film won 11 Academy Awards. We applauded the feat as though it had somehow won us an impossible A plus in an intractable school subject.
Heston’s role as Moses in The Ten Commandments made many of us take sides with the good against evil, unruffled by the debatable faith he subtly propagated. (Burt Lancaster, a self-described atheist, claimed that he turned down the role of Judah Ben-Hur because he “didn’t like the violent morals in the story” and because he did not want to promote Christianity. But this was too fine a point for the gullible moviegoers to quibble over.)
Or take our own Amitabh Bachchan. His deep baritone voice as Babu Moshoi in Anand announced the beginning of a dramatically new era in Indian cinema. All through the 70s he played the Angry Young Man, the poor man who fought the system with his bare fists. He played a Haji Mastan-like role in the runaway hit Deewar with a 786 amulet that lured his Muslim fans, including hordes of fawning women, to the movie halls. He played a Muslim coolie in a film who led a strike against a corrupt minister (in the final confrontation on the minister’s lawn the minister uses a trishul for a weapon and Bachchan a Hammer and Sickle!) The love affair with his fans has lasted for decades. When Amitabh Bachchan fell ill with myasthenia gravis millions of people in India as well as neighbouring countries prayed for his recovery.
When he romanced the dusky Rekha a new generation of movie fans vicariously cheered the alleged off-screen romance. He briefly became an MP. When he declared one day that politics was not for him, they accepted his decision like some committed members from a Shakespearean crowd scene in Julius Caesar:
“Me thinks he is right. Me thinks there is reason in his saying.”
We had accepted Heston too as an iconic hero. Recently the award-winning filmmaker and peace activist Michael Moore produced a no-holds-barred documentary about the gun-lobby in America and juxtaposed it with a culture of mindless violence it spawned, at home and abroad. Charlton Heston, we were dismayed to discover, was an avowed campaigner for rightwing Republicans, who celebrated the prowess with guns as a great American right to bear arms.
Michael Moore shot off an angry letter to the movie idol cum gun-runner. He said: “When you showed up in Denver to hold your pro-gun rally just days after the massacre at nearby Columbine High School, the nation was shocked at your incredible insensitivity to those who had just lost loved ones.
“When you came to Flint to hold another rally in the months after a 6-year old boy shot a 6-year old girl at a nearby elementary school, the community was stunned by your desire to rub its face in its grief.
“But your announcement that you are on your way to Tucson today, just 48 hours after a student at the University of Arizona shot and killed three professors and then himself, to hold ANOTHER big pro-gun celebration – this time to get out the vote for the NRA (National Rifle Association)-backed Republican running for Congress – well, sir, I have to ask you: Have you no shame?”
Of course Charlton Heston is dead and can’t argue back, but perhaps Amitabh Bachchan can tell us why a tax reprieve for his film is enough to make him paint a rosy picture of one of the most controversial, sectarian and ruthless politicians of our times?
In terms of the number of people who have seen his films, not just in India but right across the world, Amitabh Bachchan is probably a bigger phenomenon than Heston ever was. As was the case with other matinee idols, past and present, his screen persona is laced with political statement.
That people of Bachchan’s mega popularity can also get into a spot of bother is not surprising. But it did make people sit up when he declaimed his love for a political fixer, saying he would not hesitate to polish the politician’s shoes for some kindness that he had shown the actor. Something more shocking was to come. Bachchan joined the select list of business captains and showbiz idols to shower praise on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, of all the reasons for exempting the actor’s latest movie from entertainment tax.
Bachchan’s exultation is contained in his blog, which he wrote from his hotel room in Ahmedabad:
“Naked emotions, devoid of any hindrances presented and expressed as nature designed them for humans, or as many believe God the Almighty may have, have a release that remains unmatched in our recorded or unrecorded history. It somnambulates, drives us in an exhausted drain of energy to slumber. But it invigorates. Invigorates to carry function and obligation with some responsibility.”
“My condition may have been similar, but obligation must never be ignored. An emotion of gratitude and consent by a dignitary that holds office, can become overwhelming. I find myself in such state. Mr Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat, in his hospitality and generous demeanour, has through process registered that our film Paa shall be granted tax exemption, the paper work provided falling into place.”
“He lives simply and with mere basic needs and most unlike the head of a state. He speaks with affection on development and progress. He is welcoming to fresh ideas and ideals. His oft repeated phrase of him being a CM, a common man, is not misunderstood. He does and acts as he speaks. He talks of raising the level of awareness for his state through tourism and I volunteer to participate in any activity that would help promote that. Did you know or were you aware that the largest number of heritage sites in the country are in Gujarat? … The rann – a massive and wide expanse of miles of white soil, that glows like it was imbedded with millions of diamonds in the night, separating our borders with our neighbours Pakistan.”
Narendra Modi is still being investigated for his role in the 2002 Gujarat massacre in which more than a thousand Muslims were killed and more than a hundred thousand driven from their homes. But India’s icons seem to be happy to elide, if not clean forget about that horrible episode.
Or consider the response of India’s current acting rage Shahrukh Khan to a question about Narendra Modi. “I don’t know him personally…I have no opinion…,” he had declared. “Personally they have never been unkind to me.” Personally, again.
When Modi was refused a US visa the editor of a national daily said of him, “He may be a mass murderer, but he’s our mass murderer.”
There are a number of popular film actors who are members of Modi’s rightwing party and there can hardly be any quarrel with their political beliefs. After all it is their business to pursue the kind of worldview they deem fit for themselves and for their idea of nationhood.
Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan claim to have secular credentials, and that makes it dangerous when they speak approvingly of someone as questionable as Modi. Only last week, the Press Trust of India carried a report saying Bachchan was planning to join a campaign to usher peace between India and Pakistan.
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