The protests against the recently approved Citizenship Amendment Act have taken the nation by storm. Though restricted to some parts of north central India, including Delhi-NCR, the protests have taken an ugly turn, with the intervention of the elite club of Bollywood, who have found yet another reason to stage a convenient protest as per their interests.
Most of the elite Bollywood personalities are up in arms against the Modi government for having allowed the Delhi Police to take action against the vandalism perpetrated by the miscreants from Jamia Milia Islamia University. To quote an example of Priyanka Chopra’s tweet, every student “In a thriving democracy, to raise one’s voice peacefully and be met with violence is wrong. Every voice counts. And each voice will work towards changing India. #HaveVoicewillRaise #HaveVoiceMustRaise”
— PRIYANKA (@priyankachopra) December 18, 2019
However, their deafening silence on the vandalism that occurred in Seelampur reveals a simple fact: Bollywood [specifically the elite wing] protests as per convenience, and considers every protest against its own propaganda as vandalism. If you don’t believe it, here’s a look on how they work.
Massive protests against Bollywood movies with a political tinge date back to the late 90s, when films like Deepa Mehta’s ‘Fire’ and ‘Water’, which allegedly portrayed the Hindu community in a bad light, were met with massive uproar.
In fact, the protests against ‘Water’, which focused on the plight of widows in British India was so fierce that the makers had to abandon their project in India altogether and reshoot a large chunk in Sri Lanka. Even after it released almost seven years later in 2006, the violent protests against the movie refused to abate.
However, one of the first protests that attracted the attention of the emerging Indian media was the protests against the Aamir Khan starrer ‘Fanaa’. The film was another average Bollywood potboiler that catered to the secular propaganda of the elite Bollywood. However, the cause of the protests against the movie was not the movie itself, but the association of lead actor Aamir Khan with the devious organization of Narmada Bachao Andolan. Consequently, the movie was banned in Gujarat, and this was deliberately given a communal twist by the mainstream media, who was eager to downplay the then Gujarat government led by Narendra Modi at the drop of a hat.
The media got another God sent opportunity as the 2007 movie ‘Parzania’, which gave a biased touch to the 2002 riots in Gujarat, was banned in the state. If one thinks that the propaganda of ‘Hindu Terrorism’ which emerged in 2008 had a political undertone, one couldn’t have been more wrong. The seeds of the social ostracizing of the Hindu community were laid with such protests. What else would’ve explained the involvement of people like Mahesh Bhatt in blaming the RSS for 26/11? We don’t need to elaborate on how the elite Bollywood sponsored the entire propaganda of ‘Intolerance’ in less than a year after Narendra Modi stormed to power in 2014.
When people protested against the blatant Hinduphobia in ‘PK’ in 2014, followed by the extremely controversial protests over the portrayal of Indian history in ‘Padmaavat’, the same Bollywood was extremely concerned for their liberty, and did not even hesitate to name and shame the Rajput community for allegedly being intolerant to creative freedom.
Some actors were even ready to drop their surnames out of shame, while people like Farhan Akhtar even tried to indirectly label the Rajput community as ‘terrorists’, even the accused in the Gurugram vandalism turned out to be otherwise.
However, when the same cabal of intellectuals and media resorts to suppressing any other voice raised against their web of lies, the same Bollywood cabal develops a deathly silence. The ideals of liberty, equality and freedom of expression go for a toss, when their ‘ideological masters’ are displeased. A brilliant, but not often mentioned example is that of ‘Sins’, a movie starring Shiney Ahuja that was supposed to be released in 2005. It was one of the first mainstream films in India to focus on the sexual exploitation of women by the Catholic priests in the southern region of India.
However, followed by protests from the Church, the movie was permanently banned by the then Indian government. Interestingly, the same Bollywood cabal, who would go hammer and tongs on the slightest attack on their ‘freedom of speech and expression’, went AWOL with the actions against the movie.
The hypocrisy of the elite cabal of Bollywood has now come out in the open with their insensitive handling of the protests against CAA. Their protest as per convenience has not only infuriated some of their devout fans, but has also given them a bad name. Probably they haven’t learnt the consequences that the Khan trio had to suffer for illogically supporting the drama of ‘Intolerance’. If the elite Bollywood thinks that they’re doing a great service by supporting the miscreants of Jamia Milia Islamia, just because they are ‘peacefully protesting’ against an ‘intolerant regime’, they shouldn’t develop nausea at the sight of people protesting against the mediocrity that they resort to take in the name of creative liberty. You can’t cut the cake and eat it too.