Death of liberalism in Bollywood

Hasan Suroor

LAUREN BACALL, the famous Hollywood star who lived through the McCarthy witch-hunt against communists and ideological dissent, observed that,  “Being a liberal is the best thing on earth you can be. You are welcoming to everyone when you’re a liberal. You do not have a small mind…I’m total, total, total liberal and proud of it.” One wonders what she would have made of what’s going on in Bollywood where — to parody her comment — being a liberal is the last “thing on earth” anyone wants to be.

While that is true of many traditional bastions of liberalism in today’s “new” India, particularly depressing are the goings-on in the once famously free-thinking Bollywood. For those of us who grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, the Bombay film industry, as it was known before it styled itself as Bollywood, was the epitome of liberal values and India’s famed “Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb”. In a country still reeling from the trauma of Partition with Hindu-Muslim relations precariously on edge, it was a truly multicultural and pluralist enterprise representing every conceivable shade of  the country’s regional, religious and linguistic diversity.  Indeed, perhaps, the only of its kind.

Muslim actors happily took on Hindu names; Hindi-Urdu rivalry dissolved into a more commonly accessible Hindustani; Hindu filmmakers produced great Muslim “socials”; and the ultimate cinematic tribute to Indian motherhood was offered by Mehboob Khan in Mother India,  which also gave India its most famous Hindu-Muslim couple in the form of Nargis and Sunil Dutt.

Even as sectarian tensions simmered elsewhere in the country, Bollywood held its ground as an oasis of tolerance and bonhomie — free from narrow political agendas and petty prejudices. Whatever the individual predilections of its extended family lineup of  the  Kapoors, the Khans, the Chopras, the Azmis, the Roshans and the Akhtars, these were trumped by Bollywood’s overriding aim of delivering wholesome and secular mass entertainment across cultural barriers.

But, now, this last remaining outpost of sanity too is threatened by the contagion of intolerance sweeping the rest of the country with the once-united film fraternity fracturing along partisan party lines. The Anupam Kher episode (his Quixotic “intolerance” campaign against the Narendra Modi critics) illustrates Bollywood’s descent into a toxic mix of political tribalism and cultural bigotry.

It still boasts of a galaxy of robust liberal voices (Mahesh Bhatt,  Javed  Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, Nandita Das, Shyam Benegal, Sudhir Mishra, to name just a few), but, as elsewhere, there is a concerted effort to silence them — with a little help from newly recruited zealots within Bollywood. But while the wider civil society is putting up a fight, as the mass “awards wapsi” protest by writers showed, Bollywood is not. It has retreated into a shell allowing a vicious gag-and-smear campaign against the government’s liberal critics to go unchallenged.  

What Bollywood is going through has a whiff of the 1950s intolerant Hollywood. McCarthyism may not have  quite arrived yet, but clearly there’s a creeping drift towards the same sort of climate of suspicion and fear. In Hollywood, they were after the “Reds under the bed”; in Bollywood they’re after anyone whose first choice of ideological colours is not saffron.

Fear of the “consequences” of being caught off-message has made liberals reluctant to stick their neck out for each other. What if the mob gets to them too? This explains the muted reaction of Aamir Khan’s colleagues  when he was targeted for voicing his concern over the new climate of intolerance and saying (perhaps foolishly) that his wife Kiran Rao talked about migrating to another country. As punishment he was dropped from the official “Incredible India” promotion campaign. 

Overnight, he had gone from being the poster boy for Indian nationalism to a fifth columnist, with several of his former co-stars, and now staunch Modi supporters, openly questioning his loyalties. Raveena Tandon accused him of “shaming” the country; Kher in a loaded tweet wanted to know which country he wanted to move to; Paresh Rawal said “no true patriot” would ever think of leaving their motherland. But not a squeak from Bollywood liberals in defence of Aamir’s right to free speech.

Nor does one recall many of Naseeruddin Shah’s fellow actors rushing to protest when he was attacked for attending the launch of former Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri’s book in Mumbai. Though Shah’s attempt to play the Muslim card, alleging he was attacked because “my name is Naseeruddin Shah”, was in poor taste given that his co-panellist Sudheendra Kulkarni was treated even more shabbily and had black ink thrown at him, that was no excuse for the film fraternity to keep mum.

Come to think of it, however, can one really blame them for preferring to remain silent when speaking up could potentially ruin their careers; and result in cancelled endorsement deals; boycott of their films; and prospect of losing future contracts? Why, even victims themselves — wiser by experience — have become cautious when expressing their views. 

Shah Rukh Khan, the once-outspoken bearer of liberal discourse, has vowed to keep his opinions to himself and not comment, especially on political and religious issues, after blundering into too many controversies. 

“Unfortunately, because of the reactions I get when I answer something political or religious, I don’t think I will answer this question,” he told reporters when asked to comment on the cancellation of Pakistani ghazal singer Ghulam Ali’s concert in Mumbai recently. He stuck to the script when, a few days later, he was asked about an earlier comment relating to intolerance: “No sir, I’m not walking into that trap any more.”

Ditto Aamir Khan. He, too, has gone uncharacteristically quiet after his last controversy cost him a lucrative advertising contract. Apparently, he has been avoiding the media ever since with his minders on hand to protect him from inquisitive reporters. 

Clearly, the thought police seem to be doing rather well — as “they” did in Hollywood all those years ago. But today while liberalism is thriving in Hollywood, lights are going out in Bollywood. Earlier, in this article, I hedged my bets about whether or not India is having its own version of McCartyhism. But then I looked up the working definition of McCarthyism. It is defined as “the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence”. It also means “the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism”. I find no reason to hedge my bets any more.

— The writer is a columnist and editor of “Making Sense of Modi’s India” to be published shortly