Political actors
A book on Bollywood’s brush with politics unwittingly highlights the muted and opportunist engagement of today’s megastars, writes Ankur Bhardwaj
In 1961, J B Kripalani delivered a devastating speech in the Lok Sabha criticising Defence Minister V K Krishna Menon. This bout was to be replayed in the subsequent year when both contested against each other for the North Bombay constituency. For Jawaharlal Nehru, this was a matter of prestige, for Krishna Menon was his confidant, and he launched Menon’s campaign himself. Nehru followed this up with references to this battle in his speeches in Sangli, Poona and Baroda as well. Rasheed Kidwai’s book, Neta Abhineta: Bollywood Star Power in Indian Politics, reveals that the prime minister even placed a long-distance call to film star Dilip Kumar and asked him to campaign forMenon. The thespian looked up to Nehru as a father figure. His father and grandfather had been members of the Congress party in Peshawar but this was the first time he campaigned for a Congress candidate.
Such vignettes form the backbone of this book about Hindi film stars and their engagement with Indian politics since Independence. There are chapters dedicated to the likes of Prithviraj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Nargis, Dev Anand, Amitabh Bachchan and others from the Hindi film industry. A veteran political journalist, Kidwai has also written a book detailing the intrigue inside the Congress party’s headquarter, 24, Akbar Road.
Their stories of social and political engagement form a sharp contrast to the Hindi film industry and the film stars who populate our current galaxy, few of whom are known for being either aware or vocal when it comes to political or social concerns in case they cause some offence to the powers-thatbe. Just three years ago, for example, we saw Aamir Khan become the target of Hindutva ire when he expressed his views regarding rising intolerance in the country. The blowback from his comments was so severe that e-commerce player Snapdeal decided to not renew its brand ambassadorship contract with him.
How have Indian film stars engaged with these questions since Independence? This is the promise that this book holds. We learn of Kapoor and Kumar’s devotion (there can be no other word) to Nehru. Kidwai talks of Nargis’ personal involvement in social and political work as well. The book also informs us about the unlikely rebel that Dev Anand was, almost an angry even if not-so-young man.
There is plenty of filmi gossip, as one would expect. This initially makes the book an interesting read but it later becomes a burden because consistency across chapters suffers. Kumar has been one of the biggest names in Indian film industry but his political activism may not be voluminous enough to fill up an entire chapter, so we also get to know about the ups and downs in his married life. In the chapter on Anand, the actor comes across as a fiercely independent person who was not shy of taking on even Sanjay Gandhi’s coterie during the Emergency. He even floated his own political party, the National Party of India, in 1979, but lacked the stamina for the long haul.
Kidwai’s book tells us about the idealism, ideological inclinations and activities of older film stars, qualities that appear to go missing as we move closer to the 1980s and ’90s. Anand’s rebellion against the imposition of Emergency is well documented, but we don’t know how the film industry or film stars responded to the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Opportunism, it seems, has trumped idealism. Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna or Vinod Khanna’s route to politics is recorded in this book, but it is telling that we end up reading more about their film lives than their political idealism. In the case of Vinod Khanna, for example, the actor himself tells us that he believed in Hindutva, and that’s that.
The book has a star-struck quality in terms of the actors it chooses to portray. While we read about the likes of Nagma, for instance, there is no mention of an actor like Balraj Sahni, a communist who even spent two years in jail after Independence for his critical views of the Indian government. Political engagement in the Tamil and Telugu film industries has been more conspicuous than the Hindi film industry with M G Ramachandran, Jayalalithaa and N T Rama Rao even becoming chief ministers of their states. It would have served the book well to inform us of their political journeys in as much detail as their Hindi counterparts. This book could also have done with some deeper analysis. While reading the book you get the sense that today’s stars are neither as independent minded nor as idealistic as their predecessors in the early days of the republic. The book could have narrated and analysed this journey from staunch secularists like Kapoor or Kumar to actors who think nothing of spreading communal poison through fake news on social media just to earn brownie points from the political dispensation. Once you are through the essays on familiar film stars, the narrative tends to feel overextended towards the end. This is the kind of book you may pick up at an airport but not feel guilty if you don’t finish it.
SNAPDEAL CHOSE TO NOT RENEWITS CONTRACT WITH AAMIR KHAN AFTER HIS COMMENTS DREWHINDUTVA IRE