Bollywood seems to be a house divided

Bollywood seems to be a house divided when it comes to taking a real-life stand on the violence and mayhem unleashed in the Jamia Millia Islamia campus, New Delhi, on Sunday after police stormed into the campus without permission from the university authorities and used force to quell students protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Many from the film fraternity, including actors Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub, Parineeti Chopra, Sidharth Malhotra, veteran screenwriter Javed Akhtar, filmmakers Vishal Bhardwaj and Anurag Kashyap, and Hollywood actor John Cusack expressed solidarity with the youth over Sunday's violence inside the campus.

Actor-turned-TV anchor for Savdhaan India and CINTAA head, Sushant Singh, who took a stand on the issue because “I am answerable to my kids,” had to pay a price because he has been asked to exit the show due to “budgetary constraints”. He had condemned the police crackdown on students on December 15 and had participated in a peaceful protest by Mumbai University students at Kalina Campus on Monday.

But many on social media also questioned the silence of the Khans – Salman, Shahrukh, Aamir and Saif -- and Bollywood heavyweights like actors Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, Ranbir Kapoor, filmmakers Karan Johar and Ekta Kapoor on Jamia violence which triggered nationwide protests against the contentious Act.

The otherwise eloquent ‘Shahenshah’ Amitabh Bachchan actually ‘repurposed’ a tweet from seven years ago: “T970 – Pained and horrified to see what unfolds in Delhi… Peaceful protest being met with tear gas and water canons!!”

Actor Ayushmann Khurrana had tweeted on Monday how he was “deeply disturbed about what the students went through and I strongly condemn this . ... However, protests also cannot turn violent and lead to destruction of public property. That simply is counterproductive...” For this he was trolled, with @iVigneshSuresh quoting the

actor’s dialogue from the film Article 15, in which he says, ‘Staying neutral when a fire is raging is standing with the ones who lit it.” Another Twitter user, @yehlog sarcarstically suggested: “A ‘democracy’ where leading actors are forced to pose with the PM for favours. You do what you do best – take pics with the enablers. Leave protests to the students please.” However, Khurrana was unfazed by the detractors and his considered take on the situation is worth consideration. “...If they (students) think that the minority is feeling insecure in our country then the government should address that. We always feel that the government either appeases Muslims or makes them insecure. Why can't we come up with a middle ground?” he told a news channel on Tuesday. Actor Akshay Kumar, who claimed to have “accidentally” ‘hearted’ a tweet on a video showing police in riot gear on the Jamia campus, was called out for this thoughtless transgression on Monday and some of the caller-outers were his colleagues from the industry. Director Anurag Kashyap, who has been off Twitter for a while, made a comeback to the microblogging site on Sunday, tweeting, “...it makes me angry to see voices that can actually make a difference stay quiet..” On Monday, Kashyap retweeted what @Keyuratedtweets had said: “I have immense respect for Akshay Kumar. It must be extremely difficult to be trained in Martial Arts with a spine missing.” Interestingly, Akshay’s wife and author Twinkle Khanna took to Instagram on Tuesday to reiterate her tweet from last week: “Discrimination based on race, colour, cast religion and other such social constructs in whatever form, goes against the fundamental and moral integrity of the human condition” and captioned it: “That was last week and now add oppressing the voices of our students by using violence and we have crawled even further into the dark tunnel. I stand by a secular, democratic India where peaceful dissent is our constitutional right.”

User @hemirdesai had tagged celebrities and politicians like Javed Akhtar, his son Farhan, Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt, Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, with: “Jamia students attacking Media who is showing them Mirror of their Peaceful Protest. Anti National Journalist n Secular ppl like @Javedakhtarjadu @FarOutAkhtar @khanumarfa @BDUTT @RahulGandhi @priyankagandhi @sardesairajdeep will not Condemned this. These are Urban Terrorist”. Javed Akhtar responded: “According to the law of the land under any circumstances police cannot enter any university campus with out the permission of the university authorities.” By entering the Jamia campus with out permission the police has created a precedence that is a threat to every university,” Akhtar said.