Honestly, there is an urgent need for the loudmouths in the ruling combine to shut their mouths. Yes, shut tight their mouths. No civilised society can approve of the kind of idiotic remarks coming out of their foul mouths. Indeed, if this is the real face of Hindutva, we reject it outright. The foundational strength of Hindutva ought to be its capacity for tolerance, for patience, good neighbourliness, fellow feeling, kindness, even friendliness and understanding towards what might be considered by followers of the book-based religion as the Other. It is arrant nonsense for any politician, ruling or opposition, to question the patriotism of people merely because they tend to disagree with them.
Calling Shah Rukh Khan, the Bollywood star, names does not behove anyone, least of all those who hold important positions in the ruling party. He may well be a Congress supporter, — his mother was close to a couple of Delhi Congress leaders and by dint of that fact had herself allocated a kerosene depot — but that is no crime. It is a free country. He has every right to speak his mind. And if on his 50th birthday — remarkably, he still romances heroines who are half his age — he regretted that there was increasing intolerance in the country, nobody in the BJP should have singled him out for vile abuse. And vile abuse it is when a national general secretary of the ruling party tweets that Khan’s ‘soul’ is in Pakistan. Or his saffron-robed colleague and MP, Yogi Adityanath, in a most unsaintly manner compares him to the Pakistani terror ringmaster Hafiz Saeed. This is unacceptable.
Political discourse cannot be reduced to the level of the gutter. Admittedly, there has been a steep fall in the moral and behavioural standards of the entire political class, especially following the Mandal reservations. This, not to question the Mandal reservations, but only to point out that opportunities of modern education were rather late in coming to them. Yet, even those who haven’t had the benefit of proper education can be most correct and proper in their conduct. Unfortunately, some members of the ruling party have knowingly gone out of their way to create controversy. Only partly it may be so because the media otherwise refuses to take note of their existence and partly it may be with an eye on the poll in Bihar. But, at the same time, it is also true that more often than not what might appear provocative and questionable to the sensible and cultured people is truly a reflection of the way these people actually think.
It does not occur to them that even though he is one of the three reigning Khan heroes, the country, which is 80-plus-percent Hindu, has embraced them unreservedly. In the Nehruvian era, a Yusuf Khan had to become Dilip Kumar to become a great star in Bollywood. And, likewise, a number of Muslim boys and girls had to adopt Hindu screen names to attain success in the tinsel town. It says something of the growing maturity of the people that they can now accept a Shah Rukh Khan or a Salman Khan as heroes without the latter feeling obliged to change their names. In such an accommodative, nay, tolerant, environment, those who question the patriotism of the Khans can only expect to be rebuffed by the ordinary people. This is just not done. In the polite society these people ought to be treated like pariahs. Now that the polling in the crucial Bihar poll is over, the leadership of the ruling alliance must crack the whip and ensure that no nonsense emanates from the foul mouths of its backwoodsmen. We have had enough of this trashy talk these past few weeks. Enough should really be enough now. Meanwhile, the BJP leadership should be really concerned that the Shiv Sena is preaching it tolerance, certifying the patriotism of Shah Rukh Khan. It will help if the Sena showed some tolerance towards the larger alliance partner in Maharashtra. People in the State are getting fed up with the bad-loser conduct of the Sena.
