For many, Anupam Kher’s persona is synonymous with that of the protagonist of Saaransh (The Gist), his 1984 debut film. Kher plays BV Pradhan, a retired headmaster in Mumbai who, along with his wife, is struggling to adjust to a life suddenly denuded of its meaning because of the death of their only son in a mugging incident in New York. To eke a living, Pradhan rents out a room to a struggling actress, who is in a relationship with a politician’s son, with whom she conceives a child.
The politician is opposed to his son marrying her; he wants her to undergo abortion. He sends goondas to terrorise her, prompting Pradhan to become her protector. Harassed and helpless, Pradhan barges into the chief minister’s office and narrates, in anguish and anger, the beating he endured from police during the freedom struggle. Did he undergo the hardship to build the India of today? The chief minister, a former pupil of Pradhan who couldn’t understandably recognise him at first, ensures the state does indeed intervene.
A persona betrayed
In 2015, Kher has betrayed the persona of Saaransh’s Pradhan, whom he so admirably, and inspiringly, etched out. Judging from his political actions over the last few months, it wouldn't be wrong to believe Kher might actually reprimand a woman undergoing in real life the sort of travails faced by the struggling actress of Saaransh.
It is likely he would tell her that there have been many instances in the past of powerful fathers mounting pressure on their son’s partner to abort; that she isn’t the first person whom the politician’s musclemen have terrorised; that her troubles do not indicate that the Indian state has drifted into wilful somnolence.
In case she thought her best protection was to widely publicise her plight, it is also possible he would discourage her from doing so. Kher’s logic would have been that it would diminish India globally, and tar its reputation. But were she not to relent, he would accuse her of conspiring to undermine those presiding over the Indian state.
On the 30th anniversary of Saaransh last year, Kher was quoted in the Indian Express as saying, “Saaransh changed my life…My thinking forever. It made me a better person. It is not a film but a philosophy for me.” He did not spell out the tenets of his philosophy, which, however, can be outlined by decoding his political actions over the last few months. It would show his logic is fallacious and naïve.
Raj Dharma
Kher famously led the "March for India" in Delhi on November 7, protesting against writers and other luminaries who had been returning their awards to express their disquiet over the rising intolerance in the country.
Kher didn’t only lead it, he also organised it – but nobody accused him of doing it at the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party, even though his wife is a member of Parliament representing the party from Chandigarh.
Kher didn’t bill the March for India as a protest against the protesting writers. He said it was to tell President Pranab Mukherjee that India is “is a very tolerant country”, as if the political veteran needed such lessons from him.
But his intent shimmered in his rhetoric. For instance, he declared, “Every country goes through problems, but nobody has the right to call our country intolerant.” Look up the Constitution and you will see Kher hasn’t been empowered – at least not yet – to determine who has what right.
Kher is best advised to watch Saaransh, again, to fathom the motivation of those who have been returning their awards. They are not accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of triggering the worrying incidents of social conflict, as Kher persistently suggests. What they are pointing to is the perceived somnolence of the state, its refusal, so to speak, to take action against those fanning hatred through their speech and conduct. They want the prime minister to express, at least, his disapproval against the hotheads of the Sangh Parivar.
Sure, the prime minister did speak, rather belatedly, against the Dadri lynching incident. But the sliver of optimism was dashed as he exploited the beef controversy to bag votes in the Bihar election, as he sought to stoke the fear that the Grand Alliance, once voted to power, would extend reservations in jobs to Muslims at the expense of Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. What confidence can people draw from such remarks?
This lack of confidence in the Indian state is reinforced by Modi’s past. Rightly or wrongly, there are many who believe he didn’t deliberately try to control the riots of 2002 in Gujarat. To compound the problem, the BJP has a majority in the Lok Sabha and isn’t shackled by the restraining influence of its allies, as had been the fate of the National Democratic Alliance under Atal Behari Vajpayee. Though Christians in Gujarat and Odisha were tormented and bashed then, yet nobody returned awards, not even after the cataclysmic events of 2002 in Gujarat.
This was because people believed that Prime Minister Vajpayee could not turn his eyes away from social conflicts beyond a degree because it was presumed the BJP’s coalition partners in the government would mount pressure on him to uphold, to use his own term, raj dharma. This comfort is no longer ours.
Nor is it that the Sangh has spawned confidence. Over the last 18 months, we have witnessed divisive programmes such as love jihad, ghar wapsi, the movement against cow-slaughter, and violent protests against various historical personalities, most recently over the Tipu Sultan anniversary celebrations in Karnataka.
Indeed, a hyper Sangh, an inactive state, and a silent prime minister have together aroused the fear of people that a scenario similar to 2002 or 1984 might still revisit us with all its ghastly ferocity. The writers are being civil in calling what they fear as "rising intolerance", to which Kher takes grave objection. A more apt descriptor for their fear is "increasing state encouragement of communalism".
Whataboutery unlimited
Kher often recalls the Emergency and the anti-Sikh 1984 riots to accuse today’s conscionable protestors of not expressing their disapproval of instances of gross intolerance perpetrated under the past Congress regimes. It is a charge he levelled against Aamir Khan as well, forgetting his younger peer was 10 years old when the Emergency was imposed, and a callow 19, and largely a nobody, in 1984. Could he have protested then? And if he had, what salience would it have had?
Perhaps Kher believes all those who are worried over the rising intolerance today belong to the anti-BJP camp. For him, Khan and the writer Arundhati Roy, whom he often berates, represent the left-liberal ethos. Kher believes people of such ideological persuasion are sympathetic to the Congress and opposed to the BJP. Yet Khan did join Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement, which had the Congress in its crosshairs. Roy had stridently opposed the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance’s neo-liberal policies.
It seems Kher’s interest in politics of very recent vintage. Otherwise he would have known that the socialists were at the forefront of the anti-Emergency movement, that Jayaprakash Narayan wasn’t a Sangh leader, and that liberals, including academicians, risked their careers to oppose Indira Gandhi.
Kher would have also known that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh had been silent during and in the immediate aftermath of the 1984 riots. It was implicated in violence at certain places in Delhi, as Peoples Union for Democratic Rights member Gautam Navlakha told Scroll in a recent interview. Kher would have known that the Congress was implicated in the 1984 riots not because of the BJP but because of the report, Who are the Guilty?, which the PUDR and People’s Union for Civil Liberties jointly prepared and published. They, in case he doesn’t know, subscribe to the left-liberal ethos.
Kher is confusing India for the Indian state, either deliberately or consciously. We protest against the state, not against the nation. It is the state that grants rights and governs people. We protest against the state either because we want to expand our rights, or we want to curb its high-handedness, or we want it to show resolve and act. This principle underlies just about every protest movement anywhere around the world.
There are exceptions, of course. People have protested against neo-Nazis; they have protested against Islamists; they have protested against protesters opposing their state’s decision to go to war, as it happened in 2003 when George W Bush invaded Iraq.
What protest is worthy is easy to judge – one that it against hatred and killing, one which demands equality for the poor and weak.
So the next time Kher takes to Twitter to deride those who express their worries over, or protest against, intolerance, he should ask himself: Are the protesters fostering harmony and positioning themselves against violence, even at the possibility of it?
In Saaransh, headmaster Pradhan (Kher) tells his wife, “Tumhari chehre ki jhurrio mein mere jeevan ka saaranch hai (In the wrinkles of your face lies the gist of my life.)” In Kher’s tweets, comments and action can be discerned the gist of his political philosophy – it is revoltingly pro-state, reactionary, depressingly confused, and, yes, extraordinarily petty.
Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist in Delhi. His novel The Hour Before Dawn has as its backdrop the demolition of the Babri Masjid. It is available in bookstores.
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The politician is opposed to his son marrying her; he wants her to undergo abortion. He sends goondas to terrorise her, prompting Pradhan to become her protector. Harassed and helpless, Pradhan barges into the chief minister’s office and narrates, in anguish and anger, the beating he endured from police during the freedom struggle. Did he undergo the hardship to build the India of today? The chief minister, a former pupil of Pradhan who couldn’t understandably recognise him at first, ensures the state does indeed intervene.
A persona betrayed
In 2015, Kher has betrayed the persona of Saaransh’s Pradhan, whom he so admirably, and inspiringly, etched out. Judging from his political actions over the last few months, it wouldn't be wrong to believe Kher might actually reprimand a woman undergoing in real life the sort of travails faced by the struggling actress of Saaransh.
It is likely he would tell her that there have been many instances in the past of powerful fathers mounting pressure on their son’s partner to abort; that she isn’t the first person whom the politician’s musclemen have terrorised; that her troubles do not indicate that the Indian state has drifted into wilful somnolence.
In case she thought her best protection was to widely publicise her plight, it is also possible he would discourage her from doing so. Kher’s logic would have been that it would diminish India globally, and tar its reputation. But were she not to relent, he would accuse her of conspiring to undermine those presiding over the Indian state.
On the 30th anniversary of Saaransh last year, Kher was quoted in the Indian Express as saying, “Saaransh changed my life…My thinking forever. It made me a better person. It is not a film but a philosophy for me.” He did not spell out the tenets of his philosophy, which, however, can be outlined by decoding his political actions over the last few months. It would show his logic is fallacious and naïve.
Raj Dharma
Kher famously led the "March for India" in Delhi on November 7, protesting against writers and other luminaries who had been returning their awards to express their disquiet over the rising intolerance in the country.
Kher didn’t only lead it, he also organised it – but nobody accused him of doing it at the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party, even though his wife is a member of Parliament representing the party from Chandigarh.
Kher didn’t bill the March for India as a protest against the protesting writers. He said it was to tell President Pranab Mukherjee that India is “is a very tolerant country”, as if the political veteran needed such lessons from him.
But his intent shimmered in his rhetoric. For instance, he declared, “Every country goes through problems, but nobody has the right to call our country intolerant.” Look up the Constitution and you will see Kher hasn’t been empowered – at least not yet – to determine who has what right.
Kher is best advised to watch Saaransh, again, to fathom the motivation of those who have been returning their awards. They are not accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of triggering the worrying incidents of social conflict, as Kher persistently suggests. What they are pointing to is the perceived somnolence of the state, its refusal, so to speak, to take action against those fanning hatred through their speech and conduct. They want the prime minister to express, at least, his disapproval against the hotheads of the Sangh Parivar.
Sure, the prime minister did speak, rather belatedly, against the Dadri lynching incident. But the sliver of optimism was dashed as he exploited the beef controversy to bag votes in the Bihar election, as he sought to stoke the fear that the Grand Alliance, once voted to power, would extend reservations in jobs to Muslims at the expense of Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. What confidence can people draw from such remarks?
This lack of confidence in the Indian state is reinforced by Modi’s past. Rightly or wrongly, there are many who believe he didn’t deliberately try to control the riots of 2002 in Gujarat. To compound the problem, the BJP has a majority in the Lok Sabha and isn’t shackled by the restraining influence of its allies, as had been the fate of the National Democratic Alliance under Atal Behari Vajpayee. Though Christians in Gujarat and Odisha were tormented and bashed then, yet nobody returned awards, not even after the cataclysmic events of 2002 in Gujarat.
This was because people believed that Prime Minister Vajpayee could not turn his eyes away from social conflicts beyond a degree because it was presumed the BJP’s coalition partners in the government would mount pressure on him to uphold, to use his own term, raj dharma. This comfort is no longer ours.
Nor is it that the Sangh has spawned confidence. Over the last 18 months, we have witnessed divisive programmes such as love jihad, ghar wapsi, the movement against cow-slaughter, and violent protests against various historical personalities, most recently over the Tipu Sultan anniversary celebrations in Karnataka.
Indeed, a hyper Sangh, an inactive state, and a silent prime minister have together aroused the fear of people that a scenario similar to 2002 or 1984 might still revisit us with all its ghastly ferocity. The writers are being civil in calling what they fear as "rising intolerance", to which Kher takes grave objection. A more apt descriptor for their fear is "increasing state encouragement of communalism".
Whataboutery unlimited
Kher often recalls the Emergency and the anti-Sikh 1984 riots to accuse today’s conscionable protestors of not expressing their disapproval of instances of gross intolerance perpetrated under the past Congress regimes. It is a charge he levelled against Aamir Khan as well, forgetting his younger peer was 10 years old when the Emergency was imposed, and a callow 19, and largely a nobody, in 1984. Could he have protested then? And if he had, what salience would it have had?
Perhaps Kher believes all those who are worried over the rising intolerance today belong to the anti-BJP camp. For him, Khan and the writer Arundhati Roy, whom he often berates, represent the left-liberal ethos. Kher believes people of such ideological persuasion are sympathetic to the Congress and opposed to the BJP. Yet Khan did join Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement, which had the Congress in its crosshairs. Roy had stridently opposed the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance’s neo-liberal policies.
It seems Kher’s interest in politics of very recent vintage. Otherwise he would have known that the socialists were at the forefront of the anti-Emergency movement, that Jayaprakash Narayan wasn’t a Sangh leader, and that liberals, including academicians, risked their careers to oppose Indira Gandhi.
Kher would have also known that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh had been silent during and in the immediate aftermath of the 1984 riots. It was implicated in violence at certain places in Delhi, as Peoples Union for Democratic Rights member Gautam Navlakha told Scroll in a recent interview. Kher would have known that the Congress was implicated in the 1984 riots not because of the BJP but because of the report, Who are the Guilty?, which the PUDR and People’s Union for Civil Liberties jointly prepared and published. They, in case he doesn’t know, subscribe to the left-liberal ethos.
Kher is confusing India for the Indian state, either deliberately or consciously. We protest against the state, not against the nation. It is the state that grants rights and governs people. We protest against the state either because we want to expand our rights, or we want to curb its high-handedness, or we want it to show resolve and act. This principle underlies just about every protest movement anywhere around the world.
There are exceptions, of course. People have protested against neo-Nazis; they have protested against Islamists; they have protested against protesters opposing their state’s decision to go to war, as it happened in 2003 when George W Bush invaded Iraq.
What protest is worthy is easy to judge – one that it against hatred and killing, one which demands equality for the poor and weak.
So the next time Kher takes to Twitter to deride those who express their worries over, or protest against, intolerance, he should ask himself: Are the protesters fostering harmony and positioning themselves against violence, even at the possibility of it?
In Saaransh, headmaster Pradhan (Kher) tells his wife, “Tumhari chehre ki jhurrio mein mere jeevan ka saaranch hai (In the wrinkles of your face lies the gist of my life.)” In Kher’s tweets, comments and action can be discerned the gist of his political philosophy – it is revoltingly pro-state, reactionary, depressingly confused, and, yes, extraordinarily petty.
Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist in Delhi. His novel The Hour Before Dawn has as its backdrop the demolition of the Babri Masjid. It is available in bookstores.