Kiran Bedi is right to call a martyr a bigger idol than an actor, but wrong to question fans’ emotions

Too often in our country emotion is mixed with policy. Kiran Bedi, Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry and a retired IPS officer, questioned the outpouring of grief and emotion after the death of veteran Bollywood actor Vinod Khanna.

In a tweet addressed to spiritual guru Sadhguru she moaned about the idolisation of actors over soldiers. She said it was sad that people were more concerned about the death of Vinod Khanna than about the soldiers killed in the Kupwara attack.

"U fail as a nation when 70yrs old #VinodKhanna is mourned MORE than 25 yrs old Capt Ayush Yadav who lost his life at #Kupwara" @SadhguruJV pic.twitter.com/OSd96KGCij

— Kiran Bedi (@thekiranbedi) April 27, 2017

What is strange about this tweet is the fact that Bedi who herself is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party and even contested as its chief ministerial candidate in the 2015 Delhi assembly elections, focused on emotions of fans rather than questioning government policy which has failed to address violence in Kashmir. The Kupwara attack comes close to the Naxal encounter in Sukma which cost the lives of 24 CRPF jawans.

Bedi, a former Indian Police Service officer herself, would know exactly how government policy affects the security establishment. But maybe out of political allegiance, she chose to focus on the death of an actor instead of commenting on the policy of the centre and the state, especially considering BJP has governments in both Jammu and Kashmir and Chhattisgarh.

The reaction is strange also when we consider that Vinod Khanna was a BJP leader and a member of Parliament. Venkaiah Naidu, Minister of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation and Information and Broadcasting, termed Vinod Khanna’s death a great loss to the party. But the former anti-corruption crusader has broken ranks by terming it a failure that Vinod Khanna’s death is being mourned more than that of the young captain Ayush Yadav martyred in Kupwara.

The harsh reality is that defence operations rarely change with elections. Be it cross border terrorism and infiltration in Kashmir or Naxal attacks in Bastar, governments come and go but the security forces continue to bleed at the hands of poor intel collection and sharing and a lack of political will.

To be fair, it would make little sense to chop and change strategy and protocol every five years at the whim and fancy of political leaders, but what is crucial is that glaring loopholes which have become endemic in the system be rooted out with a firm will and a heavy hand.

While Kiran Bedi means well when she says jawans are bigger idols than actors, belittling the death of one to glorify the martyrdom of the other does injustice to both.