Gurmerhar Kaur row: Javed Akhtar’s ‘barely literate’ comment exposes the disdain liberals have for others

‘Yeh kahan aa gaye hum…’

Any Twitter newbie or those fond of the good ol’ days on the social media site may be excused to hum the aforementioned Javed Akhtar lyrics in light of the Gurmehar Kaur controversy. With reactions and counter-reactions, accusations and conspiracy theories in liberal supply, it looked like a free-for all slugfest where sanity is the last thing you can expect.

With the entire social media split vertically on an issue which intertwines several themes like freedom of speech, dissent, misogyny, sexism and elitism, it’s only natural that nuance will be lost on Twitter with its 140-character limit. Yet one expects cultural icons to be our shining light, guiding star, to be the voice of reason and sanity cutting through rhetoric. When ordinary mortals are trapped in binaries, one wishes them to rise above and give a healing touch. With those high hopes, one felt let down by Javed Akhtar’s crass, elitist and condescending tweets about Virender Sehwag, the Phogat sisters and Olympic medalist Yogeshwar Dutt. 

Akhtar tweeted, “If a hardly literate player or a wrestler troll a pacifist daughter of a martyr its understandable but whats wrong with some educated folks” (sic). Now even if we ignore educated Akhtar’s grammatical mistakes in the tweet, one finds it hard to believe someone’s view shouldn’t be taken seriously if they don’t pass Javed saab’s high entrance barrier. It’s perhaps discerning to note that people who have given sermons of equality and socialism throughout their life feel completely okay to belittle someone’s view just because they are not ‘educated’. Now, we get what Javed saab means. Education gives enlightenment and exposure to different strands of culture, and in turn an acceptance for a more subtle line of argument, going beyond pitting one against another. In short, education should make people more liberal and accepting to contradictory voices. Akhtar is cutting some slack to ‘hardly literates’ because their ‘bigotry’ is acceptable due to lack of education. 

But where he makes the classic mistake of judging from a point of privilege is that poor, uneducated people have a deeper intuitive understanding of people, policy and conflicts, as they are most exposed to bear the brunt of idiosyncrasies of the ruler of the day. From demonetization to war, the lesser fortunate suffer the most, as a slightest disruption can upset their day-to-day subsistence. And if some of them make sports as their living to escape the trap of poverty and make us proud with their win, do we have the right to mock them for lack of suave sophistry? Are we so tone deaf as a nation to only cheer their victory, basking in their reflected glory for a day or two and then conveniently label them as ganwars when their views don’t match ours? Honestly, one would have expected such harebrained arguments from petty partisan trolls, but not from one of the most celebrated wordsmiths of our times. 

It’s not that Javed saab is alone in this assessment. There are many who think wisdom has a direct correlation with education degrees and bank balances. Thankfully, the wise men who wrote the constitution were a little less full of themselves than the limousine liberals of Bollywood. Article 326 of the constitution ensures universal adult franchise, with subsequent 61st amendment to the constitution bringing down the minimum age for casting vote to 18. While many of the Western liberal countries opted for restricted franchise in the beginning, India reposed full faith on the wisdom of her people and opted for full voting rights of all adult citizens. Even with paltry a 18% literacy rate in 1950, our forefathers trusted Indians to make an informed choice. Our democracy has thrived since then, albeit with occasional stops and stutters.

On Twitter, facing a barrage of criticism, Javed AKhtar said that he has written a film called Lakshya, and that highlights his views about the army. Yes, Lakshya was a wonderful coming of age movie (except Preity Zinta’s horrendous wig) and an ideal recruitment reel for the Indian Army, but from when have we decided to conflate reel and real. Javed saab also wrote Sholay, a movie which virtually glorifies the gangster Gabbar Singh, so are we supposed to understand that Javed Akhtar supports violence? Of course the irony of a Bollywood celebrity talking about education prowess can’t be missed. Ranveer Kapoor’s board exam marks are a running gag in Koffee with Karan and many of our stars who espouse wisdom don’t even know the basics of most subjects. Remember, Alia Bhatt’s President of India goof-up? We still happily play along as these are successful people who are worth the airtime, notwithstanding their closed coterie, with a ridiculously high entry bar for commoners. Humble sportspersons on the other hand have to mostly rely on their merit to rise up the rank, and there are no retakes in a real dangal or cricket match. Sports is a great educator in itself, the essential fickleness of success greatly mirrors that of life. Like our cinestars are worth the attention, sports icons too deserve a voice and not scorn and disquiet. It may not be the most politically correct take, but it will be from the bottom of the heart. 

In movies after movies, Javed saab has reinvented himself, and his words have conveyed a myriad emotions of life. One can hope that he does a course correction and doesn’t treat our brightest athletes as merely disposable machines for churning out medals. Let ideas be free, debate be fair and dissent not be a birthright of the privileged few. Straightjacketing of people based on pre-conceived biases is something worth avoiding. In the movie Swades, Mohan Bhargav came back to the country and ushered a change, aided by poor, uneducated villagers. Javed saab should also keep the faith like his cinematic creation.