Twitter
Advertisement

Anupam Kher ko gussa kyon aata hai?

He may not formally be in politics but Anupam Kher is in the proverbial eye of many a political storm with his tweets, comments and speeches on everything from elections to intolerance. Gargi Gupta analyses the actor's newest role, seen by some as a hyper-nationalist and unabashed Modi admirer

Latest News
article-main
FacebookTwitterWhatsappLinkedin

The problem with actors is that you're never quite sure when they're dissembling. And when it's an actor of the calibre of Anupam Kher, someone who must be judged as much by the aplomb with which he carries off the silliest of Bollywood roles as by his celebrated portrayals in films such as Saraansh and A Wednesday, some scepticism is only natural.

Kher's feisty speech at The Telegraph newspaper's national debate, his mockery of the opposition for seeking badla (revenge) for their drubbing in the general elections – "Yeh haar, jo shikast hui hai, itni buri tarah se, uska badla liya ja raha hai… Ek chaiwalla ban gaya prime minister, kaise bana?" – had all the hallmarks of a Bollywood script.

It was short on logic, high on emotive appeal and played unabashedly to the gallery, in this case, Twitter. Of course, the 61-year-old can hardly be blamed or credited for the attention it attracted – the organisers must have budgeted for high drama when they invited him to speak on the motion, 'Tolerance is the new intolerance'. They definitely got their money's worth. (It doesn't always work though. His home audience at a 'freedom of expression' debate last November at the Tata Literature Live festival was much less forgiving and booed him when he ran down Shobhaa De for running a gossip magazine and for calling the evening crowd a "paid audience").

Clearly, this is Kher's new part – what political analysts call 'hyper-nationalist'' and a Narendra Modi admirer. And like every one of the nearly 400 roles Kher has played in his more than three-decade career, he's doing a very good job of it. Remember the time he marched to Rashtrapati Bhavan heading the 'March of India' rally against writers who'd given back their Sahitya Akademi awards, calling them deshdrohis who'd maligned India on the international platform? Or his recent 'desh ka pest control' tweet, taking off from that very famous speech from A Wednesday, to describe the arrest of JNU student leaders Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and others who are alleged to have been shouting secessionist slogans?

Palace politics

The question everyone's asking is: Will he join politics formally, become a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) like his MP wife Kirron Kher? The actor is tight-lipped. In fact, he declined to even speak to this writer when she informed him that she would like to speak to him about his politics and recent statements. "No comments," was all he said.

Perhaps it's this – the being a supporter, yet out of the formal party apparatus – that explains the seemingly discordant notes from within the BJP itself to Kher. Take the hackles he's raised for his comment that yogis and sadhvis who speak "nonsense" should be thrown out of the party and sent to jail, a statement that earned him the ire of Yogi Adityanath and Sadhvi Prachi, who've said he's a "real life khalnayak". Nalin Kohli, BJP spokesperson, however, feels that views such as these indicate personal differences, and not the party line. Kher's outspoken and feisty speeches, he feels, reveal that "while he has given several strong portrayals on screen, off screen too he has strong views on many subjects". There was his earlier equivocal line on Gajendra Chauhan's appointment as Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) chairperson, in which he'd implied that the former did not have the credentials to head the country's premier film education institution. And there was the time when he stridently defended Shah Rukh Khan against some BJP leaders who had called him anti-national. "He is a national icon & we r PROUD of him [sic]," he'd tweeted then. Ironically, it's this that has laid him open to charges of hypocrisy from both sides of the political divide.

It would be an unfair charge, because the actor is known for speaking his mind. Kher's political ambitions, at any rate his visible presence on political platforms and engagement with political debates, dates back to the Anna Hazare movement of 2011, when he spoke out in favour of the fasting Gandhian's anti-corruption drive. In a blog posted on the website of Actor Prepares, his acting school, he wrote, "My support for Anna Hazare stems not just from my convictions, but out of personal experience too."

His own grandfather, he revealed, had resigned from his job as a municipal civil engineer when he was offered a bribe of Rs30,000 for a road contract. But the falling out happened soon after then-Anna loyalist Arvind Kejriwal formed the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and won the Delhi assembly elections in 2013. Today, the actor remains one of the AAP convenor's fiercest critics.

Kher's avatar as a Modi fan may be of recent vintage, but his relative closeness with the BJP can be gauged from the two high-profile public assignments that came his way during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee regime of 1998-2004 – as chairperson of the National School of Drama society in 2001, and censor board chief in 2003. The last assignment was a somewhat controversial one, given the charges that the board under him had delayed clearing Final Solution, Rakesh Sharma's 2004 documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots that was severely critical of the Modi administration in the state. "Right from the start, CBFC (Central Board of Film Certification) tried to harass… by raising all sorts of objections," Sharma says. When he took it to film festivals abroad, where it won awards, the board responded by sending him a legal notice. The censor board banned the film, but after Sharma took the matter to the Central I&B ministry, the film was cleared. However, the Vajpayee government was out of power by this time and soon after. Kher himself was sacked, a victim of the purge of high-ranking, political appointees in cultural institutions that took place after the first UPA government came to power. The controversy, however, reared its head again two years ago when Kher claimed he'd been instrumental in clearing Final Solution, a claim Sharma vehemently denies.

Cause and effect

No wonder then that he's declined to take up official positions this time round. "They did offer me one or two positions. They offered me NFDC chairmanship. I declined," he told the media after he was awarded the Padma Bhushan earlier this year.

One issue that Kher has consistently highlighted in his public addresses in recent years has been the persecution of Kashmiri Pandits. A Pandit himself, he has reminisced emotively about visiting his grandfather's home in Srinagar as a young boy, and his pain at going back now to find the house has disappeared. In a film aired recently to mark 26 years of the Pandits' exile, he uses his considerable oratory skills to bring alive the atmosphere of terror in the Valley in the 1990s, the minimalist, black and white frames corresponding to the bleak lives of the 60,000 families crammed in Jammu camps for decades thereafter. What Kher speaks of is incontrovertible historical fact, though some like Salman Nizami have accused him of exaggeration and fanning communal feelings. Others like filmmaker Ajay Raina see it as one in which Kher has become "the most popular public face of a farcical conversation about the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh version of nationalism and majoritarian privileges that Modi's ascension has unleashed in the country". Others like Ashok Pandit, filmmaker and spokesperson of Panun Kashmir, a Kashmiri Pandit organisation, feel that having an actor of Kher's stature draws public attention to the issue. "Anupamji has stood by our cause and been an important part of our struggle for the past 26 years. He inaugurated the first World Kashmir Pandit Conference in 1993. Unlike other celebrities, who hesitate to stick their neck out for a cause they believe in, Anupamji has never felt the need to be politically right."

Kher the actor may not be as prolific today as he was a decade ago (though he still manages six-seven releases a year, plus TV, both in India and abroad), but he's managed to reinvent himself not just politically, but as a theatre person, with two very successful plays – the autobiographical Kuch Bhi Ho Sakta Hai and Mera Woh Matlab Nahi Tha. The former, a frank and self-deprecating enactment of his childhood and struggles to make it in Bollywood, has spun off into a television chat show with celebrities and a book, which has led to assignments as a motivational speaker. Kuch Bhi Ho Sakta Hai, the book, is dedicated to his grandfather Pandit Amar Nath.

"Bheega hua aadmi baarish se nahin darta", reads the book tribute. Will that motto steer him through the turbulent waters now?

Find your daily dose of news & explainers in your WhatsApp. Stay updated, Stay informed-  Follow DNA on WhatsApp.
Advertisement

Live tv

Advertisement
Advertisement