Why is Bollywood mum about Salman Khan

The star is drawing much ire for his recent comment about rape, but a precious few from Bollywood have spoken against it

Salman Khan seems to have developed a knack of wriggling into sticky situations, and more often than not, staying there. The latest storm he kicked up with his rape comment has drawn much ire too. The actor, in a press interview, compared his physical strain and exhaustion after shooting Sultan to that of a woman who had been raped. Naturally, the simile hasn’t gone down too well with many who termed the comment insensitive. That the mega star has not issued an apology has only further fuelled the fire.

One of Mumbai’s strong feminist voices and celebrity hairstylist Sapna Bhavnani sees the episode as a gross display of chauvinism. She is particularly miffed at how most of the film industry has chosen to keep mum about it. “It’s really sad that someone like Farhan Akhtar, who holds meetings with the UN and is a spokesperson for He for She at an international level chose to remain quiet. Priyanka Chopra who spoke about equal wages for women in the industry decided to keep mum when it came to Salman Khan. Deepika Padukone raised a furore about sexism when a paper published a photo of her cleavage, but chose to remain quiet when it came to her co-star in Bollywood. This clearly shows that they will talk about something only when it directly affects them,” she rues.

Ad guru Prahlad Kakkar, known to not mince his words, blames it on the chauvinistic mindset of the industry. Not to mention, the fear of upsetting bhai. “People in the industry know that they will be ostracised if they talk against Salman Khan and that they won’t get any work after that. That’s the reason no one’s talking about it. People in the industry are hypocrites and chauvinism is in their DNA. Look at the kind of scripts they write—they just want women to flaunt their bodies and be an arm candy. Very few scripts have a female protagonist. People in the media should have a long-term memory. Male chauvinism is in Salman’s DNA. He may support women for the heck of rationality, but unconsciously he will remain a chauvinist.” Kakkar reminds us how during his much hushed up tiff with Aishwarya Rai, nobody from Tinsel Town spoke in favour of Ash.

Pritish Nandy, as critical as he is about the comment, insists that we look at it in the right light. “There are two issues here—freedom of expression and the right to defend it. When I say my life is f**k**d up, I don’t literally mean it, right Similarly, what he meant was that he was in pain. Of course it was very insensitive and inappropriate to use such words.”

But even if one were to overlook the connotation of the term, there is a larger issue at hand, points out Sapna Bhavnani. “The bigger picture here is that a 50-year old man is not willing to apologise for the statement he made. It shows how his ego is blown. My ma taught me that it takes a bigger person to apologise. Salman may be a big star, but a big person he ain’t.”

Sapna is one of the few people (like singer Sona Mohapatra) who has been heavily trolled by bhai-worshipping audiences for her brazen views against the actor. But that is the least of her concerns. “As far as trolls are concerned, they don’t affect me anymore. I don’t care about his fans.”

There are however, those who stand by the star and sympathise with his foot-in-mouth tendencies. Socialite Pooja Bedi points out, “I believe that people who are supporting the outrage are doing it for political brownie points. Even the channels that are playing the audio clip just play the bit where he says, ‘I felt like a raped woman.’ Whereas, he further went on to retract his statement by adding that ‘I don’t think I should have said that,’ but none of the channels played that bit at all. You can’t pick up half a statement and create a controversy. His retraction was never shown in the media. Agreed it’s not the best simile, but if rape is the most brutal physical experience anyone could experience, is he wrong If Salman’s intention was to use the term rape to describe something that shatters someone physically and emotionally, is it wrong If using the word rape is wrong, then words like mad, retarded, strangled, murdered, crazy should all be considered politically incorrect.”