Daily Times

We grew up on Bollywood. We grew up dancing on their songs, admiring Madhuri Dixit, singing ‘ek do teen’ on our picnics, exchanging goofy cards with Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan’s pictures on them on Eid day, five rupees each. I remember vividly asking my cousin to give me the nice and shiny Salman Khan poster in exchange for my Anil Kapoor one because my mom liked Anil Kapoor and I had only gotten it for her, at which she had laughed and set aside. My five rupees were gone and I was stuck with a very sultry and very chest-hairy Anil Kapoor.

The fact that our own industry was restricted to television where women would be running, sleeping, cooking and fighting all with dupattas pinned on their heads didn’t help. Not that any of us were dancing wearing skimpy bikini style skirts in villains’ lairs but the constant sermonizing and dupatta on head woman wasn’t exactly relatable either. Both PTV and Zee TV were confusing for us, they were two extremes we didn’t fully understand.

With the advent of cable, more channels, and most recently, YouTube and streaming, content and how we look at it has visibly changed. There are more relatable stories, more connected voices and the nature of film and drama itself has changed tremendously. The dupattas are not on the heads or even on the shoulders but that’s not just the visible change. With television channels airing dramas like Udaari, a drama that speaks about child sexual abuse, or Alif Allah aur Insaan, where the inner workings of courtesans’ lives are detailed for forty odd weeks, with Bollywood producing a film like Piku, a sexually empowered, independent woman, or Pink which goes into lengthy and extensive details of how rape and sexual abuse are legally manipulated just because of how our society and our laws understand consent – the new narrative is not only woke and politically correct, it’s defining cultural moments and shaping thought processes as we speak.

The fact that our own industry was restricted to television where women would be running, sleeping, cooking and fighting all with dupattas pinned on their heads didn’t help. Not that any of us were dancing wearing skimpy bikini style skirts in villains’ lairs but the constant sermonizing and dupatta on head woman wasn’t exactly relatable either. Both PTV and Zee TV were confusing for us, they were two extremes we didn’t fully understand

Bollywood recently released the trailer and song for “Tareefan”, a song where DJ Badshah sings and Sonam Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor lip-sync to his voice. The video is shot in extreme gender reversal where the leading women are dancing and shimmying whereas nondescript, good looking young men provide eye candy in the background. Some of the reactions to the song and the film trailer itself (where the female protagonists are cursing to their hearts’ content) were disgust and disapproval. Interestingly, all the female leads of the film, Kareena Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor and notably Swara Bhasker, were under fire for protesting against the Unnao rape and the Kathua rape of a seven-year-old girl, Asifa Bano. There were calls to boycott the film, Veere Di Wedding, and social media warriors demanded that Amazon cuts its ties with Swara Bhaskar. Amazon ended up deleting the tweet where it endorsed Swara’s tweet.

Swara also came under fire for speaking out against Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s magnum opus ‘Padmaavat’ where the female protagonist, Rani Padmaavat (Deepika Padukone), willfully walks into fire along with hundreds of other women, to save their ‘honour’ from a Muslim invader, Alauddin Khilji (Ranveer Singh). Deepika Padukone defended her essaying of the role of Rani Padmaavat saying that she found Rani Padmaavat’s journey ‘relevant’ today. It is important to note here that Indian ruling party leader, BJP representative, Kunwar Surajpal Singh Ammu demanded that Deepika Padukone should be beheaded along with Sanjay Leela Bhansali and that there would be 10 crore rupees reward money for it.

Politically outspoken female actresses in Bollywood find a strange trajectory for themselves. Deepika Padukone was eventually lauded for Padmaavat (Javed Akhtar called it Padukone’s Mother India moment) and Padukone also runs her own fashion house as well as an initiative to fight stigma against depression called the Live Love Laugh Foundation” Her counterparts like Anushka Sharma have also taken the same route; Sharma owns her own brand called ‘Nush’ and has a successful production house that created films like NH 10, Phillauri and Pari. Sharma, however, makes no statements that land her in the firing line of the trigger happy ruling party. She’s clean, non-controversial and stays out of trouble. She and Padukone are possibly the epitomes of a modern Bollywood feminist star: you can wear what you want, sing and dance on what you want, maybe do a problematic film here and there (hint, Sultan, Happy New Year) and we accept you.

The moment any woman takes the Nandita Das route, or a Kalki Koechlin path, or even the Vidya Balan way – all women who are outspoken and have taken strong political as well as social stances, the graph starts to waver. Shabana Azmi and Arundhati Roy are often shamed and termed as ‘anti-Nationalist’. Azmi went on record to state that ‘no one stood up’ for her. Kangana Ranaut, often in the news for her feminist views, was shamed for her opinions on nepotism. Kangana is a firebrand feminist and refuses to do fairness creams campaigns. She has also been vocal in speaking out against her relationship with Hrithik Roshan and Aditya Pancholi – however she did not face the same ire when she said in an interview that she ‘doesn’t read papers’ but is a ‘big Modi fan’.

Pakistan was at 143 out of 144 countries in the Global Gender Gap Report. Over a thousand women are killed in the name on ‘honour’ every year in the country. Pakistan also has a major misogyny problem yet when 7-year-old Zainab Ansari was brutally raped and assaulted in Kasur, Punjab, the outrage was tumultuous. There were no protests to protect the rapist, as BJP right wingers came forth with their defence of the men who had raped Asifa Bano. Vijay Sharma, the president of Hindu Ekta Manch, was the state secretary of BJP. He was a practicing lawyer who organised protests rallies in Kathua to protect the rapist.

On the flip side, in Pakistan, to the intense public pressure, Zainab’s murderer was caught via DNA and CCTV evidence within weeks. Protests erupted to arrest the killer and Pakistan’s leading activists and stars were on the street to protest and light candlelit vigils for Zainab. Qandeel Baloch, a social media star, was killed by her brother in the name of ‘honour’. Pakistani channel made a television drama in her memory, called Baaghi, that starred Saba Qamar and Osman Khalid Butt. The drama was written by Umera Ahmed whose stories are generally not aligned with a radical feminist thought or narrative – yet Ahmed wrote the dialogues for Baaghi and is also credited with writing a play about Zainab Ansari which is yet to be released. Last year Shoaib Mansoor wrote and directed Verna, a political thriller, starring Mahira Khan and Haroon Shahid and Zarrar Khan. The film, despite its technical flaws, was an important game changer. Pakistani audiences were watching a film based entirely on a female protagonist who said things like, “I’m not just your wife. I’m a human being” and hits back at anyone who crosses her.

Artists influence community and society in a way much larger than they ever did. I do not remember expecting Madhuri Dixit or Salman Khan to speak about Kashmir nor did I expect Reema or Resham to talk about feminism. It just wasn’t done back then. Songs like “Chamma Chamma” where a heavily bejeweled Urmila Matondkar danced and grooved and sang innuendo after innuendo before Amrish Puri and his fellow goons, were accepted and kosher. Sure there are the “Beedi” (Omkara) and “Laila” (Raees) in today’s time but the trend has significantly reduced. In the era of Buzzfeed, even woke item numbers such as the one in Raabta, where Deepika Padukone danced briefly and seductively, were criticized for objectification.

In November 2017, India dropped twenty places in the Global Gender Gap Index. It was positioned at 108, ranking below China and Bangladesh. India is also said to be unsafe for women. Could one reason be that a booming billion-dollar industry like Bollywood, one of India’s largest selling points, is unable to take on the gender parities in a more serious way than making films about women who commit Jauhar, an outdated, outlawed practice? Could it be because it still relies on mostly sexist tropes that objectify women and while they allow women to dress provocatively to appease to the male gaze, the moment a woman holds an opinion that threatens the status quo, India takes multiple steps backward when it comes to women empowerment?

Could it be that Bollywood only uses its powerful female icons to sell films – but does not consider them as assets to the political landscape of India, as agents of change, as valuable members of society and individuals capable of independent, intelligent thought? That is a question every woman in India should be asking its female icons and the right wing elements that support, enforce and establish the silence of their shining stars.

Published in Daily Times, May 11^th 2018.