It is not often that you come across really good news in newspapers, in these days of murders, assassinations, swine flue and the perennial phenomenon of terrorist attacks. On a single day last month, there were two news items that made me chuckle with pleasure, something I have not done in a long time. One was about the detention at a US airport of a song-and-dance man from Bollywood, and the other, the sacking of a man from a party to which he claimed to have belonged for over thirty years.
Let me take the song-and-dance man first, because these men are more newsworthy than mere politicians. Why do I call it song-and-dance? Because there is hardly anything else in our films nowadays and the hero and the heroine break into dance every few minutes to keep the story, and the film, going. One such hero had apparently gone to the USA on, what else, a song-and-dance tour, which was to bring him a million US dollars. I have no idea whether he completed the tour or not, but what we do know, however, from newspapers, is that he was detained at an airport for questioning by immigration officers for over an hour and the man was detained because his name was Khan. His detention was therefore racist in character, he said, and the Khan kicked up a row about it that made headlines in newspapers-in India, not in the United States-and the chi-chi crowd that treats the Khans as demigods went wild and swamped TV channels with their cries.
I do not know this particular Khan, have never seen his picture, but I do know that he charges over a crore of rupees for song-and-dance shows at Weddings in Delhi and elsewhere. I can’t really be serious about such people but you have to make a living, and dancing before wedding crowds is as good an occupation as any. But why this man should hit the roof at being detained by immigration men beats me. Thousands of people are held up at airports everyday, some because they have beards and some because they carry knives. Our Khan does not have a beard and he does not carry a knife. The only thing against him is that his name is Khan.
But apparently that is not at all the reason. There are other grounds against him. According to the Washington correspondent of The Times of India, this man’s agent in the US used to have a partner who apparently had or has underworld connections and did once go to jail on that account. It does not mean that our Khan has underworld connections; only a partner of his agent has or had such connections. Americans are a very thorough lot in such matters, and they held up our matinee idol for questioning, which they often do.
Before that they had held up other Indians including an ex-President of India and a couple of union ministers. None of them kicked up a fuss. Only this song-and-dance man did. The Americans say that for them such things are routine and do not understand why we should make such a fuss about it. I entirely agree. After all, it is their country and they follow their laws. Who are we to protest?
Let me now come to the other item, viz. the summary sacking of a politician who once belonged to an opposition party. That party was once in power and this man was a minister in its government. The party is now out of power and the minister or the ex-minister may soon be out of politics.
We in India always make a mountain out of a molehill, and the chi-chi crowd that always hangs around TV channels has once again gone wild. The man says he has been sacked because he wrote a book about the father of Pakistan, painting him in unusually favourable terms. He is lucky he lives in India, not Pakistan. If he had lived in Pakistan, and written the same book holding Jinnah responsible for the murder of millions which ultimately led to the creation of Pakistan, he would have been shot, as thousands have been in that country for much less. In Soviet Russia, Stalin had a special prison only for writers who wrote inconvenient books, many of whom disappeared without a trace. Pakistan is no different, except that instead of Stalins, we have, or used to have, Bhuttos, and they had no love lost for writers too.
The man says he served the party faithfully for 30 years. I am not quite sure what that means. It is the impression of most people who were his contemporaries in the party that he was a loner in the party and never really believed in its principles and ideology. He has himself said that he opposed the party’s alliance with Shiv Sena, but that was not the only thing he opposed. He opposed almost everything the party stands for or stood for. The list is endless. He opposed Hindutva ideology and was dead against Ayodhya. He also opposed Swadeshi, though on most of these counts, he kept his counsel, and kept his mouth shut. In fact, it would be interesting to know what he did not oppose. He was all for liberalisation when the party was against it; he was against Swadeshi, against alliance with Shiv Sena, against Ayodhya, when they formed the party’s main programme.
I have one question: If he did not believe in any of the things the party believed in, or still believes in, why was he in the party at all, all these years? Why did he oppose everything-including the party’s close ties with the RSS-the party stood for, and continued to be in the party, year after year, for as many as 30 years, which is almost a lifetime? Who supported him in the party-someone inside the party, or someone outside? It is obvious that he could not have remained in the party, considering that he disapproved of almost everything the party did and stood for, without a mentor or mentors, inside and outside the party. It is time he told us about it, rather than going on and on about how wonderful a man Jinnah was and so on.
Some people think too highly of themselves. If they write a book, they think they should get a Nobel Prize for it. Thousands of books are written in this country every year. You open them, read a couple of pages and throw them away. This Jinnah book will soon gather dust in some attic, along with hundreds of others. Nobody will remember either the book or the sacking of the man who wrote it, next year, perhaps, even next week. So why all this fuss?
(The writer can be contacted at 301, Manikanchan Apts, Kanchan Galli, Pune. Phone: 020-25452395)
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