You started your interview by saying that you are going to have an apolitical interview. You have every right to do that. You can ask every stupid question under the sky – pattern of eating mangoes, bank balance, process of dealing with cold, wish from djinn of Aladdin’s lamp, sleep hours, desire for becoming PM, anger management, valuable things held by PM inside the house, pattern of styling, style of wearing watch and sleep hours.

But contrary to what you said, you are only playing politics. Through your interview you only wanted to convey the message to the people for them to turn away from the reality and see an apolitical Modi. You wanted to convey – Let things be what it is. Let things happen the way it happens. Let us not worry about issues – Jobs, Unemployment, Poverty, Demonetisation, GST, Rafael, Corruption, Women safety, Lynching’s, Communalisation, etc. Let us forget that there are elections and there are issues to think and bother about. Let us forget that the Prime Minister is to be questioned on these fronts. Let us just see the personal life of the Prime Minister, away from the Political life.

It is true that you are not one of those who has been affected by the policies of the Prime Minister. Whether it is Demonetisation, GST, Lynching’s, intolerance and growing communal environment. But if you are sensitive enough to your own industry, you would have realised that even the well-established popular and respected actors in your own industry are feeling at the environment that has grown in the last 5 years – whether it is Amir Khan, Shahrukh Khan or Nasiruddin Shah. If their situation is like that, imagine the situation of normal minorities. You could have at-least asked the Prime Minister about the growing sense of insecurity among the Minorities in the country taking a cue from your own industry.

You rather seemed to display the Bhakt in you and use your celebrity status to strengthen and continue the Bhakt narrative around the Prime Minister. You wanted to show the Prime Minister as a simple humble and saintly person – as a person from poor family who struggled even to buy mangoes, a simple person who wanted to become a saint or sainik, someone who sleeps less or works hard, someone who left family for doing something great for the nation. You also wanted to show how the Prime Minister controls his anger, is friendly towards opponents, and treats his subordinates. However, the things said by the Prime Minister goes against the points he made. His personal attacks against the political opponents, his encouragement of hatred against the political opponents through following trollers, encouragement of lynching’s through lack of action on offenders, encouragement of terrorism through providing electoral space to Pragya Sadvhvi, narcistic personality and concentration of powers display a completely different thing.

So contrary to what you said, you were only doing a political interview. You were playing a hide and seek game. You were hiding the burning issues bothering the citizens of the country – Jobs, Unemployment, Lynching’s, Demonetisation, Rafael. On the other hand you were seeking to explore aspects of Prime Ministers personal life which makes little sense to Public life. His style of eating mangoes, way of dealing with cold, sleeping lesser number of hours, style of wearing watch – means little for the people.

By an Indian Citizen

Courtesy: Counter Current

The post Akshay Kumar Interview with the Prime Minister: An Apolitical Political Interview appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 
According to the new rules displayed on the official website for Haj travel, “Women are required to travel for Hajj with a Mahram. Proof of kinship must be submitted with the application form. Any woman over the age of 45 may travel without a Mahram with an organized group, provided she submits a letter of no objection from her Mahram authorizing her to travel for Hajj with the named group. This letter should be notarized.” Also, women under the age of 45 are still prohibited from going on Haj without a male guardian. This makes one wonder if the 1300 Indian women who have been granted permission to travel without men are all above the age of 45 and are travelling in groups.
 
The Modi government is also claiming credit for rescuing Muslim women from the scourge of instant triple talaq, thereby completely invisiblising the hard work of Muslim women like Shayara Bano who was one of the original petitioners in the case that led the Supreme Court to pronounce a historic verdict in August, 2017. While, it is true that the present government passed legislation criminalising instant triple talaq, the movement was started and carried forward by strong and determined Muslim women. The fact that Ishrat Bano, one of the other petitioners in the case went on to join the BJP takes away nothing from the efforts of these women whose determination to see things through is what won them this hard fought battle against patriarchy.
 
Meanwhile, actor Akshay Kumar is busy playing Padman, a self-proclaimed ‘super hero’ whose claim to fame includes putting ‘men’ back in ‘menstruation’. For starters, while menstruation is still a taboo topic in most parts of the country, Kumar and his movie cannot claim credit for destigmatising open discussions on the subject. Feminists groups like Bhoomata Brigade have been speaking fearlessly on the subject for years and even achieved significant victories like the right to enter the sanctum sanctorum of temples such as Shani Shingnapur.
 
Also, Arunachalam Muruganatham, the original Menstrual Man of India, who suffered social boycott and ridicule in his efforts to manufacture and distribute low cost sanitary napkins to rural women, was a South Indian man from a socio-economically disadvantaged background. However, Kumar plays Laxmikant Chauhan, an ‘upper’ caste North Indian in Padman, thereby attempting to wrest credit from backward communities for original ideas and perseverance. Infact, there were reports that Tamil superstar Dhanush was director Balki’s original choice to play the role of Arunachalam. But Akshay was cast and the character was made a North Indian for the movie to have a ‘pan India’ appeal.
 
While one does not need a vagina to be a feminist and men are always welcome to join the feminist movement, it is utterly despicable for any man to claim credit for a woman’s efforts. It is equally despicable for the identity of people who represent India’s diversity to be standardised into that of an ‘upper’ caste Hindu male, the alleged ‘default setting’ for an Indian identity. 

The post A Sordid Tale of Saviour Complex and Stolen Credit appeared first on SabrangIndia.