Editorial: BJP's waning star power

By now, the trope of the has-been/wannabe/failed film star stoking hate speech, getting a horror-of-horrors response from civil society and earning himself or herself some brownie points with the BJP has worn thin through overuse. M/s Paresh Rawal, Babul Supriyo and Smriti Irani have retired to the shadows after several years of service, and the party has recruited the mercurial Kangana Ranaut for the job at the national level. But being a woman with a mind of her own, the actress can sometimes stray from message and score an own goal, as she did by making a film extolling Indira Gandhi as the Durga of Emergency just when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was trying to divert attention from his humbling in the recent Lok Sabha elections.

The film star as a hate megaphone is the BJP’s favourite polarisation device. Every state unit of the party has a Rolodex full of film personalities who can be called upon to say something nasty to cater to the insatiable needs of prime-time television and social media. Each such pitch is nuanced for the culture war particular to the state but united in the strategy of driving communities apart and widening the space for Hindutva. Despite governing the country for 10 years, the BJP’s main method of achieving lebensraum continues to be to explore nether regions.

Currently two hate-speech controversies are playing out, one featuring yesteryear Bollywood heartthrob Mithun Chakraborty and the other involving former Telugu starlet Kasturi Shankar. Just weeks after winning the Dadasaheb Phalke award whose laureates include the likes of Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen Chakraborty said at a public meeting in West Bengal that “we will chop them (Muslims) and bury them underground”. The remarks, made in the presence of Home Minister Amit Shah, were clearly intended to aid the BJP’s bid to polarise the state along communal lines.

In contrast, starlet Kasturi seems to have unwittingly stepped on a culture war Claymore mine by making disparaging remarks on Telugus living in Tamil Nadu. Her services were requisitioned to make the case for Brahmins and Sanatan Dharma politics in Tamil Nadu, but she ended up contributing some colourful history. Telugus, she said at a protest meeting, were brought to the southern country to serve as assistants to the Kings’ consort. She didn’t mean what that seems to suggest, she said later, and posted an abject apology on Twitter. All the same, her remarks kicked up a dust storm in Telugu media, which threatens to nullify the party’s Sanatan Dharma push in Andhra Pradesh.

Apologies don’t work so well for the BJP as accusations do, and the party’s film industry apologists are getting lesser traction. Frequently, advantage from hate speech in one state may lead to disadvantage in another, as is happening in the Kasturi case. Further, social media audiences are becoming desensitised to mere controversies; they want red-meat scandal instead. Frquent inflammatory statements by film stars are falling flat because Insta influencers can do much better. Moreover, the sheer choice of controversies available for public consumption means that individuals have an array of options for what they choose to be offended by. Cyberspace is not longer a safe space for the almost famous; has-beens stand little chance of lifting an eyebrow for anything over 15 minutes.