India, the hunt is on. Parliament is in session, which means the men and women you have sent to Delhi as your elected representatives will set things straight. At the very least, they will make a valiant effort to do so when they take a break from ponderous debate.
Today, after Lok Sabha was adjourned as a result of its attempts at, er, debate, the onus of solving India’s problems fell upon the Rajya Sabha. After all, when the nation has questions – like why is there such horrific violence against women and how do we stop these crimes from happening? – the members of its parliament must have the answers.
So why are we being confronted with horrors like gang-raped children every day? If our esteemed parliamentarians are to be believed, it’s because the culture produced by contemporary India is characterised by “a crisis of values”. It needs to be censored because contained in its imagery are subliminal messages that drive men to commit the unimaginable crimes that have become staple fare in the daily newspaper.
JDU’s Shivanand Tiwari roared that gossip columns and advertisements were sexualising our society, which seems like a perfectly reasonable understanding of a country that has a population of more than a billion. Could we have sex on our mind were it not for media and advertising? Absolutely not.
BSP’s Mayawati said that adult films were making the youth go “down the wrong path”. SP’s Ram Gopal Yadav declared that until “the rise in obscenity” in films is curbed, rapes will keep recurring. There seemed to be a general consensus that at the root of all the gender-centric crime is mainstream media in general, and popular films in particular since these comprise a significant chunk.
Today’s debate has revealed to India the question we all need to ask our parliamentarians: what the hell are they watching? At least in case of Mayawati, we know she’s been watching “adult films”; to study their impact upon the impressionable minds of our youth, naturally.
However, what are these channels and publications that Tiwari is viewing, which have advertisements and columns promoting violent sex? All we’ve got while watching the IPL are exhortations to breathe in a little bit of Gujarat – which, considering how dry and dusty the state is, sounds like the best way to get asthma and other respiratory diseases – and courtesy L’Oreal brand ambassador Sonam Kapoor, we’ve learned that the roots of our hair are sparkly pink. Neither seems to be a subliminal message to go on a violent rampage against girls and women.
As for Yadav, he would like to blame these crimes on Indian mainstream films, which suggests Bollywood’s best box-office performers last year were the Hindi equivalents of The Hostel and Saw IV. After all, it makes sense that the films that earn the most money would have the widest viewership and would, according to Yadav, drive the men in this country to commit grotesque crimes.
However, it’s difficult to understand how Ek Tha Tiger, which was Bollywood’s top earner for 2012, could inspire rape. Considering the bags under Salman Khan’s eyes, it could inspire you to start using under eye gel. Had there been a rash of gun-toting and shirt-tearing, we could point fingers at Ek Tha Tiger, but the only crime against a woman was suggesting any female would fall for the lines that Salman Khan delivers in that film.
If films really did have such persuasive powers upon audiences, then the crimes we’d have to deal with as a society would be rash bicycling (Barfi!) and jaywalking backwards (Jab Tak Hai Jaan), and more people would adopt girl children (taking a tip from Rowdy Rathore). Instead, what we’ve seen are violent crimes against women and girls. Politicians have been more corrupt than their cinematic counterparts and I think it’s safe to say that the family of the five-year-old would have preferred Chulbul Pandey to the cops they had to deal with in their hour of need.
As it turned out, Bollywood did save the day in parliament, in a manner of speaking. After the blame had been boomeranged from party to party and the demands for death penalties had reached fever pitch, it was the man who has written some of Bollywood’s most cherished films and beautiful lyrics who spoke reasonably and perceptively.
He pointed out the holes in the pro-censorship arguments and delivered lines that would make any audience applaud excitedly. “Don’t diagnose problems when you haven’t taken any steps to improve the condition of women,” he said to his fellow parliamentarians. Not just that, he even had an answer that didn’t sound like a suggestion Miss Universe would offer in her interview round. Akhtar suggested a series of reforms, including fast track courts and gender equality in education.
Let’s hope all those who think Bollywood can change the way we think are correct, because we could do with more people following Akhtar’s lead.
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