Saturday, July 7, 2018

Illiberal ignominy

All it took was one tweet – for his employer to sack a man from his star job, to lose his reputation, to fall into the abyss of (il)liberal ignominy. I’m writing about Atul Kochhar, the celebrity chef based out of the UK. 

Twitter was abuzz with outrage heaping (and rightly so) on Priyanka Chopra for a role in the recent episode of Quantico. The recent episode of the television drama showcased a scene where PC thwarts a plot by “Hindu nationalists” to “frame Pakistanis” ahead of the summit on Kashmir. Stop laughing, now! Notwithstanding the obvious massive holes in the plot, the protagonist foils the plot by finding out ‘rudraksha’ – the sacred chain worn by the “saffron terrorists” – a term conjured by the despicable likes of Chidambaram, Diggy Raja and the clique serving & protecting the Italian queen and her dynasty called UPA. 

Coming back to the episode in the discussion, there couldn’t be anything irreconcilable with reality than this. With 25165464616 terrorist attacks directly indicting the involvement of Muslims in all corners of the world, and zero of Hindus, the makers of the series didn’t think it will a travesty of reality to present this twisted plot. Nevermind! It’s (f)art and pardonable and they have the freedom of expression and all other sundries. But for an Indian actor PC to accept this role doesn’t seem too innocent. It’s not like somebody pushed her to do it. She would obviously be aware of the script and willingly she would have donned the role. 

After backlash in twitter, PC apologized and said she was a ‘Pround Indian’ while she should have actually apologized to Hindus if she has chosen to apologize. This again prompted various reactions. One among them was that of Atul Kochhar’s. 



Let’s see the veracity of the content of Kochhar’s tweet. He was indeed wrong about the number of years he quoted, which he corrected in the subsequent tweet. The attempt of the Islamic invasion of India had started way back in the 7th century; there were initial setbacks but were eventually successful in invading India. This is a part of recorded history - from Alberuni to Firishta, and other Persian & Arabic historians. But since India is a Shariah-compliant country, and whitewashing of Islamic history in India is a state policy, a vast majority of the people are not aware of how bad was the Islamic invasion of India. 





This is another matter and let's keep that aside. How did the fiberals of India react to this? If you can't take a guess, keep this as heuristics - whenever there is a conflict between Islam Vs anything, the fiberals take the former's side. This episode was no different - all in the day's job of the fiberals. One went a step ahead to flagged the tweet to the employer, JW Marriott which severed its ties with him. He was constantly harassed, threatened, and was made to apologize. Finally, he had to delete his twitter account. All these just for a single tweet. Fiberals deliberately tried to destroy the career of a man for just speaking out his mind. These are our self-appointed guardians and purveyors of free speech. 

This episode brought out a well-known fact - the self-proclaimed 'liberals' of India don't give two hoots for the principle of free speech. They stand for a party, religion, tribe etc. per their convenience but never for the principle. If you think they stand for "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it", you are in for a big disappointment. As Joker says in the iconic movie The Dark Knight - "their morals, their code... it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble". The self-same people never stop virtue signaling, shouting from the rooftop that the democracy and "liberal values" are under threat.

Second, if you are too vocal and have gained considerable fame and are politically incorrect in social media, it's good not to advertise your employers. Or even better - be anonymous. Because the first place they want to hurt is your livelihood. 

Lastly - in India like in the contemporary West, actors are accorded a high status in the society and their opinions valued. It's people's stupidity that keeps the actors on a high pedestal in the society. Actors' opinion should be confined to acting allied topics, not beyond that. We have seen how incoherent, uneducated an opinion can be on issues of national importance when you see an Aamir Khan, a Kamal Hasan or the latest a Prakash Raj. Clueless about the lurking realities, yet showing missionary zeal to preach and educate the nation. Nana Patekar summed it up in this short clip

In ancient Rome, actors were accorded low societal status and more importantly, Romans gave actors pariah rank in the society because "they are faked by profession" as NN Taleb puts it. Roman emperor Julian prohibited Pagan priests from attending theatre so that actors don't get the elevation in their status in the society because of their presence and attendance. Perhaps the Romans went too far but we have a thing or two learn from Romans.