Here’s The Problem With Kamal Haasan Claiming The High Moral Ground In Politics

It was in the year 1992 that a blockbuster movie called Singaravelan hit the screens. The movie was a commercial hit and the songs became, in an era when nothing went 'viral’, extremely popular. I particularly remember an exceptionally lewd number in which Kamal Haasan, with his friends, chased the lead actress, Khushboo, on the streets while mouthing the song.

The song had double innuendos, and made references to women’s body parts as coconuts and ripe mangoes. Every aspiring ‘romeo’ of those times would walk around on the roads singing the verses when a girl or group of girls passed by. It was around that time that I travelled very frequently in city buses for my classes and CA articleship.

I remember a particularly harrowing time when a group of boys discussed the lyrics loudly enough for me to hear and had a heated debate on which adjective suited me better – mangoes or coconuts. I remember the fear, horror, anger and above all the sense of shame that engulfed my being. I hastened my pace until I completely lost sight of them and heaved a sigh of relief.

This is not a one-off experience of one woman. This would have happened to every woman walking on the street in those times. Eve teasing had graduated to a social menace from a social problem at around that time. Girls being chased on bikes and groped in buses were not even a statistic. A Google search on eve teasing throws up so many horrendous images that raises a chill through the spine.

Singaravelan is by itself an exceptionally progressive movie, where the hero’s brief is to make a girl fall in love by hook or crook and the hero gets set to the task with a few of his friends.

Now,

1. I do not have any opinion on the choice of Haasan’s films or the storyline of the movies in which he chose to act.
2. Nor do I have a problem with movies being a vehicle of entertainment and all the other lame excuses about movies pandering to public taste.
3. I do not even have a problem that Haasan himself rose to the tall task of giving social sanction to eve teasing by brilliantly acting out the scene and passing it off as humour.
4. Nor am I horrified that Haasan was not a young, unnoticed struggling star at that time, but was a superstar who had the power to suggest scenes and dialogues and yet, did nothing to alter the crude contents of the song. Instead, he was seen happily mouthing the song while being dressed as a temple priest.
5. Nor do I want to single out Haasan, for, every 'hero' worth his salt has acted and is acting in movies where he stalks the heroine and harasses her to accept his love.
6. I am not even bothered about Haasan being old enough to have had two daughters at the time he acted in this movie. It is his right to feature in a movie of his choice, however undesirable the social consequences.
7. Then there is the supreme 'freedom of expression’ clause that gives the right to an artist to express himself in whatever form he wants.

But I have a problem when Haasan says that he finds the political system corrupt and wants to change it. In Tamil cinema industry of which he is still a part and a major stakeholder, he did not choose to raise his voice against a prevalent social evil. Not only was he seen endorsing it, but he also made it look heroic and gave it a platform from where it could scale easily. He chose to play the role. He did not make a difference when and where he could have. He not only failed to stop an undesirable practice, but also became a part of the problem when he had the choice to be part of the solution. He not only missed his chance to reform but contributed by actively supporting it. Imagine what impact Haasan could have made if he had chosen an equivalent of Pink instead of a Singaravelan? Pink could be recent, but eve teasing is not.

A man who could not stand up for a social reform when he had the power, energy, seniority (he could not have been less than 35 when he acted in Singaravelan) and influence today claims that he will reform politics by wearing a 'crown of thorns’. If hypocrisy was not such an overused word, I would have gladly used it here. I don’t know if O Ranga! Sri Ranga! was comedy, but Haasan’s claim most certainly, is!!

Views expressed are in personal capacity and are not binding on any institution/organisation that the author represents.

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