Issues

In the Salman Khan episode, there is a curious coalition of business interests and politics


Salman Khan is once again the cover story of the Indian Media. Couple of years ago, an exactly similar story under similar circumstances was broken by the media running transcript of the so called Sanjay-Shakeel tape. If Salman Khan now and then Sanjay Dutt is being vilified for a crime they never committed, the reasons are not hard to find. Most ordinary people in Mumbai are understandably incensed by the fact that the city's most visibly affluent and important section of society continues to consort with the underworld with evident impunity. That, in turn, has been latched on to by the Hindu Right, which has sought to link Dutt's behaviour to the fact that his mother, Nargis Dutt, was a Muslim and his father, late Sunil Dutt, was a well-known secular figure in the Congress.. Even a well-known magazine took recourse to psycho-babble to explain what is described as Sanjay Dutt's "soft spot for Muslims". Salman happens to be Muslim. His image of spoilt super brat with a huge fan following, with an influential father and famous brothers, suits the media and political agenda. Media personality Pritish Nandy, a Rajya Sabha MP and Padmashri awardee opines that in the Salman episode there is a curious coalition of business interests and politics behind this. “A new newspaper launching in Mumbai needed a sensational story on its front page. So it dug up this four-year- old recording and published it. It was almost simultaneously picked up by a TV channel with a pronounced BJP slant. All this happened on the very day a film featuring Salman was being premiered in the theatres, thus enabling the lynch mobs to immediately demand that the film be banned and Salman arrested,” said Nandy. Member of Parliament and veteran film star Shatrugan Sinha opines that since Salman Khan happens to be a Muslim, it makes it very convenient for media, politicians and vested interest to exploit the controversy. If the political establishment tries to swing public attention away from its own scandals and points towards some silly and preposterous charge against someone else, the media is the first to give it legitimacy. An analysis of how among all the metros in the country, it is Mumbai that has become the hotbed of gangsterism yields interesting responses from those who are knowledgeable. History provides us research material in the form of Haji Masthan to Varadaraja Mudaliar, to Dawood. Bollywood has played not an insignificant role in the flowering of the underworld. Those in the business know how much money is needed to bring out a movie that is of acceptable standards and has also star value. The Mumbai dons have taken advantage of the resource crunch of the average film producer. This explains the strong nexus between the two. Once underworld penetrated film industry, the politicians used it for their vested interest. Shiv Sena. was the first political party which started talking in terms of Muslim underworld and Hindu underworld. Taking cue from Shiv Sena, Dawood’s lieutenant Chhota Shakeel made no secret of his offensive against the Shiv Sena. In an interview to the media, Shakeel had claimed that his attacks were intended to punish persons who had been indicted by the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry for a role in the communal riots in Mumbai in December 1992 and January 1993. Those who had been indicted, he said, would face attacks in the future as well. The enterprise was evidently guided by Shakeel's need to build legitimacy among his dwindling network of supporters among Mumbai's inner-city Muslim poor and to attract new recruits. Understanding the continuing war between the Dawood Ibrahim empire and the Shiv Sena means engaging with the fact that Bal Thackeray's organisation is no ordinary party. Several similar tapes, according to Mumbai police sources, had been gathered in the course of the Bharat Shah case investigation, involving over two dozen major actors, producers and directors. Indeed, heated media discourse on the tape provoked the then designated judge under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, A.P. Bhangale, to bar the media from broadcasting or publishing the complete transcripts. Judge Bhangale also asked the media to observe restraint in its coverage of the issue, and to make an effort to understand the actual nature of evidence by interviewing counsel. The order has been largely observed in the breach - full transcripts of the tape are widely available on the Internet - but the fact is that the feeding frenzy provoked by the disclosure of the tapes do sections of the media little credit. Thus it is clear that a section of the Indian media is playing the volatile game. Hindutva militant organizations like Bajrang Dal and VHP has already capitalized on the issue by violent protests throughout the country and trying to vitiate the communal atmosphere.