Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone’s new song Besharam Rang has sparked huge controversies.
Shah Rukh Khan is aware of the negativity through social media and believes in positivity
It is now widely known that Bollywood has been the target of a vile online campaign to boycott the films of those actors with whom India’s right wing disagrees. Superstars Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) and Aamir Khan are the actors who are most frequently targeted. The release of SRK’s most recent movie, “Pathaan,” is scheduled for next month, but Madhya Pradesh’s Home Minister, Narottam Mishra, has already vowed to prohibit it. Mishra took issue with actor Deepika Padukone’s swimsuit in a song from the movie this week.
The minister’s specific objection is to Deepika’s orange dress because it resembles saffron, a colour that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided to claim as its own. There’s also the not-so-subtle hint that SRK is wearing a green shirt in the same song.
The minister also has a problem with the song title, ‘Besharam Rang’ and declared that it all represented a “contaminated mentality”.
Never mind that several songs in Bollywood films have featured scantily clad actresses in orange clothing over the years. One song from an Akshay Kumar film, for example, features him dancing with saffron-clad women. However, Akshay is the BJP’s darling.
This time, Shah Rukh Khan has spoken out against social media’s toxic culture. On Thursday, he spoke at a film festival in Kolkata about the negativity of social media and the narrowness of views.
The superstar said, “Cinema and advent of articulation through social media platforms have now become the foremost expression of human emotions and experience.
The collective narrative of our times is shaped by social media and contrary to the belief that the spread of social media will affect the cinema negatively, I believe cinema has an even more important role to play now.”
Shah Rukh Khan Speaking at Kolkata Film Festival
"No matter what, people like us will stay positive": Shah Rukh Khan amid protests against 'Pathaan' https://t.co/UbUrTzSCFm pic.twitter.com/Omffay7P1c
— NDTV (@ndtv) December 15, 2022
The actor pointed out how social media is “driven” by “narrowness of views” and added, “I read somewhere negativity increases social media consumption and thereby increases its commercial value as well. Such pursuits enclose the collective narrative, making it divisive and destructive.”
And then he added, “No matter what the world does, people like us will stay positive.”
Bollywood pushing away negativity
A few minutes later, Amitabh Bachchan took the stage and surprised everyone by discussing how civil liberties are still being questioned today. Bachchan has spent years avoiding any kind of controversy.
Make no mistake about it. The attack on Pathan is entirely motivated by Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone (who became the target of the troll army after she visited Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2020, standing in solidarity with protesting students).
Is this finally a pushback from Bollywood? That may be too soon to say. Some argue that by remaining silent all these years, Bollywood’s superstars have allowed hate factories to continue their smear campaigns. On the other hand, those who did speak up were met with the Income Tax Department and other unpleasant surprises. Shah Rukh Khan has been through hell since his son was arrested and later found to be innocent while wrongly framed and targeted.
