Can Anupam Kher, Yogi Adityanath stop playing who's the bigger Sanghi?
Padma Bhushan Anupam Kher has been recently dubbed a "real life villain" by the four-time BJP MP from Gorakhpur, Yogi Adityanath. This moniker, despite a lifetime of playing the onscreen villain (and the comedian), is not going to go down well with the fans of Kher, the latest spokesperson-cum-explainer-in-chief of the BJP-led NDA government in the Centre. After all, his all-out praise for the incredibly tolerant India should have ideally shielded him from a barb from a BJP member of Parliament.
Anupam Kher ne saabit kar diya ki woh reel life mein hi nahi,real life mein bhi khalnayak hain, says Yogi Adityanathhttps://t.co/fARdL8plVp
— ANI (@ANI_news) March 9, 2016
Of course, we aren't yet in a utopia, not even a Sanghi one.
Hence, Kher's admonition - that the BJP should expel and lock away rogue members such as Yogi Adityanath and (mistakenly enough) Sadhvi Prachi (who's not a BJP member) during the Telegraph debate at the famous Calcutta Club lawns - has obviously spawned counter-reactions of the expectedly virulent variety from the Gorakhpur MP.
He of the "love jihad", "ghar wapsi" eminence, the mahant of the Gorakhpur temple, who became the youngest Lok Sabha MP at the age of 26 in 1998, surely couldn't be expected to meekly acquiesce to a call to be jailed for his famed utterances.
Utterances, and systematically coordinated projects in the Hindi heartland, particularly eastern UP - his "fiefdom", that have been proven to benefit the BJP electorally. Utterances such as for every conversion into Islam, Hindus should "purify" and bring back into the fold at least 100 Muslim women.
Math is Adityanath's strong suit, whether it's winning his designated Lok Sabha seat, or coming up with a conversion ratio of one-is-to-hundred.
Barely a few months back, he proclaimed a fabled equivalence between Shah Rukh Khan and Hafiz Saeed, since the former had quibbled about "intolerance" in India (a statement since retracted in indirect ways, after a disastrous box office run of Dilwale).
That Anupam Kher, veteran actor with an enviable oeuvre in both commercial and parallel cinema, should replace the sons of the soil, among whom Yogi Adityanath featured prominently until recently, can be read as BJP's attempt to present an acceptable face of the "development plus cow equals tolerance" imposition.
Yet, the shouting marathon that Kher has presented since his (in)famous #MarchForTolerance protesting against protesters crying "intolerance", or his tasteless rant against retired Supreme Court judge Justice AK Ganguly at the Telegraph debate on the prickly issue of Afzal Guru - has proved only one thing.
That Yogi Adityanath is a bigot but perhaps not a hypocrite. Kher is both.
And between the two of them, what we have on a platter is BJP's competitive bigotry, a race to finish of who's the bigger Sanghi.
Watching Kher mouth paeans to a narrow-minded nationalism pitting Army jawans against JNU students somehow diminishes his earlier roles such as those in Saransh and Daddy. Both the middle-class pensioner and the alcoholic artist father - the characters he played respectively in those two films - are a far cry from the role of a lifetime that he is acting out now. Whether it is out of deep conviction or merely an expert simulation is not entirely irrelevant.
Kher's soliloquies on nationalism, patriotism and Indian culture are what the gist of boardroom Hindutva is made of. This urbane Sanghism, drawing intellectually dysfunctional and downright incorrect parallels, appeals to the hordes of "Internet Hindoos", who change their DPs into tricolour-tinted versions to prove they are nationalists.
If Adityanath calls for a militant Hinduism in his home constituency Gorakhpur, Kher manages to draw from the wellspring of ideological militancy that the Sangh Parivar now openly flaunts. He brings in that aggression to lace his "debates" and speeches at podiums which he shares with journalists like Barkha Dutt and historians like Mukul Kesavan.
He is even become a regular at literature festivals such as Jaipur, Mumbai and his explanations, "sound bytes", talks are now legion. Under a regime that ritually resorts to photoshopping and doctoring the past and the present to prop itself up, his playing the cheer-uncle to the Dear Leader is a supremely crucial role.
Kher sanitises the Sangh for the city-slickers, the Hindutva-with-(questionable)-development brigade. The same brigade that finds Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's World Culture Festival on the tortured banks of Yamuna perfectly acceptable as it showcases the tolerant face of India, and thereby neo-Hinduism.
He need not identify with his character which he plays with effortless finesse, just like his superlatively kitschy and entertaining Doctor Dang, one of his many memorable roles as a filmy villain.
Yogi Adityanath may be wrong in his prognosis that Kher is a "real life villain" because the latter's reel-to-real leap can be read in a number of ways, and because men and women are not papier-mâché puppets.
But their telegenic animus is just mutually assured distraction for us all.