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Bhakts, don't rejoice yet, Vidya Balan is still a liberal

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Vikram Johri
Vikram JohriOct 30, 2015 | 19:12

Bhakts, don't rejoice yet, Vidya Balan is still a liberal

In the ongoing and rapidly expanding spat between award returnees and non-returnees, the final word, it would seem, has been spoken. On Thursday, responding to a query, Vidya Balan said she would not return the National Award for her work in The Dirty Picture. "The National Award," she said, "is not given by the government, but the nation. Returning it would mean rejecting the love of the nation."

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Balan's words introduce a measure of sanity to a debate that has got shriller by the day. With even scientists now joining the list of those returning the awards, the danger is the government will be able to paint them with the same brush; consequently, there will be little effect of the protests on the ground situation. Already, the narrative on social media has been hijacked by those who have asked of the award returnees why they did not protest during the UPA rule. To be sure, this "whataboutery" worked initially when the political inclinations of the award returnees could be deemed suspect but now that the trickle has turned into a tide, it seems to have lost its sting. Having said that, with the top brass in the government refusing to clearly denounce those within its ranks for their loose utterances, and even calling the protests "manufactured", the atmosphere is likely to stay vitiated.

The film fraternity, on its part, has been divided on the issue. This week, a slew of National Award winners returned their awards. The list included Dibakar Banerjee and Anand Patwardhan. The presence of the latter among the award returnees reignited the debate over politicisation. Patwardhan has made a number of films, such as Ram Ke Naam, that have attacked Hindutva. His Jai Bhim Comrade, about atrocities on Dalits, won the Special Jury Prize at the 2012 National Awards. As is usual with any political topic these days, his critics overlooked his substantial body of work and sought to link his award return to his being a "Congress stooge". Similarly, Gulzar was criticised for supporting the award returnees, while Anupam Kher, given he is a member of the BJP, naturally denounced the returnees.

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Amidst the brouhaha, therefore, it is good to heed a voice of reason that has chosen to nuance the debate by delinking the National Award from the government of the day. And coming from Balan, whose credentials are impeccable, the statement carries much weight. Balan, from the time she debuted on Zee's Hum Paanch, was known for her acting chops but it was 2011's The Dirty Picture that turned around her fortunes. She completely inhabited the titular role of Silk, a woman who rises in filmdom on the dint of seducing a more-than-willing audience. Following that movie, Balan starred in Kahaani. That film, about a pregnant woman looking for her lost husband in Kolkata, had a shocking twist in the end that made it one of our few original thrillers. Balan ably carried the grave subject matter on her shoulders. Both The Dirty Picture and Kahaani raked over Rs 100 crore at the box office and Balan came to be called the "Female Khan".

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Vidya Balan in The Dirty Picture.

Balan's stand with regard to her National Award is similar to that taken by Sahitya Akademi award winner Amitav Ghosh, who, too has refused to return his award with the plea that his protest is directed at the current Akademi leadership and not the institution itself. The brilliant nuance in this statement deserves to be roundly applauded. In a charged atmosphere, with the government too not willing to concede defeat in the face of protests, Balan and Ghosh's stance offers a middle ground that nevertheless does not cut the government any slack.

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As per Balan, her refusal to return her National Award stems from her love for an institutional award, not one bestowed by this or that government. Her statement does not exonerate the Modi government of its responsibility to rein in the fringe within the BJP and the larger Sangh Parivar. Rather, it places the award in an institutional setup and dissociates it from the government.

This stance is the more muscular because one, it neutralises trolls who are unable to glean facets of the argument and so look upon Balan's refusal to return the National Award as unambiguously supportive of the Modi government. She thus protects herself from needless abuse and rancour. Two, by placing the awards in an institutional setup, she has asked that the debate rise above whataboutery and discuss whether our institutions are at risk of being politicised. With what has happened at FTII and with the government giving precedence to Ayurveda at the expense of modern medicine, the more pertinent question is whether we are staring at a situation that is far more alarming that some returning their awards.

As BJP supporters on Twitter go ballistic with praise for Balan, let us raise a toast to one of our most evolved actors for shrewdly making her eminent point.

Last updated: October 30, 2015 | 21:00
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