First Take| Khaike Paan Masala Wala! When stars like Amitabh Bachchan take stand against endorsing dubious products

Once upon a time, when Salman Khan insisted on hanging around in my company, he told me he would never kiss or even touch his heroines .

“Never? Isn’t that a little extreme?” I had asked him.

“No, I will never do it. Our culture doesn’t permit a public display of intimacy. There are so many ways of showing  romance and love on screen.”

A few hours after the conversation, Salman in an inebriated state, behaved in a manner quite contrary to his gentlemanly assertions made earlier.

But stars, in spite of the contradictory pulls and pushes, do take a stand. Not all of them are like Anil Kapoor, who straight-faced told me he did not know the song ‘Khada Hai’  had a double meaning when he lip-synced it for Juhi Chawla in David Dhawan’s Andaz.

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Bollocks! Feigning innocence is just not going to work any more. If you are a super-celebrity, you cannot be endorsing a cancerous agent like paan masala. We have been seeing Ajay Devgan and Shah Rukh Khan do it for ages. What is their excuse?

None at all. They feel they owe no one an explanation, a stance which just will not work.

Telugu superstar Mahesh Babu thinks it is no longer feasible for actors to shrug off their social responsibility. “I think we are at that stage of life in our country where it has become very important for each one of us to have a national conscience, social sensitivity, and certain amount of strength to speak. And cinema is a great medium to do that. I am not trying to force social responsibility on the audience but definitely trying to give a perspective.”

Pierce Brosnan claimed he had no idea about the deleterious side effects of gutka and paan masala when he  endorsed one of those products. Really? It is like having dinner with Osama bin Laden and  saying you never knew he had a connection with the destruction of the World Trade Centre. It is time celebrities made comprehensive  inquiries before endorsing a product. When destiny bestows such abnormal levels of stardom on you, you need to be more careful of what you do with it.

Bollywood actors like Akshay Kumar, Govinda, Manoj Bajpai, and  Rajneesh Duggal are seen endorsing paan masala and gutka in ads screened on various digital and non-digital  outlets.

Sources from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry say it intends to clamp down very heavily on celebrities endorsing alcohol and nicotine products. Until then, actors can go right ahead pretending they do not know anything.

You see, cigarette is injurious to health. But not endorsing hazardous products is injurious to wealth.

Farhan Akhtar feels the time for stars to hide behind their self interest in their often questionable public conduct is over. “It’s really not enough anymore to say one is here only to entertain, and not reform society. That’s just an escapist attitude. The celebrity status comes with a responsibility. However, I really wouldn’t want to comment on what others do or should do. I can only speak for myself. To me, it is very important to be a socially responsible citizen while working in my various other capacities as actor, filmmaker, and singer.”

Akhtar feels it is crucial for actors to be the best versions of themselves in public. “It’s very important to try to be the best human being that one can be. That doesn’t mean you try to be or do things that you are not. Everyone makes mistakes. I am quite certain I’ve made my share of mistakes. But the important thing is to try and do the right thing. To remember that the public’s eyes are on us all the time. So  try to be on your best behaviour as much as possible. One may not always succeed. But there is much to be said in favour of a sincere attempt to do the right thing.”

For years, a popular annual awards event had been sponsored by flush-with-funds companies, some of them selling dubious products. While earlier, no one questioned the ethics of awards being sponsored by allegedly  cancerous products, in 2019, the awards function got itself into a spot .

A letter  from the office of  the Joint Commissioner, Food and Drug Administration, addressed to the CEO/organisers of the Filmfare Awards, asked why Vimal, known to produce gutka and tobacco products which are banned in Maharashtra, is onboard as a sponsor for the award event.

A health-conscious superstar known for his patriotic cinema and clean image saw this notice as a “timely warning.” “For years, these awards were co-sponsored by paan masala and gutka makers. For me, there is no difference between  these and underworld funds. Both are illegal. Both kill. The awards’ organisers should be ashamed to rely on dubious funds,” says this popular hero of the masses, and  adds jokingly, “Don’t quote me. They’ll never give me an award if you do.”

That is the whole self-defeating  point of celebrities affording the luxury of a social conscience: it works only when it does not affect self-interest. Bob Dylan is wrong. The Times, they really aren’t changing.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.