Om Puri's serenade in New Delhi: Why BJP is the magnet for ageing actors?

With veteran actor Om Puri also throwing his weight around Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the stream of Bollywood oldies making a beeline to the BJP seems to be getting stronger. He may or may not join the party; but the BJP is probably the only target for missed calls from the film industry. Looks like Bollywood wants nobody else, but the ruling party. This is certainly a new trend. Even at its monopolistic prime, the Congress was sparing and didn’t get as many walk-in hopefuls with filmy glamour except an Amithabh Bhacchan, who finally quit in disgust within three years, or a Rajesh Khanna, who was more or less out of work. Since then, there was only an occasional trickle that more or less dried up as the party began to lose its grip. Now what we see is a steady stream, that too only towards the BJP. No other party has attracted film personalities the way BJP did in recent times. It’s understandable why Bollywood, mostly the actors, join the BJP. Because, it’s doing extremely well at the cost of an eroding Congress. It’s a move of mutual benefit, and a rehab for the actors. Film personalities joining politics is not unusual in big democracies with a big entertainment industries. It’s quite common in countries such as the US, Philippines and even Sri Lanka; but in India, what the political parties get are not the real stars, but the ageing actors, who are more less done with movies. Even the latest hopeful Om Puri is not a mainstream regular anymore. He is 65 and spending the rest of his active life in the BJP camp sounds like a worthwhile idea. [caption id=“attachment_2815114” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Veteran actor Om Puri. PTI[/caption] His predecessor Anupam Kher, who is making a lot of noise for the BJP and Sangh, some of which are silly and nasty, is 61 and his wife, who although has been in the BJP camp for some time, is 60 or thereabouts. Hema Malini, Dharmendra and Vinod Khanna too were past their prime, and mostly out of work, when they joined the BJP. Another outspoken BJP-camper, Paresh Raval, too is an old man. Among the sympathisers, Raveena Tandon has long since retired from mainstream work, Madhur Bhandarkar’s faux-realism doesn’t work any more, and Preity Zinta is not even on the fringe of mainstream Bollywood. The scene is similar elsewhere in the country too - in West Bengal, an old Roopa Ganguly doesn’t turn heads any more, and in Kerala, Suresh Gopi, who had the privilege of being nominated to the Rajya Sabha, had been unemployed for some time. In Tamil Nadu, actor Vijaya Kumar who joined the BJP recently, is also quite an old man. So, why do actors join politics not in their prime, but when they are old? Is it because of their political fervour or shameless opportunism? Would they have chosen the BJP, had it not been in power? It’s a no-brainer. When you are at the fag end of your pomp-and-show career, a switch to party and parliamentary politics helps you retain your visibility and gain from it. It’s almost like a pension programme, a move in which you cash out your past. Your face may not work in films anymore, but you can leverage it in politics because public fantasies last longer. Political parties need their oomph, and names such as Kher and Puri appear appropriate to implement their agenda in a number of public offices related to cinema, arts and culture. In fact there are enough slots for everyone, even a Gajendra Chouhan. Since they all turn up at the BJP office with a senior citizen’s card, it’s obvious that what they have been compelled by is not a burning desire to serve the public, but the lure of post-retirement jobs and access to power. Some of them become MPs and MLAs while some of them get to head prestigious institutions. The tinsel town’s attraction to the BJP is remarkable because in the past all that the party could manage had been TV actors or the B-listers. Nitish Bhardwaj, Dipika Chikhalia, Arvind Trivedi, Gajendra Chouhan and a rare Vinod Khanna or Shatrughan Sinha were all the big names that the party could attract a few years ago. But today, everybody wants to join the party, either as a member or a proxy. Of course almost all of them are old. There have been cases of younger ones joining too - but they were clearly motivated by personal reasons. Amithabh Bachchan in his early forties was unwell and had quit films when he joined the Congress. Jayaprada reportedly had income tax issues and Sanjay Dutt was in the look out of political protection when he campaigned for Samajwadi Party. The rare exceptions had been Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu, who joined young and stayed on with a purpose; Gul Panag, who joined an untested AAP while she was still young; or a Ramya (Divya Spandana) who became a Congress MP in Karnataka. It’s rather unfortunate that the actors exploit Indian democracy for pure personal gain. Not that other countries don’t have people joining politics after they lose steam in the glamour world, but the proportion is not this bad; not that our Anupam Khers and Om Puris should have pitched in earlier, but at least they could have used part of their on-screen allure for common public good when they were still going strong in their industry. That’s what Shabana Azmi did or scores of actors in Hollywood do. People like Shabana have always been political and have found time to attend public debates, media events and conferences on critical development and human rights issues. Hollywood A-listers don’t wait till they get out of work to take up social and political causes, but strategically use their popularity to make some policy impact, that too in far away lands. They even set aside time for that. What do our actors do? They wait till they are out of work and make the switch. And all that they do after jumping into the bandwagon is vitiating our public space with their half-baked political philosophies and ideas, and skewed understanding of our history and political economy. We can and should do without them.