Deepika is not a false crusader

I don't agree with writer Krishna Saagar Rao, the BJP spokesperson. (Deepika: A false crusader) regarding Deepika participating at Jawaharlal Nehru University along with SFI student group protest on allegations of violence against their students group.

Deepika is a free individual and is having freedom of expression and what is wrong in expressing solidarity to injured students?

Most of the injured students belong to SFI and what is wrong of Deepika supporting SFI students. The writer says that police are investigating and by not knowing the affiliation of the attackers group Deepika has shown solidarity to one group.

It means Deepika should wait till police find who are the attackers and then Deepika should show her solidarity. But the fact will not be known who is the mob and whom they are associated because police will not identify the masked mob.

Instead they will fix some innocent persons as attackers of students.

Showing solidarity to students is not a movie promotion gimmick either. There are many places for Deepika to promote her film and there is no need to Deepika to promote her film taking JNU issue.

It is dangerous and sad if masked people enter an education institution and assault students. Every person has a right to raise their voice on such a heinous act.

So Deepika has not done any crime. Most of the Bollywood personalities have chosen to stay silent, but instead of staying neutral , brave women Deepika Padukone raised her voice against mob attack on students.

Because of this act she may lose films and endorsements but still she has shown great courage in raising her voice against shameful act of goons in JNU.

If actors like Juhi Chawla, Dalip Tahil support BJP they are treated as patriots. Where as actors like Deepika, Shabana Azmi raise their voice against BJP they are known as false crusaders and anti-nationalist.

People who stand by the party in power are established as patriots and people who stand against the party in power are shown as anti-nationalist or of "Tukde Tukde " gang.

Some people have given a call for boycott of her movie "Chhaapak. Deepika's views are different and cinema is different. Movie is creation of group of creators and not of a single person.

Only for the sake of Deepika boycotting the film is foolishness. Our writer Krishan Sagar Rao says that Deepika's crusade certainly seems false, selfish and immature.

But in fact, Deepika showing solidarity to injured students is act of sincerity, is act of braveness, is act of fearlessness.

Zeeshaan, Kazipet

II

Deepika Padukone's gesture of solidarity with the JNU students conveyed the message that even those who cannot be described as 'political animals' have made common cause with the protesters to preserve India's cherished values.

Despite the risks involved in these days of muscular nationalism and Hindu revivalism, the fine and famous film star had the courage of her convictions. The stand taken by a celebrity like Padukone should make the BJP and the Modi government to sit up and take notice.

By her gesture of letting herself being flanked by Kanhaiya Kumar and Aishe Ghosh at JNU, the screen idol erred on the side of humanity and lent her support to the people's movement for preserving the 'Idea of India' predicated on secularism and pluralism.

It was no surprise that the bigoted and narrow-minded supporters of Hindu Right trolled her online for her 'support to the tukde-tukde gang' and favoured the boycott of her upcoming film Chhapaak in which she is featured as an acid attack victim.

Unlike other superstars who continue to maintain a studied silence on issues of existential importance, Padukone chose to stand up and be counted. We wish celebrities emulate Padukone and join the ongoing protests to halt India's drift towards a majoritarian state.

Silence when speaking out is called for and becomes a duty can be tantamount to acquiescence in wrongdoing, Much of the turbulence that India currently undergoes can be safely ascribed to the ruling party's mistaken belief that the great nation of ours belongs only to upper caste Hindus with inherited privileges and its all-out attempts to impose Hindutva hegemony on the polity.

Nobody has the divine right to say that India is the ancestral property of the self-styled nationalists and it does not belong equally to all of us.

The BJP peddles xenophobia and virulent nationalism to gain acceptability for its hold on power and tighten it. But more and more people now realise that the BJP and the Modi government are pulling the country backwards by attempting to fulfil the 'majoritarian' agenda set by the RSS instead of pushing it forward with concrete action to improve the human development indices.

It is encouraging that women are participating in large numbers in the protests to save India from drifting into a state where citizens are graded on the basis of creed (religion), caste and class.

Syed Ahmed Ali, Hyderabad

III

Apropos 'Deepika, a false crusader', by Krishna Saagar Rao. Though our mothers and grandmothers were not endowed with great looks, they were wise, prudent, and had known everything that is needed to run home, and bring up children in the best of social and cultural milieu, to make them law abiding, obedient and useful entity to the society.

Sadly, Deepika could have exhibited some of these traits, to match with her epic performances in the films that were box-office hits. We now, knew, without any doubt that her dialogue delivery and cinematic were coached, without anything to be called her 'own or original'.

I wonder how such individuals could be good wives and mothers!

In the first place, Deepika had no business to meet the striking JNU students, to be a mute spectator in the motley crowd of anti-socials, who are always up against the government, on one issue or the other, to lampoon, and berate the Centre, with pseudo-seculars and liberals joining the gang; which has become a fashion of protest by intellectuals, whose loyalties always remained with Pakistan and China.

What a beautiful thing it would have been, if Deepika had met the mother of the gangrape victim – Nirbhaya that would have surely helped heal the scars of innumerable victims of similar crime, to a great extent, who are alive today.

S Lakshmi, over e-mailDeepika is not a false crusader