Saffron: The color of Religion or Violence?
Sukhjeet Kaur
Communal violence in India has been spreading day by day. The actress who was praised for her acting in Bajirao Mastani, in which she played the role of a Mughal princess and spoke against the discrimination of colors, is now being defamed because she wore an orange monokini in her latest film Pathaan. Yes, the reference is to Deepika Padukone. People’s mind has been brainwashed to such an extent that even an innocuous thing like color can start a series of communal violence. Hardcore Bollywood fans most awaited the movie Pathaan as it was a comeback of “King Khan” Shah Rukh Khan. To the audience’s surprise, the film brought unnecessary controversies with the comeback of Shah Rukh Khan.
Starting with the title of the film, “Pathaan”, which means a local Hindi-Urdu term for an individual who belongs to the Pashtun ethnic group or descends from it. Extremists from all over India took offense, saying that this film targets a set of minority citizens. Soon, the film's first song, which was supposed to be taken as a peppy dance number, had turned into the cause of rage and violence in the country. In this music video, actress Deepika Padukone was wearing an orange monokini, and actor Shah Rukh Khan wore a wavy green T-shirt. This was taken as an insult to the color of the Hindu religion, “saffron,” and Muslims took offense because the color of their religion, “green,” was worn by the actor. Several Politicians made sure that this was their main agenda for one week. Every news channel and newspaper was talking to activists/extremists on this issue.
In between this, we needed to remember the purpose of the song release, which was to entertain the audience. We were talking about everything but the song as a new piece produced by Bollywood. One possible reason this political hatred is growing like fire in the forest is that the 2024 elections are around the corner. Political parties will do anything to show how much they care about these little things happening around them. Fans were disappointed by seeing that even colors are now not spared. This was a perfect example of how politics in India will now target things like movies which are made for entertainment, and make their propaganda for collecting votes.
No comments:
Post a Comment