Actors Posing With PM Is Sign Of Fear, Not Endorsement: Urmila Matondkar

Bhubaneswar: Actors lining up to click pictures with Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not mean they endorse his politics or will vote for him, actress Urmila Matondkar has told Outlook magazine in an interview. “Many of them are possibly doing so out of fear… of saying no to Modi or because of respect for the office of the Prime Minister,” the 45-year-old Congress candidate from Mumbai North Lok Sabha constituency said.

Many Bollywood figures, among them Karan Johar, Ranveer Singh, Ranbir Kapoor, Ayushmann Khurrana, Bhumi Pednekar, Sidharth Malhotra, Ekta Kapoor, Rajkummar Rao, Vicky Kaushal and Varun Dhawan, had flown down to New Delhi to meet Prime Minister Modi in January and even posed for a group-fie with him. They were there for a meet organised by Johar and producer Mahaveer Jain to discuss participation and contribution of these youth icons in nation-building.

More recently, the Prime Minister tweeted, urging actors Anupam Kher, Kabir Bedi and Shekhar Kapur to urge fellow Indians to vote in large numbers in the upcoming elections.

Matondkar also contrasted political awareness in Bollywood with that in Hollywood. “If you look at Hollywood or film industries elsewhere in the world, there has always been a very strong element of social and political awareness and a commitment towards speaking out against oppressive regimes or even wrong practices within the industry,” she told Outlook. “Marlon Brando had refused to receive his Oscar award and instead asked a Native American girl to go to the ceremony on his behalf so that she could speak against the stereotype portrayal of the natives that Hollywood was then known for. In India, we have perhaps not seen that kind of activism… But, you also need to understand that the film industry is a very vulnerable target for political bullying. The success and longevity of actors is short-lived because our industry is influenced by a lot of external factors… Being on the wrong side of the political power has a heavy price, which is why when the prime minister asks film celebrities to meet him or endorse some campaign, very few people say no.”

Asked why she had joined politics, and why the Congress in particular, she said she had been brought up in a family that was always very politically and socially aware. She also said the last five years have changed everything. “The curbs on freedom of expression, the lynching of people for what they eat or the religion they practice, the vindictive and abusive trolling of anyone who questions the prime minister or his party… what have we come to? I believe that these forces have to be defeated and the Congress party is best placed…”

Asked about malicious attacks ever since she joined the party, like her role in Rangeela being used to project her as someone of poor character and using the fact that she has a Kashmiri Muslim husband to question her nationalism, she reacted saying: “Oh, you haven’t heard the latest. Now they are claiming that my husband is actually a Pakistani national. See, this is exactly the kind of vitiated political and social atmosphere that forced me to join politics, and the Congress party.”

She further said that for any problem that India faces today, the Modi government wants people to hold Nehru and Gandhi responsible. “What about the failures of Modi and the BJP? Why can we not question them? Why is my religion, or the religion of my husband an election issue? Why is the lack of jobs, the suicide of farmers, the assault on our institutions, not an issue,” she asked.

She also complained that had Modi and Amit Shah instead spent the thousands of crores on self-promotion and for their troll machinery on helping the poor, “our farmers would not have been forced to commit suicide”.