2002 Hit and run case: Salman Khan - In films and real life (Basharat Peer)

The Hindu, May 8, 2015

PLAYING POLITICS

In films and real life

Basharat Peer

Cosying up to the ruling party and always playing the good cop are just some things the star did.

On May 26, 2014 there was a single venue where every powerbroker and political animal wanted to be: Rashtrapati Bhavan, where Narendra Modi was being sworn in as Prime Minister. At the ceremony, prominent in a black suit with a loopy silver bracelet dangling from his right wrist, was actor Salman Khan, sitting between his father, the legendary screenwriter Salim Khan, and Zafar Sareshwala, a car dealer from Gujarat.

The ceremony had in attendance several card-carrying members of the film world, MP Shatrughan Sinha, Chandigarh MP Kirron Kher, and her husband, actor Anupam Kher, whose relationship with the Bharatiya Janata Party and the larger Sangh Parivar are well known. Yet, it was a bit of a surprise to see Salman Khan in attendance.

The liaison

The reason for Salim and Salman Khan’s presence at Mr. Modi’s show was Mr. Sareshwala, the main dealer for BMW cars in Gujarat. A bearded, diminutive, middle-aged man, Mr. Sareshwala does not belong to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh but to a conservative, proselytising Muslim religious group, the Tablighi Jamaat. He emerged on the political landscape through the fog of the 2002 riots in Gujarat, in which buildings owned by his family were burnt down by mobs. A fierce critic of Mr. Modi after the riots, Mr. Sareshwala, who had moved to London, returned after a meeting with Mr. Modi in 2003 and grew under his patronage. He ran businesses in Mumbai and Ahmedabad and through some friends in the film industry got to know Salim Khan.

Over the years, Mr. Sareshwala took on the role of propagandist, using his visibly Muslim appearance and identity to canvass support for Mr. Modi’s candidature. During the heated 2014 election, as the ghosts of 2002 seeped into the campaign, Mr. Sareshwala seemed to have enlisted both Salman Khan and his father to showcase Mr. Modi’s inclusive credentials.

On April 16, 2014, at the height of the election campaign, Salim Khan inaugurated the Urdu version of Mr. Modi’s website, www.narendramodi.in. A short film on the website shows the older Khan typing on the keyboard of a laptop, while a picture of Mr. Modi hugging a visibly Muslim man with skullcap appears on the site’s Urdu homepage. When Mr. Khan inaugurated the website, Mr. Sareshwala sat by his side.

Earlier, in mid-January 2014, Salman Khan, flanked again by Mr. Sareshwala, spent an afternoon in Ahmedabad flying kites with Mr. Modi. The star, who was then already an accused in the hit-and-run case, spoke highly of Mr. Modi, describing him as a “great man” and praising the development in Gujarat. Yet he did force a strained smile on Mr. Modi’s face when he asked people to vote for the best man, hinting that the best people in his Bandra constituency were perhaps the Congress leaders Priya Dutt and Baba Siddiqui.

Mr. Khan didn’t only cosy up to Mr. Modi. A week before he flew kites in Ahmedabad, the superstar participated in a song-and-dance show at Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Saifai village home in Etawah district of Uttar Pradesh. His participation, along with that of Madhuri Dixit, came under intense criticism as, around the same time, the Yadav government was bulldozing the camps of the victims of Muzaffarnagar riots. “It is not about the money,” a friend in Mumbai said, “It is about patronage and protection.” Like most other filmstars, Mr. Khan has campaigned for almost every political party in Mumbai and has made appearances at celebrations organised by the Mumbai Police as well.

Post-case makeover

Interestingly, after he was charged in the hit-and-run case, Mr. Khan changed his image from romantic actor to action star, mostly playing a selfless, brave police officer or spy, an unpaid exercise in unquestioning glorification of the law enforcement agencies. Mr. Khan played an encounter specialist in Garv, an undercover IPS officer who takes on the underworld in Wanted, a spy for RAW, India’s external intelligence agency, in Ek Tha Tiger, the loveable, rogue cop in Dabangg and Dabangg 2, an ex-army man in Jai Ho, and in Kick, an undercover police officer with a heart of gold battling a greedy pharma moghul to bring healthcare to impoverished children.

A defining feature of most of Mr. Khan’s films is a stylishly delivered piece of dialogue, which his fans repeat till the next blockbuster. In Kick, Mr. Khan’s character draws the curtain with the words, “Main Dil Main Aaata Hoon, Samaj Main Nahin” (You will love me, but you won’t get me.) Looking at his flirtations with politicians, one might be tempted to modify Mr. Khan’s line a bit: “Tum Dil Main Aate Ho, Aur Samaj Main Bhee” (You might be loveable, but we do get you).