After Sushant Singh Rajput’s death, the debate rages over privilege clubs in the film industry isolating talented outsiders from their own house party. Who is to blame? And how to address this issue? Chahak Mittal speaks to actors Rajeev Khandelwal and Sujoy Prosad Chatterjee
In 2016, actor Sushant Singh Rajput told students at IIT Bombay how in pursuit of becoming an actor, he left engineering in the fourth year, when only two months were left for the final degree. Why did he do so? He was precise and honest. Because his goal was to get recognition and money. Fast. And guess what? He did get both. He did find big breaks in an industry about which many have dreamt of and started from nowhere for it. Through his non-descript but realistic roles, he transitioned from TV star into a Bollywood A-lister! “I literally started from nothing, absolutely nothing. It’s not even zero, it’s like minus. I was doing something else and was at a momentum to become an engineer. Suddenly, I discovered this thing I really like...” But stories in Bollywood are never about perfection, especially if talent races past the entitled and royalty. The result, the elite club pushes out the new toast in town or coopts him/her as a servile courtier only to justify their position. Those who do not compromise take the extreme step that Sushant did.
Why does Bollywood, the so-called and otherwise “talent recognition and management agency”, take outsiders for granted? Simply because they expose their inadequacies, which would not otherwise let them be where they are. What would their reason for existing and flirting with stardust be? No wonder netizens called out Alia Bhatt for such hypocrisy when she expressed her grief over Sushant’s death through her post. Social media was flooded with reposts of one of her clips from an episode of Koffee With Karan, where she asks host Karan Johar in a rapid fire game of listing actors according to preference, “Sushant who?” Netizens have also dug out similar videos of Sonam Kapoor from the same chat show and Kareena Kapoor Khan from an award ceremony. Even though, this does not suggest that they are responsible for the actor’s suicide, it does expose their sense of privilege and ivory tower logic. This stems from the fact that for all pretensions of being an industry, Bollywood continues to be ruled by family businesses and incestuously works with its own. Even corporate studios have not been able to break through such lobbies and align with them for joint ventures. The result? Newcomers are good enough for independent films and ventures. It’s just that the audience has received them well and given them high trading value. It is because of the latter that someone like Dabangg director Abhinav Singh Kashyap was picked up by Salman Khan Productions. But once it was a mega hit, it was attributed to Salman’s persona and heft while Abhinav was made to feel that he was lucky to be chosen by the king. Through a Facebook post, Kashyap called out Salman Khan and his family for “ruining his career over the past decade and constantly sabotaging all his projects and creative endeavours.” He said that he has been “repeatedly threatened with life and rape threats given to/for the female members of my family. The sustained gaslighting and bullying destroyed my mental health and that of my family and led to my divorce and breaking up of my family in 2017.”
Talking about Sohail Khan, Abhinav added, “Sohail intimidated the then Viacom CEO, Vikram Malhotra. My project was sabotaged and I was made to return my signing fee of Rs 7 crore plus an interest of Rs 90 lakh. It’s only then that Reliance Entertainment came to my rescue and we forged an enduring partnership for my film Besharam.”
While actor Kangana Ranaut too posted on Instagram a video saying that such inside politics compelled Sushant to take his life, director Shekhar Kapur tweeted, “I knew the pain you were going through. I knew the story of the people who let you down so bad that you would weep on my shoulder. I wish you had reached out to me. What happened to you was their Karma, not yours.”
Actor Gulshan Devaiah also tweeted, “As actors, somewhere deep down, we think we know why he did it and that’s why it’s so disturbing even if you didn’t know him at all. It’s a hard game to play but he played it very well but the game won in the end. Really sorry to be doing this, but Bollywood isn’t a family, it never was and never will be.”
How can nepotism be addressed openly in Bollywood since smaller actors might find it hard to talk against the biggies in the industry, fearing being ambushed in their careers that they have bet on? Interdisciplinary actor and director Sujoy Prosad Chatterjee recalls the version of nepotism he encountered. He says, “I have worked as an actor on stage, television and a few films. The kind of nepotism I have faced is quite different. For example, I was body-shamed by a TV director twice on the floor and when I wanted to blow the whistle, I was victimised. Without taking names, the production company and the channel substituted me on the grounds of my date issues, misconduct (because I speak loud and clear) and of course, because I was doing some very interesting national work. In Bollywood, star kids face a different kind of discrimination, too. Why should people expect Abhishek Bachchan to be a version of Amitabh? Why should Sandip Ray be compared with Satyajit Ray? Isn’t it silly? Having said that, privilege clubs exist everywhere. In the entertainment scene, the danger and harm posed by these clubs is of a different degree. There’s no point in isolating one Karan Johar but yes it’s important to address the elephants in the room. The privilege clubs in Kolkata exist in arts too.”
Actor Rajeev Khandelwal says, “Nepotism exists in every field and will continue to as long as humans exist. It is a very human tendency to prioritise your own over others. We live in a capitalist world and not a socialist world so it is very natural to give preference and privilege to your kith and kin over others. Parents will always favour their own kids whether deserving or not. The opportunities any parents will provide for their own kids will always be way more than what they would provide for the kids of anyone less privileged even if they are way more deserving then their own kids. These are the challenges every individual from outside, who is trying to make a place for oneself in a new world, will have to face. Those who have it in them will breach the walls of nepotism and carve out a place for oneself. Success comes when every obstacle in the way is breached with nepotism being one of the many. The important thing what I feel is that every individual needs to define success in their own head and not define it how the world does.”
Social media has also been comparing the #EndNepotismIn2020 campaign to the #MeToo movement. However, Sujoy says that the scale of #Me too is more severe than nepotism. He adds, “You can fight back nepotism if you have talent but #MeToo talks about assault. And yes, if you can unmask a few faces without fear of losing out on work, you must. I don’t believe in petition signatures for everything. I am not saying it is non-serious but it can be dealt with.”
Well, let’s see where this debate ends!
