The verdict has been drawn,
people wither love him or hate him yet again. Some of the responses that I have
heard on twitter are like “A person charging 3 cr per episode has no moral
right to suggest what’s wrong in our society” or some others who say “How much
money are the producers of the show donating to charity” some have gone
eccentric and believe that he is a hypocrite “Okay so we know what the problem
is, now what” some non serious tweeters have termed the show as a little too
boring , one comment was “Okay this guy produced Delhi Belly full of abuses and
now he wants to clean the society”. Well everyone is entitled to his or her
views and that’s the beauty of social media like twitter that you get to learn
and understand someone else’s point of view that you would otherwise not even
want to listen too. Sometime listening to others views can be quite enlightening.
In my humble opinion Aamir
Khan has always set the benchmarks and has created a mass appeal to people which
is unparalleled for any actor or politician atleast in present. He is one of the few celebrity
to openly express his support for issues like Narmada Bachao Aandolan or Anna
Hazaare’s fast in Delhi, something which most popular celebrities like to keep
hands off.
Commercially speaking, he is
not a public servant, he works for money but has delivered quality product in
the last few years both as a producer and as well as an actor, Films like Rang
De Basanti, 3 Idiots and Taare Zameen Pe have been very effective both socially
as well as commercially. As a star one has an option to be like the other Khans
and make as much money as one can and there is nothing wrong in that as actors
are public figures and not public servants that they should not be making extraordinary
money.
A top star with
some of the highest grossing films of all time he is a star who has
experimented and tried to deal with social issues that most of us agree plague
our society like corruption(Rang De Basanti), flaws in education system (3
Idiots) , dealing with children with learning disability (Taare Zameen Pe) or
social issues (Satyamev Jayate). I would like to stick my neck out and say that
there has been a fairly large percentage of people who get introduced to these
issues in detail because Aamir Khan is involved, there is another large
percentage who relate to such issues but almost 100% of people can empathize
with the issues that have been raised. You can’t deny that Rang De Basanti did
inspire people to conduct candle light vigils for various issues and get
involved in corruption related campaigns, the support that we see for team Anna
for various campaigns somehow did get accelerated due to the influence the film
had on people. Notably Jessica Lal case had a documented impact due to the
candlelight vigils inspired by RDB.
Some intellectuals might deny the
influence a movie can have on people’s action but what one can’t deny is that
its sensible to have a meaning to commercial cinema and to give a message to a
very large number of people which is the film watching audience in the country.
Aamir Khan might be arrogant,
he might be cocky and he might be selfish when it comes to the attention span
that he is looking for from his audience but one thing that he is not, is that
he is not using his stature for ONLY making money and nothing else. As I
mentioned earlier there is nothing wrong in working only for money but someone
who does a bit more deserves a little bit more from his audience. Aamir Khan is an artist not a
businessman and artists do get stimulated by money but they get stimulated even
more by the legacy that they can leave behind, which is why you don’t see him
doing 3 films an year which he can very well do. Aamir Khan belongs to the
category of actors who are uncommon to India, he wants success but NOT at any
cost. He reminds me of actors like Tom Hanks.
Aamir in my opinion is the FC
Barcelona of Indian film fraternity, there is a method, a culture, a connect
with the fans but is not totally commercial and is a class act even for someone
who is not a fan and is short in height like so many FC Barcelona players.
#satyamevJayate as a show is
not something that would eradicate the ills from the society , neither would it
get the guilty punished in no time, but what it can do is that it can compel
people like us to think over these issues and to find out about instances that
have happened with people, analyses the reasons for the ills and the impact
that its having and eventually creating a consensus that would create a lot of
pressure on the government machinery to act when they know that over 5 cr
people are backing one single cause. This is not a gamble, its an initiative
that forces us to think and create an opinion and then to channelize our
energies so as to get justice or clarification from the govt or private
machinery involved. I do not know in case we would achieve success but then
there is no harm trying. Instead of using prime time for a song and dance show
its probably something that can create far more difference in each one of our
lives and if nothing else we can give this man respect for that. He is not
doing charity and he does not claim that he does, but then he does not even ask for tax exemptions or dance
in marriages to make his bucks.
If nothing else he deserves at
least a salute from all of us to venture into unknown territory more than once.
