Walk The Line.....

So it is that time again. Celebrity scandal time. Bips has created quite a furor snogging C. Ronaldo himself. Envious folks may be sniggering at Bips's quotes- "We are such good friends, we have promised to mail each other everyday" (I am sure Sir Alex Ferguson is simply thrilled at the prospect), but at the end of the day, she has gotten more than her fair share of attention. Let's forget the fact that the Taj Mahal was long forgotten in Portugal, let's forget the fact that Bips is going international, let's forget the fact that John must be dying of embarrassment. What I want to highlight here is the moral side of the issue and the debate that it has once again sparked off.

An Indian kissing a foreigner in as public a place as a night club and being caught on camera. Not very common, though Shilpa Shetty and Richard Gere set quite a useful precedent. What is disturbing, though, is that these stars get away with such acts (the court cases simply disappear from the public eye in a few days and no one knows what happened in the end) and the backlash is taken by the general public.

After such incidents, the self proclaimed moral police seem to get renewed energy to wage their wars against freedom. Political parties such as the Shiv Sena and BJP indulge in all kinds of banner burning and strikes. The burning of effigies of stars doesn't really affect them, it only causes unrest among the public. If a male and a female are seen within proximity of a km to each other, they are beaten up. The Meerut police harassing innocent people walking together is a prime example. The media has a field day and gets various prominent personalities to talk about the issue. In the end nothing happens, we would be back to square one when the next star decides to do something outrageous.

What we need to realize is that India has walked the tightrope long enough. The government needs to take a clear stand on moral issues and how they want to deal with it. If they do not have the guts to introduce sex education in schools under the same name, then the least they can do is take strict action against celebrities who they feel 'cross lines'. Why discriminate between the public and the stars? The celebrities get involved in all the wrong things and they don't have to answer anyone. The public pays the price instead.

If Bips had been from the west, the images of Ronaldo and herself would have been splashed all over Vogue and Hello and other glam mags and she would have gotten offers from Playboy to model for them. The entire episode would be overlooked. No issues. If she had been from a Muslim extremist country, there would have been a fatwa issued against her and she would have had to retire from Bollywood/ increase her personal security force (I doubt if John would be willing to play her personal bodyguard anymore, hee hee). India chooses to adopt the middle path. Make a big brouhaha about the issue, cause a lot of disturbance and confusion and then cover up the story. I am not saying we need to shove Bipasha into a burkha or glamorize what she has done. You want to debate it, make a splash of it- go ahead. Don't traumatize normal people. If couples want to spend some alone time in a park, let them be. Don't grab them by the hair and throw them in prison for crossing 'moral lines'.

India has done the balancing act all the time. We are neither communist nor capitalist, we are socialist. We are neither Hindu nor Muslim- we are secular. The middle path stance might have worked with these issues, but it is not doing any good when it comes to morality. A small time painter from Baroda is thrown into jail for explicit paintings but M.F Hussain gets away with worse. What's with the hypocrisy? You decide where you want to draw the line and make sure you apply it everywhere. The longer the government sits on the wall, the more celebrities who will get away with any nonsense and the more common people who will face the music. I do know that writing this post is not going to change things (I am sure enough and more people and the media have brought this issue under the microscope) but oh hell, I have a blog and a mind, so I am going to use them.