Hema Malini's Behaviour Not Acceptable In Any Politician!

By Krishna Kumar

How many characters does it take to hang yourself in the public eye? One hundred and forty, and that's not including the characters who make up Hema Malini's publicity team. 

This morning, the former actress and current politician's Twitter account presented the world wide web with this: "How I wish the girl's father had followed the traffic rules - thn this accident could have been averted & the lil one's life safe!".

If we ever come up with a visual dictionary, then this tweet could work as the perfect example for two words -- callousness and stupidity.

What happened in Dausa was horrible. Malini's chauffeur-driven Mercedes and an Alto collided. Everyone in the Alto was seriously injured. Malini was travelling with two other people and all three were whisked away to a private hospital. Meanwhile, the Alto's passengers were left at the scene of the accident. One of them was a a two-year-old girl. She died of her injuries on that highway.

In these circumstances, Malini appears to have decided that the best course of action would not be to stick to condolences, but to place the blame of the accident on a father who has just lost a child. Aside from being insensitive and graceless, it's a massive faux pas from someone whose current occupation is "member of Parliament".

Admittedly, the idea that Malini would exhibit political smarts is like expecting Sarah Palin to know the spelling of "refute". This is, after all, a 62-year-old who has willingly and voluntarily put the phrase "dream girl" in her Twitter handle. However, the fact is, Malini is no longer just the woman who gave us unforgettable Bollywood objects of affection. 

She's an elected politician (from Mathura, for those who may have forgotten the 2014 general elections) and since she been a member of the BJP since 2004, you can't call her a newbie. However, if the mismanagement since last week's accident in Dausa is any indication, then BJP needs to enroll Malini in a course titled How To Be A Politician 101. Because being a celebrity and being a politician are two very different things.

In India, no one who knows what celebrity entails as much as a Bollywood star. As an actor, it's not your behaviour off-screen that decides your reputation. It may have an impact on it, but over the decades, we've had many heroes who were anything but heroic off-screen. Just look at the popularity and success that actors like Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt have enjoyed. As an actor, you have films that create your persona and they are what make your reputation. By and large, what happens in real life is a minor detail.

Not just that, the appeal of a Bollywood star lies in their being different from their fans and the everyday people. They symbolise the charmed life. Everything about them -- the way they look, their wardrobes, their holidays, the society they mingle in -- is supposed to be out of reach of common folk. Occasionally, they step off these islands of privilege to give the masses a dream (and promote their upcoming film). But we're never to forget that they're not really one of us anymore. The whole point of being a star is that they've left our level of reality behind.

However, for a politician, their reputations must have the opposite effect upon the public. Politicians are often tremendously privileged, but there's a concerted effort to establish them as sons (and daughters) of the soil. Their off-camera moments are as important (if not more) than the performances at public events. Every public appearance is about establishing the politician's ability to relate to their milieu. 

They must seem equally at ease among the poor, the middle-class and the rich. After all, they're going to represent all these sections. The political entourage works to maintain this illusion of a politician being one of the people, regardless of the diversity that the people exhibit. Its job is to ensure the social chasm between the politician and their constituency is camouflaged.

Had the Dausa accident happened because a regular politician's Mercedes had crashed into an Alto and killed a child, chances are we would never have seen this spectacle of callous self-centredness. This is not because a regular politician is a better human being, but because they and their staff are more adept at managing such situations. Someone would have probably offered large sums of money to the grieving family to ensure their silence. Someone else would have made sure Malini made the right, contrite noises in her public statements.
It's not a question of integrity, but of cynical self-preservation. 

You simply do not risk being seen as the one who killed a two-year-old. Instead, you do everything in your power to ensure news like this never comes to light. If it does, then you give a virtuoso performance of being as grief-struck as a family member and establish yourself as being on the same side the grieving. Just think of all the times that you've heard of a politician offering their deepest condolences and how these messages are phrased.

Malini, in contrast, painted herself into a corner by behaving like a Bollywood star -- she made an exhibition of her privileged status the way actors do conventionally. She got preferential treatment for herself and largely ignored what happened to the hoi polloi that she left behind at the scene of the accident until she was ready to deal with them. Meanwhile, the police made a statement that the Mercedes was reportedly speeding. Her driver was arrested and (surprise surprise) released on bail. Most importantly, a child died, on the road, while Malini was being whisked away. Malini's response was to point fingers at Bollywood's favourite off-screen villain: the media.

In an ideal world, the doctor who came to Malini's aid would have taken a moment to look at a grievously-injured child at the scene. In an ideal world, Malini would have asked if someone else needed the hospital urgently since she had a working car at her service. But this is not an ideal world. 

This is real India -- a country where no one wants to have to deal with police and have to explain their role in road accidents; a place where there's so much chaos and cacophony that the cries of terrified parents, cradling a horribly-injured child, are drowned out by sirens. In this reality where humanity struggles to survive, to be a politician, you've got to be a lot more than a dream girl.