Two recent events have brought home to me how public attitudes toward Bollywood — and toward India itself — have changed over the years (or, if not public attitudes, then at least the controversies that are manufactured around them). The first has to do with the sad passing of Dharmendra, possibly the nicest human being ever to become a Bollywood star. The second concerns the needless fuss over Ranbir Kapoor’s diet.
Let’s start with Dharmendra. Ever since I started writing about the film industry decades ago, it was universally agreed that the most good-hearted and generous star in Mumbai was Dharamji, as everyone called him. It was said that anybody from his hometown in Punjab could drop in unannounced at his house, and the visitor would be offered food and, if needed, shelter.
Nor was Dharamji competitive or petty. Amitabh Bachchan once told me the story of how he got the role in Sholay, the part that turned him into a superstar. At that stage, Bachchan’s big movies (Zanjeer and Deewar) had not yet been released. When the Sippys were casting Sholay, the film’s writers, Salim-Javed, recommended Amitabh for one of the lead roles. The producers were reluctant to cast him.
Javed Akhtar suggested to Amitabh that he speak to Dharmendra, the film’s star, and request him to recommend Bachchan for the role. Amitabh, who has always been unwilling to ask for favours, swallowed his reservations and went to see Dharamji. To his surprise, Dharmendra agreed at once to help and spoke to Ramesh Sippy, the film’s director.
You know the rest of the story. Bachchan was cast and went on to give a glorious performance. Though people later told Dharmendra that he had been wrong to help a potential rival, Dharamji never once regretted his decision. He was that kind of decent and generous man.
While people wrote reams of copy about Dharamji and Amitabh, one question was rarely asked: were the actors vegetarians?
If anyone had been concerned about the dietary preferences of actors in those days, the answers would have been easy to find.
Dharamji was a non-vegetarian, though in later years he was careful not to eat meat when dining with his vegetarian wife, Hema Malini.
Amitabh was also a non-vegetarian, who voluntarily gave up meat until 1989, when he was being persecuted by VP Singh’s government. He briefly returned to eating meat for a few months before resuming his vegetarian diet. But he never imposed his preferences on his family, and meat continued to be served in his home.
None of this has ever seemed particularly important to me — and frankly, it still doesn’t. Nor did anyone else seem to care very much.
But now, as Ranbir Kapoor has discovered, times have changed.
Meat Police, straight from the Middle Ages
The Kapoor family have always been the greatest gourmands in the Mumbai film industry. Raj Kapoor loved his paya curry, and his children were — and are — passionate about food. His granddaughter Kareena has a sophisticated global palate, and his gifted grandson Armaan is set to become a force in the food business. His son Rishi Kapoor always had something to say to me about my food columns: not always complimentary, but always coming from a place of knowledge and experience. He often recommended restaurants I should write about. (He was always right.)
I guess the Kapoors, like so many others, had not fully grasped that the mentality of a few Indians had retreated into some mythical conception of the Middle Ages. According to this bogus view of history and tradition, Hinduism and vegetarianism are inextricably intertwined, and anyone who eats meat is betraying the faith.
This is errant nonsense. Yes, some upper castes (mainly Banias and some, though certainly not all, Brahmins) have a vegetarian tradition. But most Hindus are not vegetarians, and non-vegetarianism is growing all over India. A Pew survey found that six out of ten Indians would not describe themselves as vegetarians.
Equally nonsensical is the notion that all the characters in the great Indian epics — such as the Ramayana or the Mahabharata — were vegetarians. There is no reason to believe, for instance, that the Lord Ram described in Valmiki’s Ramayana was a vegetarian. In fact, many historians argue that vegetarianism originated in the Jain tradition and later infiltrated certain strands of Hindu beliefs.
But we now have a “Meat Police” on social media, ready to pounce on anyone who admits to eating non-vegetarian food, especially if the person concerned is famous. When Ranbir Kapoor was said to have admitted to liking beef, he became a target of the Meat Police. Perhaps as a consequence, when Ranbir was cast as Lord Ram in a movie now under production, the PR team put out the line that he would give up meat during the filming.
This was a silly thing to do because it put the Meat Police on high alert. And sure enough, an opportunity to attack Ranbir has now arrived. When Armaan, his cousin, made a TV feature called Dining With The Kapoors, the Meat Police watched with eagle eyes. I have seen and enjoyed the feature where, as you would expect, non-vegetarian food is served to several generations of the Kapoor family. I wasn’t looking too closely at Ranbir’s plate, so I don’t know if he restricted himself to vegetarian food. Nor do I know when the shoot took place, though my instinct is that it was filmed quite some time ago.
When the good-for-nothings sit in judgment
But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the feature was filmed after the PR announcement about Ranbir giving up meat — and that he did eat the non-vegetarian food. So what?
Perhaps he changed his mind after saying he would turn vegetarian. He has every right to do so. It doesn’t make him a bad human being, nor does it make him unfit to play some movie version of Ram.
And more to the point: why has this become such a controversy? Why do we care so much what our actors eat? What kind of person signs up for the Meat Police, eager to control other people’s diets? Don’t they have anything better to do with their lives?
It’s a symptom of a certain mentality that has become more and more widespread in India: where people invent historical and religious ‘facts’ to justify their own prejudices; where idle bigots make themselves feel superior by passing judgment on people who have achieved far more than they ever will.
It’s sad to see how low we have descended from the days of Dharamji, when people were judged by their good deeds, not their Butter Chicken. It is an unfortunate marker of how far we have travelled from that era. While the rest of the world forges ahead, India is held back by the Meat Police, by lies about religion and tradition, and by an unhealthy fascination with what other people eat.
Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)