We’ve turned Jaya Bachchan’s anger into a national pastime. It must be exhausting for her

Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan speaks in Rajya Sabha on 20 December 2021 | ANI |

Jaya Bachchan – not Jaya Amitabh Bachchan – isn’t a woman of few words. But she seems to have expended them all, repeatedly trying to explain herself to a mulish, uncaring, and addled audience.

The Rajya Sabha MP from the Samajwadi Party (SP), currently serving her fifth term, is in news for having her words ignored yet again, this time in the Upper House. It all started on 29 July, when Bachchan objected to being addressed as “Jaya Amitabh Bachchan” by Deputy Chairman Harivansh Narayan Singh. She expressed her displeasure at the practice of women being identified by their husband’s full names – even though she has chosen to take on her superstar husband’s last name. A few days later, Bachchan chose to make light of the situation by introducing herself as “Jaya Amitabh Bachchan”, leading to a playful exchange between her and Jagdeep Dhankhar, the Rajya Sabha chairperson.

This lively banter took a turn for the worse when, during a heated exchange on 9 August, Bachchan accused Dhankhar of talking to her in an “unacceptable tone” and demanded an apology from him. Dhankhar’s response was that of any older Indian man who is held to account by a woman. “Enough of it,” he thundered. “You may be anybody, you may be a celebrity, but you have to understand the decorum,” he said while violating decorum himself. This led to a walkout by several Opposition MPs, including Sonia Gandhi.

You, a concerned citizen, would be well within your rights to ask why precious Rajya Sabha sessions are being spent on a storm in a teacup. As Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Sanju Verma, screaming her way through a TV debate, stated, Bachchan could follow a simple formal procedure to decide how she wishes to be addressed.

However, in the same debate, SP spokesperson Juhie Singh pointed out that Bachchan has actually objected to being called by that name several times in the past. That the chairperson couldn’t entertain such a small request suggests a breakdown of communication between him and the MPs. Clearly, this is a problem that runs much deeper, considering there are rumours that the INDIA bloc might move an impeachment resolution against Dhankhar’s conduct. Bachchan, speaking to the media outside the Rajya Sabha, accused him of being nasty, especially to MPs from Opposition parties, labelling them “buddhiheen” (stupid) or a nuisance.

Being called ‘ladakin’, ‘chudail’

By now, Jaya Bachchan must be used to being labelled a nuisance. The Padma Shri actor’s outspokenness in Parliament as well as outside it – particularly her acrimonious run-ins with the paparazzi – ensures that she is constantly singled out for ridicule. And in that, she is entirely alone.

In the Rajya Sabha, Bachchan is told off for being just “a celebrity”, a way to minimise her work in Parliament. She might have been nominated to the Rajya Sabha for her celebrity status, but she shouldn’t be pigeonholed by it because Bachchan is actually one of our most active Upper House members, with an attendance of 82 per cent (three percentage points higher than the national average of 79 per cent) and has asked 451 questions. Most of these range on issues like criminalising marital rape, street children, pollution, and recently, the need for “reservations within reservation” for minorities in the women’s Bill.

Despite that, the only time Bachchan seems to hit the headlines is for her Angry Bird avatar: For instance, in 2021, when she lashed out at Manjinder Singh Sirsa’s alleged remarks about Aishwarya Rai Bachchan being summoned in the Panama Papers case. Or the time she locked horns with Dhankhar again, over the suspension of MP Rajani Patil.

Bachchan’s persona as the angry old woman of Bollywood is slowly defining her image inside Parliament. Predictably, the response to her row with Dhankhar is the same as the responses she draws on videos where she routinely schools the paparazzi for harassing her. This meme, which has over 5,00,000 likes and labels her “ladakin” (pugnacious) and “chudail” (witch), is emblematic of a particular kind of hatred reserved for her.

In every such video, the comments are full of snippy remarks that empathise with Amitabh Bachchan for “tolerating” her and congratulate Aishwarya Rai Bachchan for her impending divorce (which has apparently been on the horizon for nearly as long as she and Abhishek have been married). Others go a step further, treating her like the third wheel in her own marriage. Every few months, Rekha and Amitabh “shippers” will put out video edits about their rumoured relationship, which neither of the actors has ever admitted to.

I can’t imagine how exhausting it must be to be Jaya Bachchan. A superstar and a parliamentarian, who has a family’s worth of Bollywood royalty, is forced to fend for crumbs of peace and privacy from an insatiable media machine. Can we really blame her for the curdled rage we witness in every other paparazzi video?

A friend and I started exclusively swapping Jaya Bachchan memes a few years ago. We admired her feistiness, while occasionally laughing at her outbursts. In video after video, her crotchetiness began to make sense. That timeline is now a reminder that Bachchan has been imploring the media to leave her alone for years.

The unspoken social contract

So popular are these videos that she is now being mocked by other Bollywood actors. Any celebrity who now objects to being shot, like Kajol, is immediately labelled, “Jaya Bachchan 2.0”. At this point, it feels like media outlets, via the paparazzi, are almost goading her to get a rise out of her. In one such video at an airport, Bachchan calmly but firmly requests not to be photographed, and when the paps don’t budge, she retaliates with, “They should be fired from their jobs”. It led one user to comment, “She is just not worth the attention given to her, as it’s us the general public that made her who she is today.”

This really goes to the heart of the problem, this entitlement over every smidge of a celebrity’s life, whether they wish to share it with us or not. Bachchan gets censured because she has broken this unspoken social contract between us and celebrities.

Here’s a woman who has repeatedly drawn her boundaries, only to have them consistently violated. We shouldn’t have to imagine our own family or friends in the same place for our empathy to flow, but here we are. How many of us could tell our own mothers or grandmothers to just suck it up and smile for the cameras they don’t want to smile at? To live in the unrelenting gaze of the media for so many years, and not give in to the instinct to protect their family? To witness their very legitimate anger become fodder for the laughter of millions?

Bachchan seems to be fighting an existential battle, and as far as I can see, she is not winning.

She isn’t even the only celebrity to have objected to paparazzi attention. Hugh Grant allegedly weaponised a can of baked beans against a photographer; Sean Penn violently objected to photographers at his brother’s funeral according to media reports. Yet, these – male – celebrities are somehow considered defenders of their families. Reams of newsprint are expended in listening to their side of the story and how hard they tried to reason with the paps before they snapped. But a woman like Bachchan, who has attempted to reason with the paps for years, is labelled a chudail.

We’ve turned Jaya Bachchan’s anger into a national pastime. Each paparazzi encounter, each parliamentary outburst, is just another episode in this tragicomedy. And Bachchan’s greatest performance to date just might be her ability to maintain her sanity in a world gone mad with voyeurism.

Karanjeet Kaur is a journalist, former editor of Arré, and a partner at TWO Design. She tweets @Kaju_Katri. Views are personal.

(Edited by Humra Laeeq)