Calling spade a spade: The poor victims, do not matter

Singer Abhijit’s tweet on pavement dwellers show that the celebrity factor in Salman Khan’s hit-and-run case has eclipsed the others who appear now to be less than incidental to the narrative, writesMahesh Vijapurkar

Hardly anyone even now may know about Nurullah Shariff, Ravindra Patil and Muslim Sheikh (Muslimispart of his name). They are the three reasons why Salman Khan was found guilty of a crime, and sentenced to five years by a court.  Shariff was killed by Salman Khan’s car; Patil was the police bodyguard who lodged the FIR, and who the court said was “natural and impartial witness”. Sheikh was badly injured, like three others, and has steel rod put in his body in a surgery.

It is Salman Khan, however, who has been grabbing the headlines and media hardly makes a mention of the victims; Patil had died after he was found lying on a street and admitted to a hospital of TB. He had gone into hiding to avoid pressures, and for that, sacked from service. Sheikh lives in penury in his UP village. No doubt, the celebrity factor in the hit-and-run case has eclipsed the others who appear now to be less than incidental to the narrative.

This speaks a lot about how the society is divided, especially when an overawed media pushes the celebrity factor ahead of all other considerations in all matters. A chilling revelation came from the way those who are “important” with platforms to voice their views, behaved stupidly. One was Abheejit, the Bollywood singer whose tweet said two things – those who sleep on streets like dogs are likely to get killed like dogs; and that speed and alcohol cannot be the cause of death, in this case, of Nurullah Sharrif.

Though roasted for it, the man stood his ground and went on any television channel that would have him to explain it away. The horrific part of his explanation was that when he arrived in Mumbai and lived on the streets for a year, he always made it a point to sleep in a railway station, safe from the prospect of being run over. Streets, he holds, are not the poor’s property to colonise. The dead and the injured in such accidents are victims of their own foolishness.

If he was a footpath occupant, much as others were in his industry in their initial days in Mumbai – one expected empathy from the man. Every Indian city, small or big, has its share of the homeless, and who survive the sun, rain, the biting cold, and the indignity of a life thus lived. Many are not as lucky as Abheejit to escape that misery.  Society rarely thinks of them because they are, not being us, are only a statistics.

At one time, some eminent people – editors, journalists, writers, and lawyers, actors – initiated efforts to secure disenfranchisement of the poor because without an address, they were ‘illegal’. Fortunately, wiser counsel prevailed and almost everyone else walked out of the move, leaving only the lawyer championing it even now. Mumbai High Court had dismissed their petition at the admission stage itself, but he has filed a petition – yet to be heard – in the Supreme Court.

Bollywood had for long made movies focusing on the poor. K A Abbas and Raj Kapoor’sShree 420andAwara,were about the poor and the homeless. Later came any number of them from the industry, likeChakraabout a taxi-driver living in the slums of Mumbai, the underlying theme being that though in utter poverty, they are humans.  The same industry didn’t much care when lives in slums and the struggle to survive in the underside of a society was brought out inSlumdog Millionaires.

Others kept a studied silence except for Rishi Kapoor who said if he had a chance, he would have neutered Abheejit for his tweets.

No one expects anyone to desert a friend in a personal crisis. Expression of solidarity can be private, unlike some who took to Twitter implying that the system was unkind to Salman Khan –a man, who the judge decided, was defending himself with a set of lies even though he had driven a car under influence of alcohol without a driving licence. Even politicians are involved: Raj Thackeray visited Salman, so did an MLA, Nitish Rane, visited him. Baba Siddiqui, a former MLA made way for Salman to leave the court after the verdict.

These worthies either had nothing to say about the victims, and those who did, complained about their presence. It was not as if they were initiating a sober debate on how to deal with the problem of homelessness. The country has no clue how to sort it out, when it is getting worse with rapid urbanisat6ion and increasing real estate prices. Abheejit was only whining. And Salman’s fans flooded the street where his apartment is located. The poor are such an inconvenience, you see.