Slap bounty placed on film star exposes depth of Indian bigotry

Hindu nationalists have offered a 100,000 rupee bounty to anyone who slaps film star Aamir Khan.

Indian film star Aamir Khan with his wife Kiran Rao in November last year.

A right-wing Hindu nationalist party has offered a 100,000 rupee ($2000) bounty to anyone who slaps Aamir Khan, one of India’s most respected actors, after he expressed concern over a growing intolerance in the country.

The actor, who has previously presented a television show tackling some of India’s most troubling social issues, is the ­latest victim of an increasingly violent debate over freedom of expression that government ­critics say is harming the world’s largest democracy.

Opposition politicians held a vigil outside parliament yesterday, a day after debate was ­adjourned four times as MPs sparred over claims India has ­become hostage to a “creeping majoritarianism” by Hindu ­nationalists.

Dozens of writers, scholars and artists have returned state awards in protest at what they claim is a growing intolerance of free speech and artistic ­expression, following the murders of two scholars this year — both of whom had criticised Hindu extremists.

Khan, a Muslim in Hindu-majority India, told an awards ceremony last week his Hindu film director wife, Kiran Rao, was so concerned about the ­direction the country was headed under the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party-led government that she wondered whether they should leave India.

“She fears for her child. She fears about what the atmosphere around us will be. She feels scared to open the newspapers. That does indicate that there is this sense of growing disquiet, there is growing ­despondency apart from alarm,” Khan told an audience that ­included Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

The blowback was as swift as it was intemperate with right wing Hindu groups burning ­effigies and staging angry ­protests outside the actor’s Mumbai home.

A sedition case was filed against him for “anti-national statements”, and a government spokesman accused him of a “moral offence” and “defaming the entire country”.

A spokesman for the Shiv Sena Hindu nationalist party ­announced the 100,000 rupee bounty for each slap landed on the actor, prompting Khan to ­observe that his detractors were “only proving my point”.

During Monday’s heated ­parliamentary debate the ­government countered accusations of intolerance by citing statistics that suggest communal violence has actually declined since it took office in May last year.

But critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi say he has been too slow to condemn violent acts against Muslims, including the lynching of a man accused of keeping beef in his fridge, and that his government has ­emboldened Hindu extremists.

Historian Ramachandra Guha says while successive ­Indian governments had placed restrictions on free speech, an “insidious majoritarianism” had crept in under the current ­administration.

The author of India after ­Gandhi and the Makers of Modern India and former Yale, Stanford and Berkeley professor said in such a climate people were wary of raising objections for fear of being targeted.

“India is an imperfect democracy, and we will continue to be so”, he told The Australian, citing “arcane” sedition laws, courts willing to entertain frivolous ­petitions, and a police force that did not adequately protect freedom of expression.

“But what is new is that writers are being murdered for their views.

“We are not about to become a totalitarian regime but we need to push the boundaries of freedom of expression.”

Professor Guha belatedly ­accepted an invitation to speak on the topic at this weekend’s Bangalore Literary Festival, after BLF founder and author, Vikram Sampath, was forced to step down after comments he made criticising writers who returned state awards prompted several to boycott the event.

Professor Guha said yesterday it was “absurd” for writers to boycott other writers over differences of opinion.