Katrina, Rita … and now Khushboo

IN Media Practice | 09/10/2005

S R Ramanujan

Suddenly, Tamil Nadu finds itself in the midst of a storm. A storm in a wine glass. This man-made storm did not develop due to a depression in the sea across Marina, but purely because of media frenzy. For any depression, mental or atmospheric, there must be a triggering point somewhere and that was provided by the news magazine India Today when it conjured up a survey on ‘sex and the single woman’. Though the target was not specifically Tamil women, in order to add meat to the survey, the magazine interviewed Khushboo, for she is still the heartthrob of Tamil cinema fans. They have even raised a temple to her. It is a different story that Tamils have a penchant for raising temples to just about anyone they like. 

As if to corroborate the survey results, which claimed that one in every four women between the ages of 18 and 30 had pre-marital sex, Khushboo added her own spin. She said, "Our society must free itself from expectations that brides should all be virgins… There is nothing wrong in pre-marital sex as long as the girl protects herself from pregnancy and venereal diseases."

Whether the undeniably conservative Tamil society took note of this sexplosive comment or not is moot. However, the Tamil press and chauvinistic politicians, most of whom - including the top rung leaders - take pride in having more than one wife, went ballistic. They leapt into the ring to take on poor Khushboo in the name of Tamil culture.

What exactly is this ‘Tamil culture’? No one has taken the trouble to define it. But if one goes by the sermons in the Tamil press, ‘Tamil culture’ is heavily patriarchal and loaded against women. They should cover themselves up from neck to toe, should have a single partner throughout their life, and should not drink anything stronger than ‘kappi’. Smoking? Don’t even think about it. All the interesting vices are reserved for men. This was the underlying message of the protests and dharnas that were staged against Khushboo by the political parties and the Tamil media, even after she apologized for her comments. 

Moral policing apart, it seems fairly obvious that another reason for the tirade against her was her association with Jaya TV, as one of its star anchors for the highly rated programme ‘Jackpot’, a KBC clone. So, the Tamil dailies and political parties that are inimical to Jayalalitha did not miss this opportunity. Perhaps they saw Jaya in Khushboo. Otherwise, there is no reason for parties like Dalit Panthers of India (DPI), Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) and the BJP to take her so seriously. The DPI is only a front for the wily Karunanidhi’s DMK. The Hindu was quite right when it said in its editorial that "an actress’ personal opinion on pre-marital sex has been viciously misrepresented, and blown out of all proportion, as an attack on Tamil womanhood by political parties keen on playing the chauvinism card".

Though The Hindu was quite forthright in its comments, the Indian Express was a bit circumspect. While it had reservations about the India Today survey because of the sample size, it nevertheless felt the survey results were worrying. Well, it did not condemn the actress, but highlighted in its editorial the changing social trends among women because of the influence of television and "other developments". This ambivalence was neutralized when the paper carried a lead article on ‘culture vultures’ which argued that culture is not a monolithic structure, but is vibrant and evolving.

The author of the article, Geeta Ramaseshan’s viewpoint was that the survey only brought to light the existence of a sub-culture in a changing world, where sex outside the institution of marriage is no longer taboo. Ramaseshan continued, "It raises a whole lot of issues in the area of health, social norms, behaviour patterns among the young and complexities in the context of gender in a still highly patriarchal society. Unfortunately, none of these issues are being focused in the media except the "insult to Tamil women".

The division between the Tamil and English press was, however, clear. The Hindu, both in its editorial and in an article, highlighted the double standards of some newspapers (read Tamil press) that publish scantily clad and suggestive pin-ups of film actresses as a circulation booster. The article had a dig at the competition for page 3 culture featuring "eye-grabbing glitz, glamour, and the good life as a circulation booster".  It’s not just the Tamil press that’s to blame. What about the most powerful daily in the world, our own homegrown TOI, or the growing Deccan Chronicle? They are splattered with lewd pictures.

Even as this controversy raged, another storm broke out, a Rita to follow Katrina. A Tamil daily published pictures of couples partying in a star hotel. Naturally, a late night party in a star hotel will have scenes of people in somewhat compromising positions holding liquor glasses. After a Tamil daily published the pictures, the police raided the hotel, closed the restaurant and issued a notice for the cancellation of its licence.

Such a course of action is not unknown in other states and cities, and not just Chennai. But the Tamil Nadu police’s action was branded as ‘moral policing’. Besides the police action, the question that was hotly debated was whether the media was right in publishing such pictures. The media’s right to gatecrash a private party was questioned. The point is that a hotel is a public place. Any party in such a place can be termed a private party only because a private individual or a corporate house hosts it. Does that give the participants a license to conduct themselves in a manner that does not conform to standards of public decency? Should there not be a distinction between what happens within the four walls of a residence (where the right to privacy is inviolable) and a public place like a hotel, which is governed by a set of regulations that are non-existent for a truly private place like a residence?

Well, one may argue about the intentions of the paper in publishing such pictures. Perhaps it was a gimmick in increase circulation. Hypothetically, if drugs were making their rounds in such a ‘private party’, what should be the role of the press? Would it ignore this as private business at a private party, or up its antenna for an expose? Because men and women from high society were involved, there is all this fuss about privacy. Would the outcry be the same if pictures of men and women drinking and smoking in a toddy shop were published?

While the Tamil press has certainly played into the hands of vested interests in going for Khushboo’s jugular and unnecessarily creating a hullabaloo over nothing, it has to be given the benefit of doubt in the case of the ‘private party’ in a public hotel.

Let me confess one thing, though. I am a fan of Khushboo, but that has not influenced me!