I send infrequent newsletters about tech , product, and poetry

Curious Case of Salman Khan Sympathy Wave

Salman Khan was convicted (only 5 year punishment for killing a man and maiming others, driving drunk and running away) and is now out of bail.

I get it , people like Salman Khan :The Actor , what I do not get is the sympathy wave for him BECAUSE he did so much charity. Really?

The Indian judicial system is geared towards reform rather than punish, hence being a good person with good behaviour does help in the court of law,I get that ,and at some level I support that too .

But what really baffles me is the incredible outpouring of grief for his ,in my opinion too lenient ,sentencing . And the sympathy wave seems to be justified based on an NGO called Being Human.

This made me wonder, do people really care about NGOs and the so called Good work done by them?

Let me put things into perspective , the “Great” Reliance Industries has a CSR wing that spent 700 crores for the betterment of society(3.25% of profits ..among highest percentage in indian corporates BTW) .

Even If you doubt their intentions ,you will agree that with that kind of money many people would have been helped. This is being done by Ambani’ Wife Nita Ambani.By owning Shares and being active in the company , their son too is party to this .

So do we have sympathy for their Son who was also accused of ramming his Aston Martin while probably drunk driving? The case has been erased from public memory as almost no News channel ever covers it . Come on Sympathy for that “Poor” Chap? What if he makes an appearance in an orphanage where he donates a crore? Would we have sympathy for him them (assuming he is ever punished). How many crores of money would it take? I am sure monetarily Reliance would have done more than being human.

If we really cared about people doing good work, what about thousands of people selflessly doing great work on the ground? What about 100s of NGOs being targeted by the government ? Did we flinch and ask once , do they really need to be banned? Hey you say “rule of law”  then, what happened to rule of law in Salman’s case? Just because the government said “Foreign Funding” , we just looked the other way? (Not to mention India has relied on foreign aid for many many years) . I am not defending NGOs breaking laws, but again where is the sympathy for them? Many of whom are probably filled with volunteers who might have given up jobs to work there? Where is the sympathy if the NGO work really matters to you?

It took a Nobel Peace prize for Indians to recognise the great work people like Kailash Satyarthi  were doing, where was the love of “Good Work” then?

I am sorry to call out the hypocrisy of many people today. You DO NOT care about Salman Khan’s “Being Human” . You Love Salman Khan the actor and just don’t want him to go to jail and are letting it cloud your judgement.

So yes, You can be sad at him going to jail(if he ever goes, which looks never) , you can say that he has reformed  , you can cry over his delayed films , but please save your sympathies for the victims here. .Being Human is not his repentance.It’s a good thing, I give you that but have a moment for the real victim here(Hint: It’s not Salman Khan).

Let the court decide how much consideration they want to give to his “NGO work” , don’t make a show of it (Someone even tried committing suicide in his support, but failed).

In India Powerful people rarely get punished, if he did gets punished, be happy that poor people can get justice (even though after 13 years it’s meaningless)

Maybe I am wrong, I hope I am wrong but that seems a bit improbable.

 


Posted

in

by

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *