Why India has this celebrity bhakti culture?
We have many times seen this that people literally worship the people they admire, though there is nothing wrong in admiring anyone but when this admiration turns into obsession that’s when it becomes a problem because people lose their senses in the pursuit of that celebrity.
I would like to give some examples like, when South actor Vijay film “Sarkar” had released in 2018, as the movie was political so it was bound to get under some controversy as this showed the popular south leader Jayalalithaa in a different light which was offensive to many of her party workers so as usual they protested against the movie and threaten to burn down the theatre, in response to this the actor Vijay fans started demolishing the freebies that was given by AIADMK party in large numbers.
This thing is extreme in south though not uncommon in North India or other parts of India. Like the fans of Sachin Tendulkar Sudhir Kumar and one fan of Shahrukh khan slit his throat because he wasn’t allowed to meet Shahrukh khan.
What’s the reason behind this?
Now these situations seem so funny, we need to understand from where it came and how it evolved. A Durham University professor Jamie Tehrani wrote that humans have evolved like this to support and admire the person who’s not the strongest but the most skillful and they would copy him as they think it will help them gain prestige as well and help in their adaptability to the environment.
As this also explains why people politician in a crazy manner, wherever the vehicle of politician go they follow him even though the politician doesn’t even know his name and this brings us to the things that how it can harms the person as well.
If the person realises that his hero doesn’t know him he might do something bad like that Shahrukh khan movie fan or would hurt himself like when Jayalalithaa died around 16 people committed suicide.
How can we forget the temple that are made in their name? Temple of Rajnikanth, PM Modi and Sonia Gandhi etc.
With the coming of social media this is getting more and more dangers as the fans now constantly check the social media handles of celebrity and judge them on various things like the clothes they wear, the person they are in relationship with and write hate comments which we call as trolling. But will this stop or government take any action, then let’s find talk about the actors who are given tickets to fight election just because they have a fan base, parties don’t care whether they are going to work for the people while coming into power as we have seen in many cases that many of them don’t even attend parliament properly.
Is there any benefit behind it? Well yes in some cases as we have seen that the ads that are endorsed by the celebrity people tend to buy whether it is fair and handsome or any other product. This appeal works in a better way when these actors support government schemes and their fans follow him like swach bharat scheme by Amitabh Bachchan or Atithi devo bhawa by Aamir Khan had created a impact on people.
But even after all these things i believe this is something that’s needs to be reduce if it can’t be completely finished. The stars can have a huge role to play in this as they should tell their fans not to do this, politician who enjoy large fan base should again and again make statement condemning these activities like making temple.
But the last but not least i think the people need to be aware about this and it’s effects, they should know that this admiration once becomes obsession can lead to their destruction. As Dr Ambedkar had also said that the bhakti of politician can degrade democracy and even lead to a rise of dictator. All in all people need to be sensible enough. Period