BJYM leader threatens ‘action’ against actors

While women film personalities who took part in Monday’s march in Kochi against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) chose not to comment on Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) leader Sandeep Warrier’s “snide and cowardly” remarks widely seen as threatening them with sending the Enforcement Directorate and the Income Tax Department after them, filmmaker Kamal, who was also part of the march, said it was an attempt to steer the “discussion away from the CAA”.

Mr. Warrier had, in a patronising Facebook post, issued a veiled threat to film personalities, especially women actors who made political statements, to ensure that their income tax was being paid by their “father, brother or secretary”.He also went on to claim that new age film personalities were lax in remitting taxes.

“Income Tax and Enforcement could look into this. If [they are] caught evading tax tomorrow, don’t shed tears calling it political vendetta. No weed-smoking teams will be there with you then to take out a march (sic),” he said in the post.

Women from the film world part of the anti-CAA march thought this was classic mansplaining and an attempt to hit below the belt which deserved no response.

Meanwhile, Kamal, also chairman of the State Chalachithra Academy, called it ‘childish’, but part of a larger scheme to divert the attention of people from discussing the CAA.

“It is also an attempt at labelling young people in the film world, who have a clear sense of history and a political outlook unlike their namby-pamby seniors and the so-called superstars, as junkies and thereby denying them agency,” he said.

But Mr. Kamal found the statement of Kummanam Rajasekharan, who had held the Constitutional post of Governor, much more serious. “Aren’t film personalities rightful citizens of the country, that they can’t protest injustice as concerned citizens,” he asked.