From remarks over intolerance to ‘Maggi’ mess – all happened in the Bollywood industry. Besides, handful of extremists never skipped their part to drag big names into trouble.
Have a look at top Bollywood controversies in the outgoing year 2015.
Anushka Sharma – bad omen for Indian cricket team?
Eleven players team up for the key World Cup match in Australia and a girl watching out the game from enclosure is blamed for India defeat. How strange? Isnt it?
Blame one guy’s girlfriend for an entire team’s loss. What does one say? It happens only in India! It was Bollywood actress Anushka Sharma who was called a “bad omen” for being by her rumoured beau and cricketer Virat Kohli’s side during the ICC Cricket World Cup semifinal in Melbourne.
Intolerance in India
In India, you talk of intolerance and people become intolerant. The mess erupted after Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan’s comments on the state of affairs in the country. Both faced a backlash. Shah Rukh Khan went from being called ‘Badshah’ to being called a “Pakistani agent”, while Aamir was asked which country he felt safe in.
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and racism
Art and creativity can have myriad interpretations. And it was truly a case of perception that dragged Aishwarya Rai Bachchan into trouble for starring in a jewellery brand Kalyan Jewellers’ ad.
She was labelled “insidiously racist” for “representing aristocracy from a bygone era – poised and relaxing”- while an underage dark-skinned emaciated slave struggled to hold an oversized umbrella over her head. The creatives took the blame, and the actress went scot-free.
Radhika Apte’s indecent exposure!
New Bollywood entrant Radhika Apte found herself at the unfortunate end of two ‘nude’ related controversies. First, MMS video of a actress who had faint resemblance to Radhika and it surfaced on the internet that went viral with the headline, ‘Radhika Apte Nude’.
The next one, however, was a more serious one involving the leaking of a nude clip from one of her international projects directed by Anurag Kashyap. The actress and the director saw red at the leak and pulled all strings to trace down the culprit, but in vain.
Maggi lands Big B, Madhuri and Pretty Zinta in a mess
Enacting and endorsing the memorable tune of the 2-Minute Noodles landed actors Amitabh Bachchan, Preity Zinta and Madhuri Dixit Nene in a legal soup as the food safety regulators from Barabanki, a district of Uttar Pradesh, had found unexpectedly high levels of monosodium glutamate (MSG) and lead in excess of the prescribed limit, in the samples they tested.
‘Awards Wapsi Tehreek’
Filmmakers like Dibakar Banerjee, Anand Pathwardhan and others decided to adopt a new way of protesting against Gajendra Chauhan and other issues plaguing the nation.
The filmmakers returned their National Awards to express their displeasure over intolerance wave. However, many disagreed with this form of protest.
All India Bakchod (AIB) Knockout
You must have remembered a controversy arising out of ‘All India Bakchod’ episode featuring Ranveer Singh, Arjun Singh and Karan Johar (the host) alongside the AIB team.
The show drew wrath from several showbiz figures for its vulgar language and open abuses.
Karan Johar, amidst abuses and vulgar gestures, left its critics red-faced and several youths up in arms against the attack on freedom to watch what they want to. A live ticketed show, the event was aired online and received brickbats and an FIR against 14 people, including our celeb trio.
Salman Khan – controversially yours!
Outgoing 2015 was as much a year of success as a time for troubles for “Wanted” star Salman Khan, but he remained ‘Dabangg’. On May 6 came a court judgment holding the actor guilty in a September 2002 road accident in Mumbai that claimed a life and injured four others and sentenced him to five years’ jail.
His fans were in for a rude shock, but the emotional “Bajrangi Bhaijaan” star walked free when the Bombay High Court acquitted him in December. But just months before this, came Salman’s tweet about Yakub Memon and Tiger Memon.
The actor received flak after he condemned, via a tweet, the hanging of the 1993 Mumbai blasts accused Yakub Memon and demanded that Tiger Memon be brought to justice instead. On his father Salim Khan’s behest, the actor apologised for his remarks.
Twitter trolling – a headache for celebrities
Twitter landed many B-Town figures into controversy, especially celebrities who tried to comment on socio-political issues. Meat ban, Maggi ban, AIB Knockout ban, Ghulam Ali ban, FTII, intolerance… what a plethora of subjects to tweet on and also unfortunately land in trouble for speaking out in a country where ‘freedom of speech’ is a fundamental right. Should Bollywood celebs keep their mouths shut?
Indian fans miss Ghulam Ali
This was a miss, not to be missed in the list of controversies for 2015. Legendary Pakistani ghazal singer Ghulam Ali’s concert in Mumbai had to be called off after resistance from the Shiv Sena political party. Hurt by the politics being played over his concerts, the singer cancelled all his shows in India.
