And the Best Farce Award Goes to…

No one takes awards in India seriously because they are only entertainment events.

On Sunday night, those who watched the Filmfare Awards on television and then took a short nap and woke up early morning to see the live telecast of the Academy Awards, would have arrived at an irony: that the most irritating thing about watching Shah Rukh and Saif doing a damn good stand-up act was the interruption to announce the winners. But when it came to the Academy Awards, it was not Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, but the winners that they were waiting for.

There’s a little rider there. Filmfare Awards happened on 27 February, and 7 March was just the telecast.  But it’s still a fair certainty that no one really knew or cared about the winners. In fact, not even the actors themselves. Two of the nominees for the best actor award—Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan stayed away from the awards ceremony. Amitabh Bachchan boycotted it because of his feud with Filmfare owners, the Times Group, after their tabloid Mumbai Mirror said his daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai Bachchan had problems conceiving because of stomach tuberculosis. Aamir forswears all private award functions as having no credibility.

It’s not just films. Most awards in India have no legitimacy, starting from the most famous ones. The Padma Shri has gone to sexologists, practitioners of a subject that is not taught in medical colleges. But that’s still better than an NRI investigated for fraud winning  a premium award, as happened this year when Sant Singh Chatwal got a Padma Bhushan. In fact, Aamir Khan’s sense of probity is a tad hypocritical. He accepted his Padma award and that is equivalent to choosing one farce over another.

Awards will never be of any consequence in India because they will never be objective. They will never be objective because that is bad for business. A couple of years ago, when Ekta Kapoor found that Kyunkii Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi hadn’t been nominated for the Indian Television Academy Awards, she ordered her television actors not to perform in the show. The day of this year’s Filmfare awards, Amitabh wrote on his blog: ‘And we have informed Filmfare that neither will Aishwarya be performing at the event, for which all preparations had been made and neither shall any of us be attending…No coercion, just a voluntary decision of solidarity.’ 

It might not be coercion but Bachchan knew where to hit them where it hurts. Without stars, there is no entertainment. And without entertainment, which Indian in his right mind will watch an awards ceremony?

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