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I am often surprised by the hypocrisy displayed by India's print and electronic media. They make gratuitous folk heroes out of total nonentities; and then they appear pained at the excesses perpetrated by them.

The latest example of this is the ridiculous fuss and the media hype being created over the film "Jodha Akbar". A hitherto fringe group, calling itself the Rajput Karni Sena (Army) (the Shiv Sena has displayed a lack of foresight by not taking out a patent on the sena' nomenclature: now senas' of various hues seem to be mushrooming all over India), has taken umbrage because Jodha, a Rajput princess, has been depicted as the wife of the Mughal Emperor Jehangir, instead of the spouse of Jehangir's father, Akbar. They claim that Rajput honour has been sorely affronted by this inaccuracy. So they have disrupted the screening of the film all over Rajasthan. Even by the standards of nonsensical issues that become causes celebre these days, this takes the cake. It is not as if a Rajput princess has been insulted by being portrayed a s a slut, or even a commoner. What possible difference could it make to the present generation if she is said to have married the son, instead of the father?

Movies distorting historical and other facts in the name of artistic licence' are nothing new. Hollywood has been doing it for the past 80 years. A standard joke making the rounds of Hollywood in the 1960s went something like this.

An author is being felicitated on the release of his latest novel. "Thanks," he avers, "I got the idea from the movie they made of my previous book."

An equally banal fracas was engineered a couple of years ago, over the movie "Fanaa". The film was banned all over Gujarat, not because of the content of the movie, but because its star, Aamir Khan had opined that the raising of the Narmada dam was unwise, because it would displace several hundred poor families. How that was presented as an insult to Gujarati asmita (pride) remains a mystery to me. What is even more puzzling is why the supposedly literate and intelligent Gujaratis fell for it.

The point I am trying to make is that these self-proclaimed champions of the people' are worthy of nothing but contempt. Left to their own devices, they would rapidly sink back into the obscurity whence they emerged. Instead, they witness their vacant, maniacal mug shots displayed on countless television screens; and splashed across newspapers and get emboldened. And I am not talking about tabloids and scandal sheets

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