The Munmun Dutta video controversy is a refreshing reminder of what has increasingly become commonplace in the social media age: that shrugging off accountability is not an option anymore, for anyone. Even, rather especially, if one is a celebrity. The phenomenon of taking responsibility for your words may seem like an oddity in a place like India where the 'chalta hai attitude' reigns sensibilities.
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But the ways of the world on the internet are different. Thank heavens for that. This playground here is level and no one - not ministers, not the top leaders, not actors, not dignitaries - can evade scrutiny.
On Sunday when Dutta, a Bengali native who has worked in the Hindi television industry for well over a decade now, used a casteist slur on video, social media went up in wildfires. By Monday, there was wide condemnation for her actions and even calls for her arrest under the SC/ST Act that protects the rights of India's minorities.
It was "misinterpreted," it came about due to a "language barrier," she was "misinformed," Dutta explained in her
— Munmun Dutta (@moonstar4u) May 10, 2021 statement. But social media was having none of it. Rightly so. Because when celebrities with a massive online following commit offences as grave as this, it does not matter whether it was perpetrated wittingly or unwittingly.
Munmun Dutta Video Controversy: Can Accountability Be Shrugged Off Anymore?
It is indeed possible that Dutta was genuinely ignorant to the implications and historical baggage of the slur she used carried. We're all evolving into the world and its social makings as we go along.
But on whom does the responsibility of education, in this regard, fall if not ourselves? Can those who have privileged access to infinite information - on the internet, in books, newspapers, law journals, the very Constitution of India - slip away with weak defences?
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Munmun Dutta is working in Hindi Entertainment Industry for at least 17 Years. She started her acting career in Mumbai in 2004. Now she wants us to believe her story that there is some “language barrier” and she doesn’t know Hindi well. #ArrestMunmunDuttapic.twitter.com/2Md6qnVEEz
By evening, social media channels were flooding with the slur she used, as droves of casteists came out of their ratholes to stir up mischief. In a bid to show 'support' for the Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah actor, many even went the length to justify caste oppression, deride the marginalised and mock those demanding accountability.
So even though the slur may have been "unintentional" from Dutta's end, as she claimed it was, a can of worms was bust open. And once out, it becomes painfully punishing to squeeze this brutality back in. A caste-oppressed person living that reality every day will tell you.
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