Hollywood speaks up, even as Bollywood stays silent

John Cusack has become the first major Hollywood star to publicly back India’s Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protests, sparking praise across Indian social media and reigniting a familiar debate about celebrity silence closer home.

The star of such films as ‘Say Anything…’, ‘Being John Malkovich’, and ‘Con Air’ actor took to social media this week, addressing protesters as his “favourite fellow cockroach” in a message of solidarity with the student-led movement demanding the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the NEET-UG paper leak controversy. It is not the first time Cusack has spoken on India. Back in 2020, he had criticised the government’s handling of the police crackdown on students at Jamia Millia Islamia.

The CJP movement itself has an unusual origin story. It began as a satirical response to a remark by India’s Chief Justice comparing unemployed young Indians to cockroaches. Within days, a mocking Instagram page had gathered millions of followers. Within weeks, it had grown into one of the country’s largest youth protests in years, with tens of thousands gathering at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar and repeated clashes with the police.

Cusack’s message was warmly received in India, with headlines calling it “beautiful news” and describing him as the first Hollywood name to engage directly with the movement.

But the gesture has also sharpened an uncomfortable comparison closer home. While an actor thousands of miles away found it easy to speak up, many of India’s own biggest stars have said nothing at all.

Cinema’s biggies are all silent

Reports this week pointed out that stars such as Ranveer Singh, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, Katrina Kaif, Kareena Kapoor and Deepika Padukone have remained conspicuously quiet on the NEET protests, continuing a pattern seen during the farmers’ protests, the Citizenship Amendment Act unrest and the MeToo movement in Indian cinema. A smaller group, including Shabana Azmi, Anurag Kashyap, Sonu Sood, Hrithik Roshan and Sonakshi Sinha, did choose to speak up this time.

Veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah has been among the sharpest critics of this silence, comparing quiet Bollywood stars to dogs guarding a bone, unwilling to risk what they have built for a cause outside their own interest. It is a criticism he has made before, and one that echoes a wider argument now doing the rounds, that many of Bollywood’s biggest names treat their brand endorsements as more precious than any public stand.

The contrast is not new, but it stings a little more each time it repeats. Hollywood’s stars disagree fiercely amongst themselves on politics, yet many still speak, march and campaign despite the backlash that follows. India’s biggest stars appear to have learnt a different lesson altogether, that silence sells safer than solidarity, especially after the backlash some of their predecessors faced in the 1990s.

Whether Cusack’s gesture nudges any big Indian names off the fence remains to be seen. For now, the loudest voices supporting India’s protesting students continue to come from almost everywhere except the country’s own film industry.