@bainjal is right. The media is feasting on a man who died of a serious mental illness. But mental illness is a #taboo subject in the #India in which a smart sassy self-made girl who came up in the world of glamour and fashion is considered trashy. gulfnews.com/opinion/op-eds…
Throw in the lowest form of political opportunism, a manufactured rivalry between states and cultures in the run-up to a state election, and the #Moralistic #HinduRight propensity to pander to the popular taste for cheap thrills, and you get the media #LynchMob.
Why admit to the most obvious explanation of them all: that the tragic actor committed suicide? that the person who most cared for him was his partner? that the one person who had zero motive to kill him was that same woman?
To admit that would be to accept, shock horror, that it was acceptable for a man and a woman to live together. And conservative Indian society is not yet ready for that. It'd be preferable to maintain the fiction that #India is above such decadent 'western' ideas.
That fiction is best played out by convicting the dead man's lover for his murder. That way, he would not have committed suicide, his mental illness would be annulled, the shame and stigma of living together would be resolved by painted her as a seductive scheming siren.
And we thought we had abolished the practice of #Sati!
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