By Suresh Unnithan
Khushboo Sunder, the celebrated tinsel star of yesteryears, has landed in the BJP, a party she used to single out and censure till recent days. She has joined the Saffrom Party on the same day October 12, 2020; hurriedly renounce Indian Nationa Congress, the party she was in for the over six years. Will Khushboo’s entry provide any electoral impetus to the BJP in Tamil Nadu is the curious question electoral rivals and political pundits are vociferously debating. While her sudden switchover is fiercely debated in the media desks and news studios entry of Khushboo into the party has not excited the saffron brigade in Tamil Nadu or elsewhere. On the contrary her way into the party has created discontent among a prominent section of the State party leadership. The prime reason: Kushboo in her former avatar as spokesperson of rival Congress Party and before that as leader of the Dravidian Party, the DMK, did not spare any chance to admonish and demean Prime Minster Narendra Modi or the Sangh Parivar. Khushboo’s, acerbic remarks on Modi, BJP and the Parivar still “hounds” the Party cadre and they are unwilling to accommodate “someone who was spitting venom against BJP in general and Modiji in particular”.
Her accusations on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Sangh Parivar through social media and other channels were never taken kindly by the Saffron cadre for “language she used was so bitter and crude.” Khushboo as Congress spokesperson had been attacking the saffron party on every possible chance with no considerations. Targeting Modi personally on one occasion Khushboo went to the extent of accusing him as an insult India and its Democracy. She tweeted “It is an insult to me as an Indian to call him (Narendra Modi) my PM…he behaves like a PM to selected group…Alas blind bhakts don’t see that …communal riot minded such as you follow a man who thinks people from different religion are no INDIANS. Modi is an insult to India n its democracy”.
She had not even spared PM Narendra Modi’s day-long fast in protest against the non-functioning of Parliament two years ago. She had accused Modi had breakfast and lunch in the aircraft itself while flying back. ‘He is the only PM who sat on fast after keeping his tummy full’ she had contemptuously quipped.
On another instance reacting to a question on why she is not disclosing her name in full (Nakhat Khan), Khushboo tweeted ruthlessly, “Sadly once again I have to edit my profile. Sanghi dump idiots are so physically retardated that they don’t understand simple basics…they are calling me a Muslim who does not have a place in my country, my INDIA. YES I AM A KHAN, I AM A MUSLIM AND INDIA IS MY COUNTRY…KOI shaq (any doubt)?”
Yes, Khushboo was born into a Muslim family in West Andheri in Mumbai in 1970 as Nakhat Khan. She entered the tinsel world as a child artist at the age of ten and rose to stardom in Tamil silver screen within a few years. In the late eighties and early nineties Khushboo was the most favorite South Indian female film celebrity.
Khushboo is known as a person with rationalist views and her outlook on many sensitive issues like pre-marital sex had invited wide protests from traditional and conservative communities. Her statement supporting premarital sex in a national publication was never taken kindly by the BJP and Sangh Parivar. Her controversial statement that media created commotion -“‘According to me, sex is not only concerned with the body, but also concerned with the conscious . . . Our society should come out of the thinking that at the time of the marriage, the girls should be with virginity (sic) . . . But when having sexual relationship the girls should protect themselves (sic) from conceiving and getting venereal diseases.’” This was in September 2005 when she was still active in cinema.
Her rationalist thinking could be one of the reasons for her adverse attitude to Sangh Parivar and its iconic figure Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India. Or, compulsions?
She has, a year ago equated Sangh Parivar to “monkeys” in her tweet. “ Sanghis are behaving like monkeys…without 6th sense” was her words.
On October 7, this year just five days before her admission into BJP (on October 12, 2020) Khushboo had made a sarcastic tweet on PM’s newly introduced sophisticated aircraft.” You see Narendra Modi ji is the only PM this country has ever seen. Before him India never had one. So we didn’t see specially made aircraft for PM.” In the same tweet she has attacked the Sangh Parivar on farmers’ bill 2020 saying “the minute you are a Sanghi you will never see the problems of a farmer, this farmers bill is alien to you.”
But political pundits in Chennai are not surprised at Khushboo suddenly switching over to the party which she was attacking virulently till the other day.
“In a decade she (Khushboo) has changed two political capes and this (BJP) is the third. It’s just a matter of time she jumps to another bandwagon. She is fortune hunter who is in search of treasures. Ideological commitments never matters for those who are concerned of kismet only.”
Khushboo’s political baptism was in May 2010 when she joined the DMK in Chennai, in the presence of the then party chief and Chief Minister, the late M Karunanidhi. For some reasons, Khushboo could not ‘get along’ with party chief M K Stalin, Karunanidhi’s son, and she had to quit the DMK to join the Congress in November 2014. After little less than six years with the Tamil Nadu State Congress now she has embraced the Sangh Parivar governed saffron party, the BJP, the party she was attacking in most aggressively till a fortnight ago.
As a senior journalist observes, “Neither the DMK nor the Congress gained anything out of her as a politician. Unlike her present Party, BJP the previous parties had suited her principles the best. Taking into account her temperament and impulsive nature, couple with excess aspirations, its beyond prediction, how long she could survive with the Saffron Party. Also, how much the BJP will benefit from Khushboo is a million dollar question.”
