b Trans Persons Amendment Bill 2026 And The Silence Of The B-Town Brigade[/b]https://www.outlookindia.com/art-entertainment/trans-bill-2026-and-the-silence-of-the-b-town-brigade 🔗Debiparna Chakraborty (30 March 2026)
Amitabh Bachchan has done it. Akshay Kumar has done it. Kamal Haasan and Vijay Sethupathi have done it. Even Vaani Kapoor, Sushmita Sen and Adah Sharma did it. Across decades and industries, they have slipped into sarees, modulated their voices and performed femininity or transness. Sometimes they did it for laughs, sometimes for prestige. Sometimes this acclaim came along with capital and cultural prestige. Sethupathi actually won the National Award in 2021 for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of a trans woman in Super Deluxe (2019). But as India stands on the brink of enacting a dastardly and dehumanising amendment to its transgender rights framework, none of them have had the courage to speak up against it.
Most Bollywood stars have categorically proven in the past few years that they have no skin in the game when it comes to standing up to oppressors. They will rather chase box office glory and fleeting fame by appeasing the authorities. They do not speak up when minorities in India are discriminated against or lynched; not even when bombs are dropped on innocents in Palestine or Iran. In fact, they build their brand identities on being vacuous idols, here to make bank, whether the world around them survives or evaporates to nothing but dust. They do not seem to care if no one is left to clap for their faux-heroics and damsel acts; their visions blinkered by naked greed, short-term ambitions and abject cowardice.
