The five-year jail term reminds us that the law is the ultimate leveller of the human condition
Comeuppance comes in strange ways. So while the nation expected superstar Salman Khan to emerge unscathed from the black buck poaching case from 20 years ago, given his string of acquittals by the High Court in earlier chinkara shootings and even the hit-and-run case where a human had died, there was a shock when everybody's Bhai got done in for not being so human in the first place. If justice was delayed, ducked and sidestepped, in the end it was not denied. So the five-year jail term for killing the endangered black buck, while seeming severe, actually upholds the value of a living being and, human or animal, its right to live free. The star may get bail, a reduced term or even an acquittal by the higher courts but sometimes a verdict reminds us that the law is the ultimate leveller of the human condition. While claims and counter-claims are being bandied about the judgment call by eyewitnesses, the assumption being that they were looking for vicarious fame by nailing a star, the Jodhpur court could not overlook the material evidence. The DNA test had proved that the blood on the Gypsy Khan was driving during the night of the hunt was the same as that of the dead buck. While scores of fans argued that it has indeed been 20 years of the killing and the actor had been incarcerated for pyrrhic bursts of retribution, the judge reminded why Khan needed to be a virtuous Tiger given the sway he had on a nation's collective consciousness and a substantial impact on the film economy. As a role model followed by millions, the judge reminded, he needed to be seen as doing the right thing instead of getting away by being a habitual offender. It is because justice was perceived to be reduced to a joke when it came to Khan that the judge underlined the importance of being earnest in its dispensation.
The soft power of being a popular role model has to be equally respected by the star in his public behaviour and Khan realised this after being implicated in the hit-and-run case in Mumbai. Hoping to repair his bad boy image, he set up the Being Human foundation, engaged in social welfare and charitable activities and lent himself to causes of the underprivileged, crafting his own path to retribution in the popular psyche, becoming a big brother or Bhai. Post 2005 and Wanted, Khan became a box office behemoth. With the ticket windows in far-flung cities and towns sold out on first day, producers had found an icon of heartland India and, therefore, lionised him onscreen as a superhero sworn to his commitment to the common man who would go through any mid-air back-flip to fulfill it. One cannot deny that much of Khan's onscreen championship of the dispossessed washed off on his offscreen persona and suffused him with an ochre glow. It is this make-believe invincibility that explains the collective disbelief about the quantum of cause and its effect. Hence the social media memes and jokes, one even linking the deer species responsible for both lord Rama's and Khan's ills. It is this pan-India arc of giganticism that encourages even the Pakistan foreign minister to preposterously comment that Khan was being framed for belonging to a minority community. Be that as it may, the law played out as it should. No less aided by the unwavering Bishnois, who worship their environment and showed that they would not bow to even the most coercive and overwhelming star power. However, rather than giving Khan an opportunity to get bail and popular sympathy, the judge could have tied him to mandatory wildlife conservation duty. Now that would have been a landmark.