As Minority Persecution Soars, Hollywood Celebrities are Helping India With Image Correction

The recent grand opening of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Center (NMACC) in Mumbai was exactly what one would expect from a gala hosted by the family of Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in Asia. From Met Gala-level opulence to a star-studded guest list, the NMACC event had one clear goal: to draw the world’s attention to India’s soft power. And pull, it did.

International celebrities such as Penelope Cruz, Tom Holland, Nick Jonas and Poorna Jagannathan, as well as models and artists such as Neelam Gill and Jasmine Wahi, all strutted down the red carpet in designer Indian pieces. Photos of Zendaya slipping in a sparkling purple saree nearly broke the internet, as did clips of Priyanka Chopra Jonas storming the stage to the beat of “Galla Goodiyan” and the whirl of Gigi Hadid’s hand-decorated saree as Bollywood stars Actor Varun Dhawan swept her right off her feet. Several of these stars posted messages thanking the Ambanis for a dazzling event and raved about India.

All in all, the NMACC Gala served its purpose. But its beauty just gets under your skin.

Take a step back from glitter and gold, and Mukesh Ambani’s political connections become uncomfortably prominent. Ambani, a close associate of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has used his wealth as chairman of a Fortune 500 company to promote the far-right Hindu movement in India. And by thanking him, consciously or unconsciously, the celebrity guests at the NMACC Gala helped blind the world to the much scarier reality of India.

Ambani is the rich friend of a politician accused of encouraging mass violence against Muslims. At worst, he can be called an enabler. He has seized control of much of India’s mainstream media, relegating it to propaganda mouthpieces for the Modi regime and destroying a vital pillar of democracy. One of the major channels he owns, News18, was fined by a news regulator for spreading anti-Muslim hate speech and celebrating the persecution of Muslims during prime time. One of its media affiliates is pumping millions to help Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sweep elections across India by spreading pro-BJP and anti-Muslim misinformation via Facebook ads – including in defense of a BJP politician who accused of terrorism.

The NMACC isn’t just another inconsequential party for the rich and famous. These celebrities are directly helping Ambani – and by extension Modi – in India’s image repair, especially as mob lynchings, anti-minority violence and Modi’s hero-worshipping become the new normal.

You can and should expect more from these stars. Especially since they are no strangers to criticism of fascism and hatred.

It is troubling, therefore, that Gigi thanked the Ambanis for hosting her in Mumbai – a city where the government used a bulldozer to demolish an elderly Muslim man’s home just a week before the NMACC Gala, while a Hindu militant group demanded the destruction of a Muslim shrine.

Gigi Hadid has repeatedly made headlines for her outspoken support for Palestine, and no amount of criticism from Israeli lobby groups has deterred her. But India’s Hindu-racist government has a bulldozer fetish copied straight from Israel. The heavy machinery will be used to raze hundreds of Muslim homes, businesses and places of worship across the country. The bulldozer has become a means, as Indian activist Afreen Fatima puts it, to “collectively punish” Muslims for dissenting or opposing extremist Hindu mobs, and even simply for existing.

Media outlets under Ambani’s control call this “law and order.” Amnesty International speaks of a violation of international human rights law.

It is troubling, therefore, that Gigi thanked the Ambanis for hosting her in Mumbai – a city where the government used a bulldozer to demolish an elderly Muslim man’s home just a week before the NMACC Gala, while a Hindu militant group demanded the destruction of a Muslim shrine.

Similarly, Penelope Cruz was one of dozens of Spanish celebrities to sign a letter urging the European Union to denounce Israel’s 2014 “genocide” of the Palestinians in the media Ambani controls so tightly. The anti-Muslim messages are so widespread last year that the Editors’ Guild of India compared the mainstream media to Radio Rwanda.

Poorna Jagannathan, who played the mother of Maitreyi Ramakrishnan’s character on Netflix’s Never Have I Ever, also produced playwright Yael Farber’s Nirbhaya. The play tells the story of one of the most brutal gang rape cases in India and opens up a broader conversation about sexual violence in India. In Modi and Ambani’s India, men who gang rape Muslim women are released from prison and garlanded as heroes, while Hindu women have their relationships with Muslim men monitored by pro-Modi militant groups.

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Curator Jasmine Wahi has stated in an interview that she “speaks[s] against what [is] inherently wrong or oppressive”, either to oneself or to others. She is also a vocal critic of Donald Trump for his blatant racism and sexism. Trump and Modi have praised one another and share similar goals: driving Muslims out of their countries, belittling women, and building fascist fan bases.

Especially Priyanka Chopra can do better. The double standard in their values ​​is evident. Last year she praised Iranian women for protesting the regime’s attempt to control their clothing – but she remained noticeably silent after young Muslim women in the Indian state of Karnataka were forced out of school for choosing to wear hijab wear them while being threatened and verbally abused by Hindu militant groups, politicians and Ambani-owned news channels.

Some might say that every nation has its problems. Should we then be asking celebrities to do better after every appearance in every inevitably flawed nation? No one has spoken out against Gigi and Zendaya for attending the Met Gala while Trump was President, just as no one berates the celebrities at Paris Fashion Week for being in a country ravaged by anti-Blackness and Islamophobia becomes.

The difference here is that the stars of the NMACC were guests of the Ambani family, while Mukesh Ambani’s agenda is on display for all to see. No one should help him clean up India’s image. Especially not at a time when Genocide Watch has placed India on the eighth of ten levels of genocide.

“It was an honor to be there and to see your family’s vision come to life,” Gigi Hadid told the Ambanis in a tagged Instagram post. But the Ambanis’ full vision of India is nothing special.

Safa Ahmed is an Indian-American independent journalist based in Raleigh, North Carolina.