Salman dragged Somy Ali by her hair

The Toxic Masculinity of Salman Khan

On the one hand, insensitive statements about rape and rape survivors, are par for the course in India's thriving rape culture, where estimates based merely on reported cases, say a woman is raped every 20 minutes. Everyone from politicians, to television commentators, senior journalists, film directors and page three socialites routinely comment on rape - comparing victims to the living dead, calling them prostitutes, questioning the veracity of sub judice rape cases. In most of these instances, public outrage has proven to be an immediate and occasionally effective way of changing the way we speak about sexual violence.

But finally, they're only words, easily dismissed, soon forgotten. To give them undue attention is to risk missing the bigger, more important picture. When it comes to Khan, the picture of his casual, verbal misogyny is incomplete without the story of his persistently violent and abusive behaviour with the women in his life.

In September 2002, beauty pageant winner, Aishwarya Rai did something unheard of in Bombay - she wrote an open letter to the press about Salman Khan. The letter was the final chapter of a love story turned toxic. In it, Rai swore she would never work with Khan in a film again:

After we broke up, he would call me and talk rubbish. He also suspected me of having affairs with my co-stars. I was linked up with everyone, from Abhishek Bachchan to Shah Rukh Khan. There were times when Salman got physical with me, luckily without leaving any marks. And, I would go to work as if nothing had happened. Salman hounded me and caused physical injuries to himself when I refused to take his calls," she wrote. Khan's temper had not just caused Rai emotional, physical and mental trauma " it also cost her lucrative projects and damaged her professional reputation.

But Khan's mania didn't begin or end with Aishwarya Rai. His first girlfriend from the film industry, Sangeeta Bijlani once described being with Salman as the most emotionally traumatic phase' she had ever endured. In the following years, when he began to date Pakistani model Somy Ali, film circles were rife with stories of Salman dragging her by the hair, publicly berating her, and on one occasion pouring a drink on her head because despite his own fondness for tipple, he didn't like the sight of his girlfriend drinking. After they broke up, Ali moved to the US and began a charity for victims of domestic abuse, a move she says was born from the deep depression her last relationship left her with.

Unlike Aishwarya, Sangeeta Bijlani and Somy Ali never spoke to the press about Salman in any detail. At present, both claim a deep fondness for the actor, and a willingness to let bygones be bygones. Only on one occasion, when Khan made a significant donation to Ali's charity, No More Tears, she clarified the story about the rum and coke to the New York Times: Salman had objected to her drinking, but he had not poured the drink on her head. He merely emptied it on the table where Ali was seated.

Khan frequently discusses incidents like this with the press, adding to his own legend of a conservative, passionate lover. Describing a night from November 2001, when Khan had shown up outside Rai's door in a drunken fugue, banging on the door for hours, screaming to be let in, threatening to jump off the building until her father was forced to file a police complaint against the actor, he said:

The incident is true, but it was overhyped by the media. I have a relationship with Aishwarya. If you do not fight in a relationship, it means you do not love each other. Why would I squabble with a person who is a stranger to me? Such things happen between us only because we love each other. Now, even the police have barred me from entering that building.'

Referring to another incident, when Khan got into a screaming match and allegedly tried to attack actor and then girlfriend Katrina Kaif with a stick on a movie set, because he didn't like her costume, Salman said:

"It (the blouse) didn't fit properly, and would have taken away from the beauty of the scene. Eat what you like, and wear what others like. It is as simple as that."

Every time life has presented Salman Khan with a choice, he's hurtled down the wrong path. But if you believe the narrative spun by his PR team, Khan's family and the actor himself, there is always a tragic story, or a simple miscommunication behind every setback' in Salman's life.

Hours after Khan's misplaced comment comparing himself to a raped woman, his father, the screen writer Salim Khan tweeted an apology on his behalf.

"Undoubtedly what Salman said is wrong, the simili [sic], example and the context. The intention was not wrong. Nevertheless I apologise on behalf of his family, his fans & friends. Forgiveness is to pardon the unpardonable or it is no virtue at all. To err is human, to forgive divine. Today on Intl Yoga Day, lets not run our shops on this mistake,"

In a separate interview, Khan's elder brother Arbaaz said the 50-year old was responsible for his own actions, but that his words had been misconstrued.:

"It was just the kind of (statement) where we compare things... I worked like a donkey' so now people will say you used the word donkey so some animal activist will come after you," he said.

Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap agreed that Khan's comment was thoughtless and daft, but placed responsibility with journalists who published the comment instead of the man who made them:

"How irresponsible it is to make that into a headline. I would have taken that out. It does not send a great signal, it empowers misogyny. Suddenly, people have got issue to jump on," he explained.

At every point, men like Salman are able to position themselves as the wronged party - he is too passionate, too hot headed, too much of a man's man, too kind-hearted, women take advantage of him. He beats up his girlfriends because he was hopelessly in love and wanted to settle down, while they were too career minded. He allegedly ran over pedestrians sleeping on the pavement because he was broken-hearted, drinking to forget Rai and her bitter words in the press. It is never really his fault.

In this sense, Khan is only one of the many examples of abusive men never held accountable for their violence, because their dealings with women are disregarded as an aspect of their personal lives, in which they may act whimsical, capricious and occasionally violent, with no repercussions to their professional lives " because they do good work.

This is why a man like Sardar Singh, Padma Shree awardee and captain of India's national men's hockey team, is able to speak about how much strength and focus it takes,for him to survive the allegations of rape made by his ex fiancee. Or why Stanford swimmer Brock Turner's father is able to rue his son's lack of appetite, ever since that one time he raped an unconscious young woman behind a dumpster.

In the past few weeks, a global conversation on toxic masculinity with regard to men like Orlando shooter Omar Mateen, and rapist Brock Turner has attempted to outline the aspects of maleness that create conditions for violence: the urge to establish dominance, contempt for those the male subject considers weaker, softer, or more effete' than him.

But let us remember that these qualities do not exist and thrive in a vacuum. They are encouraged and enabled by the active connivance of those (men and women) who seek to benefit from male (or a particular man's) privilege.

If Salman were to ever find himself in the deep end again, he knows he will be buoyed by the support of such enablers around him, who deliberately choose to remain blind to his faults. It is divine to forgive, after all, and this Friday, we'll do it again.

Nishita Jha is an independent journalist and New India Foundation Fellow. You can find her on Twitter: @nishswish

The Toxic Masculinity of Salman Khan