Singer Sonu Nigam said speaking about any woman in this manner is a sin. Director Milaap Zaveri, maker of a soft-porn film called “Mastizaade,” said he had earlier stood by comedy collective All India Bakchod (AIB) but won’t do this time. Bhat is an AIB founder member.

Homilies from the Bollywood fraternity on such matters can be rich, though, especially when many of them have been associated with crude, sexist, and homophobic films.

Deshmukh himself played important roles in movies such as “Kya Kool Hain Hum” and “Grand Masti”, laden with sexual innuendoes and entendre, and which were accused of debasing women. “In Grand Masti, horrendous jokes revolving around sex and women made the rounds. Not only were they cringe-worthy but also negative. But, the film ended up making money and giving rise to increase in number of films,” Vishal Manve wrote in the DNA newspaper in April 2014.

Interestingly, Pahalaj Nihalani, the current censor board chief and maker of some B-grade potboilers, has even called for the arrest of Bhat.

Even Kamaal R Khan, Twitter’s resident Bollywood clown who says the most disrespectful of things about actors, has joined the “Down with Tanmay Bhat” bandwagon. “Shame on you!” tweets Satish Kaushik. Documentary filmmaker and censor board member Ashok Pandit called it cultural terrorism.

Meanwhile, Bhat has tweeted about how the trolling and abuse he faced had included death threats. But to his critics and some of Bollywood’s flagbearers, somehow, that’s not appalling, shocking, disgusting, or disrespectful.

There have been industry voices supportive of Bhat, too. For instance, outspoken film-maker Mahesh Bhat simply quoted Goerge Carlin to make his point.

Mahesh Bhat’s voice, though, is merely a candle in a thunderstorm.

Censorship

The Mumbai police have, meanwhile, asked Facebook and YouTube to take down Bhat’s video and provide the IP addresses used to upload them. Perhaps they don’t yet know what Snapchat is.

Does Bollywood really want a country where we can’t be disrespectful of our most loved icons? Is that the new reasonable restriction on free speech? Already, the list of things Bollywood can’t touch without attracting the ire of either the censor board or some right-wing sections of the society includes gods, the Gandhi family, homosexualitywidows, long kissing, girls dancing with hoses, barbers… and it goes on.

Perhaps all that Bollywood can do is fawn before the prime minister of the day, fly kites, and take selfies with him, so that all sins are forgiven.

We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.

📬 Sign up for the Daily Brief

Our free, fast, and fun briefing on the global economy, delivered every weekday morning.