How Salman Khan’s verdict has polarized India?

Here’s a summary of what’s happening around the word – four athletes from Kerala tried to commit suicide of which 1 has died and 3 critical, GST has been passed in the Lok Sabha, Land acquisition bill has being tabled again in Lok Sabha, Nepal has moved towards rehabilitating their people, Indian political parties are playing politics over Dawood Ibrahim, Pakistan claims Dawood is not in Pakistan, Britain elections happened, Rahul Gandhi has joined twitter, Kumar Vishwas is still in news for all the wrong reasons, Sensex is doing a deep-dive, rupee is down to 64 and shows no sign of improvement. There’s more, but I choose not to deviate from the topic.

None of us can be blamed for missing out on the above mentioned events. Our ignorance is primarily because all of us were engrossed in #SalmanVerdict.

Who was behind the wheel anyway?

Wednesday, 6th of May, saw an emotional outburst from all the Indians living worldwide. Many of us even went on to question the judiciary, the establishment we Indians should have the utmost respect towards. Certain people tried flirting with logic and failed miserably at it. Some of them, probably people whose career Salman Khan built, pledged allegiance to the superstar by making ridiculous arguments. Indian media had a field day and probably achieved their monthly revenue targets from record viewership.

Through all this, I think we Indians have inadvertently divided ourselves into one of the below mentioned  groups. If the question is who divided us, I honestly don't know. I don't think Salman Khan has any role to play here. Indian media and some foolish people on social media surely played their part. 

In my opinion, #SalmanVerdict divided us into one of these groups – 

• Salman Khan fanatic group: These are the die-hard Salman followers. The people belonging to this group are not only fans, but are “fanatic” in the real sense. These are the people who have started blaming people sleeping on footpath for the accident. Some compared this to a train driver getting arrested due to a trespassing incident. Logic took a serious beating thanks to these people. Some even suggested that he is now a changed man and hence should not be jailed. Going by this logic, eminent saints in every religion can commit accidents that results in a death but remain safe in the eyes of the law because they have done a lot of good deeds! Going by the same logic, owner of Microsoft is free to harm people since his products (namely PowerPoint and Excel) have played a huge part in the livelihood of millions.
• Support Salman, but respect legal judgment: This is the group filled with his family, friends, well-wishers, fellow industry people and true law-abiding fans. They have given their full support to Salman Khan, but trust and respect the law of the land. They still believe that Salman has done no wrong and law will take its own course. In a way, the Friday HC decision to suspend the session court’s verdict has vindicated their stand. These are the sensible folks who know what to talk, when to talk and most importantly, when NOT to talk!
• It doesn't matter club: I don’t think there are people in Indian who don’t know who Salman Khan is. He is a superstar in India and probably that one of those few actors in India who can assure box office success. But there are millions of people in India struggling for their daily wages to keep up with growing inflation. For these people who get up every day not knowing where their next wage is going to come from, this verdict doesn’t matter to them at all. This verdict will not help increase their wage, will not improve their standards and will do nothing for all at them. Whether you and I may not agree with this, there are many who are in this group!

Did I miss out on anything? Did I misread the situation? And which club do you belong to?