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India Fired Up over Gere PDA

Tue., Apr. 17, 2007 12:35 PM PDT by Josh Grossberg

An officer, maybe, but when it comes to Indian audiences, Richard Gere is no gentleman.

The Hollywood star was burned in effigy throughout the country Monday after taking Bollywood beauty Shilpa Shetty in his arms and showering her with kisses during an AIDS event, a big no-no in a land where modesty reigns supreme.

According to local media reports, Gere, 57, was appearing at a rally in New Delhi, when, in a humorous nod to his 2005 flick Shall We Dance?, he surprised the 31-year-old actress by smooching her hand and planting several wet ones on her cheek.

A crowd of several thousand truckers greeted the spontaneous osculation with laughs and whistles and the actors then launched into their campaign promoting safe sex to combat HIV, of which India has the highest percentage of infections in the world.

But once images and video of the embrace began to circulate, Hindu traditionalists were outraged. Indian custom typically frowns upon men showing public affection toward women to protect them from the supposedly pernicious influence of western culture.

Within hours, groups of men took to the streets in several major cities and began torching effigies of the Unfaithful star—not exactly the kind of reception one would expect for Gere, a dedicated Buddhist who's usually adept at respecting local cultural norms. Other activists lit fire to posters of Shetty, shouted "Death to Shilpa Shetty" and danced around the ashes.

Shetty—perhaps best known to western audiences as the most recent winner of Britain's Big Brother, where she was subjected to racist taunts by her fellow competitors—defended Gere and blamed the media for literally stoking the flames.

"I think too much has been made out of something that was really quite unimportant," Sky News quoted her as saying. "He was trying to strike his dance pose from Shall We Dance?, his previous movie. He kind of, you know, just bent over me and he kisses me on the cheeks—I mean, that was it!

"Then [TV stations] kept playing and replaying it on the channels and people didn't even know why we were there, and that kind of sad and infuriated me," she added. (There are still several postings of the clip on YouTube.)

Shetty said she believes the vast majority of Indians aren't upset by such behavior, only staunch members belonging of the militant Hindu nationalist party Shiv Sena, which called on Gere to apologize and then skedaddle.

"It was just, you know, some lunatic fringe—that complete minority voice—that definitely doesn't represent the symbol of my country," she continued.

Gere's rep did not immediately comment on the controversy.

In any case, the actor opted for cooler climates, flying to the Nepalese city of Kathmandu for a low-key visit with Tibetan refugees, whom he's long supported in their quest for independence from China.