Pathaan: Balm for India’s battered soul

Film's success reminds us of the once-flawed secular nation-state that India used to be

PUNE:

Shah Rukh Khan’s stardom is not unknown in South Asia. Largely famous for redefining heterosexual romance to generations born in the 1980s, 90s and early 2000s, his popularity, especially amongst his women fan following has only grown. Shranyana Bhattacharya in her book, Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, explores in a series of interviews, how women navigate career hardships, family, love, and friendships through the varied and sometimes arid landscape of Shah Rukh’s stardom.

Their love for Shah Rukh transforms and adapts itself to reinvent the meanings of life, as they move from his films to his interviews. His films in the past decade or so lacked their earlier luster or charm. Films such as Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017) and Dilwale (2016 ) were nothing more than caricatures of the quintessential SRK role. Zero (2018), his last film before Pathaan failed at the box office.

As much as both Shah Rukh’s failure and success at the box office means a lot more to India than just numbers, his recent filmography can’t be divorced from the contemporary historical genre in popular Hindi cinema, which is aided by jingoism and reinvention of history to fit the Hindutva narrative.

Shah Rukh stayed away from this genre and arguably this genre in its contemporary form in the Hindi film industry required non-Muslim actors and stars in the lead roles. But after a four-year-long hiatus, he is back on Indian screens with Pathaan, an espionage melodrama and thriller with him in the role of a spy, who teams up with a Pakistani agent Rubai, played by Deepika Padukone.

Both Shah Rukh and Padukone have faced their share of ordeal in the current regime, where Padukone was trolled for visit to Jawaharlal Nehru University, during the Citizenship Amendment Act protests in India. She received a significant political backlash after this stand and her film Chhapaak (2020) based on the life of an acid attack survivor, tanked at the box office. Khan’s torment has been far worse. He has been under constant political attacks since 2016 after his very carefully calibrated comments on the secular fabric of India and the constitutional commitments of every Indian citizen.

Intolerance against Khan has only grown after this, even when he refrained from making any further comments on India’s growing intolerance towards her minorities. With this backdrop of vendetta against India’s Muslim superstar, his middle-class roots, interfaith marriage to a Hindu woman and open embrace of India’s secular and multicultural ethos, Shah Rukh’s latest film Pathaan has broken all previous records by becoming the highest-grosser film of Bollywood ever.

Pathaan from the very beginning critiques the institutions. Jim, played by John Abraham is an Indian agent turned into an independent operator who works for money. Jim has not turned foe without reason and his hatred for his country has an explanation in the backstory where his pregnant wife is killed by terrorists after the Indian government refuses to negotiate with terrorists.

The plot follows India’s revocation of article 370, which provided special status to Jammu and Kashmir. The film celebrates the revocation of article 370 and yet it has been received with unparalleled enthusiasm in Kashmir, where many single-screen theatres have reopened due to demands for more shows.

Through these contradictions of escaping blatant jingoism o and soft Hindutva messaging, Pathaan reminds the Indian audience of the once flawed secular nation-state that India used to be. I call it flawed because it was flawed in its being. It remained dangerously oblivion to caste questions, gender, and other ethnic identities in India. It required Muslims to display their patriotism and loyalty, however, this flawed secularism also ensured a co-existence and multiculturalism and multi-religious harmony.

Pathaan also escapes the cringe-worthy depiction of a Pakistani intelligence officer. Rubai is an intelligent officer who races, chases, and wins alongside Pathaan. In India, Pathaan may have connotations of upper caste identity, although it is an ethnic identity. But the film very interestingly brings in an anecdote in a flashback, where the name is a legacy of serving Afghanistan and saving innocent villagers thus winning love and a family. He is an orphan who is quite cine-poetically abandoned in a cinema hall.

The persecution of Khan’s family, especially his son’s arrest and then acquittal from all the charges of possession of illegal drugs; his calm and graceful handling of the situation in the face of travesty earned him sympathies from all quarters and especially his women fan following. His humble salaams and namastes while entering the prison complex to meet his son, received much-deserved empathy. His calm composure managed to expose the pettiness of the right wing.

In the times when India’s slip into dark times is followed by persecution of minorities, incidents of lynching and growing intolerance, Pathaan works like a palliative. It may just be a placebo, however even a placebo works on a wounded heart. The success of Pathaan reminds us of the old, tolerant, inclusive India that loved its film stars irrespective of their religious identities.

About the author

Rutuja Deshmukh is a visiting faculty member of the Cinema Department at Savitribai Phule Pune University, India. She also teaches film and culture at FLAME University, Pune as a visiting faculty member.

Her research areas include early cinema, archives, popular cinema, popular cultures, and questions of gender and representation at the intersection of neoliberalism. She is co-editor of the book – Historicising Myths in Contemporary India: Cinematic Representations and Nationalist Agendas in Hindi Cinema. She tweets @rut28.

Have something to add to the story? Share it in the comments below.