Shah Rukh Khan, Aryan Khan and the war on Bollywood

Shah Rukh Khan visited his son Aryan in prison on October 21, 2021.

Cultural revivalism is a dangerous thing, if enforced. History is full of such testaments—from Nazi Germany to Erdogan’s Turkey. Like everything else in a robust democracy, the cultural temperature of a nation or a society evolves constantly. It is a mirror to shifting tastes and generational chinks. Cultural temperature, when it permeates out of toxic social media echo chambers to really shatter entrenched world-views and tastes, becomes a propeller for new alchemies and directions.

Now, with the palpable war on Shah Rukh Khan, which is increasingly looking like vendetta, India’s cultural temperature is all awry. Although not known for his opinions on politics, political leaders or ideologues—he is blue blood of largely apolitical, anodyne Bollywood, after all—Shah Rukh has held his own when bulldozed. He has been anti-hero, hero, Romeo to a Pakistani Juliet (Yash Chopra’s Veer Zaara, 2004) and one of Hindi cinema’s most articulate primates. Hardly a woke warrior like Hollywood’s George Clooney or Meryl Streep, Shah Rukh hits best and hugs best as Film Nagar’s Romance Frontman. He is wired for the untiring embrace—you know, when he flings his arms out to galloping heroines for the gentle ensconce? 

But like Dilip Kumar, he doesn’t apologise for being Muslim. In 2010, when Shiv Sena attacked theatres showing his film My Name is Khan when he said that Pakistani cricket players shouldn’t be banned from participating in the Indian Premier League (IPL), he remained unfazed and adhered to his stand. Recently, when Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) acolytes on Twitter directed the “go to Pakistan” slur at him, he tweeted back: “Nobody has more right to live in this country than me, and I am not going to leave. So shut up.”

In 2015, he unequivocally expressed at a press conference on his 50th birthday that there was extreme intolerance in India. “Creativity is secular. Creativity ke andar koi jaat paat, koi dharm nahin aata hai. Kis religion ke hain. Humein kalaakaar se pyaar hai, na ke kahaan se aayein hain (Creativity does not involve caste or religion. We love the artist, not where s/he is from),” he famously said.

The same year, when the other big Khan, Aamir, mildly expressed his wife’s fear about the rising intolerance in India and contemplated moving out of the country, he lost his endorsement contract with Snapdeal.

Also see: 'Grace. Class. Decency': Video of Shah Rukh Khan outside jail to meet son Aryan Khan breaks internet's heart

In India, dissent and original thought have always had fierce adversaries. For a rigorous look into the history of offence in India, read Salil Tripathi’s Offence: The Hindu Case (Seagull Books). When late artist M.F. Husain left India in 2005, he had no choice but to leave. The Hindu establishment, through the Shiv Sena, its most potent vehicle in the 1990s and early 2000s, virtually hounded him out of the country. He painted Saraswati nude, he had made Bharat mata trivial—there were such allegations against the artist, which became court cases Husain had no patience, will or temperament to fight for years.

Like then, India is still using Section 295 (A) and Section 153 (A) of the Constitution to justify offence and demand cuts, bans and serial silencing of artistic voice in cinema and art. Both these sections allow imprisonment or fine for “deliberate and malicious acts” that insult religious beliefs of any class of citizens. Section 153 (A) extends the purview of the offended: Offence can be on grounds of “race, place of birth, residence, language, caste or community or any other ground whatsoever”, which may encourage feelings of hatred or animosity. The easily offended Indian has used these two archaic sections of the Constitution freely and gleefully.

Culture for this government is largely indigenous art forms, and the need to save them, rather than promote voices that redefine tastes and traditions—basically, culture as a reflection of majoritarian sentiments, state-sanctioned versions of nationalism and history and stories that rouse and affirm that nationalistic pride. In 2017, the government earmarked a Rs469 crore three-year budget for what it calls the National Mission on Cultural Mapping. It didn’t take off. Last month, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) was made to take over the cultural mission. IGNCA representatives have said that they are starting a trial run in 75 villages to document artists and cultural traditions in October itself.

Bollywood has been a soft target of successive governments since Independence. During the Emergency, Kishore Kumar was banned as an All India Radio (AIR) artiste when he declined singing in praise of the state. But the serial harassment and steamrolling of Hindi film artistes in the past few years has escalated beyond a degree we could imagine. Jailing his 23-year-old son Aryan this October for alleged possession of drugs at a cruise party - Aryan was arrested on October 3, and judicial custody for him and seven others has been extended again, till October 30 – has been read by some as an attack on Shah Rukh and our mass cultural barometer, the Hindi film industry – it is a message to its professionals. In extension, it is a symbol of attack on everything that is under threat in the new India. Bollywood has been a wonderfully pluralistic culture since its inception in the early 1900s. To target its biggest star, a Muslim outsider who made it to the Bachchan league by cementing a screen image that rests entirely on love stories, is to target all of Bollywood—and to trumpet hatred. 

Though not known for his opinions on politics, Shah Rukh has held his own when bulldozed. (Image: PTI)

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Under this government, voices against censorship—an old gag in our diverse country—on social media are louder than ever before. But is social media activism enough, now that the targeting of Bollywood on flimsy grounds has reached preposterous lengths? Now is the time for Bollywood’s aristocracy, its biggest stars, producers and directors, to openly recognise and own the Hindi film industry’s sway over Indians of all ages. It is our mass cultural register, which is not necessarily a validation of pluralism because like all establishments, power structures control success here too. But when it comes to religious syncretism, Bollywood has a flawless reputation. And Shah Rukh Khan is the most consummate mascot of this syncretism. To imprison his son on grounds that are now appearing to be flimsy, we are stripping India’s most popular embodier of love of dignity and justice. 

Akshay Kumar and Kangana Ranaut have already crossed over to be government mouthpieces. It’s time Bollywood began its own Culture War, to prop more of the likes of Prakash Raj, Anurag Kashyap and Swara Bhaskar, so what’s left of its syncretic utopia remains for Gen Z-plus aspirants. 

Read more: Aryan Khan Is Everyone's Child