For an actor who stands out spectacularly among contemporaries for lending his name and voice to issues of national significance in his films, Aamir’s despondency in contemporary India comes as a shock to his fans
The year 2006 witnessed the release of a Hindi film that instantly attained iconic status for scripting a fresh vocabulary of protest for Generation Next. Rang De Basanti, in a manner unprecedented in cinematic history, became an evocative catalyst of social debate on issues that crowd the lives of ordinary men and women and which the ‘system’ is largely apathetic to. Indeed, the film rewrote the way India’s civil society would protest against inefficient political, legal and social systems and malaise in the decade to follow.
This trip down memory lane is occasioned by the recent unnecessary, hurtful and patently unprovoked utterances from the man who stood at the centre of the film’s iconic protest, Aamir Khan. A month after the film’s release, ‘the RDB effect’ as it came to be subsequently known, hovered over the huge public and media outcry when the key accused in the 1999 high-profile Jessica lal murder case were acquitted because of a lackadaisical prosecution and hostile witnesses. Fired into action by the film’s novel protest, India’s youth congregated at India Gate, the reel-life venue in Rang De Basanti, and held a candlelight vigil seeking justice for Jessica — and it worked.
Subsequently, not only was the country’s legal system forced to re-examine the Jessica lal case, the film resonated as far as the United States when similar justice was sought in the rape and murder of Priyardarshini Mattoo. The RDB syndrome found further credence in the deluge of protesters from across the country who stormed down New Delhi’s Rajpath, braving freezing water cannons on a cold December morning in 2012 to shake the nation’s conscience over the brutal Nirbhaya rape and murder case. Anna Hazare’s symbolic tryst at the Capital’s Ramlila Maidan with his fight against corruption followed thereafter, the RDB effect clearly rippling through all these public agitations.
Rang De Basanti brilliantly juxtaposed India’s freedom struggle with the angst of a clutch of university students compelled by contemporary circumstances to wage a war as critical as India’s independence movement, a battle against the establishment, against corruption, against political apathy and against social indifference to such causes. As one of the protagonists, Kunal Kapoor, later explained, the film presented “patriotism in a package that the youngsters understood and empathised with”. Admittedly, this fresh breath of patriotic fervour that Rang De Basanti infused in the youth could not have been lost on Aamir himself, an actor whose stupendous success as a cine star is largely a factor of his unique ability to marry commercial entertainment with an infectious sincerity to reel-life characters mirroring real and felt experiences of his ardent followers.
For a man who stands out spectacularly among his contemporaries for lending his name and voice to issues of utmost social, human, and political significance in his films, Aamir’s new avatar as Kiran Rao’s insecure husband suffering despondency in contemporary India has shocked and pained many of his admirers. If ACP Rathore’s determination to weed out Pakistani terror operatives from Indian soil in Sarfarosh resonated in the deafening gunfire at Kargil in 1999, lagaan’s Bhuvan thrilled modern India with the rustic challenge he hurled at the British Raj. If Ram Shankar Nikumbh in Taare Zameen Par compelled middle India to deal with the stigma of dyslexia, Phunsukh Wangdoo alias Rancho in 3 Idiots took the beast of vocational education in India by its horns. More recently, PK fearlessly punctured the self-imposed aura of India’s ubiquitous godmen. Admittedly, if articulating the seething anger of the youth against the establishment in the 70s made Amitabh Bachchan the legend he is, Aamir’s relevance as a star too is specifically rooted in his body of work.
Unlike Salman Khan or Shah Rukh Khan, who are patently unapologetic about being pure entertainers, Aamir has consciously sought to be different. An actor who is known to turn to a game of chess or even a Charles Dickens or a Dostoevsky in between shots, Aamir’s appeal flows from people’s perception of him as a thinking actor with his heart in the right place, and whose real life persona genuinely matches his various reel life characters, be it the evocative ‘Atithi Devo Bhava’ advertisements for Incredible India or his poignant social documentation in the Satyamev Jayate television series. In fact, it is through such ventures outside popular cinema that Aamir’s image as a right-thinking patriotic Indian stands inarguably validated.
Therefore, it dismayed many that Aamir chose to ventilate his feelings on the prevailing atmosphere of “insecurity”, “growing disquiet” and “despondency” in India, only days before Parliament was to meet for its Winter Session, in full knowledge of the political implications of his remarks. While dissent in a democracy is healthy, it appears misplaced coming from a man who as recently as this June was chosen by the Modi Government to continue as the face of Incredible India. Since he is not known to be a motormouth, publicity-hungry actor, Aamir Khan’s laboured empathy with the tedious ‘intolerance’ drama seemed curiously motivated to appease a partisan audience.
Arguably, the actor has made peace with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, both he and the then Gujarat Chief Minister having travelled a great distance from 2006 when Aamir’s film Fanaa was unofficially banned in Gujarat following his criticism of the State Government’s handling of the Narmada Dam issue. In joining the recent bandwagon of cacophonous, politically motivated artists and writers who are pathologically intolerant of the BJP, Aamir struck a jarring note. His reference to events in the recent six or eight months made one question the wisdom of an otherwise well-read and socially aware actor who must explain how in recent months India’s social fabric, its texture and hue, has altered dramatically from what it has been for the past 50 to 60 years.
It was indeed unfortunate that the actor chose to publicly voice his and his wife’s misplaced phobia of living in this country, a view that found him standing in the dubious company of someone like Arundhati Roy, whose writings, some bordering on sedition, have routinely struck a note of discontent without substance. Cinema actors, like politicians, are public figures who must forever be mindful of the implications of their public utterances. Aamir, the otherwise careful speaker, seems to have slipped up on this one occasion.
However, to be fair to one of Indian cinema’s most endearing stars, Aamir promptly embarked on a course-correction mission. Instead of remaining stubbornly oblivious to the barrage of criticism directed his way, the actor immediately found merit in declaring that “India is my country, I love it, I feel fortunate for being born here, and this is where I am staying.” For all those intolerant protesters out there who have decided to shame the entire nation in their partisan fervour to shame a particular political party, a leaf out of Aamir Khan’s book is highly recommended.