With a global release on 8,000 screens in 5,000 cinema theatres and record-breaking earnings at home, ‘Pathan’ is Indian cinema's evergreen hero Shah Rukh Khan’s finest hour, topping a three-decade career in the world’s most prolific film industry. 

The film is marching to smashing more records if industry reports are any indication. After a pre-release controversy stirred by motivated disinformation and slander from rightwing political forces, the rapturous reception to the film from his legion of fans has silenced his critics. The buzz in Bollywood is that it is expected to net over Rs 200 crores (USD 24 million), in the very first week since its release, close to its estimated production cost of Rs 269 crores.

It is the fourth instalment in the YRF Spy Universe. Khan, 57, popularly known by his initials SRK,  was last seen as a lead actor in Zero (2018), which had not earned too well. The evergreen romantic, whose adulation cuts across generations and cultures across the vast subcontinent and its diaspora, is back on the screen after four years with a bang. Twenty-three cinema theatres that closed down during the Covid-19 pandemic reopened to screen Pathan and recover lost business. 

With India's pluralist traditions coming increasingly under question under a Hindu majoritarian dispensation, and a vicious call-out culture directed insidiously against Muslim stars and their films from Bollywood, the overwhelming popular response to the film - with social media images of people dancing in the aisles and in front of the screen across cinema theatres -  has given a resounding thumbs-down to the growing cancel culture and redeemed the country's secular credentials that the world has long known and admired.

The credit for this about-turn from protests to praise must go to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to some extent. At a recent conclave of his party, he reportedly counselled against making "unnecessary comments” on films which then generate unwarranted controversy and negative publicity for the ruling BJP and government.

Objectors turned supporters

When a cinema screen was burnt in Guwahati by extremist goons, Khan telephoned Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma who assured full protection; so did Gujarat Home Minister Harsh Sanghavi after violence in Ahmedabad. It negated the earlier campaign launched by Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Narottam Mishra.

Those pitted against the film had problems with the title, which they presumed exalted Muslims and their role in India's chequered history, purely because its main protagonist was Shah Rukh Khan, who has been on the radar of Hindu nationalists and their media drumbeaters. 

But once it was released, stones stopped being pelted. Theatres have not been attacked and burnt. Earlier slogan-shouting has ended and the social media campaigners have gone silent or changed their tune. Detractors are left dumbfounded, and opponents have become proponents of the film. 

Besides their known prejudices against Khan (all Khans in general), their reason, for the most part,  their objection was that leading lady Deepika Padukone sported a saffron-coloured bikini in a dance sequence with Khan, for all of 20 seconds. Right-wing Hindutva groups alleged that this was an ‘insult’ to their faith where saffron is associated with Hindu holiness.  Khan’s effigies were burnt.  Some cinema personalities joined the campaign for that five-minute fame and vented righteous anger on social media.

Although not directly related to the anti-Pathan campaign, more in the context of the cancel culture, Amitabh Bachchan, the country's cinema icon, and Khan spoke up at the recent Kolkata International Film Festival. Bachchan talked about questions being raised on “civil liberties and freedom of speech tradition” that the constitution and the law of the land guaranteed. As if in tandem, Khan appealed for a saner and balanced approach to debatable issues and said cinema was best placed to counter divisiveness on social media.

Their messages, it would seem, went right to the top, apparently prompting Modi’s counsel. It has silenced– one hopes for some time – the cultural vigilantes who speak and act against a film without seeing or knowing anything about it.  

It is difficult to ignore in this context the government’s official rejection of a two-part series by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on Modi’s alleged role in Gujarat’s violence in 2002 when he was the state’s chief minister. Without going into the film’s merits or otherwise, it needs to be noted that politically sensitive, unwelcome issues can often resurface and as a democracy with a global standing, India needs to deal with them more maturely.  

Besides pitching in with a hit when many Bollywood films have miserably flopped, the rapidly widening cracks in Bollywood have been cemented with Pathan and its patriotic (read anti-Pakistan) theme. Even actor-director Kangana Ranaut, a known Khan critic and a staunch Modi supporter, has hastened to suggest that the film be re-christened “Indian Pathan.”

This new Pathan -  a fiercely proud martial community with roots straddling Afghanistan and Pakistan - seems to be that he is acceptable if he is a "patriotic Indian". 

Plaudits for Indian, Pakistani cinema

Asked in the film if he is a Muslim, and that too by a woman from an adversarial force he is supposed to be combating, the protagonist says he does not know. An orphan, his parent(s) had abandoned him at a cinema theatre. This sounds like the lost-and-found theme popular in Bollywood. In that case, one wishes that what is ‘found’ - or rediscovered - is the inclusive Indian society that he represents.

Pathan is fictionally an exiled agent of the Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) fighting terrorists out to harm the country. The lady who seeks to know his identity is from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), reviews say. How the two meet, clash, and engage in song and dance is the stuff Bollywood has been dishing out for the past two decades. 

There is no novelty since there are many Indian clones. Also, some Pakistani filmmakers have sought to ‘respond’ to Bollywood’s Pakistan-bashing jingoism of which ‘Waar’ (2013) is the most notable and its sequel 'Waar 2' is in the making.

Pathan’s box-office triumph comes at a time when both India and Pakistan have been earning plaudits in the world of global cinema. The song “Natu, Natu” from Indian action-thriller RRR in the southern Telugu language is busy winning accolades, and a nomination at the 95th Academy Awards (Oscar) along with Indian documentaries. Pakistani film ‘Joyland’ has also earned critical acclaim abroad, despite opposition from social conservatives at home. It is the first Pakistani film short-listed in the Best International Feature Film category for the Oscars. Pakistani artists have made a name at the Grammys as well.  It is certainly a good augury that the two South Asian neighbours compete cinematically but do not engage in real war.

Film with a universal message

On Pathan, Cath Clarke of The Guardian newspaper enthusiastically wrote: "This enjoyable high-octane action spy movie from India is possibly the most fun you can currently have at the cinema. Still, the cheers kept coming: the loudest whoop of all when Salman Khan made an entrance as Tiger, a hero from an earlier movie in the series".

The film, directed by Siddharth 
Anand, seems to have even lured the Kashmiri militants back to cinema theatres they once boycotted. In 1990, they had got all 30 theatres in the Valley closed. With four more screens added since, it is being viewed with great enthusiasm, even though their protests against the 2019 revocation of Kashmir's special constitutional status form the backdrop for the movie’s action.   

Pathan is a film to entertain viewers across ages and demographies who love the Indian Bollywood staple made with some flair and panache. If in the process it carries a universal message, it is doubly welcome.

It places SRK centrestage a decade after his “My Name is Khan.” An Indian film with a significant American contribution, it was well-received globally. Khan and India were the flagbearers of a universal message for peace and against terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 events. The “Indian Pathan” can take up the baton of harmony and patriotism where his previous film left off. 

(The author is a veteran Indian journalist and commentator on South Asian issues. Views are personal. He can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com)