The audience sees in Jawan a critique of the PM, in contrast to BJP supporters and the apolitical, who view it as just a thriller
Shah Rukh Khan in a still from the action thriller Jawan
The antidote to the heavy head a person may get after watching Jawan, with its interminable chase-fight-kill sequences and unbearably loud music, would not be an analgesic but a reflection over Shah Rukh Khan’s audacity to critique Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party. Khan has stood up when other filmstars have either chosen to stay silent or fawn over Modi, and propaganda films like The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story have become the season’s flavour.
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Yet credit is also due to viewers, whose prior knowledge and political inclinations have them see beyond the ostensible in Jawan. With free speech imperilled and censors petrified of displeasing the BJP, the film’s political double entendre every ten minutes invites viewers to enter into a surreptitious pact with Khan for a subversive seeing of Jawan. In sharp contrast to them are BJP supporters and the apolitical, who see the film as just a stylish thriller.
Weaned on literalism and habituated to watching films without a subtext, such as Gadar II, the BJP belatedly woke up to the subversive viewing of Jawan afoot in theatres, courtesy the writeups of film critics. The party issued a press release applauding Khan for highlighting the corruption of the previous United Progressive Alliance governments, hoping to nudge viewers to watch Jawan through saffron-tinged glasses.
The BJP failed to discern Jawan’s subversive quality as the film does not take on Hindutva’s pet peeves regarding Muslims. Indeed, Jawan imitates the politics of Opposition leaders, who are reluctant to take on the Hindutva ideology head-on out of their fear of alienating Hindus and forfeiting their votes. Jawan, too, shies away from disenchanting Hindus who vote for the BJP but also love Khan.
The stakes are extraordinarily high for both Khan and Opposition leaders to take risks. And so, Jawan, like Opposition leaders, prefers to focus on misgovernance, hoping this strategy would coax BJP supporters into asking: “Main Kaun Hoon? (Who am I?)” This question is asked by Jawan’s protagonist Vikram Rathore, father of Azad, who suffers from amnesia, a trope for India forgetting its past. Azad’s noble mission restores the father’s memory, thus conveying to the ageing generation that the India they once knew could be returned to them by their children.
Sure, some of the examples of misgovernance that Jawan highlights could implicate the UPA as well. But Jawan’s prioritising of issues unequivocally establishes its anti-BJP credentials, further bolstered by our prior knowledge of Khan’s politics. For instance, Jawan focuses on the distress of farmers, an issue as old as the Hindi film industry, but it juxtaposes their woes with hefty loan waivers granted to industrialists, giving a novel spin to a trite theme. When the richest among them is compelled to pay crores as a ransom, the payoff is transferred to the accounts of farmers.
Those political are bound to conclude that Khan is critiquing Modi’s indifference to the 2021 farmer protest, and his jumla of crediting R15 lakh to every bank account, after repatriating the black money stashed abroad. But none can miss the unmistakable reference to Gorakhpur’s Dr Kafeel Khan, who arranged oxygen cylinders for ailing children but failed to save them. The person playing Dr Kafeel in Jawan is Dr Earam, and the Muslim-ness of the names of real and reel heroes leaves viewers with no doubt that SRK wants them to connect the dots.
Thereafter, every episode of misgovernance becomes a scream against Modi. A syndicate of industrialists funding a party most supportive of big business becomes a pointer to the alleged Modi-Adani symbiotic relationship. The violation of environmental laws becomes a reference to the current regime’s prioritising of development over ecology.
Indeed, the subversive pact has viewers asking questions even as guns boom, lovers romance, and a daughter chooses a man to marry her mother, who birthed the child outside wedlock. Why is the death tally in the Vikram Rathore-led anti-terrorist mission, which failed because the guns of soldiers would not fire, a precise 40—did I hear it right?—not 26 or 70? Is this a reference to the 40 soldiers who perished instantaneously in the 2019 Pulwama bombing? Are the dud guns a substitute to the charge of intelligence failure that former governor Satya Pal Malik made then?
Perhaps it’s a case of over-seeing, over-reading scenes in Jawan, making the viewing hallucinatory, a reflection of viewers’ frustration with Indian politics.
But this temptation to match scenes in Jawan with real-life situations reaches an apogee during Khan’s monologue on why people must think before they vote for a party. Suddenly, in this episode, he flashes his palm, fingers stretched and pointing skyward. Friends and family saw in this gesture Khan’s call to vote for the Congress. SRK’s fingers were not stuck together as closely as they are in the Congress election symbol, I countered.
Such, then, is the power of subversive pacts, often employed in totalitarian States to pull the wool over the eyes of censors, as Jawan, too, does, with the message: a jawan is not just the person guarding the border, but also the one who makes democracy meaningful.
The writer is a senior journalist
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper
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