Link to the editorial note and the panel discussion can be found here.

Cue I: ‘Bollywood’

My relationship with mainstream and popular A Grade Hindi films, ‘Bollywood’[i] to some, multiplex films as they are now called, has been a complex one, to say the least. My relationship with the stars, male, has also been interesting. It has been a long engagement, sustaining itself through multiple personal histories of a metropolitan cis-gender heterosexual self-formation over time; a sense of the broken, partitioned, Punjabi ethnic-national self; and diverse academic geographies inhabited in a checkered career of a sociologist committed to critically observing cognitive and imaginative spaces, particularly through a feminist lens. In the SRK Pathaan moment, I use memoir, or rather the telling of memory- necessarily a tad sentimental – as a method, to reflect on some aspects of this relationship. An exercise in the sociological imagination, this essay weaves the autobiographical with the historical, almost like in an autoethnography. True to feminist methodologies of writing, it weaves the personal with the political.

***

Like the typical middle-class girl woman who was sent to a convent school and was encouraged to pursue ‘further studies,’ I was raised with scepticism of things ‘superficial.’ This included cinema, fashion and of course ’boys.’ Each of these had to be negotiated, within one’s self and the world outside. Writing about what it means to be ‘into’ mainstream Hindi films and what it means to call myself a ‘fan’- or come out as a fan-  is one such attempt. The consequent equilibrium was and is always deferred.

In my family, cinema and the performing arts, unless classical, were perceived as ‘lower pursuits,’ not suited for the middle classes, and as I realized much later in life, for the upper castes. Strangely poetry was not, especially Urdu poetry. This is a poignant history of us, a people who lost a sense of self during the partition of Punjab in 1947. A people who wanted to reconstruct themselves after the trauma, using whatever privilege they had, or could acquire, in a socially upward journey. Interestingly, underlying this process were also visions of what the nation- and the world- must become, and what the goal of art must be. The task ahead was serious and lofty. It was a moral task. Of reconstruction.

In this scenario, even though Hindi films represented by the sheer composition of the industry- Punjabi-speaking people across the two nations could have easily been an active force in our new identity formation, my immediate family turned away from them. Or at least, we wanted to do so. As my Marxist father said, mainstream films were mindless, and escapist. Echoing what the theorists of the culture industry were to say. Being a trade unionist, my father had internalized Adorno and Horkheimer without ever having read them. Films, like all the arts, father said, must be meaningful, they were to reflect life’s struggle, they were to transmit progressive social values, they were to function as mirrors of what was wrong with our world, and what must be done to make it right. They were to imagine, and present, the path to progress. Most importantly, they had to do something for the marginal, the oppressed and the exploited of the world. I began to share his ideology early on. A Do Bigha Zameen, a Godaan, the Guru Dutt film were applauded by us for their realism and their authentic and lucid portrayal of the human condition. Later, the films of Basu Chatterji and Hrishikesh Mukherji were welcome for their breezy and liberal middle-class people and middle-class values. Interestingly, Garam Hava, one of the earliest films on the partition was brought to us much later. This film, together with the serial Buniyaad, led to some open conversations on the family’s experience of the partition at dinner time. Tamas was too brutal, but we watched it as a family witnessing the ghosts of our history.

My mother was schooled to become indifferent to films. Like the ‘good woman’ of Indian culture, she got busy making a life, and a home, from scratch. The project of ‘settling’ down was all-consuming. Yet, her engagement with Hindi films stayed alive through the songs she and her siblings knew, and sang, at all family get-togethers. In fact, in telling my birth story, mother always remembered the song Jo Wada Kiya Tha, Nibhana Padega from the 1963 film Tajamahal, a song penned by Sahir Ludhianvi, the darling poet lyricist of the progressives, which she would hear on the radio. As an annual ritual, the mother and her school staff comprising mostly women would go for a film at the end of the academic year, mostly at Rupam Theater in Sion, Koliwada, Mumbai. The school was called Sanatan Dharma High School and was situated in Guru Tegh Bahadur Nagar, from where many of the film industry hailed and which was also the place where many refugees of the Punjab partition had settled. I, the daughter of the Head Mistress would tag along, treated to ice cream and wafers in the much-awaited Intermission. The cinema experience would bring relief, effervescence, celebration, and guilty pleasure- even though the films chosen would always be ‘clean’ films. My earliest memory of watching a film in an air-conditioned theatre was watching Ashirwaad, the 1968 film made by Hrishikesh Mukherji, with this lovely group of women. Even today, Ik tha bachpaan and Jeevan se lambey hai bandhu, yeh jeevan ke rastey, penned by the ‘sentimental’ lyricist of Hindi films, Gulzar, can move me in ways that few other things from my childhood can.

My mother’s love for Raj Kapoor was clear as, many years later, she watched Awara and Aag,  on television with my film-crazy partner. Interestingly, Raj Kapoor satisfied my father’s bill, too, in many ways. Films like Jagte Raho raised the bar of cinema, it went beyond love stories. The favourite bhajan at our home, when bhajans were allowed, was Jago Mohan Pyaare, the quintessential song for the new dawn of an independent nation. Woh Subah Kabhi Tho Ayegi was another song, almost bhajan, of hope. I suspect these songs were placeholders of much of the past, much of the future for us as a family.

***

As I grew up, all through the mid 70’s and 80’s, I approached mainstream ‘commercial’ Hindi films of my time, with an appropriate disdain. My teenage infatuation with Amitabh Bachchan had to be lived in the closet as I mounted a critique of films like Deewar and Zanjeer. The angry young man had great appeal for an angry generation like mine, which was grappling with the ’76 emergency times. Yet, I would say ‘His films do nothing to change society, they sell pain, and dreams, and they give no solutions. It is all an escape.’ I would stand by my growing commitment to the left, to reason, and realism. ‘They are not even entertainment, not even time pass’ was the ultimate dismissal of mainstream films. They were not to my ‘taste,’ taste being a cultivated culinary habit of high cuisine, not just what you like. 

I abandoned the appeal of the raging young man with an irresistible voice, for the hard-hitting figure of Naseeruddin Shah, the parallel state-sponsored NFDC cinema he represented, the political vision he had. I dropped the star for the actor citizen. No regrets. When Naseeruddin Shah did a film like Sunaina, produced by Rajshri Productions, one of the most conservative film houses of Hindi films, I stayed loyal to my commitment to him, justified his move to do mainstream/commercial cinema, and rationalized it. I was quite a fan, I must say. But my film ideology was fixed on realism, my utopia was limited to the young boy of Shyam Benegal’s Ankur, who at the end of the film casts a symbolic stone at the establishment when it crushed all hope, all dissent. This symbolic gesture in the Benegal film was a promise to hope. As a young student of Sociology , I was dedicated to the idea of cinema for society. Yet, I could never make it so flat, it could not be, Amitabh Bachhaan singing O Saathi Re in Muqadar ka Sikandar in the soulful voice of Kishore Kumar would haunt me. The angry young man was a devastating looker and a powerhouse romancer, crucial to my cis heterosexual imagination of desire, just as were Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor of my parents’ era, whom I met and ‘fell in love’ within the Sunday Doordarshan film. These actors and films were generational links.

There was also the third cinema, other than the mainstream and the parallel cinema: state-funded experimental cinema of Kumar Shahani and Mani Kaul. The avant-garde cinema. These films, explorations in abstraction and form provided an intellectual ‘purity’ to cinema, and offered a poetics that the other two did not. The camera spoke to the human predicament with the aesthetics of the visual that the other two did not. Watching Duvidha and Uski Roti till today are pleasurable entries into the self and the world. These films made cinema into art, into ‘high’ art. These were films that released the burden of social messaging and brought it to the level of a universal aesthetic. They were ‘art for art’s sake.’ Set high up in the pecking order of cinema in modern times, and in the cinema of modernity, experimental cinema was the equivalent of high theory, for which I was developing an insatiable taste in my discipline of Sociology , as a student. Interestingly Duvidha was later made as Paheli by Amol Palekar. The film starred Shahrukh Khan as the dual lover of the heroine, one within social codes and the other transgressing, a theme repeated in Rab Ne Banaa Di Jodi and one dear to my feminist heart.

As I traversed, and still do, through these three kinds of cinema and their histories and political economies, not even knowing of the fourth kind-the B Grade Film, it is as if I traverse through the segmented Brahminism of our cognitive and imaginary worlds. The three segments are not watertight. Many films and many people flow into and across the categories. I enjoyed each and benefited from all, particularly in my understanding of desire, romance, sexuality, and love. But the shame associated with the popular, the guilt in the pleasure of- and it- seemed like violence against that which was ‘mass,’ that which was ‘low,’ that which was ‘mainstream’. As I researched and read freely for my doctorate in the late 90s, I encountered the post-structuralist, particularly feminist, turn in social theory. I was introduced to the blurring between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture – cognitive and imaginative-that critical cultural studies offered to anthropology and Sociology. With the deconstruction of these hegemonic histories and spaces, I not only began my journey into feminist science studies but also began to apply it to sites other than science. For instance, I began to look at visual cultures differently^[i]. As a fallout, I began breathing with ease in my relationship with many things, including popular cinema. I began to see it, first, as a storehouse of memory and history, both personal and collective. I also learnt the art of seeing it as a heterogeneous space, meriting intellectual engagement, deserving of a hermeneutic ear, in both its text and its context. It became respectable in my own mind, which was the first move towards acceptance. I stopped looking at it as ‘what the masses wanted, as the opium of the people.’ I began to see in it an intelligent sigh for the oppressed, as a place that carries and holds so much of life for everyone. These films portrayed the political state by making it absent, by completely erasing it. They were remarkable in their make belief. I began to appreciate my ‘taste’ for the popular without guilt. It helped me sharpen my critique of these films. I became the insider-outsider in the audience of popular cinema, a location so crucial to the practice of Sociology. And to its pedagogy, as I learnt later.

These breakthroughs in academia coincided with, expectedly, a surge in the NRI cinema of Bollywood. Bollywood came of age, as some would say in the post 90’s and at the turn of the millennium. Anurag Kashyap, and Vishal Bharadwaj, to name two filmmakers changed the way films were to be made again. But it was in Yash Raj Films and Dharma Productions, both of which had started in the 70s and reinvented themselves in the 90s that Shah Rukh Khan played a central part. One of these, Yash Raj Films had a strong connection with the partition. And with being Punjabi, an ethnicity that I was finding for myself. The other two Punjabi film studios, Navketan of the Anands and RK Films of the Kapoors did not survive, though the third generation of the latter, including the women, became iconic stars.

 Cue II: Shahrukh Khan

I disliked Shah Rukh Khan in Baazigar and Darr. Or rather, it is the obsessive, stalking representation of the lover that I disliked. Which self-respecting feminist would approve of such violence, I said. I did not. And then came Yash Rag Film’s blockbuster, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, I was too old to relate to the Raj and Simran romance. Though I enjoyed Amrish Puri’s Punjabi baoji, I saw DDLJ as a film, a social text, which brought the NRI centrally in the cinematic narrative, just as Subhash Ghai’s Pardes did. The study of diasporic communities was becoming popular in Indian academia, there was so much coming from there, on the purity of traditions upheld by the pardesis, their nostalgia for the homeland, and the gendered violence against diasporic women. It was, particularly the Punjabi diaspora. Patricia Uberoi’s classic texts on popular culture appeared soon^[ii]. My sociological eye feasted on this cinema. Shah Rukh Khan was not central to this engagement, he was just another actor, quite bad looking, very silly and mostly a ham, I thought. These were all arrogant and smug judgements that audiences like me make. It was only with Dil Se that I began to turn around, a certain magic began to seize me, the magic of love and patriotism. There was sincerity and playfulness in SRK’s Aman Varma. The patriot essayed by SRK was a simple person who could obsessively love and tragically die with his beloved, to save the nation. The magic got better and better with Swades, Veer Zaara, My Name is Khan, Chak De, Raees and now, Pathan. I have become more engaged than I could ever be, with a star figure. This engagement, I read, as a sign of me becoming a ‘fan.’ I began watching most of SRK films also because I had an interest in YRF’s idea of love and how it was progressing with time. For me, these films seemed like the Punjabi’s attempt to find the divine through human love, echoing and keeping alive sufi voices that were torn with the partition. It was Shah Rukh Khan who essayed the protagonist in these films- he was fun, playful, light, and intense. Mohabbateein was a strong way of opening this discourse on love as it stood against discipline and authority, just as Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi was a progression in the Yash Raj Films’ idea of love within and outside of social boundaries. SRK essayed the characters and the idea of such love impeccably. And yet, it was the patriot in SRK that I held on to and watched with anticipation. SRK’s patriot became iconic for me.  It helped that he began looking better with age. It also helped that in his off-screen persona, he candidly performed with confidence, almost bordering on arrogance without ever believing in it. His dimpled smile always gave away the vulnerable person beneath, a person he never shied away from speaking about

It is with Swades, the 2004 film made by Ashutosh Gowariker that starred Shah Rukh Khan as a NASA scientist navigating his way back to India, as he is about to become an American citizen, that I first became completely engrossed in the star. It is with a simple Nehruvian Gandhian conviction for development- and for the scientific temper that Khan essays the role of Mohan Bhargava, the upper caste Hindu man seeking his homeland represented not by the biological mother but by a foster mother, a dai. The feminized nation and the male son who wishes to discover, understand, and safeguard the nation against itself are prominent themes of the film, themes that we as feminists have arduously critiqued. But it is an encounter with the julaha, and his family’s total impoverishment, that brings the protagonist of the film to a moment of deep patriotism, of integrity. A moment when he finally drinks local water, instead of his mineral bottled water. The subtext of this journey was the journey of another Mohan, M. K. Gandhi, of finding the true Indian self and the true Indian nation, in the villages of India where science and technology must lay side by side with religion and faith in a Nehruvian spirit. Echoing the social reform movement and the need for simple social change, the actor understood the liberal naivete required in the character. Also, Mohan, another name for Krishna, is brought into play with Ram in the film. Both avatars of the Hindu Vedic god Vishnu, in one moment of role-play at a ramlila event speak reflectively and together to a post-Babri Masjid demolition in India. The Muslim Indian actor, essaying secularism, straight from the heart, was a winner for me. I used this film in a course for applied science students on Science Technology and Society in Jharkhand. The film, and the actor, helped in critically discussing nation, belonging, and the role of science and technology in India. It was a completely absorbing exercise for me and the students. My gut said that the actor and the character had met each other in the director’s vision but also in the persona of Shah Rukh Khan.

But the film that completely locked me into the Shah Rukh Khan magic was Chak De India. It is in this film that SRK’s Kabir Khan pulls in the persona of SRK, the Muslim actor of Hindi cinema. Made in 2007, when the right-wing forces were rising in India, surely and steadily, when global Islamophobia was growing, the film uses sports instead of war to enact the nationalism expected of the Indian Muslim. There is no love angle in the film, the fallen hero must romance only one thing, the nation. There is only one heroine left for the Muslim man in India: the nation. And he must go through the test of fire to prove his love for her. The nation in this film is once again feminized through the all-female football team that Kabir Khan builds, reconstructs, and saves. Shah Rukh Khan plays the maverick sports coach who must love, platonically, each of his team members-women and girls from different regions of India- to bring victory to a watan, the nation-home, which has forsaken him. And what an essay it was. As SRK comes back home in the last scene of the film and a young Sikh boy wipes out the graffiti, gaddar, from the walls of his home, restoring the dignity and worthiness of the Indian Muslim, I found the stillness of profound effect. This stillness came to someone who had been told when young, “Fall in love with anyone but a Muslim”. My fan moment teared up, wholesome and in solidarity. Sentimental, raw, vulnerable. As it did in the anti-CAA movements. My fanship is a closure – of much.

Whether he plays the Hindu patriot or the Muslim one, SRK’s feeling for the country, for a watan is visceral. For me, the SRK patriot plays out the syncretic identities, the jointness in what we call the ganga jamuna tehzeeb, as it is on the floor. One of the things for instance that came up in discussions around Pathaan was the question of hypernationalism. Did Pathaan play out the nationalism too close to the Hindu nationalist narrative? Did it lose its distinctness? I would argue: No. I strongly came out of the film thinking that just as we do not see violence in a universal absolutist framework, we must not see Indian nationalism through a single lens. All violence is not evil, some are less evil. All nationalism is not evil, some are more evil. When a Muslim character in a film performs nationalism, we must see it differently, it merits a different lens. We know that it is becoming harder and harder to express nationalism in India for the Indian Muslim. There is no easy language for it. In that context, the patriotism, and the performative nationalism of films like My Name is Khan, Raees, Veer Zara, Chak De India and now Pathaan require a different compassion. They require critical empathy. It is in this sense that I, as an unapologetic fan of SRK, and as an intersectional sociologist, see the performative nationalism in Pathaan. And it is my fanship that has enabled me to stand by that, fully understanding the sentiment of patriotism for the watan, of being put outside and of having to find a place within the ‘nation’. Forever exiled, at home.

My ultimate fan moment that tested my ‘loyalty’. came when I saw the video made by SRK on the New Parliament Building and the tweet that accompanied it.^[i] Texts like this video are going to become increasingly common in the coming years. Where those who do not support a political regime but who cannot openly disassociate from it either, will produce things. These artefacts may be without much conviction, with feigned conviction or with a halfhearted conviction. The cost of saying no being too heavy, these texts I hope will go into the detritus of history. I must confess that I was stunned by the video. The script was deceptively like lines out of Swades. The tweet said something else. Sadly. Yet, I could not cancel him. I could not draw back my feeling of affinity with ‘my’ star citizen. I understood every bit of the dilemma in the making of that video. The arrest of Aryan Khan came back to me. As a woman, as a mother, as a friend, as a fan, I found myself not condemning, not cancelling that video. What I could not do for Amitabh Bachchan at the Bofors time, I could do for Shah Rukh Khan. I could stand behind him, in solidarity. And compassion. For a Muslim man, married to a Hindu woman. For an Indian who honours the best of what this land has to offer-love. And intelligence.

It is the quality of liberating love, playful but intense- for the country and the beloved that appeals to me in the SRK persona. That connects me to past histories and memories- of the partition, of a unified India, of a diverse one. That connects me to the visions for the future. My fanship is a placeholder of much. Including the smell of ittar, which I have only imagined.

Cue III: Pathaan

When Pathaan was released, people around me reacted in diverse ways. There were those, like my earlier self, who do not watch ‘these’ films so did not want to watch Pathaan. There were some in this category now who wanted to watch the film because it was about supporting a larger politics of liberal secularism. It was an interesting moment. It was even more interesting because I noted, for the first time, that SRK had a considerable ‘fan following’ among my feminist friends. Feminist and fan? That too of SRK. Seemed a contradiction. “How do we examine that relationship,” was my question to myself.  This essay is the beginning of that reflection.

***

The spy genre, or the action film, is not my natural choice in films.  Though a ‘fan’ of SRK, I too was watching it for the larger politics. As I watched the film, I tried not to be lazy, I tried to enter the genre. I succeeded in the required suspension of disbelief, though, unlike Swades or Chak De India which I can watch repeatedly, this is not a film I can sit through a second time. To begin with, I did not like the gendered nationalist politics of the film but what worked for the feminist in me were the poignant encounters between Pathaan and Tiger, two hypermasculine patriot men who come together on the side of the ‘good’ against another hypermasculine rogue patriot man, Jim, fated to be on the side of ‘evil’. Set in a violent and action-packed scene, they pause to share pain killers took my heart away. Was it the pain and fatigue of performing masculinity, of playing the system or of being the Indian Muslim? Probably all of it. It was heartbreaking to see the blue strip of paracetamol shared between the two. While the film signals a less toxic masculinity that acknowledges pain, it reinforces gender stereotypes of the female spy, the mother boss as a nation. Yet, my raison d’etre for being on the side of the film is not the film itself but the politics around the film, its star actor, and what these might have to offer to the re-making of a secular civic society. After the film, we ended the ride home with a conversation with our rickshaw driver. He had not watched the film yet. Multiplexes are expensive. “Phone par aayega toh dekhunga.” I asked him if he is a fan of SRK or Salman Khan. Pat came the reply: Salman Khan. And I died in full cognition of my middle-class iconisation of SRK.

***

Pathaan is a term used for Pashtun men. The Pashtun are people from Eastern Iran. They settled in Afghanistan and Northwest Pakistan. Pashtun migration into India can be traced back to the 11th and 12th centuries. The Pashtun set up empires, notably the Khilji, Lodhi and Sur empires on the Indian subcontinent. The Pashtun also arrived as traders, administrators, travellers, religious saints, and preachers. Among the religious leaders most notable was Hazrat Babajaan, a woman mystic who lived under a neem tree in Pune for the last thirty years of her life^[ii], and is remembered as the inspiration of Mehar Baaba, the spiritual guru of the famous rock group, the WHO. Though Pathaans in India speak a mix of Urdu and Persian, their original language, Pashto is also spoken in parts of India. The term Pathaan is a Hindi Urdu term that possibly originated in contexts of intermingling. The Pathaans played a significant role in the British Army.

A second round of Pashtun migration occurred at the time of the partition of India- Pakistan-Bangladesh. Many of the Pashtun came from Peshawar in Pakistan. Pathaans, as the Pashtun men were known, settled across the length and breadth of the country: in Gujarat, Bengal, Assam, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu. References to Pathaani vyaj in Gujarat are common, the term often indicates the tight moneylending codes that the Pathaans abide by. In Tamil Nadu, if you must go to a pattan kadai, it is understood that you are in a monetary crisis. Pathaans are perceived as tough moneylenders, who know how to get their money back. In India, Pathaans commonly use the surname, Khan. While Khan has become synonymous with Pathaans, not all Khans are Paathans. Well-known Pathaan politicians in India include Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, Zakir Husain and Salman Khurshid. Irfaan Pathan and Yusuf Pathaan are heroes of the cricket industry, as is Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi. Traditions of Hindustani classical have been shaped significantly by the Pathaan presence, notable is the Bangash gharana of Amjad Ali Khan. The sarod has its origins in the rabab, an instrument synonymous with the music of the Pashtun. Interestingly, there is a sizeable presence of Pathaans in the Hindi film industry. Dilip Kumar, Madhubala, Nasir Khan, Salim Khan Shahrukh Khan Amir Khan Salman Khan Feroz Khan Sanjay Khan, Parveen Babi, Irrfan Khan, and Farah Khan to name a few, have Pathaan lineage. 

Looking at this lineup, the Pathaan identity appears as an exclusive Muslim, and thereby minority, identity. And that might very well be true. Yet, like all Indian identities, the Pathaan identity too is complicated-it is regional, it is linguistic, it is cultural. Further, the Pathaan identity is an assemblage. It is played out on two registers; religion where the Muslim Pathaan signals a subordinate minority identity with reference to the Hindu Pathaan, and of caste where the Pathaan identity-Muslim or Hindu- becomes a hegemonic one with reference to the lower castes.

***

My first introduction to a Pathaan identity was that of a Hindu Pathaan, an anomalous identity, one would say. But if the place of origin, or language spoken and known, food and dress are markers of identity, the Hindu Pathaan may be a thing.

“He is from Peshawar, a Pathaan.” I had heard that said of Kapoor Uncle, a family friend. I carry memories of a tall, fair-skinned, light-eyed, Punjabi speaking gentle person who set up a successful retail business in the city of Mumbai. Kapoor Aunty had the looks of a mountain person, rustic, red-skinned. Like other Pashtun women, she had tattoos on her arms and face. Kapoor Uncle wore a Pathaan suit, always. The Pathaan suit became fashionable in the late 70s. Coupled with a jacket, young girls like me wore them too. Mine was soft cotton, in the shade of mauve. Every time I wore it, I remember feeling a pathaaniyat seeping into me, something would make me stand tall, something would make me smell the kajal in my eyes, the ittar in my armpits. Something that would bring forth epigenetic memories of a lost land, a lost home, of separation. It was as if the Peshawar air would engulf my Punjabi identity, an identity that my Mumbai urban Indian displaced self was so much in denial of. It was like a golden cover, of nostalgia.

Prithviraj Kapoor, the famous actor, identified himself as a Hindi Pathaan. He hailed from Peshawar and spoke Pashto.^[iii] Though he was a Punjabi Hindu Khatri, his self-identification as Pathaan speaks of regional and linguistic unities felt by people like him. Since he came with religious and caste privilege his claim might seem like appropriation, but it could also be seen as a claim to hybridity and a plea for unity. Prithvi Raj Kapoor made a play in 1948 called Pathaan.^[iv] Part of his quartet of plays on Hindu-Muslim unity that lamented the Indian partition of 1947, the play was an attempt to break the stereotype of the tough moneylender Pathaan and present him as a man driven by humanity and moral consciousness. Kapoor made a valiant attempt in his life to present the Pathaan identity as both Hindu and Muslim. The Sheenkhalai of Rajasthan, till today, identify themselves as Hindu Pathaans. A recent film documents their stories of complex migrant and displaced identities, of loss and humiliation^[v].

My second introduction to the identity of Pathaan was the film Kabuliwallah, based on Rabindranath Tagore’s story by the same name, a film I saw on Doordarshan. Balaraj Sahni as Abdul Rehman Khan, became, for an entire nation, the quintessential pathaan, the Muslim pathaan. The song Ai Mere Pyaare Watan from the filmfelt much like my mauve Pathaan suit, a golden cover of nostalgia, which has become a classic song of displacement and longing. The mellifluous voice of Manna Dey, someone who witnessed the pains of the partition and chose to say in Mumbai, and the face of Wazir Mohammad Khan, a real-life Pathaan who also starred in India’s first talkies, Alam Ara became iconic in our national imagination. The story of exile, migration, love between father and daughter, belonging, watan, home, of the nation play out poignantly in the film. Some of these themes find their way into the literature of the Anti-CAA NRC protests^[vi]. The Sher Khan of Challia first and Zanjeer later, both played by Pran, embody the ethos of yaari (friendship) and imaan (integrity). Salim Khan, the writer of this character says that he modelled Sher Khan on the people of his community who were emotional and generous. Speaking of Pathaan men, Amjad Khan’s wife, Shehla Khan says “My father-in-law and Amjad both cried at the drop of a hat. Amjad would return home late from a shoot and see the children sleeping and get emotional. The men cry more than the women; the women are tough.” ^[vii] In the duo of Salim Javed, Javed Akhtar is the quintessential liberal atheist rationalist voice of the Indian Muslim while Salim Khan is the financially astute Pathaan, also determined more by ideas of loyalty, friendship, and philanthropy. Their sons further embody this divide between the intellectual Muslim, the suave Farhan Akhtar and the ‘heart of gold’ Muslim, Salman Khan, the Pathaan.

***

Hence, I see pathaniyaat, the state of being pathaan as containing histories of exile, loss, and separation; of home, belonging and abandonment; of mitti(soil), zubaan (language) and baradari (community). It contains experiences of betrayal and treachery, of friendship and loyalty. I wonder if this combination of a contradictory set of affects, and moral codes could offer values that can be imagined as emancipatory for all. What if we see pathaaniyaat as both- Hindu and Muslim, albeit with different identity markers of religion, double but joint? A space that crafts the religious binary and respects difference but also suggests ways of becoming fluid within it. The Pathaan people – Hindu and Muslim-carry critical longing for jointness. To my mind, the Pathaan consciousness offers a possibility, a window into crafting much-needed jointness. The Hindi film industry has a mixed Pathaan population that has interacted with each other economically, socially, and culturally. The landmark ‘love jihad’ marriage of Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan gains newer meanings if we begin to look at the Pathaan identity as transcending the religious, and into the cultural. The children of another ‘love jihad’ filmi marriage of Shah Rukh Khan and Gauri Khan have interesting names to ponder over-Aryan, Suhana and AbRam. Hybrid, joint. In these names, I begin to imagine a possibility of coming together, differentiated by religion, united by love.

***

As I draw out this romantic Pathaan consciousness for myself, I stop short in my tracks. I see the crack in my left-liberal fantasy. In it and by it, the question of caste is erased. In the film, and my memoir. The Khans and the Kapoors, like me, are upper caste, and hegemonic. I need to  ‘call out’ myself.

Our general conception of the Indian Muslims is that they are a homogenous group, united by a singular religion. This of course is not true, considering that there are diverse sects like the Shias and Sunnis. The further differentiation based on caste makes it even more complex, it requires to be studied and understood^[viii]. Indian Muslims are categorised into three broad caste groups: the ashrafs, the ajlaks and the arzals. The Pathaans were classified as one of the ashraf castes – those who claimed descent from ‘superior’ foreign lands and who claimed the status of nobility. Upper-caste Hindus who converted to Islam are also categorised as ashrafs. Ashraf constitute 15% of the Indian Muslim population. The ajlaks are Hindu lower caste converts and the arzals, the ‘despicable’ are converts from the shudras and atishudras. The ajlaks and the arzals, often economically backward, constitute 85% of the Indian Muslims. They call themselves the Pasmandas, meaning ‘those who have fallen behind.’ The caste hierarchies among Indian Muslims are maintained through controls on land possession, endogamy in marriage, well-defined class boundaries, separate burial grounds and everyday humiliation. Upper-caste Hindus and Muslims show the same casteism towards lower castes within their own- and in each other’s- religions. Where religion divides, caste units. Interestingly while the Dalits receive some form of state protection through affirmative action, the ajraks and arzals, because they are Muslim do not receive it. This is ironic because they carry the extra burden of belonging to an othered and minority religion.

***

The objections raised by the Hindu right against the song Besharam Rang gained much visibility. But there was another constituency that asked for a ban on Pathaan: the Pasmanda Muslims. The Pasmandas said that the film Pathaan uses the name Shabbir Ansari, one of their prominent leaders in a derogatory manner^[ix]. It is a well-known fact that Dilip Kumar supported the Pasmanda cause but only after considerable persuasion^[x]. It is also well known that the Pathaans exert structural power over the lower castes. In 2019, a Dalit man was beaten up by two Pathaans in Gujrat for wearing a Pathaan suit^[xi]. So much for the golden cover of nostalgia that I, a woman from a privileged location, could feel in my youth. The Dalit man was not allowed that golden cover. Pathaan, as a film, failed to address the poor Muslims, the lower caste Muslims. In creating a united transnational ‘good Muslim’ identity across Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Hindustan, not only excludes the large number of Muslims who are from here but also problematically reinforces the idea of the Muslim as an outsider. More problematically it erases caste and thus reinforces it. No wonder the regime is not scared of the film Pathaan, they know that the real addressee of development is the Pasmanda Muslim. Who they possibly will get into their vote bank very soon.

Identities are assemblages. While mainstream Hindi films, that work as the surrogates of national imagination, have normalized upper-caste Hindus, they have done the same with Muslims. It is time for the liberal imagination in mainstream cinema to be further radicalized, to include and centralize the sigh of the julaha of Swades whose story is the turning point in Mohan’s journey. The julaha of course could be Hindu or Muslim. Or both. It is only then that Shahrukh Khan’s signature gesture, of opening his arms wide, as an invitation to be encircled in love, can truly mean what it must-an agape embrace. A just embrace.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to K. Sridhar, Dharen Chadha, Ira Chadha Sridhar, Vidita Vaidya and Sanjukta Wagh for responding to an early draft. Thanks to Rukmini Sen, Sneha Gole and Sayantan Datta for reviewing it with a critical eye. Thanks to Shals Mahajan for a last reassuring read. Thanks to all the contributors to this series for the collective peer review. Also, we read each other’s pieces and were influenced by each other, leading to an echo in several ideas. I thank all the contributors who made this series happen. Most importantly I thank Doing Sociology for agreeing to feature this series. Particular thanks to Maitrayee Chaudhuri, Rituparna Patgiri and Deepali Aparajita Dungdung.

[i]Bollywood is a much-debated term. I use the term more colloquially to mean the popular masala film of the Bombay film industry.

^[ii]See Berger, John – Ways of Seeing, Penguin Books, London, 1972)

^[iii]See Uberoi, Patricia – Freedom and Destiny: Gender, Family and Popular Culture in India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2006.

^[iv]See https://www.google.com/search?q=shahrukh+khan+parliament+building&rlz=1C1SQJL_enIN1052IN1054&oq=shahrukh+khan+parliament+building&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30j0i390i650l3.12539j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:00d13b9e,vid:mzFq7HldDEA

^[v]See Munsiff, Dr Abdul Ghani: Hazrat Babajan of Poona, Meher Baba Journal, Vol. 1, No. 4 (1939), p. 29- 39.

^[vi]See Kapoor, Shashi Pathan with a soft heart (November 9, 2006) https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/pathan-with-a-soft-heart/articleshow/471116.cms?from=mdr.

^[vii]See Nair, Malini  Much before the Partition, Prithviraj Kapoor was warning of its horrors in gut-wrenching plays (August 15, 2017) https://scroll.in/magazine/847168/much-before-the-partition-prithviraj-kapoor-was-warning-of-its-horrors-in-gut-wrenching-plays. 

^[viii]See Gandapur, Shueyb Partition’s grandchildren: The Pashto speaking Hindus in Jaipur  (February 14, 2021) https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/partitions-grandchildren-the-pashto-speaking-hindus-in-jaipur.

^[ix]See Chadha, Gita and Tyagi, Akansha: Kaagaz, Watan, Hum: Feminist Imaginations from Resistance, Indian Journal of Secularism, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Jan-Mar 2020).

^[x]See Lentin, Sifra: The Khans of Bombay’s Hindi Film Industry, Gateway House: The Journal of the Indian Council on Global Relations (January 2020) https://www.gatewayhouse.in/khans-hindi-film-industry/

^[xi]See Azam, Shireen and Goli, Srinivas Why Caste Among Muslims Must Be Studied (May 2, 2022) https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/why-caste-among-muslims-must-be-studied-7896667/. I also wish to acknowledge conversations with sociologist Khalid Anis Ansari.

^[xii]See Free Press Journal Web Desk Pathaan controversy: Now, Pasmanda Muslims’ body takes objection to villain’s name in movie; demands ban on Shah Rukh’s film (January 24, 2023) https://www.freepressjournal.in/india/pathaan-controversy-now-pasmanda-movement-takes-objection-to-villains-name-demands-ban-on-shah-rukhs-movie#:~:text=Pasmanda%20senior%20activist%20name%20given%20to%20movie’s%20villain&text=Fyzie%20said%20Pasmanda%20movement%20strongly,only%20Pathans%20are%20found%20there%22.

^[xiii]See Anand, Abhijit Dilip Kumar: A Baghbaan of Pasmanda Movement (August 31, 2017) https://www.roundtableindia.co.in/dilip-kumar-a-baghbaan-of-pasmanda-movement/

^[xiv]See The Wire Staff Two Pathans Assault Dalit Man for Wearing ‘Pathani Suit’ (December 5, 2019) https://thewire.in/caste/muslim-men-dalit

***

Gita Chadha is a feminist sociologist working in the area of gender and science. She is Visiting Professor at Azim Premji University and presently holds the Obaid Siddiqui Chair Professorahip at the NCBS, Bangalore . Her interests lie in social theory, feminisms, and visual cultures.