Shehzada: Why does ultimate outsider Kartik Aaryan’s new film end up endorsing Bollywood nepotism?

An early scene in Shehzada serves as a blunt metaphor for the outsider experience in the film industry. Aaryan plays Bantu, the now-grown up boy that Rawal’s character kidnapped in the opening scene. Bantu doesn’t know it yet, but he’s the ‘eklauta waaris’ of the wealthy Jindals. Having been separated from them at birth, however, he has gone on to study law at Amritsar and has now found himself knocking at the door of a prestigious firm where Kriti Sanon’s character Samara works. Even though she’s a lawyer herself, Samara spends most of the movie dancing in glamorous locations and being prodded like a farm animal by her father, who wants her to agree to a ‘rishta’. Coincidentally, the person she’s being set up with is Raj (Ankur Rathee), the young man that the Jindals believe to be their heir. But Raj is actually the biological child of Rawal’s character.

Back to Bantu. He shows up at law firm one day, only to be told by Samara that he stands no chance against the Harvard and Cambridge graduates that they usually accept. “Merit dekhe bina reject kar diya. Not fair,” a dejected Bantu says. Samara takes a moment, and then calls him into the room to essentially ‘audition’ for the job, using two of her actual clients as props. The scene is effective enough at communicating what director Rohit Dhawan, himself a product of nepotism, has to say about the controversial subject. He seems to understand that the bigger challenge for most outsiders isn’t getting a job, but getting their foot in the door.

The term ‘outsider’ was co-opted by a very specific corner of social media in the immediate aftermath of Sushant Singh Rajput’s death in 2020. Eventually, it slipped into the mainstream; the farce peaked when Taapsee Pannu announced that she’d call her newly-launched production company Outsiders Films. The Jindals in Shehzada represent Bollywood old guard. Their palatial house exists not only in isolation from the rest of the world, but almost in another reality. They’re out of touch with the masses, who are represented in the film by their icon, Bantu. But Bantu isn’t exactly an outsider, is he? Even though he was raised outside the ecosystem of the elite, it is decided by the filmmakers that genetics alone should dictate his desire to do good. When we first meet him, Bantu is a layabout who laughs when some goons harass his sister, but when he discovers that he has royal blood, so to speak, he transforms into Shah Rukh Khan’s character from Kal Ho Naa Ho.

Funnily enough, SRK’s co-star in that film, Saif Ali Khan, still holds the dubious honour of having made the most tone deaf comments about nepotism. “I am generally perceived as being a very privileged person and I probably am,” he began rather level-headedly in a 2017 interview with Firstpost, before taking a wild left turn: “It’s easy to confuse nepotism with genetics. Maybe there is something in the genes too that makes many of Raj Kapoor’s descendants actors or Pataudis cricketers. I think it’s actually eugenics and genetics that’s coming into play.” More recently, Raveena Tandon and Zayed Khan have also made similar comments about nepotism. Tandon, herself the daughter of a filmmaker, suggested that ‘filmy kids’ might have ‘art in their bloodstream’, and Khan, also the son of a filmmaker, said that stars have a ‘God-given duty’ to help their kids.

But each of them has misunderstood the fundamental argument here. In the context of the film industry, which, let’s be clear, cannot be compared to the fields of business or science, nepotism isn’t really about how many projects you’re able to bag. It’s about access; a talented outsider might never get it, but a talentless insider invariably will. And access isn’t limited to just the one time; star kids can go back for refills. Shehzada, at least in that ‘audition’ scene, appears to understand this. Sure, Zayed Khan and the rest can say that at the end of the day, it’s the audience that decides. But Zayed, buddy, haven’t they already?

After a rather on-the-nose monologue in which Aaryan literally invokes ‘nepotism’, Shehzada’s commentary on the subject concludes on a typically convoluted note in the film’s penultimate scene. Ronit Roy’s character has learned that Bantu is his biological son, and Raj isn’t. But Bantu requests his father to keep this a secret from his wife Yashoda, played by Manisha Koirala, because he doesn’t want her to ‘lose’ Raj. Why Bantu assumes that she’d have to kick Raj out simply because she has gained another son remains a mystery. Does he think of Raj as an empty bottle of milk, meant to be left outside the door to be replaced the next day with a new one?

Yashoda enters the scene, flanked by Raj, and embraces Bantu. While openly dismissing Raj for being a good-for-nothing waste of space, as if he isn’t there, she thanks Bantu for everything that he has done, and tells him that he is as good as a son to her. For a moment, it seems like Shehzada, almost in spite of itself, has stumbled into making an important point about found family and the undue importance given to blood relationships. But then, she delivers the punchline. Yashoda looks at Rawal’s character, and hands him a five-year assignment to transform Raj into Bantu. “Jo saalon ki foreign education Raj ko nahi sikha payi, woh tumne Bantu ko purani Dilli ki galiyon mein sikha di,” she tells him. “Mere Raj ko apne Bantu jaisa bana do. Usse shuruat se shuru karne do, balki apne ghar rakh lo. Aur agle 5 saal mein, usse clerk se CEO bana do.”

Even though real talent is literally staring her in the face, Yashoda will still favour her own son to take over the family business and not the ostensible ‘outsider’. Before you can say, ‘What?’ Dhawan cuts away. There’s a lot wrong with the movie — the outdated tone, its absolute disregard for Sanon and her character, and its obliviousness about the optics of mocking a character named Valmiki — and for all its disruptive ambitions, Shehzada appears to have inherited the worst qualities of Bollywood.