Pathaan marks the “revival” of Bollywood and the return of Shah Rukh Khan with record-breaking numbers and cinema halls bursting at the seams.
More importantly, it is also a revival of the “public” itself. After the isolation of the pandemic and massive crackdown on collective protest gatherings, this is the first event which has offered a space for the public to come together physically — touching, dancing, cheering together while simultaneously transcending those spaces and being a part of something larger, something sublime even.
On the face of it, Pathaan is your regular masala action thriller with dollops of nationalism, a dash of humour and sculpted abs, giving the packed halls much to cheer and jeer at. The script seems to be made of all the most predictable formulae — triumph of the “good”, “patriotic” Muslim soldier over terrorists wanting to destroy our nation, in cahoots with Pakistan, of course. In the world beyond the screen, it is being seen as the triumph of cinema over the politics of hate. The movie is all of this and yet, not quite. Pathaan offers many cracks to this narrative from within, teasing us with different possibilities and unstable identities.
Shah Rukh Khan, through Pathaan, deftly constructs and deconstructs both the hero and the villain. The audience is given the masculine larger-than-life hero who performs stunts that defy all laws of physics and yet, he also mocks this figure by popping painkillers. He is supposed to be smart and yet, makes deadly mistakes, gets fooled and deceived easily. He is invincible but he needs help from another “hero”, both of whom mock each other. We are never quite sure of the religious identities of either the hero or the villain. “Pathaan” is an assumed identity derived from the love of people — not the nation-state — and it is loose enough to remain open to many possibilities. Similarly, the “terrorist” is also an ambiguous figure, not tied to any nation-state or religion but only to revenge, unlike in most Bollywood films where they are, incidentally, Muslims. In fact, he is depicted as a once-patriotic soldier, who is sacrificed in the “larger” interest of the nation. This figure is not only symbolic of what being discarded and having untended wounds can do to people but also of the blind rage and violence that comes out of a politics of revenge and pure victimhood. Thus, it is not a battle between fixed positions of nationalism and terrorism but between two kinds of politics: That of a nationalism where its people are dispensable for the figure of the nation; and the other which derives itself from its people and yet does not get tied down to a singular identity. That which creates people filled with rage; and that which opens up in an embrace not only to its “own”. The film also has its blind spots, like Kashmir and Article 370, which are perhaps too dangerous or painful. So it treads the majoritarian line there, not daring to open it up, though there is a slight crack even there in terms of the demand for the removal of the Indian Army and flags and not a “handover” to Pakistan.
In the formulaic script, the only resolution to this conflict is that the figure of the terrorist must be killed in the interest of the “nation”. Khan has to succumb to the script and prove his patriotism through this act, but Pathaan also invokes the art of kintsugi, the Japanese art form of repairing broken things with gold. In fact, this is a central metaphor running through the film, invoked from the beginning to the end and is perhaps its most radical suggestion, though delivered through its worst lines. It is suggested by the character of Pathaan as a way of harnessing the potential of injured soldiers in the service of the nation, but it again seems to offer us an alternative to discarding what is broken within us and the nation and repairing it with tenderness instead; rather than getting caught in the cycle of revenge and rage which comes from the pain of festering wounds, examining and tending to these wounds. To not say that no one died due to oxygen shortage in the pandemic, to not say nobody walked kilometers on highways to reach “home”, to not say there are no caste atrocities; to not say nobody was lynched due to their religion, to not say that all is well with the economy, to not say we are living in Amrit Kaal, to not be so terrified of wounds and their pain that we make terrorists out of the people who expose them.
Can we congratulate and leave Shahrukh and take forward the journey of Pathaan. Can we dare to become that gold and start the work of repairing our collective brokenness instead of bulldozing it away?
The writer is a Pinjra Tod activist
