A Best Actor National Award for Shah Rukh Khan has set tongues wagging. Since the announcement last evening, WhatsApp groups have been abuzz, and Insta DMs and Reddit sub-threads have been on fire. Whichever group — Boomers, Millennials, Gen Z (I won’t be surprised if his famed charm spreads to Alphas at some point as well) you belong to, everyone has an opinion on SRK and the fact that he has received this award 33 years after he came into the movies, and 30 years after he delivered one of the biggest blockbusters in Hindi cinema, which redefined how mainstream romances were made.
This October will be the 30th anniversary of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ), in which SRK bore Kajol away with the blessings of her uber-strict dad Amrish Puri. Since then, the superstar, who has indubitably been one all through these decades regardless of his hits and pits, has amassed a clutch of honours, including the once-much-coveted Filmfare black ladies, and honorary doctorates around the world.
But a National Award, the highest film award handed out by the Indian government, has been elusive. Until now. Atlee’s Jawan, which came to theatres two years back (2023), and its lead — SRK in a double role as both the grizzled war veteran and the Robin Hood-esque younger vigilante — are at one with their agenda. Setting wrongs right in a system creaking under corruption, raising the flag for those who need it most — farmers struggling under debt, soldiers on the border dying by the use of faulty guns, empty oxygen cylinders in hospitals — with the help of an army of determined young women.
More than the fact that it’s taken him this long to get to the National Award podium, I’m surprised at the choice of film. SRK, coming off the back of five fallow years in which both his professional and person lives got a beating — his previous films had crashed, and his son was implicated in a false case and imprisoned — had roared back with Pathaan, a zingy spy saga, in which he went loud and proud, reclaiming his identity, which had been (and still is, from a section of poisonous trolls) under attack.
Pathaan would have been an easy choice. It’s comic-book enough for us not to take any of the fun and games seriously. On the other hand, Jawan is massy and messy, yes, but it is also unapologetically political, with SRK holding up his hand, fanning his fingers, and saying press that button and make the right choice of neta, while slipping in a line about the beta. There’s also a batty sequence which involves the stealing of electronic voting machines. They may have been wrapped up in Atlee’s loud, full-tilt filmmaking, but they all demand notice, exactly the things the present dispensation is very sensitive about.
Clearly, someone or more than one member of the jury either had a sense of humour or was not as aware about the visceral impact of that film which came in the year SRK bounced back to doing what he does best: Entertain his viewers and please his fanbase stretching across the world. Or it could well be that whoever was batting for him felt it was high time: If you want a comparison, Aamir Khan has not just one but four National Awards, two for films he did as a newcomer in 1988, for Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, as well as Raakh. It is another matter altogether that Rani Mukerji, who has also got her first National award for Best Actress after almost 30 years for Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway, has been nearly forgotten in all the der aaye-durust aaye chatter.
What the SRK award feels most like is a reflection of both the state and the actor having found a pragmatic middle ground, the former perhaps using this as a gesture of conciliation, and the latter accepting with grace. And humour. In an Instagram post, you can see him with an arm in a cast (he is reportedly recovering after a procedure) thanking the “jury and the I&B ministry, Atlee sir, my team and my wife and kids, and Bharat sarkar and my fans” for the “honour”, and stretching out his uninjured arm in his trademark move, promising he will be back soon, on screen, serving cinema with truth.
Nitpickers, and there are plenty, are claiming that the “honour” has been diluted because the award has been split between him and Vikrant Massey, for Massey’s terrific turn as an underprivileged student who cracks the civil services in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 12th Fail. There may be some truth in it, and it may be a case of damning with faint praise, but the jury could just as easily and comprehensively have ignored SRK all over again, just as they did with Swades (2004), which is the one film he should have got the Best Actor award for, no ifs, no buts.
So here we are, and there he is: SRK, naam toh suna hoga?
