Guest columnist Javeed Akhter: Surprising film tackles Islamophobia in India

I stopped seeing Bollywood movies a few years ago but decided recently to see the new movie "Pathaan."

It is a masala movie, which means lots of fantastic violence, an attractive female lead and Shah Rukh Khan the lead actor as a superhero. It created pre-release controversy because the right-wing-Hindu party was offended by the orange color of the female lead's bikini. This ultra-conservative group drapes itself in orange clothes and has turned orange as a Hindu religion identifier. The movie has broken all kinds of box office records and may turn out to be the highest grossing Bollywood movie ever.

I had to see what all this hysteria was about. I came away surprised that in a subtle and effective way it tackles virulent Islamophobia that has infested India and Bollywood.

For the last few years there have been multiple movies showing Muslim characters as unmitigated caricatures of evil. They are depicted as devoid of any moral bone in their body and are completely divorced from humanity. One recent example was a movie titled "Padmavat." Based on a poem written by a Sufi poet, it is historical fiction. This big-budget movie directed by a well-known director depicts the Muslim king, Allauddin Khilji, with kohl-lined eyes, ripping flesh to the bone off the food he is eating and laughing like a hyena.

Khilji was known to be a civilized ruler. For mainstream Bollywood to make the movie "Padmavat" would be like making a movie showing Jewish characters in the worst possible light in the 1930s Germany when anti-Semitism was at its peak. The movie makers took shelter under the tenet of freedom of speech. It can be persuasively argued that it had crossed over into hate speech and increased the level of Muslim hate.

These types of movies drove Muslims away from Bollywood. It was simply painful to watch them.

Movies reflect society. The fact that "Padmavat" was a financial success is a commentary of where India is under the influence of the ultra-right-wing Hindus. Many movies with similar themes have popped up. The Muslim community in India has looked at this trend with increasing trepidation.

Just last year another movie titled "Kashmir Files" was released. It was promoted by high officials of the ruling party and had its entertainment tax forgiven in many states. An eminent Israeli movie director, Nadav Lapid, called it "vulgar and propaganda."

Nevertheless, the movie was also a financial success. In contrast, a remake of "Forest Gump" by a Muslim actor Amir Khan was blacklisted by the right-wing groups, with threats of violence, and was a flop. Viewers were afraid to see the movie in theaters. One of Amir Khan's crimes is that he is Muslim and that his ex-wife, a Hindu, had commented that it is increasingly difficult for Muslims to live in India because of the hate and violence against them.

It was feared that because of its title and because it features a Muslim actor, Shah Rukh Khan, who plays a Muslim character, the new movie "Pathaan" would meet the same fate. Pathaan refers to both a Muslim tribe from the Northwest region of the Indian subcontinent and is used colloquially to refer to someone with machismo who fights for justice. The controversy about the movie generated even more interest in it. When released, the movie turned out to be entertaining.

The fact that millions of ordinary Indians ignored the negative hype about the movie and even the threats of violence against the screening venues and went to see it is a good sign and may suggest that Islamophobia in India is limited to a loud but small group.

Although it plays on the perennial India and Pakistan conflict, the villain of the movie is an Indian spy who has gone rogue because of the Indian government's policy not to negotiate for ransom. This fictional group kills his kidnapped wife, turning the man eternally bitter. In the movie, this character is called Jim, just Jim. The lead actor is asked in the movie if he is a Muslim. His answer is interesting. He discloses that he was given the name Pathaan affectionately by a Muslim family in Afghanistan who he saved heroically, and he visits them on Eid every year. He elaborates that loyalty to the nation whose citizen he is, India, is more important than faith and ethnicity. He adds that for the nation to prosper it needs all its citizens.

The writer-director Siddharth Anand deserves credit for including this undercurrent of tackling racism. Shah Rukh Khan has amplified the theme of diversity in his after-release press conferences by pointing out the three main characters of the movie in real life belong to three different faiths.

• Javeed Akhter is a physician and freelance writer from Oak Brook.