The reinvention of Akshay Kumar

*This piece was written on March 3

The shift towards a more lucrative ideological stand began with Baby for Akshay Kumar. Or perhaps the seeds of opportunism were always there. After all, here is a hero who went from a rebellious lover boy in his debut film Saugandh to a super human khiladi to an ensemble star of comedies and then struck gold with films like Singh is Kinng and Namaste London, where he played the bumbling outsider in foreign climes. Reminding people of what they were missing out on by not being closer to their roots. Whatever was the trend of the day, he encashed it and full points to his resilience.
Baby however was a turning point of another kind. Because it started something that has now culminated into a Suryavanshi cop representing the might of the state. He eyeballs and hectors bearded men who are the ‘enemy within.’
The enemy in Baby was ostensibly Pakistan but it subtly turned the audiences’ gaze towards the crowded Muslim majority areas in Mumbai for traces of “anti-nationalism.”
In Suryvanshi, the enemy is a sleeper Lashkar cell with potential terrorists hiding in plain sight among unsuspecting Indians. Throw in some exploding cars, helicopter stunts and punchlines about Mumbai police and you have another Us vs Them narrative disguised as an entertainer. There is a quote by Gandhi hidden somewhere in the trailer but that is all he is now used for. A few quotes, and the symbolic use of his charkha and spectacles on special occasions.
The most successful cop films in India have never questioned India’s secularism and have almost always explored the rot in within policing and political systems. Introspection has however gone out of our mainstream films. And this has happened gradually.
Baby’s core team exploring a conspiracy did have a Muslim. A girl, no less. Shabana Khan played by Tapasee Pannu. Strangely enough, the film also had two well-known Pakistani actors in key roles.
The nationalism genre was being tweaked however. Subtly and unmistakably. The year was 2015 after all and it was too early to paint all Muslims with one brush. We also had Danny Denzongpa’s Feroz Ali Khan heading the counter-terrorism unit just so you knew that the film was NOT against a religion but only the anti-nationals. Yes, we got it.
It is not that we have not had jingoism before Baby. There was Anil Sharma’s Gadar where an uprooted hand pump took on Pakistan and the lone hero killed hundreds if not thousands on his way to his watan on a burning train with his wife and kid. Then there was John Mathew Matthan’s 1999 hit Sarfarosh where a nationalist ACP takes on a Pakistani singer called Ghulam Hasaan (hint..hint). But the first was also a love story between an Indian and a Pakistani. And Sarfarosh had a Muslim subordinate of the hero making an important point about always being on the defensive about his religion because he was called upon again and again to prove his nationalism.
A Wednesday, Neeraj Pandey’s debut, was clear in its intent that the only way to counter terrorism was to blow up terrorists without any legal intervention. But it also had a Muslim cop saving Mumbai from the terror spreading ‘vermin.’ The danger in the film was contained but in Baby, Pandey’s narrative took a clear stand like Bush in the post 9/11 era that those who were not ‘with’ us were ‘against’ us.
Also the security agent played by Akshay had a sense of entitlement almost as heavy as his surname. His name is Ajay Singh Rajput and he habitually throws punches because he can. In one scene , he smashes the jaw of a willing to cooperate witness, uproots his tooth and when asked why he did that, he says, “Aadat hai.”
He also mentions helpfully how during the Gujarat riots, he protected a Muslim family from a trishul waving mob because he is a proud Indian. Yet, the only people plotting trouble in the film are Muslims. The naive engineer being brain-washed by a community leader, the agent who switches loyalties, the terrorist (Kay Kay Menon wasted in a sketchy role) who wants to be given better facilities in the prison because he has killed more people than Kasab. Don’t also miss the Minister saab who is called the, ‘face of change’ and dresses like someone we know as the harbinger of ‘acche din.’
Unlike Black Friday, where terror was treated as the tragedy of not just those who suffer it but those who inflict it, there was no sociological subtext here.
There were just terrorists and those who swat them as members of a crack team called Baby. I remember noting in a review that the film was symptomatic of a time when many nations were feeling the urge to assert a singular identity. Like American Sniper, Baby was a reflection of the simplistic, gun powered patriotism that treats symptomatic ills but forgets the root causes of divisions. Like the bloody make-up you saw on Baby’s victims and Akshay Kumar’s rather jarringly fake moustache, the ideological territory this film inhabited was hurried and ad-hoc.
Since then, Akshay and many of his colleagues have tasted blood. They know secularism is no longer the nation’s primary currency. So they are ready to profit from what is. Take Ajay Devgan. In his Singham 2, there was a song dedicated to a Sufi peer and the villain was a corrupt Godman but that was in 2014. From Lajja (2001) where he played a dacoit out to protect women from the atrocities of upper caste men, to The Legend of Bhagat Singh (2002) where India was equated with all its people , to Halla Bol (2008) where he was the disciple of a street revolutionary reminiscent of Safdar Jashmi to the full blown historical revisionism of Tanhaji, he has been on quite a journey. The success of Tanhaji shows that Devgan has now hit upon a profitable theme with endless possibilities.
These actors among many others know that timing is everything and Akshay despite his Canadian passport is the most successful representative of the new brand of nationalism. From hobnobbing with ABVP students to interviewing the ‘face of the change,’ to endorsing political ‘masterstrokes’ through his films and his tweets, he is the man of the moment. Suryavanshi is just another step towards cementing his position as an astute actor who doesn’t really care about a moral compass as long as an unearned national award and an exploding box -office are around to remind him of his own success.