The film is not about Hindu aur Muslim: SRK

The latest hit at the box office ‘Chak De India’ has notched up a number of firsts. It’s a Yashraj Film. It has no heroine. It has no song sequence. And it has Shahrukh Khan playing Kabir Khan. Why is that such a big deal? Well, because it is the first time, this actor has played a Muslim character in his career. What’s an even bigger deal is that with this, the superstar says it was his big chance to knock some favourite Hindi film stereotypes!

Explains Shahrukh, “The film is not about Hindu aur Muslim, but it is important for the protagonist in the film to be Muslim. I don’t want anyone to feel that an educated Muslim is a terrorist or a bad man, and he talks in a peculiar manner. Like how we depict Christians, for instance, character like Aunty Mary gets dialogues like “kya karta hai tum man”. There is no clichéd Muslim in this film. It is most important for me that when all the Muslims in India see Kabir Khan, they should feel that ‘yes, this is what we stand for, we pray five times a day, but that is not the only aim of our life’. “

Chipping away at the stereotypes have been films like Sarfarosh in 1999, which for the first time gave a mainline voice to the Indian Muslim. Next month, Mahesh Bhatt’s Dhoka releases – the film is about an upright Muslim cop whose religion is held against him. Bhatt is characteristically vocal on the need for popular cinema to set things right.

“I feel this is how change suddenly makes its presence felt through a popular medium through a film which has got a superstar and also a banner which has mostly made what are largely called escapist films,” says the vociferous Bhatt. “I need to look at the world through the eyes of a young Muslim and it is not the prerogative of the majority community to have its own heroes up there on the alter. Its time to put the minority guy on the altar.”

In a nation where films are probably the biggest religion, a move away from religious stereotyping is more than welcome. We asked filmmaker Govind Nihalani, who in 2004, directed ‘Dev’, a film based on the sensitive issue of communal violence, for his take.

Says Govind matter-of-factly, “I firmly believe that films represent our times and the perceptions as they are changing and I believe that our films are reflecting that and the minorities particularly Muslims are being treated with much more sensitivity, much more complexity and a greater sense of equality.”

With mainline Hindi cinema on the whole moving away from clichés, filmmakers who want to break myths are fortunately not a minority and that is good news for all concerned!

Source: E NOW WEEKEND