A silly fuss over Aamir Khan's PK

BY VIKRAM JOHRI| IN Media Practice | 30/12/2014

Ignore the professional protestors.

PK is a charming dig at blind faith and bigotry in all religions, not just Hinduism says VIKRAM JOHRI

Subramanian Swamy thinks it has been financed by the ISI. Bajrang Dal protestors in Gujarat have attacked cinema halls screening it. And Baba Ramdev, that venerable Indian institution, has called for its boycott. I am talking, of course, of PK, the latest film from the Aamir Khan stable that has been in the news since its closely guarded plot was revealed post its release on December 19.

Khan must think it’s in his stars. His 2006 film Fanaa was banned in Gujarat because of his support for Narmada Bachao Andolan, and its leader Medha Patkar. More recently, he was subjected to a lawsuit for “promoting homosexuality” through his show, Satyamev Jayate.

In the latest incident, even before reviews of the film arrived, the media had begun indicating that sections of the Sangh Parivar had found PK objectionable. Twitter trended right from Day 1, with "bhakts" - the popular term for Hindutva supporters - demanding that the film be canned. There were even reports that the Supreme Court might take action in that direction in response to a petition.

Furthermore, pictures of Aamir Khan's visit to the Haj were shared widely on Facebook and Twitter. If there was any doubt, the pictures were meant to hit home Aamir's supposed hypocrisy in making a film that purportedly attacks religion, and Hindu religion at that, when he himself is a devout Muslim.

I got to the film late, I must confess. I wanted to see it once the brouhaha had died down lest the charged atmosphere colour my perception of the film. I needn't have worried. Having seen PK, I have no reservation in declaring that the film is an absolute delight. Yes, it talks about religion, but it does not attack faith, and it certainly does not attack any one religion, as the bhakts are claiming. What it does, and achieves with much success, is to throw a light on bigotry and blind worship.

Here is the skeleton of the plot. Aamir Khan plays an alien who lands on earth, precisely in Rajasthan, and is quickly robbed of the device that keeps him connected to the mother ship. He comes from a planet where there is no concept of God or a higher being. So, when he goes looking for his lost device, he is surprised that everyone asks him to seek God's help. While those around him are evoking God to ward him off, Aamir's PK takes them literally and begins his search in earnest.

And what a deep, across-the-board search it is. PK takes part in nearly every ritual of every conceivable religion in the hope that his prayers will be answered. He washes shiv lingams in milk, bleeds profusely while punishing himself on Muharram, gets baptised, offers ardas in a gurudwara, and so on. He commits these actions with studied fidelity and they constitute perhaps the most tender sequence in the film.

To the discerning viewer even this level of ritualism might jar, but director Rajkumar Hirani reserves his indignation for the more crassly commercial forms of organised religion. At a time when the news is thick with tales of fake babas and their shoddy dealings, PK hits the nail on the head with its portrayal of Tapaswi Maharaj, a self-styed guru, played to perfection by Saurabh Shukla.

Tapaswi Maharaj lords it over a vast empire that is built upon the faith of his legions of followers. He apparently has a direct line to God, and uses it to resolve the problems of his worshippers. All very well, and very exploitative. In one glaring scene, a man whose wife is paralysed approaches the baba for help. The baba tells him to visit a “bhavya mandir" (grand temple) in the foothills of the Himalayas. “Bas mattha teko, kaam ho jayega!”(“visit the shrine and your wish shall be granted”), the baba intones. The fallen look on the man’s face captures the nub of the film.

The film charts Tapaswi Maharaj's downfall as PK, with the aid of Jaggu (Anushka Sharma), strives to recover the lost device that has fallen in the baba's hands. Hirani's trademark humour leavens the film even as it tackles a topic far more serious than any he has dealt in his earlier works. While the two Munnabhai comedies were laugh riots, 3 Idiots (about the pressures of the education system) perhaps comes closest to PK in approaching a social evil.

But even 3 Idiots was not as timely as PK is. Watching it induced in me a disturbing deja vu. In November Baba Rampal was arrested from his ashram in Haryana, a giant complex from whose bowels emerged the most egregious details of subservience. Dalits, unable to stake a claim to respect within their own religion, fell for the charms of the godman who, reports indicated, made followers drink the milk his feet were washed in. Scenes from Ground Zero, where a protracted battle ensued between supporters of Rampal and the police, exposed the nefarious hold of the godman on the gullible.

Some of the criticism of PK has been plain silly. A Scroll report mentioned the link some groups sought to draw between the abortive romance of Pakistani Sarafaraz (Sushant Singh Rajput) and Jagguas as a case of love jihad. It is nothing of the sort. Even if love jihad were taken on face value and assumed to be true, the setting of Sarafaraz's and Jaggu's romance - Bruges in Belgium - is hardly the sort of place that encourages visions of vulnerable Hindu girls falling for the charm of Muslim boys. In fact, one would have liked to see more of their romance because they make for such a natural couple, but the movie’s softer elements get lost in the bigger questions it raises.

In a panel discussion on NewsX, an opponent of the film referred to a scene in which a character playing Lord Shiva in a street play goes to the washroom where PK accosts him. The panelist was aghast that a Lord Shiva character had been shown inside a toilet. If we were to go by such yardsticks, we should ban all drama involving mythology, starting with the ever-popular and near-ubiquitous Ram Leela. We should also ban any film that has actors depicting Gods (the classic tongue-in-cheek Mahabharata scene from Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron comes to mind). This would spell the end of all artistic freedom.

There is also the fact the villainous character in PK happens to be a Hindu godman and not a Muslim cleric or Christian missionary because the film is set in India and so, naturally, must situate itself within the dominant cultural and social context of this country. Even so, it does show the pitfalls of other belief systems that tend towards the dogmatic. There is criticism of fatwas against girl child education and of conversions by inducement.

The movie’s critique, it must be reiterated, is not targeted at any one religion, but at what unquestioned, absolute belief can lead to. Such self-contemplation must not only be tolerated but welcomed in the times we live in. It is therefore heartening that the film has been doing roaring business, not only becoming the fastest-grossing Rs 200 crore earner but also superseding that other big blockbuster of 2014, the mind-numbing Kick.

(Vikram Johri is a Bangalore-based writer. He tweets at @VohariJikram.)

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