New Delhi: “My name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist.” This is not just cheesy dialogue delivered by Shah Rukh Khan in his new film. It is a line all set to go viral as soon as the first show opens tomorrow, and it could well make My Name Is Khan bigger than it is was meant to be.
It may or may not release in Mumbai this weekend (theatre-owners are being chary) but that’s only a knee-jerk reaction to extra-constitutional bullying. This is a film whose time has come. It is shockingly naïve, yes, but nothing can be truer: not all Muslims are terrorists.
For a long time now, and especially after 9/11, this statement, both scarily defensive and stating the obvious, has played out the world over, in different forms, and in different media. But this new articulation, which comes from India’s biggest star who, by no coincidence, also happens to be a Muslim, and a Khan, makes it at once acquire fresh, urgent meaning.
For Shah Rukh Khan to not pick up a Pakistani cricket player for his IPL team, and then lament the absence of Pak players on prime-time TV is clearly duplicitious. But when he plays upfront, with a Forrest Gump-ish, endearing honesty, a good Muslim man who is NOT a terrorist, there are no false notes: will the Thackerays ask him to take back this line as well?
The cynics amongst us have been skeptical about the genesis of the Shiv Sena uproar. Was it all a carefully planned strategy to get endless, free publicity? Even if distributors 20th Century Fox had expended millions, they wouldn’t have done such carpet coverage without the controversy. Sure, he did a brave thing by standing up to the Sena rhetoric, but would SRK have been quite as forthcoming if his film’s release wasn’t around the corner?
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9:32 PM
Moderate Islamist here
