India’s Hindu right wing has opened up a new front against Bollywood’s ace star, Aamir Khan, days after India and Pakistan were embroiled in deadly clashes that involved missile and drone strikes.
But this time it wasn’t Khan’s bold movies that challenged the dominant narrative that riled up the right-wing activists, mostly associated with the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). It was rather his picture with the Turkish first lady, Emine Erdogan, taken in August 2020 that has become the grounds for targeting the actor-cum-director.
Khan had met the first lady while in Istanbul for the shooting of his movie, Lal Singh Chadda. He is among the few South Asian stars who remain popular in Türkiye – his movie 3 Idiots was dubbed in Turkish and played in cinemas across various cities.
The four-day tit-for-tat strikes between the Indian and Pakistani militaries, in which around 60 people were killed on both sides, raised fears of an all-out war between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
Tensions de-escalated after the United States intervened as Pakistan claimed to have shot down six Indian jets, including the French-made Rafale fighters.
On May 7, India struck multiple Pakistani cities with missiles, claiming they were “terrorist camps” from where the deadly April 22 attack on tourists at Pahalgam, in the India-administered Kashmir, was planned. Islamabad denies any involvement and has called for a joint investigation to establish who was behind the attack. Pakistan also says that the Indian missile targeted religious institutions and killed civilians.
Soon after the Indian military strikes, the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, called his Pakistani counterpart, Ishaq Dar. In an interview with TRT World, Dar publicly appreciated the Turkish government for standing with Islamabad and acknowledged that Fidan was the first diplomat to reach out.
The bonhomie between the two countries and calls for peace from Türkiye were framed as animosity towards New Delhi by India’s propaganda houses, popularly known as ‘godi media’ (lap-dog media).
India’s Hindu right-wing parties, including the ruling BJP, called for a boycott of Türkiye.
Celebi, which provides airport ground handling in India, was struck off from its contracts over “national security concerns”.
The All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation (AICPDF), on the call of right-wing groups, also launched an "indefinite and total boycott" of all Turkish-origin goods, which would affect chocolates, wafers, jams, biscuits and skincare products.
Indian fashion websites owned by Walmart-backed Flipkart and billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance have removed numerous Turkish apparel brands.
Flipkart's fashion website Myntra removed listings of Turkish brands, including Trendyol, known for the street and casual wear brand LC Waikiki, and jeans producer Mavi.
Reliance's fashion website, AJIO, also removed Turkish brands.
Old grudges
The relationship between Aamir Khan and India’s right wing goes far. In 2006, Khan’s movie Rang De Basanti (Paint me in the colour of sacrifice) depicted the growing frustration of Indian youth with the country’s politics.
A story of five boys discovering their patriotism and human values, rising above the jingoism and aspiring for a change when one of their friends, a MiG-21 fighter jet pilot, dies in a crash.
The politicians blame the martyr pilot for his poor skills rather than the substandard technology. The boys protest and challenge the narrative, but to no avail, as they are beaten and tortured. Unable to find a voice in biased media, they forcibly enter a radio station and expose the corrupt politicians for buying faulty defence equipment, only to be killed and labelled as terrorists.
An underlying theme of the movie is also how one of the boys affiliated with a right-wing Hindu political party discovers the hollowness of their nationalism and rebels against them.
The movie was a blockbuster.
The dam
In June 2006, Modi was Chief Minister of the Indian state of Gujarat and was still banned in the United States for violating religious freedoms. Riots had engulfed Gujarat in 2002. Frenzied Hindu mobs had killed over 1000 Muslims. Modi was banking on a wave of right-wing politics mixed with the promise of development.
Amir Khan supported the rehabilitation of farmers displaced by the construction of a dam on the Narmada River. The foundation of the dam was laid by India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1961. In 1979, the World Bank sanctioned $200 million for the construction, but the construction resumed only in 1987.
However, a movement to oppose the construction over concerns of displacement was started by a Gandhian activist, Medha Patkar, and as such, the top court of India stalled the construction of the dam. In 2006, the project was again revived, and the height of the dam was fixed at 123 metres, even as many feared the displacement.
Khan’s support for the Save Narmada Movement didn't go well with Narendra Modi and his supporters, who not only attacked cinema halls in Gujarat that screened Rang de Basanti but also banned his forthcoming movie Fanaa (Annihilation).
Fanaa depicts the story of a Kashmiri rebel who yearns for freedom but, while on a mission, falls for a blind Kashmiri girl. In one of the scenes, an Indian officer briefs her colleagues that Kashmiris have been promised a plebiscite by the then Prime Minister of India, Nehru, but successive Indian governments have robbed them of their right to self-determination.
Much water has flowed in rivers since then. India has suspended the Indus Water Treaty with its neighbour, Pakistan.
Modi inaugurated the Narmada dam in 2017.
The wrong number
In 2014, Khan’s movie PK debunked religious intolerance, fake religiosity and hate stereotypes.
In it, a Hindu girl falls in love with a Muslim Pakistani boy, but the doubts created by a Hindu godman separate them. Khan’s character, an alien, challenges the fake godmen and dissects their sorcery and calls them wrong numbers.
The ruling BJP under Modi, which had come into power in the summer of 2014, riding on a wave of Hindu nationalism, saw the popularity and message of the movie as a threat to its politics and power. Protests were held against it, and effigies of Khan were burnt, calling the movie a conspiracy.
In 2015, public lynchings of Muslims peaked when refrigerators in Muslim households were searched by Hindu mobs for any traces of beef. Khan joined the outcry and said he was “alarmed” by the number of incidents, and his wife even suggested that they should probably leave the country.
The media lashed him. ‘How dare he say he was unsafe!' shouted a news anchor.
Choosing silence
In recent years, Khan has abandoned the script and chosen safe movie subjects. He played a wrestler, a thief and even a bandit in his subsequent movies. But more so remained away from the media.
In 2022, the right-wing decided to boycott Bollywood movies that they deemed anti-national and promote ‘nationalist movies’. Khan’s movie Laal Singh Chaddha, a remake of the Hollywood narrative movie Forrest Gump, became the target.
Aamir Khan’s co-actor in the movie, Kareena Kapoor, who is married to actor Saif Ali Khan, became a point of contention for right-wing trolls for marrying a Muslim. The movie was a disaster at the box office, thanks to bad publicity by Indian media and right-wing trolls.
Khan’s ancestry
Khan’s great-granduncle is Moulana Abdul Kalam Azad. Azad was a renowned Muslim scholar, a freedom fighter and the first education minister of India. When the Indian subcontinent was partitioned in 1947 into India and Pakistan, Azad chose India over Pakistan. He became a voice of millions of Muslims who remained in India. But decades later, his great-grandnephew has been told by the Hindu right-wing to leave India and even asked to go to Pakistan.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan, had warned the Muslims, like Abdul Kalam Azad, who wanted to stay in India, about what lay ahead for them.
“Muslims who are opposing Pakistan will spend the rest of their lives proving loyalty to India,” Jinnah said.
Aamir Khan has an upcoming movie, Sitaare Zameen par (Stars on the Earth). It is apparent now; he’s trying to save the movie. He is the producer. His production company changed the display pictures bearing his company’s name to the Indian flag on social media.
Khan is now hailing Narendra Modi for leading “India’s war on Pakistan”.
