Bollywood Dreams : Part 4

King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema
by Anupama Chopra

(Page 4 of 4)

For fifty years since independence, India had struggled with a stagnant economy. Economist Raj Krishna labeled it the "Hindu rate of growth," which averaged just 3.5 percent annually. India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, envisaged a "socialist pattern of society," which would combine the best of socialism and capitalism so that Indians could enjoy both economic egalitarianism and democratic freedom. Instead, the extreme protectionism and state-controlled public sector created the "License Raj," a Kafkaesque maze of regulations and permits that forced businessmen and ordinary citizens customarily to use bribes and "contacts" in high places. The License Raj distorted the economy and filled the markets with low-quality, made-in-India goods that were two or three decades behind the West. Factories were forced to produce goods in line with centrally mandated Five Year Plans on the Soviet model; producing more scooters in a year than the annual quota allowed for was as much of an official sin as producing fewer. In this environment, even ordinary American products such as Kellogg's cereals and Levi's jeans were considered status symbols. They implied that one had the money and good fortune to travel to foreign lands. America, with its vast supermarkets groaning with consumer delights, was a faraway paradise.

The reforms changed the urban Indian landscape. Suddenly cereals, jeans, and dozens of other branded products were available at the corner store. Television, which earlier featured hours of staid, government-run programming on two state-run terrestrial channels, now boasted dizzying alternatives. There were dozens of cable channels, inexpensive enough to be bought by anyone who could afford a television set. Tedious political speeches and discussions on agriculture were replaced by glitzy, titillating shows such as The Bold and the Beautiful and Baywatch. The West, with its seductive promise of modernity, glamour, and a sumptuous lifestyle, entered middle-class homes.

As India's economic growth rate rose beyond 7 percent in the 1990s, the middle classes with their increased spending power came to the forefront. The Delhi-based National Council of Applied Economic Research, which prefers the term "consuming class," estimated that in the mid-1990s this consuming class was 32.5 million households or 168 million people. (By 2005, experts estimated that the middle class numbered over 250 million people - that is only 50 million less than the total population of the United States.)

Globalization, and the ensuing consumerism and competition, created an enormous cultural churning. The conventional rules no longer held. Negotiating between tradition and modernity, between new desires and deep-rooted expectations, the middle class was wracked by confusion and insecurity. Stress, depression, divorce, long considered ailments of the affluent West, became more widespread. The Indian family, women's roles, marriage, and relationships were irrevocably redefined.

These shifts were paralleled by various reactionary trends, particularly the rise of a muscular Hindu right wing. In December 1992, Hindu fundamentalists destroyed the Babri Masjid, a disputed religious site in North India. Riots followed. Mumbai, long heralded as India's most cosmopolitan city, was torn apart by two spells of rioting. According to the government-ordered Srikrishna Commission Report, 900 people died and 2,036 were injured. Over 50,000 were rendered homeless. The patina of globalization couldn't camouflage or quell the religious conflict, poverty, corruption, and violence that simmered underneath. A sleepy society, mired in 5,000 years of culture and tradition, wrestled with the "shock of modernity" and asked itself: What does it mean to be Indian?

Shah Rukh Khan provided one very persuasive answer. In films like Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The Brave-Hearted Will Take the Bride, also widely known as DDLJ: 1995), Dil To Pagal Hai (The Heart Is Crazy: 1997), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Something Is Happening: 1998), Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001), and Kal Ho Naa Ho (If Tomorrow Comes: 2003), he told Indians that an Indian could be a hybrid who easily enjoys the material comforts of the West and the spiritual comforts of the East. You didn't have to choose between the two; the twain could meet without friction or confusion. So in DDLJ, Shah Rukh's character, Raj, is a London-born Indian who drinks beer, wears a Harley-Davidson jacket, and is clearly a European man-about-town; but Raj doesn't take advantage of his intoxicated heroine because he "respects an Indian woman's honor." Shah Rukh's subsequent characters also reiterated this idea, that the international-designer-label exterior cannot undermine an essential Indian identity. Shah Rukh personified the new millennium Indian who combines a global perspective with local values and is at home in the world.

Shah Rukh became both the face and the catalyst of the new consumerist society; he was one of the earliest Bollywood stars to plunge into advertising. Shah Rukh rarely met a product he could not endorse. He sold everything from Pepsi-Cola to Tag Heuer watches. The commercials accentuated his screen persona and helped transform the actor into a brand.

A popular song from a film released in 1955, Shri 420 (Mr. 420), puts it aptly:

Mera joota hai Japani

Yeh patloon Englistani

Sar pe lal topi Rusi

Phir bhi dil hai Hindustani

My shoes are Japanese

These pants are British

The cap on my head is Russian

But my heart is Indian.

In 1955, this cosmopolitanism was perhaps a cherished hope for most Indians; today, it is an inescapable reality. Shah Rukh Khan, like Marilyn Monroe, is an icon for an age. This is his story.

Copyright © 2007 by Anupama Chopra

About the Author

I belong to a family steeped in Hindi film. My mother Kamna Chandra sowed the Bollywood seed. She wrote scripts for two of Bollywood's finest directors: Raj Kapoor and Yash Chopra. My siblings followed in her footsteps: my sister Tanuja Chandra is one of the few women directors in the Hindi film industry. My brother Vikram Chandra is a renowned novelist (Sacred Games) who has also written film scripts. I am a film critic. And I'm married to Vidhu Vinod Chopra, a well-know Hindi film director whose short film, An Encounter with Faces, was nominated for an Oscar in 1979.