The Player
AKSHAY KUMAR LOVES INDIA. He really does. He has said so in his movies, in his advertisements and in his tweets.
In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought the country to its knees, and the actor was grounded. The final round of promotions for his film Sooryavanshi had to be cancelled since the Maharashtra government started telling people not to leave their homes. The release of the cop drama, the latest in the filmmaker Rohit Shetty’s oeuvre, was postponed indefinitely.
But still, Kumar was as busy as he could be, for his work as a performer in recent times has hardly been limited to films. During the COVID-19 crisis, he came to play the role of the responsible superstar and the morale-booster-in-chief on social media. His Twitter posts were a flood of upbeat content. He pledged a ₹ 25-crore donation within minutes of Narendra Modi announcing the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations fund, or PM-CARES. When the prime minister said that the country should show solidarity with its healthcare workers by banging pots and pans, Kumar posted a video of himself loudly beating a thali outside his home. He put together a song of hope, lit a diya, hosted a benefit concert, and told people to stay safe and stay home. In June, when the government wanted to lift lock-down restrictions, Kumar made a public-service advertisement telling people not to worry, to wear masks, to go out but be careful. If the government had a message that season, it seemed Kumar was the messenger.
“I don’t believe in thinking about what the country has given you, but what you can give to the country,” he told the media in December 2019. “For example, you pick a captain of a cricket team, and now it is the team’s responsibility to listen to him. Follow the leader. Koi bhi party ka ho”—no matter which political party he is from—“let him lead the country, because chuna toh aap hi logon ne hai”—it was you people who chose him, after all.
Since Akshay Kumar made his Bollywood debut in 1991, he has appeared in over a hundred and twenty films, gliding from one phase of his career to the next. He started out as an action hero, then morphed into a reliable comic performer and now, in his fifties, has come to be seen as Mr India, an enlightened nationalist hero.
His recent releases include national-security films such as Baby and Naam Shabana; true-life dramas such as Gold, Kesari and Mission Man-gal; and social-reform sagas such as Padman and Toilet. If Kumar is to be believed, it is a mere coincidence that his films are about issues on which the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government likes to keep the spotlight: patriotism, national security, cleanliness campaigns. “Modi sir did Swachh Bharat in 2014, Toilet: Ek Prem Katha came in 2017,” he said in August 2019. “So, you are wrong. The Chandrayaan project”— India’s moon mission—“has been in development since 2015 and we started shooting Mission Mangal in December 2018. So, even that is not possible. This is all coincidental.” Kumar added that the Indian Space Research Organisation “was established on August 15, 1969 and it is coincidental that our film is releasing on the 50th anniversary of its formation. I got to know about this months ago.”
“In the past four or five years there has been a rise in patriotic films being made, particularly thanks to Akshay Kumar and others,” Atul Mohan, who edits the trade journal Complete Cinema, told me in March last year. “After the coming of the BJP there has been open discussion on issues of patriotism and nationalism, and that has also given a boost to the production of such films. When the prime minister talks openly about patriotism, cleanliness and hygiene, that also gives rise to socially relevant films.”
Behind this wave of nationalism in Hindi cinema, however, there seems to be a system of unspoken collusion. The image-conscious government watches closely not just the content of films but also the opinions publicly expressed by celebrities. Some are approached directly to amplify the government’s voice. Those who cooperate are rewarded in many ways: tax cuts, government assignments, national awards and so on. Those who do not are punished through the misuse of institutions. Kumar emerged early on as a willing colluder, and has been able to skilfully find common ground between his own beliefs and the government’s agenda.
The Hindu-nationalist establishment finds Kumar useful due to a constellation of factors: the perception of him as an outsider to the film industry; people’s image of him as a Hindu alternative to the three big Muslim superstars—Aamir Khan, Shahrukh Khan and Salman Khan; his charitable concerns and responsible messaging in advertisements. The association is mutually beneficial. “If Bollywood’s own visibility is limited from a Friday to another Friday, the PSAs extend his visibility lifeline, along with the ads,” Karthik Srinivasan, an independent communications consultant, told me over email. “The recent spate of biopics and hyper-nationalistic movies being produced (and succeeding) has helped quite a few actors (like Vicky Kaushal and John Abraham, though it hasn’t helped Vivek Oberoi at all), and not just Akshay.”
Film releases have always been carefully timed. Diwali was previously the main release window for producers, but now holiday weekends across the calendar have assumed an importance as a film’s box-office fate hinges on the first week after its debut. Salman Khan has become associated with the Eid weekend, Aamir Khan with the Christmas weekend and now Akshay Kumar with the Republic Day and Independence Day weekends. Gold was released on 15 August 2018, Toilet on 11 August 2017, Mission Mangal on 15 August 2019 and Rustom on 12 August 2016. Airlift came out on 22 January 2016 and Bachchan Pandey will release on Republic Day next year.
While actors such as Vivek Oberoi starred as Narendra Modi in a propagandist biopic, and Kangana Ranaut plans a film on Ayodhya, and while filmmakers such as Vivek Agnihotri and Ashoke Pandit openly flaunt their support of the BJP, Kumar has been more strategic. He
