Aamir Khan's PK is hardly gutsy, but it's good enough for silly Twitter rants

Move over Valentine’s Day, PK is here. It can now be concluded that Aamir Khan’s new film has taken the favourite outrage spot in the lives of religious fundamentalists that was hitherto reserved for couples who wanted to gift each other pink teddy bears and big red cards on 14 February. While the lovers can breathe a sigh of relief, film goers aren’t so lucky. There have been report s that Hindutva activists have been burning posters - which is pretty routine for angry Indians - and vandalising theatres in Gujarat. Muslim clerics too have joined the din, demanding ‘objectionable’ scenes degrading Islam be removed from the film. In fact,  Maulana Khalid Rashid Firangi Mahali , a renowned Sunni cleric in Uttar Pradesh even suggested that the film might be detrimental to ‘communal harmony’. Given that religious fundamentalists of any stripe aren’t exactly the brightest sparks among humans, it is almost amusing to see how a strictly mediocre film has sparked a violent debate - not on its merits as a film, but on its assumed intent. [caption id=“attachment_2022541” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] A still from PK.[/caption] Since PK, on the face of it, seems to be questioning organised religion - some Christians, Muslims and Hindus have seen red and are accusing the film of meting out step-motherly treatment to each of them, while attempting to glorify others. Since the favourite battleground for such matters (after TV debates) is Twitter, the hashtag #PKDebate has started trending and occupied the top spot on the India trend list for two straight days. This hashtag was preceded by another hashtag war - #BoycottPK versus #WeSupportPK - making the film seem like the most visceral work on religion that India has seen in the recent times. While half of the world is busy outraging over PK’s audacity and the other half are applauding it, Aamir Khan’s film is actually symbolic of the deep fear that effectively props religion up in our society. While religious institutions thrive on the aam aadmi’s fear that life might go topsy turvy if their endorsed ‘god’ is not appeased, the fact that Rajkumar Hirani’s protagonist had to be an alien to question organised religion is symptomatic of the intense caution that we have to exercise in a democracy while dealing with religion. Given that the most farcical bits in PK have to do with Khan being an alien, one can see why the makers couldn’t get a big ticket hero to play a human and question religion in India. For example when Kamal Haasan’s big budget Vishwaroopam released last year, Islamic fundamentalists took umbrage at a militant in the film being shown as a Muslim. Hasaan had to go to great lengths to secure the realease of the film. The frenzy around the film has thrown up some wonderful tweets, with the PK haters’ pack predictably being led by I-am-too-angry-for-my-shoes Subramanian Swamy. While we are somewhat familiar with reports of the underworld’s hold on Bollywood of ’80s and ’90s, Swamy has come up with a completely new source of funding for the industry and that is the ISI. In fact, in a series of tweets, Swamy seems to have narrated a story that could well be made into a Bollywood thriller. Following are some of his tweets:

Not only that, he also said that a Sikh group has complained to him that the film shows a Sikh as a beggar and Sikhs aren’t beggars. So he, the official offence-taker of the country, will lodge a complaint on behalf of them too. Maybe his following tweets will explain which religion and ethnicity should be okay with the fact that a fictional character from their community was shown as a beggar. It doesn’t strike either Swamy or the 750 odd people who retweeted his tweet that beggars don’t choose to be homeless and destitute and are plain unfortunate, not noxious or evil.

While the film uniformly slams all religious establishments - not religion itself - Twitter has made it out to be yet another anti-Hindu conspiracy. So a series of tweets effectively saying ‘you haven’t slammed Islam enough to our liking’ surfaced on Twitter. For example, the tweeters below seem to have dozed off during the bits where the film shows PK being chased by a violent Muslim mob as he almost entered a mosque with bottles of wine.

Thankfully, the debate on Twitter saw occasional sparks of logic, where some urged others to watch the film the way a work of fiction should be and others pointed out that it is critical of all religion alike. Led thankfully by the censor board of India and Supreme Court, the #PKdebate also had voices countering the religious fundamentalists.