Akshay Kumar to play a Sikh hero... again, but there are other good Sikh actors too

The minute I got to know that Akshay Kumar will play mining engineer Jaswant Singh Gill, who had rescued 64 miners from a flooded quarry in West Bengal in 1989, my mind went back to the number of times Akshay has played turbaned Sikh characters: Singh Is Kinng (where he was excoriated by the Sikh community for wearing the turban wrong) and  its atrocious followup Singh Is Bliing where the title (Akshay’s idea, I was told) had to be revised  since there was copyright dispute between the Singh Is Kinng producer and the director Anees Bazmee.

Then there was Kesari, where Akshay’s beard looked as real as Rekha’s eyelashes. The  difference being one of intention and import. Kesari was a slice-of-life historical set in 1892. All Akshay had to do was look at the pictorial evidence of how the turban and beard was  worn during those days. He didn’t. No one told him to. The producers were ever so grateful for his presence. To hell with authenticity.

No attention was paid to authenticity, although Kesari was meant to be a historical. An actor’s responsibility towards his character grows manifold when he is playing a real character, especially one of historical import. The actor can’t afford to be smug or lazy when playing a national hero.

So why Akshay Kumar to play the braveheart Sikh Jaswant Gill, when he has already proved his inability recently to play a historical character Samrat Prithviraj with dignity, accuracy and credibility? Why not a real Sikh to play Gill whom the Sikhs love like very few contemporary  heroes?

I know Diljit Dosanjh  can’t play every turbaned hero in films. But there are other very good Sikh actors. Watch Ajitpal Singh’s Tabbar or Netflix’s forthcoming CAT to experience the  torrent of turbaned talent.

Akshay Kumar’s track record  in real-life roles has been  pretty dismal. In 2016, in Rustom, Akshay played the real-life naval officer Nanavati, who caught his wife red-handed, as they say, with his best friend. The film Rustom was directed by Tinu Desai, who is now directing  the Jaswant Singh Gill biopic.

The celebrated Nanavati case was credited with  changing the way we  look at the laws regarding crimes of passion. Rustom plucks the core of the crime, unplugs the theme of infidelity from its original context and plays deviously around with the facts to create a semi-fiction ‘what-if’ scenario where the characters hurl towards what the film’s writers would like to think of as an unexpectedly shocking ending.

It’s like watching a true-life crime story from Shyam Benegal done in Walt Disney studios. The manner in which the story unfolds suggests that no harm can come to this world of fragile blemished but unbreakable Utopia.

We need less Disney, more Scorsese in the Gill  bio-pic. For the film to convey a high level of authenticity, the actor has to be correct: we can’t have George Clooney playing Nelson Mandela, can we?

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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