From Sanjay Dutt to Arvind Kejriwal: The AK-47 fires on

Upon hearing that Mikhail Kalashnikov had died, some wag on Twitter rather unkindly quipped that Sanjay Dutt would now get another parole extension so he could attend the funeral of the “Father of the AK-47”. As that tweet and its imitators went viral, nitpickers pointed out that Sanjay Dutt actually had an illegal AK-56 in his possession not an AK-47. But why let a few digits get in the way of a good story? That confusion, in fact, merely underscores how iconic the AK-47 has become in our popular culture. It is the godfather of all guns. Other guns have their pedigree. James Bond started out with a Beretta. The cowboy with a Colt won the American West. But there was no Colt culture or a Beretta culture the way the AK-47 gave us the “Kalashnikov culture” defined here as “the attitudes and behaviour in a social group that resolves political disputes by force of arms; ‘the Kalashnikov culture in Afghanistan.’” The Afghan war really brought home to us the image of the guerilla with a Kalashnikov. But it was part of many other liberation wars. Just as the Indian national flag enshrined the chakra, the flag of Mozambique and Hezbollah honoured the AK-47. Kalashnikov’s obituary mentioned that during the Vietnam War, American soldiers would throw away their M-16s to grab AK-47s from dead Vietnamese soldiers because the AK-47 was more rugged, simpler to use and jammed less. [caption id=“attachment_1304757” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  AK-47 rifles seized from militants being displayed in Kashmir. AFP.[/caption] It was, in short, a gun whose time had come even if it was not the most accurate. The New York Times estimates between 70 and 100 million AK-47s have been produced since 1947. That’s more than all other assault rifles combined. It became the sort of weapon anyone, even a Bollywood film star, could dream of owning. It fit in perfectly with the rising culture of if you’ve got it, flaunt it. And so it made the jump neatly from the weapon of a liberation war to the private security of the rich and infamous. The AK-47 made violence visible in a way the Beretta in its chamois holder never was. Even the cowboy’s Colt had been comparatively discreet tucked away in its holder till it needed to be whipped out. The AK-47 was the opposite. It advertised its presence. Away from the badlands of Afghanistan it became a statement of (fire)power, a way to assert might was right. A revolver was about stealth. The AK-47 was about saying very loudly “Don’t f*** with me.” It never conveyed that message as chillingly as when slung over the shoulder of some drugged out child soldier in Congo or Somalia. When James Bond debuted with a Beretta, a gun collector wrote to Ian Fleming saying he was a fan of the novel but the Beretta 418 was a “ladies gun”. (Fleming stuck to his guns, for a while, but ultimately equipped Bond with a Walther PPK.) The Kalashnikov, in contrast, will cause no such gender confusion. The Kalashnikov shows up in The Living Daylights where the KGB assassin uses one. And Bond remarks it will turn the target into “strawberry jam”. In the West the Kalashnikov symbolized the terrorist, the drug cartel, the bad guy. In the Third World it was all about the war of liberation, the little guy “sticking a finger into the eye of the man” as Larry Kahaner, author AK-47: The Weapon That Changed the Face of War put it. But after the Cold War ended, those distinctions became murkier. The US armed Iraqis and Afghans with AK-47s. Meanwhile Mexico has its “narcocorridos”, a sort of gangsta rap for drug cartels which glorify AK-47s. In the documentary Narco Cultura, Edgar Quintero a Los Angeles based singer croons “With an AK-47 and a bazooka on my shoulder/Cross my path and I’ll chop your head off/We’re bloodthirsty, crazy, and we like to kill” as a lullaby for his baby. In India we have our own spin on it. The Kalashnikov is as much a symbol as Mona Darling of the don who has no qualms about creating a bloodbath. “Once, a Hindi film villain wore pointed shoes and drank Vat 69. These days, his face is covered, and he carries a Kalashnikov” writes S. Ramachandran in The Telegraph in an article discussing how terrorism had changed Bollywood. The terrorist, writes Ramachandran has become the stock Bollywood villain now just as the smuggler was in the seventies when our markets were closed or the evil landlord was in the fifties. And the Kalashnikov has become the marker of the terrorist. It is also shorthand for our scriptwriters. In an essay about the portrayal of Muslims in Bollywood cinema, Sanjeev Kumar writes “The mannerly Musalman produced by the secular Hindi films now has no place and is replaced by the terrorists, who not surprisingly, wear their identities on sleeves while carrying out terrorist activities. Many of them wear the salwar kameez, sport beards, carry AK-47 rifles and use Arab Scarves. Bollywood wants to make sure that the religious identity of the terrorist is doubted not at all by the audience.” So closely has the AK-47 been identified with this stereotype that when Piyush Jha made the film Sikandar about a Kashmiri orphan he emphasized,“My protagonist plays football. How common is that? Contrary to popular perception, he does not go around with an AK-47.” Just the name AK-47 is loaded. Om Puri had a Kannada hit with a film named A.K.47 in 1999 playing the upright and strict policeman who takes on the underworld. But the AK-47’s bad boy reputation might be in for an overhaul.The latest inheritor of AK-47’s mantle is the newest political stormtrooper in Delhi – Arvind Kejriwal who shares the initials with Avtomat Kalashnikova. As one blog describes him he is “Agent AK-47” “the Batman that every Gotham needs.” Simple. Rugged. Jams less. But not always accurate. Actually that’s a pretty good description for the ubiquitous aam aadmi of assault weapons as well as Mr. Aam Aadmi-in-chief himself.