Representation of Sikhs in Bollywood Cinema

By Anjali Gera Roy

Published online: 21 Aug 2014

Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory

Like other ethnic minorities, Sikhs have been conventionally represented in popular Hindi cinema either as brave warriors or as uncouth rustics. In the nationalist text in which the imagined subject was an urban North Indian, Hindu male, Sikh characters were displaced and made to provide comic relief. Since the mid-1990s, Hindi filmmakers have genuflected to the rising economic and political power of the Sikh diaspora through token inclusions of Sikhs. Although 1990s films like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) included attractive images of Sikhs, Hindi cinema could introduce a Sikh protagonist only in the new millennium in Ghadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001) and featured a turbaned Sikh as a protagonist only two decades later in the film Singh is Kinng (2009). Ever since the film became a superhit, top Bollywood stars such as Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan, Ranbir Kapoor and even Rani Mukherjee have played Sikh characters in films like Love Aaj Kal (2009), Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year (2009) and Dil Bole Hadippa (2009). Even though Bollywood stars have donned the turban to turn Sikh cool, Sikhs view the representation of the community in Hindi cinema as demeaning and have attempted to revive the Punjabi film industry as an attempt at authentic self-representation. This paper examines images of Sikhs in new Bollywood films to inquire if the romanticization of Sikhs as representing rustic authenticity is a clever marketing tactic used by the film industry to capitalize on the increasing power of the Sikh diaspora or if it is an indulgence in diasporic techno-nostalgia that converges on the Sikh body as the site for non-technologized rusticity. It argues that despite the exoticization of Sikhs in the new Bollywood film, the Sikh subject continues to be displaced in the Indian nation.

Abstract
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• Introduction
• Lions of Punjab
• Hindi Cinema and the ‘Lions of Punjab’
• Sikh as martyr, Sikh as clown
• Birth of turban cool and the body of desire
• Sikh as Indian
• Beyond Bollywood
• Conclusion

• Introduction
• Lions of Punjab
• Hindi Cinema and the ‘Lions of Punjab’
• Sikh as martyr, Sikh as clown
• Birth of turban cool and the body of desire
• Sikh as Indian
• Beyond Bollywood
• Conclusion

Since cinematic identity has been normalized in popular Hindi cinema as Hindu, North Indian, middle class, urban and male, Sikhs, like other religious or ethnic minority characters, are usually typecast, in subordinate or negative roles. However, since the mid-1990s, Mumbai filmmakers have been forced to genuflect to the rising economic and political power of the Sikh diaspora through the integration of the Sikh subject in the visual and narrative economy of the Hindi film. Although some 1990s films like Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ, 1995) and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) had featured Sikh characters in extended cameos, Hindi cinema could afford to introduce a turbaned Sikh protagonist only in Border (1997) and Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001), which culminated in the emergence of the bearded, turban-clad Sikh in a non-military role in Singh is Kinng (2009). Ever since the film became a ‘superhit’, top Bollywood ‘stars’ such as Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, Ajay Devgn, Farhan Akhtar, and even Rani Mukerji, have played Sikh characters in films like Love Aaj Kal (2009), Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year (2009), Son of Sardar (2012), Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2012) and Dil Bole Hadippa (2009), respectively. Even though Bollywood actors have donned the turban and turned the Sikh ‘cool’,1 Sikhs have largely dismissed the representation of the community in Hindi cinema as demeaning and turned to revive the nearly extinct Punjabi film industry as an attempt at authentic self-representation.2 This paper examines the representation of Sikhs in new Bollywood films to argue that the Sikh subject continues to be displaced in the Indian nation (Mooney 2008) despite the exoticization of Sikhs in the Bollywood film.3 The paper begins by providing a brief overview of the historical production of Sikh identity and the changing representation of the Sikhs in the larger Indian imaginary before focusing on their cinematic representations in new Bollywood films, which play on the stereotyped articulation of Sikhs to rusticity and hypermasculinity to transform the Sikh into an object of the nation's desire. The essay concludes by looking at two films featuring Sikh protagonists in which the Sikh is not ethnicized.
Lions of Punjab
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While examining the use of animals as metaphors with which the self is constructed, R.S. Perinbanayagam asserts that ‘in Indian culture, in myth, legend, history and practice, the lion figures prominently as a metaphor for legitimizing social control, political authority and self-constitution and presentation’ (1990). Perinbanayagam shows that while all Kshatriya houses added the appellation Singh (lion) to their names, the metaphor gets fully realized in the case of the Sikhs (1990, 330) in ‘whom the militarism, courage and willingness to put honor and loyalty’ above self-preservation attached to the Kshatriya came to be held up as the sacred duty of a believer. As Perinbanayagam points out, it is immaterial whether the real lion possesses the qualities that are attributed to him in Hindu mythography, the lion-metaphor has been effectively appropriated by Sikhs in the formation and institutionalization of ‘a knightly order’ based on ‘struggle, sacrifice and victory over Islamic persecution’ (1990, 333).

The central thread underpinning the majority of Sikh objections to their stereotyped representation in Hindi cinema is the conspicuous gap between positive Sikh self-ascriptions and largely unflattering stereotypes of the Sikhs in the national imaginary that are reproduced in the nation-space of Hindi cinema. While Sikh subjectivity has largely converged on the lion-metaphor to foreground the qualities of valour, courage and sacrifice in its self-constitution as an order of saint warriors [sant-sipahi], the Indian nation has isolated Sikhs' self-acknowledged peasant origins to inscribe rusticity on the Sikh body that has been reproduced in Hindi cinema. In order to put the stereotyping of Sikhs in perspective, it is important that we understand how ethnicity has been represented in mainstream Hollywood cinema in general and Hindi cinema in particular.
Hindi Cinema and the ‘Lions of Punjab’
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Studies of popular Hindi cinema have uncovered its implication in the ideology of the post-colonial Indian nation-state and its role in the production of the modern Indian citizen-subject.4
In their exploration of the politics of the nation-state, these studies engage a number of questions central to debates surrounding the formation of the nation-state, including tradition, modernity, language, religion, caste, gender and sexuality focusing in particular on exclusionary practices through which the nation has defined itself. Although considerable space has been devoted to discussions of the question of ‘the other’ in relation to the Hindi film's ideological base, the other has largely been defined in caste, class, religious and gendered terms. While allusions to ethnicity are occasionally made in examinations of its secular underpinnings, sustained engagements with Hindi cinema's negotiation with ethnic difference are missing in existing studies. The inclusion of essays on cinema in other Indian languages in recent anthologies of Bengali, Tamil and Malayalam cinema has demystified the synonymy of the Hindi film with Indian cinema and questioned the hegemonizing hold of the commercial Hindi film over the popular imagination (Devadas and Velayutham 2012).

The history of ethnic American representation in Hollywood cinema has been marked either by absence or stereotyping. In both Hollywood and Hindi cinema, ethnicity has been repressed by the national desire for assimilation and the erasure of ethnic difference presented as a preamble to citizenship. Speaking about Hollywood cinema, Lester D. Friedman states that Hollywood films assign easily recognizable signs (e.g. speech, dress, food choices and mannerisms) that ‘when taken together function as covert codes that apparently signify divergent ethnic cultures’ and that ‘most Hollywood movies superimpose American-ness as a self-ascripting category whose value orientation dominates any primordial ethnic conditions’ (1991, 22). Mark Winokur adds that ‘Puritan-derived, male, white Anglo-Saxonism’ became ‘the omphalos, the original mythomoteur, the originary culture’ in the 1940s (1996, 1), whereas ethnic cultures were infantilized; it has been viewed as ‘the founding half of a binary opposition the other side of which is every other reactive cultural influence’ since the 1980s (1996, 2).

Similarly, the construction of national identity in Indian cinemas functions, as Ravi S. Vasudevan points out, through representing the other either as an absence or as a stereotype. Arguing that Indian cinemas construct an abstraction of national identity, Vasudevan distinguishes between its regional and pan-Indian constructions and points out that Bombay cinema has a special position in this context because it positions other national/ethnic/socio-religious in stereotypical ways under an overarching North Indian, Hindu majoritarian identity (2012, 228). In his view, stereotyped images of the Sikhs resemble those of the ‘Madrasi’, Bengali, Parsi or Christian that must be subordinated to the Hindu/Hindi subject of Hindi cinema. Anirudh Deshpande concurs that its ‘north Indian pseudo urban bias’ produces stereotypes of the “ayyo” mouthing lungi clutching Tamil, the “vanisayin” muttering Sindhi, the gamcha sporting Bihari domestic, the dhoti-clad timid Bengali, the funny and dimwitted Nepali chowkidar, the martial, manly, chivalrous taxi driver or truck driver Sikh and the subordinate, naïve Kashmiri, etc. (2009, 29)
But the Hindi film's incorporation of ethnic difference in the construction of the ‘Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan’5 narrative of the nation presents a different strategy for containing regional narratives under the master narrative of the nation. As de-ethnicization is considered the precondition to entry into secular modernity, the modern Indian citizen-subject can be produced only through a disavowal of ethnicity. In the construction of a homogeneous Hindi Hindu narrative of the nation, ethnic difference is represented either through the mode of humour in the comic sub-plot or that of exoticization in the song and dance sequence.

Ethnic-based comedy that has been the prime means deployed by popular cinema to contain ethnic difference foregrounds the nation-state's anxieties with respect to its others. Denzin maintained that ‘the [Hollywood] filmmakers exercised a social control over the non-Western figure, arguing that he should be made to accommodate the central features of Western culture’ through the comedic gestures such as exaggeration of ethnic stereotypes through speech and dress patterns (2002, 92). Friedman argued that ‘ethnic-based comedy has been a feature of American cinema from its beginnings until the present day’ (1991, 42) and that ethnicity is presented as ‘a constraint and a construction from which characters and audiences can be at least temporarily liberated’ (1991, 43). Ethnic-based comedy has been as much a feature of Hindi cinema as it was of American cinema and a similar tendency to exercise control over ethnic groups by the North Indian Hindu majority is visible in its exaggeration of speech patterns and mannerisms of specific ethnic groups. As ethnic stereotyping becomes the dominant group's prime strategy of containing ethnic difference, ethnic stereotyping of Sikhs as simple rustics conceals deep anxieties about the nation dating back to Sikhs' alleged ‘betrayal’ of the Indian nationalist cause in 1857 through their loyalty to the British, the three nation demand in 1947 and the ‘imputed’ one for Khalistan in 1984.6
Charles Ramírez Berg defines stereotyping as a negative generalization used by an in-group (us) for an out-group (others) (2002, 15). Norman Denzin attributes stereotyping to ‘the racist system of cinematic representation’ [star system, genre, studio and so on] with which each ethnic group is confronted and argues that ‘its historical relationship with the state shaped Hollywood's representation of each ethnic group’ (2002, 25). Similarly, Mark Winokur attempts to examine how events on the screen explicate or are explicated by the larger cultural stage. As in Hollywood cinema, each ethnic group's historical relationship with the state has shaped its representation in Hindi cinema. The Sikhs' problematic relationship with the Indian state has been underwritten by the assimilationist drive articulated through the rhetoric of Unity in Diversity. Sikhs' position with respect to the Indian state has been defined in relation to ‘their willingness to be assimilated’ into the dominant Hindu discourse as ‘the sword arm of the Hindus’ or as ‘dangerous secessionists’ threatening the unity of the nation-state. The Sikh might be permitted to enter Hindu iconography as the embodiment of exemplary courage and valour or be tolerated as a country bumpkin in return for allegiance to the Indian state. The post-colonial Indian state alternated between twin colonial stereotypes of Sikhs as the martial race and hardy cultivators that were faithfully reproduced in Hindi cinema (Streets 2004).
Lopez approaches ethnicity through the perennialist view that each group's history is marked with ‘moments of revisionist racial enlightenment, by new forms of representation and interpretation that are aligned with current perceptions’ (1991, 406). The displacement of the Sikh from harmless outsider or subordinate by that of the dangerous outsider, the position formerly assigned to the Muslim, culminating in the tragic events before and after Operation Bluestar, hints at a situated perennialism. To this effect, Kavita Daiya discerns a political agenda by arguing that the economic exploitation and political disenfranchisement of the Indian Sikh male is engendered through ‘popular stereotypes of hypermasculinity and feminization’ (2011, 28). The intersection of Hindu Sikh boundaries suggested in Vijeta (1982) that throws light on the established Punjabi Hindu practice of raising the first born as a Sikh foregrounds the ever-changing boundaries between Sikhs and Hindu established through ongoing social negotiation and interaction. The conspicuous absence of Sikh as terrorist produced by the Indian media during the 1980s in Hindi cinema, except for Gulzar's sensitive exploration in Maachis (1997), foregrounds commercial cinema's reluctance to engage with the political.

Considering that the imagined spectator of the Hindi film is Hindu, it is not surprising that the Sikh subject should have been stereotyped and relegated to a subordinate position. Following the same logic, the foregrounding of the Sikh subject in Hindi cinema may be attributed to the altered diasporic address of the Hindi film since the mid-1990s. The renegotiation of Hindu–Sikh relations following the end of what has been euphemistically termed as ‘the Punjab problem’, the rising power of the Sikh diaspora, the transnational mobilization of Sikh identity and the increased visibility of Sikhs in eminent positions has compelled a revision of the Sikh in the national imaginary. It is significant that this moment of revisionist ethnic representation spawns new forms of representation. In addition, the crisis in the Hindi film industry caused by the diminishing number of cine-goers within India and the popularity of Hindi films in the Indian diasporas that forced filmmakers to explore overseas markets has also been connected to the integration of the Sikh-dominated diaspora in the visual economy of the Hindi film and to its alleged ‘Punjabification’.

Vijay Mishra was the first to have noted a trend in ‘the non-resident Indian (NRI) film’ beginning with DDLJ towards a centralization of the stereotyped Punjabi character in deference to Hindi cinema's diasporic spectatorship (2002). While DDLJ reversed the older stereotype of the Punjabi in Hindi cinema through its sensitive portrayal of concerns animating the predominantly Sikh diaspora in the UK, it also constructed what Mishra calls the Punjabi pastoral through which Punjabiyat has come to be valorized as the source of authenticity in the films that followed.

Chaudhary Baldev Singh in DDLJ inaugurates the arrival of the diasporic subject whose compromise with the adopted Western land in the space of production intensifies rather than diminishes his bonding with home and the values of home. While situating the conflict in the film in rural Punjabi patriarchal culture, the film endorses the preservation of traditional family values through the central figure of Simran who, despite having been raised in Britain, is more Indian than urban Indian young women in her observation of traditional rituals and compliance with family priorities. The film's coalescing of Sikh with Punjabi and both with Hindu and Indian resulted in the production of the Sikh body as the site for a non-technologized rusticity through a combination of diasporic nostalgia and a crisis in the nation. As in Simran's family, Sikh community values ultimately prevail in New York in Naina's dysfunctional, multi-ethnic family in Kal Ho Na Ho (2003), even though they must be catalysed by the messiah from home, Aman. Geet Dhillon and her extended family in Jab We Met (2007) are similarly presented as the site of rustic authenticity to expose the duplicity of urban Mumbai. In Love Aaj Kal (2009), the Sikh entrepreneur Veer Singh is made to epitomize selfless love in opposition to the individualist and self-centred Jai and Meera.

The film industry's decision to experiment with turbaned Sikhs in lead roles might be attributed as much to the altered perception of the turban in the Indian imaginary as to its recognition of the large diasporic audience. The turbaned Sikh was first demarginalized in popular music with music companies such as Magnasound taking the lead in launching the first turbaned pop music star Daler Mehndi in the 1990s and Oriental Star doing the same with Malkit Singh in UK so that by the time Singh is Kinng (2008) was released, the turbaned Sikh clad in glittering robes was a familiar popular cultural figure to a significant global audience. While the mona [clean-shaven] Sikh Gurdas Mann had been a familiar figure on national television since the 1980s and Daler Mehndi had appeared as himself in Mrityudaata (1997), Bollywood appropriated British Punjabi Bally Sagoo's ‘cool’ look in Anil Kapoor's musician character in Taal (1999). Almost a decade before the first turbaned Sikh arrived as a Hindi film hero, both mona and turbaned Sikhs' bodies had been inscribed as signs of pleasure in Bhangra music videos and Bollywood song and dance sequences. Bhangra's global visibility and the emergence of ‘Punjabi cool’ in the UK and India (Gera Roy 2011) had led Hindi film producers to cannibalize Punjabi folk music as ‘item number’ to increase their box appeal from the 1990s that culminated in the introduction of the first turbaned Sikh hero.
Sikh as martyr, Sikh as clown
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In comparison with unflattering portrayals of Sikhs in the past, Hindi films have been presenting Sikh characters in a more sympathetic light since the late 1990s with J.P. Dutta's Border (1997) featuring Sunny Deol as a turbaned Sikh Major, Kuldip Singh Chandpuri, in the central role. Unlike Border that reiterated the stereotype of the Sikh as soldier, Gadar (2001) set a new cinematic trend by collapsing the Sikh narrative of the martyr [Shaheed] with the martyr-to-love [Shaheed-e-Mohabbat]. Although the two Bhagat Singh films Shaheed Bhagat Singh (2002) and The Legend of Bhagat Singh (2002) have been hailed for their resuscitating the memory of the charismatic revolutionary, it was Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra's Rang De Basanti (2006) that succeeded in reviving the cult of Bhagat Singh among the nation's youth. Amir Khan's clean-shaven Sikh Daljeet alias DJ in Rang De Basanti reinscribed the Sikh as heroic on the nation's imaginary and ushered in neo-nationalist sentiments with its rousing anthem ‘rang de basanti’ galvanizing Indian youth into political action. However, while a handful of Hindi films appropriated the figure of the Sikh warrior/revolutionary in neo-nationalist returns following the liberalization of the Indian economy in the 1990s, other Sikh characters continued to serve as the Hindu's hero comic or heroic foil in the rest.

The trend for featuring Sikh characters in extended cameos began with the Sikh child played by a six-year old Parsi Parzan Dastur in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998). While the silent boy who breaks his silence with his memorable one-liner ‘tussi na jao [Don't leave]’ has been viewed as adorable by a number of viewers, Sikhs have expressed their unhappiness over Johnny Lever's character glancing at his watch whenever the child appears as an insulting reminder of the popular ‘sardarji joke’ about Sikhs losing it when the clock strikes 12. ‘Looking back, I'd say I am proud of having played a Sardar in “Lage Raho Munnabhai”’, stated Boman Irani, another Parsi actor who claims to have researched for the role of the unscrupulous real estate developer Lucky Singh by meeting several Sikh transporters and considers meeting members of the community in order to get under the skin of the character as ‘a heart-warming experience’ (quoted in Nayar 2006). Moving beyond ‘the balle balle’ image of Sikhs in Hindi films, Irani claims to have managed to portray a ‘vulnerable’ side to Lucky Singh by turning around the stereotype of Sikhs as ‘jokey’ by making Lucky ‘sensitive’ (quoted in Nayar 2006). Irani did not ‘want the character to look like a caricature’ and considers that making a big man like Lucky Singh ‘curl up like a prawn and shrink’ was ‘the challenge’ (quoted in Nayar 2006). Notwithstanding India's Sikh Prime Minister Manmohan Singh praising the film and actor Irani's sincere intentions to represent Sikhs authentically, Irani's exaggerated repetition of Sikh speech patterns and mannerisms make his Lucky Singh equally stereotyped. To his credit, Irani introduces a disjuncture in the stereotype of the jolly Sikh not only by revealing his sensitive side but also by making him sinister. In the year that followed, Amitabh Bachchan's Chaudhury Sumer Singh character in the film Veer Zaara (2003) appeared more credible despite Bachchan's underplayed Punjabi accent and mannerisms and earned him a Filmfare Award for the Best Supporting Actor. Shah Rukh Khan's stoical Veer Pratap Singh who does not break his silence for 22 years set the stage for the arrival of the inarticulate but passionate martyr to love. Although these images of Sikhs as industrious, enterprising and sincere have gone a long way in altering the perception of the Sikh in the Indian imaginary, they have not succeeded in shattering the stereotype judging by their disproportionate numbers.
Birth of turban cool and the body of desire
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In 2008, a Hindi film titled Singh is Kingg featured a turbaned Sikh in a non-military role played by the popular star Akshay Kumar and turned out to be a resounding success belying the apprehensions of the industry and blazed the trail for a number of films featuring Sikh protagonists. Unlike NRI films that camouflaged Sikhs as Punjabis or included turbaned Sikhs in supporting roles to transform the stereotyped perception of Punjabis in the national imaginary by turning Punjabi/Sikh cool, the films that cast turbaned Sikhs in central roles went a step further to turn the turban cool. While Akshay Kumar has been congratulated for agreeing to don the turban in his film Singh is Kingg, the gamble taken by the film in an industry that has refrained from including turbaned Sikhs as protagonists has not received much attention. While emphasizing the relationship between corporeality and Sikh subjectivity, Axel contrasts the tortured Sikh body with the wholeness of the amritdhari body and the Maharaja's glorious body (2001). In order that this body be incorporated in the visual economy of the Hindi film whose ‘ideal of beauty was the north Indian upper-caste Hindu, which is reinforced by character names, such as Malhotra’ (Dwyer 2000, 120), this Sikh body had to be reinscribed in its discursive regime.

The emergence of a bearded Sikh hero could also be ascribed to the return of facial hair as a virile symbol of neo-sexuality ‘as a hark against the “whole metrosexual feminisation of guys”’, worldwide with Times London reporting that ‘the unfettered facial flourishing is no longer an object of feminine disgust, masculine ridicule and universal suspicion’ (quoted in Kundu 2009). While earlier films had appropriated the positive signification of the kesdhari Sikh's body as the warrior's body to denote valour, patriotism and ferocity, it was transformed into the desirable body through juxtaposing its stereotyped masculinity and virility with the feminized bodies of the new metrosexual Bollywood heroes. In contrast to the NRI films such as DDLJ in which Sikh hypermasculinity is contrasted with Hindu androgyny in the polarized opposition between Simran's two suitors, the Hindu Raj Malhotra and the Sikh Kuljeet, the Sikh films resignify hirsuteness as a sign of masculinity, virility and even piety.

The hypermasculine ideal was first inscribed on the body of the sehejdhari Jat Sikh Tara Singh in Gadar: Ek Prem Katha played by the action hero Sunny Deol whose demonic violence is justified through his jingoistic defence of the nation. Nicola Mooney's nuanced reading of the film particularizes the character's violence and hypermasculinity as a specifically Jat Sikh trait that erupts as a primordial reflex against irrational oppression captured in the phrase Jat vigad gaya [the Jat went crazy] (2008). Throughout the film, the film counterpoises the Jat's uncontrolled violence against both Hindu and Muslim oppression with the tenderness he displays towards his beloved and family. This careful juxtaposition of unarticulated tenderness against violence endears Tara Singh's machismo to his Muslim beloved Sakina as well as to the action hero Deol's North Indian fans whose fight sequences drove them into a frenzy making the film an unprecedented box office hit. However, unlike Gadar in which Sikh hypermasculinity was largely signified through the sartorial sign of the turban, the Sikh films deploy bodily signifiers such as the beard to produce the Sikh hero as the masculine antithesis of the androgynous Hindi film hero.

The community's protest against the Sikh character's trimmed beard in Singh is Kingg as going against the tenets of Sikhism missed the more disquieting question of the film's perpetuation of Sikh stereotype through the infantilization of the Sikh in the central character of ‘a mentally subnormal Sikh peasant’ and the caricatured depiction of the Sikhs as ‘loud people with little insight and depth’ (Singh 2011). Beginning with its title, Singh is Kingg's play on Sikh self-constructions that manifest in narcissistic self-appropriations of royal titles by Sikh popular cultural icons is in tune with the comic genre in which the film is slotted. The extra ‘n’ in the film's title ‘King’, allegedly inserted after astrological consultation, however, accentuates the Sikh/Punjabi tendency to stress the final consonant and the film's borrowing of popular Sikh nicknames such as Lucky Singh and Happy Singh produces humour. Through its parodic representation of Sikh names, accent and hypermasculine rituals of bonding, the film puns on the plural meanings of royalty by finally making its protagonist expound on the meaning of true kingship in true Bollywood style.

Although the comic genre of the film gives the actor license to indulge in a series of mindless capers, he plays the innocent that underscores his innate goodness and vulnerability, which opens out a new reading of the meaning of the film's title Singh is Kingg. Rather than articulating Sikh machismo, Akshay Kumar deconstructs the clownish figure of the Sikh to bring out his essential goodness and capability of bringing out the good in others. Sikh hypermasculinity, caricatured in Lucky Singh and the members of his gang, is made to confront the true meaning of royalty through the innocent's appeal to the sachha badshah, the true King, who forbade the Sikhs to pick up arms except to protect the weak and uproot all forms of tyranny. This feminization of Sikh hypermasculinity makes the diasporic Sikh girl Sonia prefer him over her white lover and transforms the Sikh into the symbol of rustic authenticity, communality and conviviality that is contrasted with the impersonality and individualism of the inhuman city.

While the testosterone-driven Sikh character of Samarjit Singh Talwar alias Sexy Sam played with great aplomb and dignity by Amitabh Bachchan in Karan Johar's Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (2006) had already articulated Sikh masculinity to virility, the bearded Sikh had to wait a few more years to become the object of the nation's desire. Singh is Kingg appropriates the visual iconography of the Maharaja's glorious body to produce a royal Bollywood Sikh body on which the nation's desires might be made to converge. Although he plays a poor villager, the visible markers of the Maharaja's body on the Bollywood martial art practitioner's perfectly toned body enhance actor Akshay Kumar's sex appeal. While the signifiers of the Maharaja's body had earlier been appropriated by popular music stars such as Daler Mehndi and Malkit Singh in the construction of a regal Sikh persona, never had accoutrements been incorporated as a source of a Bollywood sex symbol's machismo. Unlike the 1980s' Bollywood ‘hunk’ Sunny Deol whose rugged masculinity was differently marked to expand his considerable fan base in the Punjabi heartland that eventually turned him into a cult figure, the designer ‘Patiala Shahi Puggs’ adorned by Akshay Kumar returned to the memory of the Sikh kingdom to reinscribe Sikh identity with regal splendour and glory. Although the trend of bhangra-style teasing has been well in place since ‘meri jaan balle balle’ in Kashmir ki Kali (1964), this was the first time that the nation swooned over a Bollywood star's articulating his yearnings for his ladylove, clad in full Sikh regalia, in the soulful Punjabi melody ‘jee karda hai’ making the glorious Sikh body both a desiring and desired body. While the film plays with the contrast between appearance and reality in the meaning of royalty and redefines it to shift it from the Maharaja's glorious body to the true king [saccha badshah], the reiteration of the splendid royal body inducts it in the nation's sexual regime.

Love Aaj Kal (2009) carried over the stereotype of the industrious Sikh from Veer Zaara with the difference that the ethic of labour was now embodied in the figure of self-made Sikh entrepreneur Veer Singh rather than the hardy peasant Sumer Singh. With the beard transforming into a stylish fashion statement, even ‘cute’ Bollywood actors such as Saif Ali Khan could not remain averse to experimenting with facial hair in order to be perceived as exuding sex appeal. The beard and the turban certainly succeeds in giving the actor a quick makeover as he switches from sensitive ‘new age guy’ Jai to the steely, stoic and determined Veer in Love Aaj Kal to facilitate the filmmakers' exploration of different forms of masculinity and love across the ages. Through decoupling Sikh masculinity from the ferocious warrior's hypermasculinity and reinscribing it as intensity, determination and an entrepreneurial spirit, Love Aaj Kal presents the Sikh in the avatar of a passionate lover who is different from the legendary Ranjha lover of Gadar: Ek Prem Katha. This progression of the Sikh as the embodiment of rustic authenticity to that of intense passion and commitment contributes to the resignification of Sikh masculinity as desirable. Although Saif claims to have ‘played the role of a Sikh gentleman in this film with sensitivity’ (quoted in IANS 2009) so as not to hurt Sikh sentiments, his feisty and energetic Veer Singh is no patch on his middle-aged version brilliantly etched by Kapoor. Rishi Kapoor's remarkably understated performance stands out in sharp contrast to the young Veer played by Saif Ali Khan to show that taking ‘care of the costumes, the look, mannerisms, dialect and a lot of other things’ like not smoking while wearing the turban alone cannot make a character ‘authentic’ (quoted in IANS 2009).

Sikh ire was once again directed against the Sikh character played by a top Bollywood female actor wearing a patka instead of a turban once again turning the focus away from the more disturbing trend of continued stereotyping of Sikhs regardless of whether the stereotype is celebratory, comic or endearing. Although Dil Bole Hadippa (2009) deconstructed the stereotype of the hypermasculinist Sikh and addressed rural Sikh patriarchy through a Sikh female's masquerading as a male in order to be able to play cricket, the patka-sporting Rani Mukerji essays an adolescent rather than adult Sikh masculinity. Mukerji's Veer appears to be modelled after the youthful insouciance of the Indian cricket team's leading spinner Harbhajan Singh alias Bhajji, whose impetuous actions on the pitch have acquired him the image of the incorrigible Sikh. Veera's cross-dressing as a bearded Veer to challenge Sikh patriarchy foregrounds the performative nature of both femininity and masculinity that appears to have been overlooked in the construction of a gendered Sikh identity. Through her exaggerated imitation of Sikh hypermasculinity, Rani constructs a ‘cute’ version that works to deflate the absorption of the British discourse of manliness in the everyday discourses of Sikhs (Dwyer 2000, 120).

Similarly, controversies surrounding Akshay Kumar's clean-shaven look in Patiala House (2011), a detail that the filmmaker has claimed to have integrated into the cinematic plot, as well as speculations about its being inspired by Monty Panesar's life marginalized its contrasting representations of Sikh masculinity in the dictatorial patriarch Gurtej Singh Kahlon and his timid son Pargat Singh Kahlon alias Gattu. While Gattu's submissiveness is ascribed to the behaviour of his overbearing, authoritarian father and the generational conflict, the macho star's essaying the role goes a long way in deconstructing the myth of Sikh machismo.
Patiala House, which was not particularly well received as a cricket film, created a credible character in the authoritarian father Gurtej Kahlon whose personal experience of racism prevents him from encouraging his son Gattu's aspirations to play cricket for the British team. Once again, Rishi Kapoor's finely etched rendering of the dictatorial father was perfectly complemented by Akshay Kumar's sensitive portrayal as Gattu proving that his flair for comedy could match his ability to deliver extremely restrained performances.
Sikh as Indian
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• Introduction
• Lions of Punjab
• Hindi Cinema and the ‘Lions of Punjab’
• Sikh as martyr, Sikh as clown
• Birth of turban cool and the body of desire
• Sikh as Indian
• Beyond Bollywood
• Conclusion
Harpreet Singh Bedi in Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year (2009) might be viewed as another representation of the industrious Sikh. But his enterprise and resourcefulness is presented as a compensation for his poor academic performance once again reiterating the myth of the ‘dumb’ Sikh. Ranbir Singh's performance received the community's approval for getting his turban and beard right courtesy his Sikh mother rather than for his superbly restrained performance as a recent graduate that partially redeems the stereotype. Finally, with Rocket Singh in which the character of Harpreet Singh Bedi still plays on the polarized opposition of the bookish Bengali or Tamilian with the brawny Sikh, Sikh masculinity is recovered through the sincere, honest, enterprising and enthusiastic Sikh played by Ranbir Kapoor. The dilemmas of the fresh Sikh graduate in a corrupt corporate world might resonate with other low academic performers who might bring to the workplace other qualities that might compensate for poor scholastic performance. In the process of creating of a model of masculinity traditionally identified with Sikhs, the film normalizes the Sikh as a model for the nation through his incorruptibility and strong ethical values.
It took Hindi cinema a 100 years to produce a film that has been hailed as a ‘near-flawless homage’ to ‘the flying spirit of India's greatest runner’ (Jha 2013) through its heart-wrenching representation of the former legendary athlete's inspirational story of hardship, grit and determination. Notwithstanding the critical acclaim the film has received, the number of awards it has garnered and ‘the flying Sikh's’ own endorsement of the filmmaker and actors, some have expressed their deep reservations such as actor Naseeruddin Shah who called it ‘a completely fake film’ (Shah quoted in IANS 2013b). Instead of engaging in a debate on its cinematic features, an examination of its representation of Sikhs would be more pertinent in this context. While the film is almost impeccable in its tracing of the sprinter's incredible journey from being a traumatized child witness of Partition carnage to the nation's pride at the Olympics, the film does not succeed in breaking free of mediatized images of the Sikh as sportsperson that are predicated on ethnicized modes of representation.
Bhaag Milkha Bhaag works by performing the more difficult task of confirming the stereotype but imbuing it with a form of interiority that makes it endearing. Whether it be the uncontrollable tears of the maternal sister or the irrepressible joy of the jawans breaking into bhangra, each Sikh stereotype is inscribed with an intensity through the culturally nuanced performances of the supporting cast of Divya Dutta and Pawan Malhotra, who play Singh's sister and coach, respectively. As for Farhan Akhtar, the actor who underwent a punishing regimen to acquire the athlete's body, opinion is highly divided. The septuagenarian sportsperson is extremely happy with Akhtar's portrayal and thinks that ‘the boy (Farhan) has done kamaal. He has replicated me on screen. He even resembles me’ (quoted in IANS 2013a). But Shah has no hesitation in stating that Akhtar ‘looked terrific but he did not look like Milkha’ (quoted in IANS 2013b). Although Akhtar has spoken of his empathetic internalization of the athlete's body language and mannerisms during his meetings with him, Shah avers that ‘building up muscles and growing your hair is not exactly working hard on your acting’ (quoted in IANS 2013b). Whether Akhtar resembles Milkha Singh or not, whether his look is quintessentially Milkha Singh or Rocky, the conviction with which he played his character, coupled with the inspiration he derived from the legendary sportsman, helped him bring a certain sincerity and piety to the character that endeared him and the Sikh legend to their audience.
But the question that needs to be posed with respect to Bhaag Milkha Bhaag must go beyond issues of stereotyping and representation. In her essay on Gadar and Shaheed-e-Mohabbat, Nicola Mooney suggests that ‘the Sikh subject is permanently bound and dislocated within Indian constructions of citizenship and nation’ and concludes that ‘the Sikh subject must be heroically and triumphally subsumed in the Indian nation-state (Gadar), or be vehemently cast aside (Shaheed-e-Mohabbat)’ (2008, 44). In enlisting a Sikh subject in representing the nation's honour, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag once again ‘seeks to reinscribe Sikh subjection to a nationalist narrative’ (Mooney 2008, 45) rather than trace a different route.
Beyond Bollywood
Jump to section
• Introduction
• Lions of Punjab
• Hindi Cinema and the ‘Lions of Punjab’
• Sikh as martyr, Sikh as clown
• Birth of turban cool and the body of desire
• Sikh as Indian
• Beyond Bollywood
• Conclusion
The debates surrounding the emergence of the turbaned Sikh protagonist in Hindi cinema have ignored two landmark films that featured Sikhs in central roles, Govind Nihalani's Vijeta (1982) and Gulzar's Maachis (1996) much before the cult of the turban entered Hindi cinema. The dates of the films' release are significant as Nihalani's film clearly reveals the underpinnings of the Unity in Diversity master narrative unlike Gulzar's, which is burdened with the secessionist rhetoric after 1984. Both films also share the generic requirements of the youth-centred film with the difference that Vijeta is a coming-of-age film and Maachis is a film about the incendiary power of youth. Through casting Kunal Kapoor as the first-born Sikh male child Angad of an urban, multi-ethnic Bombay family, Nihalani's translation of the nationalist vision of integration in the private space of the family had returned to the still prevalent practice of some Hindu families raising the first-born male as Sikh that suggested the intersection of Hindu–Sikh boundaries. Gulzar, on the other hand, in one of the most sensitive explorations of the events of 1984 in a popular Hindi film, uncovered the thickening of these boundaries through the rise of both Sikh and Hindu militancy. Both the films are exceptional in their normalization of Sikh ethnicity through their capacity to represent Sikh difference as representation of other forms of difference that interrogate the rhetoric of national unity. If the rites of initiation through which Angad Singh makes the crucial transition from a troubled youth to manhood, the narratives of Veeran, Kirpal, Jaswant and Jaimal might replicate those of other discontented youth in other parts of the nation despite the film being set in the mid to late 1980s in Punjab.
Unlike Yash Raj films that converged on diasporic Sikh nostalgia to produce the pastoral of ‘the green, green fields of Punjab’ (Mishra 2002), Gulzar's Maachis was an elegiac hymn to the Punjab bloodied once again after the events of 1984. Unlike the new Bollywood films in which Sikh bodily signifiers and displays are exoticized as authentic or vilified as rustic, the turban or the beard in these films are sartorial choices that might produce ethnic difference incidentally: if the patka sported by Angad is merely an ethnic indicator then the unturbaned heads of Kirpal and Jaswant hint at the fluid Sikh identities that were closed through the construction of religious boundaries (Oberoi 1994). In contrast to Veera's playful masculinity in Dil Bole Hadippa, Maachis traces the metamorphosis of coy femininity to assertive masculinity in Veeran's transformation into Virinder.7
Arguing that the film fails both at the aesthetic and political levels, Gupta concludes that Maachis is ‘an aesthetic, cinematic and political act in mainstream melancholia since it does not awaken, and transforms sympathy for weaponised masculinity’ and that at the ‘political level it fails to raise and come to grips with the discourses on family, group, nationalism and democracy in their evolution and contexts’ (2004). His dismissal of Maachis as a Bollywood–Hollywood masala film in its failure to do what he expects it to do underlines his failure to appreciate the transformative role of the mainstream masala film in altering popular perception of particular ethnic or sectarian groups. His objection to its middle class milieu that excludes the peasantry and its limited appeal for a middle class audience could be equally viewed as its dismantling of the stereotype of the exoticized Sikh peasant of the Indian imagination, who breaks out in bhangra at the first opportunity.
Conclusion
Jump to section
• Introduction
• Lions of Punjab
• Hindi Cinema and the ‘Lions of Punjab’
• Sikh as martyr, Sikh as clown
• Birth of turban cool and the body of desire
• Sikh as Indian
• Beyond Bollywood
• Conclusion
The Sikh community is predictably offended by the portrayal of Sikhs in the Hindi film but its justifiable wrath against the correct way of wearing the turban or the trimming of the beard has deflected attention from more disquieting issues, such as its persistence in the stereotyped representation of the community. The most important change, according to social scientist Shiv Vishwanathan, was that ‘today's Sikh protagonist in Hindi film has broken the stereotype’ through young Sikhs playing ‘non-military characters’ (quoted in Sinha 2009). It might be more accurate to claim that Hindi films since the 1990s have merely reversed rather than destabilized ethnic stereotypes by representing the Sikhs in a positive light. The Sikh has turned ‘cool’ and ‘sexy’ with top Bollywood actors vying with one another to play Sikh characters. Notwithstanding Sikh objections to the accuracy in the representation of the Sikh body, the ‘Sikh’ films have accomplished the challenging objective of reinscribing the kesdhari Sikh body as the body of desire in a visual regime dominated by clean-shaven, ‘chocolate boy next door’ Hindi film hero and heralded the production of a new masculine hero that converges on the historical mapping of hypermasculinity on the kesdhari Sikh body. In the majority of Sikh-centred films, the Sikh villager or rustic becomes inscribed with a positively inflected rusticity produced through the reaffirmation of family ties, communality, traditional values, sincerity and conviviality that is contrasted with the aspirations of an urban middle class globalized India towards an individualized, instrumentalist, modern and work-centred ethic.
Notes
1 ‘“Cool” is an ubiquitous slang term of African-American origin that gradually crept into Standard English to signify “stylishness”’ (Gera Roy 2011, 754). Anees Bazmee insists that his purpose was to showcase a ‘cool, good looking sardar’ in Singh is Kingg despite the criticism the film has received from the Sikh community (quoted in Sharma 2009).
2 For example, popular Bhangra singer turned film star Harbhajan Mann cited the misrepresentation of Punjabis in the Hindi film as the primary motivation for his involvement in the resuscitation of the deceased Punjabi film industry in an interview after the phenomenal success of the Punjabi film Mitti Vajaan Mardi (2007). Similar sentiments were voiced at the third ETC Punjabi Award Function held in Chandigarh when Punjabi actor Divya Datta made a public appeal to the Bollywood director Yash Chopra, who received an honorary award for promoting Punjabiyat, to do his bit for the Punjabi film industry.
3 In using the term Bollywood, I follow the distinction made by Rajadhyaksha between Indian cinema and the Bollywood film addressed to the diasporic viewer (2003).
4 Sumita S. Chakravarty's (1993) book National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema 1947–1987, in which she reads Indian cinema in the light of Fredric Jameson's view of cultural production in ex-colonized countries as ‘national allegories’, set the trend for a number of studies that followed. M. Madhava Prasad combined Marxist analysis with political and film theory to trace the historical construction of Indian cinema in a nationalist impulse (2000). Similarly, contributors to Ravi Vasudevan's Making Meaning in Indian Cinema examined the political implications of Indian popular cinema within a nationalist frame (2000). Although Vijay Mishra viewed Bombay Cinema from a diasporic perspective, his analysis was predicated on its nationalist underpinnings (2002).
5 The phrase, attributed to Pandit Pratap Narayan Mishra, was borrowed in cementing language, community and nation in the nineteenth century (Amin 2005, 14).
6 Handoo (1998), in his analysis of ‘sardarji’ jokes, throws new light on the anxieties underpinning ethnic humour.
7 Rakesh Gupta points out that the film uses the metaphor of the family to explore the individual subjectivity of a terrorist and demonstrates how the discursive femininity and masculinity of the normal family is disrupted through the emergence of the energized masculinity of another family fired by revenge. He argues that circumstances surrounding the rise of insurgency in Punjab compel Veeran to abandon her coy femininity predicated on longing for love and desire for an assertive masculinity when she joins Kirpal in the militant cause as Virinder and the benign masculinity of the space of the family is subsumed under a weaponized masculinity.
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