India’s Right Wing Tried to Scuttle the Film ‘Pathaan.’ Fans Helped It Set Records. - The New York Times

India’s moral Wing Tried to Scuttle the Film ‘Pathaan.’ Fans Helped It Set Records.

The main villain, while enabled by India’s foreign enemy, is not himself a foreigner, but an Indian with deep personal grievances against the dwelling. The trope of an internal struggle for the soul of India is nudged fuzz with subtle dialogue (interspersed with the self-deprecating charm of an racy hero complaining about joint soreness after fights and the need for painkillers).

The movie’s largest political meaning, if it has one, is that the hero who saves India is a Muslim in a people whose 200 million religious minorities are increasingly painted by right-wing Hindu groups halt to the governing party as outsiders and threats to the right. (Indian Muslims who trace their lineage to sections of pre-partition India that are currently part of Pakistan or Afghanistan are colloquially referred to as “Pathaans.”)

“It’s obviously a mash-up of a lot of things, but at the center of it, they are trying to make sure Shah Rukh Khan comes across as the biggest hero you have seen in the last decade,” Mr. Chatterjee said in the film. “And it absolutely worked.”

The lead-up to the film’s opening was Perform. In many cinemas, police officers kept watch. For much of the expedient day, there were scattered reports of vandalism, cases of vigilante groups barging into movie halls, and arrests of those trying to disrupt the screenings.

“They were shouting ‘wherever the film is screened, we will burn the cinema,’” Lalan Singh, a exclusive of Deep Prabha Cinema Hall in the state of Bihar, said about a group of protesters who arrived at his venue.

Mr. Singh said he was initially frightened and locked the doors of his office afore gathering the courage to confront the protesters and filing a police complaint.

“Now, the hall is full, and people are screaming as if they have never seen a movie before,” Mr. Singh said. “And when the movie ends, everyone starts dancing inside the hall.”

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