Hindi cinema uses the superstardom of Shah Rukh, Salman, Aamir and Saif Ali Khan as a smokescreen for systemic erasure; Muslim stories are flattened, their lived realities recast through a Hindu-majority lens
Bollywood has long had a problem with representation. While Hindi cinema loves to parade its Khans as proof of secular success, it rarely casts Muslim actors in roles that reflect their lived realities. Even when the Khans — Shah Rukh, Salman, Aamir and Saif — do play Muslim characters (on rare occasions), the roles tend to reinforce the model minority myths or suspicious outsider tropes.
Together, the Khans have created a kind of black hole, where the illusion of inclusion collapses every time it is brought up. This black hole regularly enables the industry to avoid structural questions about caste and religion in casting, production, and storytelling. It becomes even more glaring when films and shows inspired by real communities quietly erase their identities. A recent example is Reema Kagti’s Superboys of Malegaon, which features an almost entirely Hindu cast, despite the original documentary focusing on a Muslim community and its ardent love for films.
In fact, Superboys of Malegaon is symptomatic of everything that is wrong with Bollywood’s idea of representation, which is painted in broad strokes and often involves co-opting marginalised identities for drama, awards, and political clout, but rarely entrusts it to the people who have lived those realities.
Perpetuating the stereotypes
Faiza Ahmad Khan’s documentary, Supermen of Malegaon (2008), captured a uniquely Indian story: a group of young Muslim men in a communally fragile town in Maharashtra, armed with ambition, a second-hand camera, and makeshift equipment, making low-budget pastiche of Hollywood and Bollywood blockbusters. It was a testament to the country’s vast reservoir of untapped talent that is not only diverse but dares to imagine themselves in the same frame as the biggest stars this country has manufactured.
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Even though their work is often characterised as parody or spoof, what Nasir Shaikh, Farogh Jafri, Akram Khan and company were doing cannot be written off as simple playful snark. Nasir himself disapproved of the term ‘parody’ to describe his work in the documentary. The Malegaon crews’ work was reverential and paid heartfelt homage through humour to the original work. Had their films emerged from more privileged or urban (read: Hindu, upper caste or upper class) places, we’d be celebrating them as high-concept, meta tributes. But in a world laced with irony and hierarchy, their brilliant ingenuity has repeatedly been defined as spoof.
Reema Kagti’s Superboys of Malegaon quietly flattens the Muslimness of a group of young Muslim men in a Maharashtra town who made low-budget pastiche of Hollywood and Bollywood blockbusters.
But what’s graver is how in the transition from docu-reality to fiction, Superboys of Malegaon quietly flattened their Muslimness. The film overrides the real reason Nasir and his team couldn’t cast local women: rigid rural and religious constraints. Trupti (played by a pitch-perfect Manjiri Pupala) steps in as Basmati for Malegaon ke Sholay not just because she’s a dancer (and hence coded to be more free-spirited), but because she’s free from some of those limitations. Even the abundant food references — naan, nihari, biryani — are treated as throwaway stereotypes. There was barely any scene that revelled in the sensory joy or their cultural richness.
Selling the image of secular harmony
Despite being a story about Muslim characters, Superboys of Malegaon seemed too afraid to claim that identity beyond its tropes. It works as a fairly enjoyable film about filmmaking, as an ode to the dreamers. However, my biggest discomfort with it lay in its stark lack of representation on screen. The main cast almost entirely consists of Hindu actors (Saqib Ayub as Irfan and Anmol Kajani as Nadeem seemingly the only exceptions). This may not seem like a glaring issue to some. An actor’s religion does not inform their ability to portray a character on screen. And Adarsh Gourav, Vineet Kumar Singh, Shashank Arora are some of the most talented actors in the country right now. So, this is not an argument against their merit.
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However, this sleight of hand isn’t accidental. It has long been Bollywood’s default mode of operation when it comes to representation. These patterns echo across some of Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti’s other work as well. From Gully Boy (2019), where Ranveer Singh brown-faced as a Muslim rapper, to Made in Heaven (2019-2023), which was called out for not crediting Dalit writer Yashica Dutt for the inter-caste love story, ‘The Heart Skipped a Beat,’ — something director Neeraj Ghaywan briefly acknowledged on social media before deleting the post.
For decades now, the industry has leaned heavily on the star power of its most bankable Muslim actors — Shah Rukh, Salman, Aamir, and to a lesser extent Saif Ali Khan— to sell an image of secular harmony. “See, they lead our biggest blockbusters,” it says. But this has become a convenient cover, a fig leaf to distract from how rarely Muslim lives, let alone Dalit or other marginalised realities, are portrayed with any depth or authenticity on screen. Between the three of them, Shah Rukh, Salman, and Aamir have starred in over 250 films, but how many times have they played Muslim characters? Less than 20. Combined.
Playing Rajs, Rahuls, and Prems
Shah Rukh has the highest score among these three with eight titles, from Hey Ram (2000) to Raees (2017) and Tubelight (2017). Salman’s Muslim roles are either ornamental (Tumko Na Bhool Paayenge, 2002) or culturally neutral (Sultan, 2016). From Raakh (1989) and Earth (1999) to Fanaa (2006), Aamir seems to slip into Muslim identities only when he is playing characters with more than a few shades of grey. Saif’s quota comes in at the lowest, with only two films under his belt; a terrorist in Kurbaan (2009) and a patriotic RAW agent in Phantom (2015).
While Shah Rukh Khan’s Jawan (2023) flirted with anti-establishment themes, its hero was ultimately cast in the mould of the suffering saviour, never the assertive minority.
These characters rarely ever get a blank canvas to play with where they get to be an everyday guy — SRK’s Tahir in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (2016) and Dr. Jehangir Khan in Dear Zindagi (2016) being the noted exceptions. When these characters are not playing out the model minority tropes, they are the dangerous deviants. And ultimately palatable to a Hindu-majority audience just like their Rajs, Rahuls, and Prems.
In Pathaan (2023), Shah Rukh’s titular character does not get to claim his character’s religion. The film allows him to be “desh ka beta (son of the soil)” but never explicitly Muslim. While Jawan (2023) flirted with anti-establishment themes, its hero was ultimately cast in the mould of the suffering saviour, never the assertive minority.
As lawyer Shahrukh Alam puts it, Muslims in India are increasingly expected to behave like rudaalis, who mourn loudly at times of national tragedies (like the Pahalgam attack), perform public loyalty, and exist without asserting identity. The erasure isn’t limited to religion. It extends to caste and class. Ghaywan’s Geeli Pucchi (part of Ajeeb Daastaans, 2021) made waves for its layered Dalit-Brahmin queer narrative. But even that starred upper-caste actors (Konkona Sen Sharma and Aditi Rao Hydari) in the lead roles.
Representation: A political act
It’s telling that Ghaywan is one of the only openly Dalit filmmakers in mainstream Bollywood today. And there are no major Dalit actors headlining films about Dalit lives in Bollywood. Even when there are stories about minorities, Bollywood somehow bungles the script on proper representation.
The entire fiasco with Made in Heaven and Yashica Dutt led to public discourse on representation and authorship in storytelling that went nowhere, especially with its makers. The fact that the original documentary maker, Faiza Ahmad Khan, was only acknowledged in the closing credits of Superboys of Malegaon as “inspiration”, has raised similar concerns about the recognition of original works and the ethics of adaptation.
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Representation, both on and off screen, isn’t just an aesthetic choice; it’s political. Who gets to tell a story, embody a role, or greenlight a film shapes what narratives are normalised. Yet Bollywood remains tethered to market logic, which itself is governed by the majoritarian pulse of the country. As Hindutva ideologies seep further into public discourse, the scrutiny on films that tell minority stories has intensified.
Every contrarian release is subjected to digital witch hunts by hyperactive, rightwing IT cells. It delivers a flurry of outrage over Salman’s titular Tiger romancing Pakistani spy, Zoya, every time a Tiger film release. The films still do roaring business. But Salman’s stardom surviving everything from communal targeting to criminal charges for drunk driving, poaching, and assault, is a topic for another piece.
Still, minority communities deserve fuller, fairer representation. In general, the resilience of the three Khans is fascinating. Their cultural imprint is indelible. But their superstardom, increasingly used as a smokescreen for systemic erasure, has accidentally (or conveniently) enabled Bollywood’s representational stagnation. Their success is glittering and often thrown in our faces as tokens. But nonetheless, they cast a long, distorting shadow over everyone else who is still waiting in the wings.
