Pardes turns 24: Shah Rukh Khan, Mahima Chaudhry’s musical drama is a crash course on deshbhakti and toxic masculinity

Hindi cinema has redefined chest-thumping jingoism in recent years with its steadfast dedication to making mindless actioners. Be it Sooryavanshi that glorifies vigilante cops encountering bad guys at will, or John Abraham’s back-to-back masala extravaganzas like Satyamev Jayate or Romeo Akbar Walter, deshprem has evidently taken centre-stage in many big-screen offerings.

For the millennials though, Subhash Ghai’s Pardes still remains the unopposed winner in the deshprem genre. It positively did not have characters gunning down “anti-nationals”, but if you are up for a drinking game every time someone utters India/Bharat/Hindustan on screen, there is no contender that can dethrone the inimitable Pardes. For lovers of gratuitous violence though, there is enough congealed blood trickling out of characters’ punctured bodies to keep you interested. Heck, there are also attempts at molestation to establish the moral corruptness of Americans in comparison to the sickly paavam Indians.

Yes, Pardes is a film that glorifies the motherland as no child has before. It thrives on drawing comparisons. Thus, America is a distant land where debauchery is a way of living. It’s the land of rave parties where people sway suggestively after soaking themselves in every available kind of alcoholic beverage. Indians, on the other hand, prance about in bovine-choked Indian streets, pray to snake intruders for them to respectfully exit your bed chambers, and break into choreographed music and dance performances in paddy fields.

In one of the earliest scenes of the film, Kishorilal (Amrish Puri), an NRI business magnate who flies to India to get his nincompoop son married to a sanskari Bharatiya naari, remarks how in contrast to the transactional nature of love in America, in India, love is unconditional. Whether or not it ethically agrees with this writer, this statement, even in the context of the film, is neither proved nor disproved. It's just an observation Ghai makes, that he refuses to back with examples.

Ganga, played by debutante Mahima Chaudry, is your run of the mill infantilised manic pixie dream girl in traditional attire. She is often spotted defying gravity while springing up and down expansive fields while fluttering her vividly coloured dupattas in the wind. Her frenetic energy and never-ending chuckles are nauseating at best, petrifying at worst.

Apurva Agnihotri played bad guy Rajiv with a conviction many actors failed to display in their debut role. As Ganga’s rich and entitled fiance, Agnihotri was unsettlingly diabolical. Ghai wanted Rajiv to be hated, and hate, the audience did. In contrast, Shah Rukh Khan, as Arjun, the somewhat shy and timid dolt, became the national heartthrob. For Ganga, slim-pickings, though. It was either a molester or a mannequin-romancing serial head-bobber.

The other male figure in this movie, Ganga’s father, played by Alok Nath, is Keh Diya Na Bus Keh Diya dialled up to a 100. He takes particular pleasure in silencing the women of the house. So despite Ganga's mother being averse to the idea of shipping off her daughter overseas, she is forced to cower because her husband's honour and friendship with Kishorilal finds more importance.

He also doesn’t make qualms about slut-shaming and victim-blaming his own daughter, because she fled her abuser’s abode, despite being engaged to be married to him. Daddy Sanskar is sacrosanct about preserving his honour, so of course, he bellows that his daughter much rather is dead than flee her would-be husband’s house. The only woman who has any agency in the Pardes universe is Ganga’s grandmother, that too because of her seniority. Daddy Sanskar has too much pride to contest his mother.

Released in 1997, Pardes was the fourth-highest grossing film of the year, behind Dil To Pagal Hai, Border, and Ishq. It is safe to say that none of the four films has aged particularly well. While problematic films continue to be churned out in hordes even in 2021, there has been a marked shift in how these films are perceived by critics and cinephiles.

Increased awareness has led to viewers taking stock of films like Kabir Singh or Sooryavanshi, and questioning the far-reaching impact of fostering toxic misogyny in the name of passion. This decade has also seen films like Kumbalangi Nights and The Great Indian Kitchen shatter the language barrier with stories of fragile male ego and regressive gendered social behaviour. It is an important shift, because films like Pardes can be fodder for parody, not serve as commentary. Period.