In a 2017 TED Talk, Shah Rukh Khan recalled his childhood as a simpler time where “migration was a term reserved for Siberian cranes and not for human beings”.
Khan was a child in the late 1960s and early ’70s so this may not strictly be true, but it’s the essence of his latest film – Dunki, directed by Rajkumar Hirani. He plays a messianic figure, a fauji leading a group of people across India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey to their final destination of London, helping them slip over borders in search of a better life.
The group is of ordinary, unquestioning people who adhere to the status quo designed by and for colonisers. Their resistance is the desire for a better life. And it’s Khan who finally challenges them to think.
The first half of Dunki unfolds in 1995, four years after liberalisation. The film is as political, if not more, than Khan’s previous venture Jawan. Announced in April 2022, it stirred conversations once we figured out how to pronounce it and learned it was about illegal immigration.
Even more promising is that it’s helmed by Hirani, who challenged the state of affairs in movies like Munna Bhai MBBS, 3 Idiots and PK. (Sure, he had ambitions with Sanju too but the eventual product was the whitewashing of a controversial personality.)
With Dunki, Hirani attempts to answer the following questions: Who draws the borders that define us? Who builds the walls that keep us apart? Why is one section of the world allowed to invade and plunder, while the other struggles to get a passport and enter even under legal means?
The film is bogged down by the superficial treatment meted out to Sanju. It’s inhibited by its own ambitions, a problem that had plagued Khan’s Raees in 2017 too. And yet, Dunki works in some ways because of its topicality.
After all, we’re witnessing the latest chapter of Israel’s colonisation of Palestine, with displaced Palestinians unable to return to their own homes. Over 20,200 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7, aided and abetted by a clutch of western powers even though public opinion is rising in favour of Palestine.
The West continues to enjoy impunity and manufactured consent through the veneer of democracy and humanitarianism – arguably the imperialist project’s greatest victory. It’s why white oppressors get away with atrocities while the oppressed are criticised for trying to reclaim what is theirs.
It’s this double standard that lies at the core of Dunki. It almost seems to borrow imagery from British-Somali poet Warsan Shire’s poem Home:
As Taapsee Pannu’s character asks, “We only came here because they came first, right?”
Or in the way Vicky Kaushal’s character, perhaps the most fleshed-out in Dunki’s cast of caricatures, questions the prejudice of the IELTS exam by asking whether the Englishman conducting his test was quizzed on his knowledge of Punjab before taking it over.
It’s reminiscent of Khan’s own words in 2010, when he said England is “like home” thanks to our colonial history.
Homecoming
Dunki is a story about leaving and finding home. It’s rooted in aspirations for a better life and the ignorance that lies behind the ‘melting pot’ dream. Hirani cleverly juxtaposes unfamiliar territory, through land and theme, with familiarity from Khan and Hirani’s previous works.
For example, Dunki has Khan’s Hardy and Pannu’s Mannu reunite after 25 years in what can only be an homage to Veer-Zara. There’s a 3 Idiots-style reunion of long-lost friends at Dubai airport. Khan boards a train in true DDLJ style in 1995 (which is also when DDLJ released) carrying a tape recorder, which itself is a hat-tip to PK’s Aamir Khan carrying nothing but a transistor. The reference to Boman Irani being a terrible teacher takes us straight back to Munna Bhai and 3 Idiots. Even the visuals are littered with nostalgic references – O Maahi is reminiscent of Dil Se Re, Hardy gazing at Mannu while praying at a gurdwara takes us back to Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi.
These parallels aside, Hirani’s films often have the recurring motif of a quest – for a father’s validation, for friendship, for god, for home. In the second half of Dunki, the characters embark on an odyssey to try and question the world – and fix it too – through transnational solidarity.
Unfortunately for Hirani, Bollywood has done this before and done it better. Think of Rizwan Khan’s journey in My Name Is Khan to make the world a better place through tiny acts of kindness. Or Salman Khan’s journey to take a lost Pakistani girl back home in Bajrangi Bhaijaan. The films worked because their first halves explored the characters and amped up the emotion.
Dunki, sadly, falls short on this front. Its first half is uneventful, focusing on comedy, abruptly followed by a dramatic and intense second half. It includes scenes where illegal migrants are literally hunted like game during open season, and one insinuating horrific sexual assault. Some shenanigans and over-the-top Hirani-isms later, we learn the foreign land isn’t the promised land and tragedy awaits the characters written so flatly thus far.
The movie ends with snapshots of real-life refugees which could have salvaged the mess before, except Hirani threw in an unnecessary “joke” – I won’t say what – to make sure it didn’t.
All told, Dunki benefits from the scope of PK but suffers from its treatment like Sanju. Its saving graces contribute to its downfall. It relies heavily on nostalgia to the point that it’s engulfed in it. The slapstick humour often does not land. Khan’s 1995 guise is eerily similar to how he looked in Zero. It’s riddled with tonal inconsistencies so the viewer is unable to commit to either comedy or tragedy at a given moment.
But as we enter 2024, with worries over 130 million displaced people and the UK’s illegal migration act, Dunki has its heart in the right place. It echoes what Khan said in his TED Talk: “You may use your power to build walls and keep people outside. Or you may use it to break barriers and welcome them in.”
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