PK: Questioning the Religious Institution

The fourth film by Rajkumar Hirani is PK. Released in 2014; PK is a satiric comedy with some blend of science fiction. The film is written by Rajkumar Hirani and Abhijat Joshi. Hirani, this time, tackles the institution of religion. Though it has instigated lot of controversy, the film emerged as one of the highest grossing Indian films of all time. Part of the controversy is a Muslim actor questioning the religious dogmas and superstitions of Majority community of the country.

The movie PK is about a humanoid alien who comes to earth to do research here. As soon as he lends, his spaceship remote gets stolen in Rajasthan. Eventually, he learns that clothes and money are requisites on earth. He starts getting clothes from ‘dancing cars’, that is, he begins stealing clothes and money from couples having sex in cars with open windows.

In Burgess, Jaggu falls in love with Sarfaraz. Jaggu’s father is against this relationship as Sarfaraz is a Pakistani Muslim and Jaggu is an Indian and Hindu. Jaggu’s family Guru, Tapasvi Maharaj, also opposes their relation and predicts that Sarfaraz will betray her. Jaggu proposes for marriage, Sarfaraz agrees. But at the time of marriage, Jaggu receives a letter, supposedly, from Sarfaraz saying that they cannot get married due to the differences in religion and culture. Heartbroken, Jaggu returns to India and starts working as a press-reporter.

This side, the alien befriends bandmaster Bhairon Singh who takes him as a person who has lost his memory. He tries to help him. Alien tries to grab hands of the people to transfer their memory and language to his mind. Singh assumes it as sexual interest and takes him to the brothel where he holds the hands of a prostitute for several hours and learns Bhojpuri language from her.

When he learns from people that stolen things are often sold in Delhi, he moves there to find his remote. But due to his queer behavior people kept asking him “Peekay aaya he kya?” (Are you drunk?) Based on this, he takes up his name as ‘PK’. Nobody could identify what he is asking for and hence people told him that only God can help him. And from here begins his search for God to search his remote. In a country like India, where there are multiple religions, religious sects and Godmen, it becomes quite difficult for him to identify one particular God that can really help him. He mixes rituals of one religion with another and puts himself in trouble.

Finally, he finds the remote with Tapasvi Maharaj, but he denies to give it back saying that he has got it from Himalaya as a boon. With the support from Jaggu and her News-channel, PK starts exposing the superstitions and Godmen. Tapasvi Maharaj challenges him for open discussion and in the discussion he brings the point of Jaggu and Sarfaraz. Jaggu is asked to call Sarfaraz. She calls Pakistani embassy of Belgium as she had only one contact number of Sarfaraz. And to everyone’s surprise, she comes to know that Sarfaraz calls there every day to check if she had called. Thus, they get connected together and losing his bet, Tapasvi Maharaj had to return the remote to PK. PK secretly falls in love with Jaggu and hence he records her voice in lots of cassettes to take back on his planet.

The protagonist – The central character of this movie is an alien, PK. He doesn’t know human ways of living. He doesn’t think like other humans. He is not affected by social face and status. He can roam around naked in the street of cities or hold anyone’s hand without realizing that these acts are socially unacceptable. He possesses superpower of transferring the language from one’s mind to his. His thinking is always inferential and mostly out of the box, he learns from experience and applies in his behavior. Like the previous protagonists of Hirani, he doesn’t behave like a common-man and he doesn’t have to worry about his social status as he doesn’t even know what a society in our sense is. The most important aspect is his curiosity. He is curios like a child and always ready to experiment and learn new things.

The Helper – PK is initially helped by Bhairon Singh and when he goes to Delhi, Jaggu helps him. Bhairon Singh helps him because he thinks that PK is mentally ‘ill’. And due to him, PK could transfer a language into his system. Jaggu helps him because she finds him abnormal. His questions regarding God and his tactics to deal with day-to-day problems are out of the box and hence Jaggu is interested in him professionally.

The Purpose – Like the previous films, this movie also has multiple purposes. The primary goal is to find the spaceship remote so that PK can return to his planet. The second goal is to have reunion of Jaggu and Sarfaraz. Third goal is to expose the Godmen like Tapasvi Maharaj. Fourth goal is to expose the superstitious nature of religious human beings and most of the practices are invented by people and are not actually religiously relevant. Most of the religions and sects thrive on the hatred for the other religions and sects. The Godmen, through their lectures, put the seeds of prejudice against the other religions and sects so that his followers don’t count on those ‘so called’ others. They will become their enemies, always looking at all their actions with suspicion. This is clearly implied in the case of Jaggu and Sarfaraz. Tapasviji had declared that Sarfaraz would betray Jaggu. Keeping this prejudice in her mind, she could not manage the patience to wait for him for some time. She took the words of Tapasviji as a fact. It was never revealed throughout the movie that what kind of research the humanoid aliens wanted to do on earth. So, we do not know whether the goal of Aliens is met or not?

The Antagonist – Like all the previous films of Hirani, here also, we do not have traditional antagonist. Rather we have protectors of their established interests in the institution of the religion. Tapasvi Maharaj was the bitter critic of PK and his actions. He even predicted his religion and made allegation that because he was from a different religion, he questioned Maharaj’s sanctity. Jaggu’s father is a blind-follower of Maharaj and hence he doesn’t like anything spoken against him. Here, Tapasvi Maharaj is presented as a metonym for all the religious gurus and Jaggu’s father is a metonym for all the blind-followers. PK’s questions were for the people who were running the ‘shop’ of belief system and superstitions. But, the Godmen, both in reel and real, presented them as questions to our ‘great’ religions. The people who get economic and political benefits from the religious systems are the real antagonists here.

Self-realization – PK, as a protagonist, did not have any self-realization as we have seen in earlier films. But, both Jaggu and her father did realize that the prejudiced thinking against anyone is wrong. Jaggu and PK used media to expose the faulty religious practices. Through this many, as shown in the movie, had an understanding that prejudiced thinking can only harm the harmonious society. But here also, PK’s views are supported by Jaggu and endorsed by the news-channel she works for. Even Jaggu’s father, a staunch follower of Tapasvi Maharaj, goes against Maharaj and takes remote from him and hands over to PK.

Like ‘dancing car’, we can see many ploys in the movie which questions the system as well as entertain. Once PK presents four people of four different religions in front of Tapasviji and asks him to identify the religion of the people. He could not because PK had swapped their religious attire, proving that we look at superficial symbols. Our identification of people is based on their clothes and mala-tilak. Just by looking at that we form a view, or prejudice, about them. Such an idea about attire is also used in ‘3 Idiots’. PK pastes the pictures of Gods on his chicks so that people can’t beat him. In older times, Tribal and Dalit people used to tattoo names of Gods on their body for the similar reasons. In order to prove that the insecure people are more superstitious and how Godmen use this insecurity to monetize, PK puts a stone in front of a college where the examination is going on. He adds some red powder (Sindoor) on it and some money in front of it. And, there is a queue of devotees asking for good results in the exam.

The movie raises very important and pertinent questions about the institution of religion. But, it creates more controversy than comprehension. And the reason is explained in the movie itself. We look at the person who says, and don’t neutrally think what s/he says. Audience is already prejudiced against the protagonist as he is a Muslim actor and hence the message doesn’t reach clearly as it is contaminated by the prejudice. We don’t question the religious beliefs, and we don’t like someone raising questions either.

Published in: The Hills Times – Heritage July 20, 2017. Page No. 07