There are many excellent reasons for young hearts to seek love outside their religious confines. That is what sages like Bulley Shah are believed to have encouraged.

In Delhi, more than half the journalists — Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs — I know have married someone not of their religion and I think that is a great cosmopolitan attribute to flaunt.

Unlike the couples one is familiar with, there are those men — usually Muslim men — who would marry their sweethearts only if they would agree to change their religion. In other words, they could fall in love with a Hindu or a Parsi woman but considered her religion to be unacceptable.

A popular Indian movie has triggered this feeling of strong disapproval, or to put it bluntly, revulsion of religious stereotypes. Let’s see why.

We all know that the most patriotic Indian Muslim according to the Hindu nationalist pantheon was the kohl-eyed Company Quarter Master Havildar Abdul Hameed. Legend has it that he died blowing up US-made Patton tanks with hand grenades in the 1965 war with Pakistan.

After his new film — My Name Is Khan — which unwittingly conjures a similarly black and white world of good and evil, actor Shahrukh Khan qualifies to be India’s second most patriotic Muslim.

That is why Bal Thackeray of Mumbai should be eating his angry words. He ordered his lumpen hordes to vandalise a movie that has been co-produced by his spiritual guru Rupert Murdoch and which, in its theme, should gladden the hearts of all the supporters of Narendra Modi’s politics of stereotypes.

The movie in fact represents India’s saffron ideologues and their purpose which closely follows the famous dictum of George W. Bush — if you were not with him you were with the terrorists.

It is another matter that the global definition of terrorism has swerved from Salvadorian democrats, to Cubans and communists, right up to Palestinians exiled from their homes and now angry Muslims who want foreigners to leave them alone.

That the protagonist of the movie is an autistic Muslim man with a moral precept akin to George W. Bush’s forms the backdrop to his quest to meet the American president to tell him that though his name was Khan he was not a terrorist.

To go through the loaded plot Shahrukh Khan is made to adlib Dustin Hoffman in the Rainman and Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump.

Finally he meets and is warmly welcomed by someone who plays President Obama, but not before he gets a group of angry (Indian or possibly Pakistani) Muslims arrested by the FBI because they expressed their outrage at Modi and Israel.

It is a tragedy of our times that enlightened countries like India and Pakistan, which celebrated eclectic thinkers like Kabir, Ghalib and Faiz for centuries, are forced to follow their religious identities although they remained largely immune to the adverse influences of jihad and the Crusades.

And Shahrukh Khan’s portrayal of an autistic Muslim who gets caught in a stereotypical definition of terrorism, brings up the nadir of this unhappy reality.

While Indian cinema has been a medium of secular motifs mostly, reactionary themes were not unknown to it. In a scene in My Name Is Khan, the only time the hero — Rizvan Khan — loses his temper is when he encounters a group of fellow Muslims in an American mosque.

As their leader, who introduced himself as a doctor or an engineer, expresses outrage at the plight of Palestinians, Kashmiris and Gujarati Muslims, Khan remains absorbed in his prayers. The angry man wants to do something about the outrages though he does not spell out what that would mean. Let’s assume that they plotted some kind of revenge.

Khan berates them as satanic, and in a gesture known to orthodox Muslims hits them with stones. The Murdochian message was: anyone angered by Israel or Modi was satanic, if also a potential terrorist.

Sensing his difficulty with unnecessarily complex ideas as an autistic child, Khan’s mother had taught him that there were only good and bad people in the world, and there was as such no shade of grey.

The formulaic reasoning would still be agreeable given the context in which it was imparted. How that precept was discarded when it came to his romantic liaison with Mandira Rathore contains an unacceptable message that the movie clearly conveys.

It is in fact the unsuspecting pivot that marshals the plot of My Name Is Khan. Mandira, played by the versatile actress Kajol, is a single mother who lives in San Francisco.

The two marry and she becomes Mrs Khan. Her son from a previous marriage also acquires the distinctly Muslim surname. That becomes a handicap when 9/11 happens. The junior Khan is pummelled in a hate attack by school ruffians, which kills him. Mandira blames her husband’s religion for the death and regrets marrying him.

“If my son had a name like Rathore and not Khan, he would not be killed,” she cries and adds a condition for her to accept him again. He must convince the world that though his name was Rizvan Khan he was not a terrorist. “Why just the people, why don’t you meet the American president and tell him that my name if Khan and I am not a terrorist.”

Khan sets off on his mission to meet the president. However, the sad part about this entire episode is that the movie reflects a popular stereotype, one that is supported by not just the Indian and Pakistani states, but also by the average middle class person as can be gleaned from the film’s success in Europe and the United States.

An implied message of the film is that only Muslims are angry opposed to Israel’s occupation of Palestine, that only Muslims are perturbed at the plight of Kashmiris and that only Muslims are outraged by a fascist administration in Gujarat.

However, fortunately for those who believe in justice for everyone and not for just any one religious group that is not a true reflection of the reality.

Without India’s Hindus, Sikhs and Christians standing up against the onslaught of rightwing hordes nobody would be left to stop fascism from striking firm roots across the country. Without Jews and Christians standing by them it would be nearly impossible for the Palestinians to end Israeli occupation.

And if there are only good and bad people, and they could be Hindus as well as Muslims, as Rizvan Khan keeps mumbling throughout the film, why did he have to convert Mandira Rathore to Islam and give her a name like Mandira Khan, which got her into so much trouble? Bal Thackeray should watch the movie. He will change his mind about it.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

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