Chak De India had Muslim victimhood at its core and sports at its periphery. But it ended up becoming an iconic movie

Both Indian Men’s and women’s Hockey teams qualified for the Semi-Finals in the Tokyo Olympics, sending the population of 1.3 billion into proper ecstasy. Congratulatory messages started pouring in and the two victories became overnight folklore amongst the masses. However, few dimwits, out of force of habit tried to play down the achievement, while others used it as an opportunity to self-promote themselves.

Dhruv Rathee, the AAP fanboy took to Twitter to post a ground-breaking observation where he claimed that the performance of the current Hockey team was made possible due to Shah Rukh Khan’s Chak De India as the current generation of Hockey players were inspired by the movie.

https://twitter.com/indiantweeter/status/1422093510660923394

Props should be given to Rathee that he quickly realised his folly and deleted the tweet but the damage had already been done. By making such an asinine commentary, Rathee diluted the gargantuan achievement of the Hockey teams, players, federation, government and everybody else that played a minuscule yet important part in helping the team achieve glory and emulate the golden days of yore.

Shahrukh Khan, the lead actor in the movie took to Twitter to share a veiled congratulatory message when all the actor wanted to do was hog the limelight. However, the Indian women’s Hockey head coach Sjoerd Marijne schooled Khan instantly to set him in place.

As reported by TFI, Marijne had posted a photo after the victory where he captioned it saying “Sorry family , I coming again later”. However, Shahrukh chimed in and quote tweeted, “Haan haan no problem. Just bring some Gold on your way back….for a billion family members. This time Dhanteras is also on 2nd Nov. From: Ex-coach Kabir Khan.”

One can understand where the Women’s team got the ability to retaliate in any circumstance as Marijne quickly set Shahrukh in place by tweeting a sarcasm dripping tweet “Thank you for all the support and love. We will give everything again. From: The Real Coach.”

Similarly, Aajtak brought a few of the cast members of Chak De India on its show and one of the actors said that the celebration by the Women’s Hockey team after beating Australia was reminiscent to that of them celebrating in the movie. Chitranshi Rawat who played the role of Komal Chautala in the movie said that it was a ‘deja vu’ moment for her and somehow managed to draw a comparison with a movie and the actual historic achievement of the women’s hockey team in the Olympics.

At this point, it was just tone-deaf from the people associated with the movie who were trying excessively hard to bask in the glory of the players.

Ever since the victory, there has been a concerted campaign to take the sheen away from the achievements of the two teams by putting Chak De India in focus. However, the truth of the matter is that despite being a hit at the box office and claiming to be an out and out sports movie, Chak De India was a movie that had Muslim victimhood of character ‘Kabir Khan’ at its centre while the sport i.e Hockey was reduced to the periphery.

A Twitter thread by Atul Mishra neatly dissects the inner workings of the film that many of us, through countless reruns of the movie seemingly failed to notice. The netizen states that the movie was about Khan and how he redeems himself and because he was a Muslim, the impact is dialled up by certain notches.

“A Muslim man becomes the main reason for India’s loss in the finals of a tournament. He is branded a traitor. He makes a comeback as coach. He turns a team of underdogs into world champions (hence redeeming himself). The story is only about the man.” said Atul.

He further pointed, “Teeja tera rang tha main to (I was your third colour – Green) Jiya tere dhang hi main to (Muslims trying to peacefully adapt themselves in a Hindu majority country) The song is literally the epitome of Muslim victimization.”

However, it is interesting to note that the movie is loosely based on the real-life character of Mir Ranjan Negi, a former Indian Hockey national, who was the goalkeeper in the 1982 Asian Games. India lost the final 1-7 against Pakistan and the entire anger of the country descended upon Negi who was in front of the net. People instantly branded him a traitor and called him names for taking money from the Pakistan side. While the entire team performed badly, it was Negi who was singled out.

Akin to the movie, Negi redeemed himself by becoming the goalkeeping coach of the India women’s national field hockey team that won the Gold at the 2002 Commonwealth Games. However, because his religious identity was different and it would have been difficult to sell it to the audience, the character of Kabir Khan was introduced in the movie, to rub the ‘Muslim victimhood’ agenda on the viewers. That’s how subtle messaging and propaganda works in Bollywood.

Read More: Indian Hockey Federation killed Indian Hockey. Then came Naveen Patnaik. And everything changed

It’s not to say that the movie was all bad and no good, it showed the struggles of the individual players, the apathy of the federation, the David vs Goliath battle and ultimately it was a wholesome movie that made it the big success it was back in the day. However, if anyone tries to force down the trope that Chak De India catapulted the rise in the standards of Indian hockey then either he/she is deluded or is simply a zombie fanboy of Shahrukh Khan.