Aamir Khan’s IPS in Sarfarosh vs Rohit Shetty’s cop universe: One is doing his job, others are vigilantes dressed in superhero ‘uniform’

When Rohit Shetty released his film Singham in 2011, it seemed like it was trying to ride on the coattails of Salman Khan’s Dabangg which had just released a few months before that. But 13 years later, Shetty has built an entire universe around macho men who are presented as saviours of society. The cops of this universe believe they aren’t just the protectors of law, and society by its extension, but also the judge and jury who don’t have to bother about consequences. Shetty is months away from his Avengers-like movie Singham Againand while one might feel like this idea of cops being the superheroes that are projected in these movies is the norm, this wasn’t always the case. 25 years ago, when Aamir played a cop in John Matthew Matthan’s Sarfarosh, his aura was just as powerful, but he didn’t need any grand heroic entry to prove it.

In fact, when you meet Aamir’s Ajay in Sarfarosh, the movie doesn’t even reveal that he is a cop for almost half an hour. The audience gets to know him in his personal space before they are told that he is an IPS officer. And when you eventually meet him as ACP Ajay Singh Rathod, who has chosen to serve his country in this capacity, you don’t hear him say any seeti-maar dialogues, but actually watch him do the work that is required for his job.

There is a distinct tonal difference between Sarfarosh and Shetty’s cop universe, even though they both are born out of the same idea – a police officer doing his job, and making sure that he doesn’t let the bad guys get away. Sarfarosh relies largely on its plot where Pakistan is trying to attack India with its illegal supply of weapons, and presents Aamir as the man who is a team player, but also an excellent leader who knows how to get the job done. Shetty’s men, who lead his cop universe, have this superhero-esque idea of themselves, and that is the energy they exude. In an interview with Film Companion in 2018 after the success of Simmba, when asked about the way he presents his heroes, Shetty admitted that he is giving the young boys a hero to look up to, someone who could be aspirational.

Ranveer Singh in Rohit Shetty’s Simmba.

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Sarfarosh, which released right around the time when India was at war with Pakistan, did not need a war cry to bring the audience together as the country was already united in the spirit of patriotism. In an interview with NDTV in 2000, Aamir spoke about the film’s themes and spoke about the “distrust” that people of one religion might feel towards others and admitted that he, being a Muslim, had faced this “to a certain extent” in his “personal life”. But Aamir also mentioned that Sarfarosh was not about villainsing a country or religion, it was a film that insisted that anyone that works against the country is a terrorist, and that had nothing to do with their religion. “Violence is bad, and terrorism is bad and anybody indulging in that is not doing the right thing,” he said. It was probably this idea, which wasn’t often verbalised at the time, which birthed the character of Salim, played by Mukesh Rishi.Salim and Ajay both had the same sense of duty but the discrimination faced by Salim, because of his religion was brought out just to underline the fact that one’s love for their nation should not be discounted just because they practice their faith.

Shetty’s cop universe was born in another era and it is evident that no matter how many token good Muslim characters he places within his movies, one always walks away with a faint sense of Islamophobia. His last cop film Sooryavanshi and even his recent web series Indian Police Force are big examples of the same.

Aamir Khan’s Ajay and Mukesh Rishi’s Salim have an open dialogue about discrimination based on religion in Sarfarosh.

In fact, when Aamir spoke about feeling the heat of being a Muslim in India in that interview, he mentioned that the social climate of the country, “primarily in the early 1990s” was probably the cause of John Matthew Matthan writing a script like Sarfarosh. He also mentioned that more people who are “balanced”, need to come out and speak against the “radicals who have been having a field day.” Shetty’s idea of creating balance in society comes from the same era but the lessons he learnt from the 1990s are completely different. In the same FC interview, Shetty blatantly said that some criminals should be punished on the spot, and be shot on sight. When asked if his portrayal of encounter killings did not appear problematic to him, Rohit just said ‘no’. He referred to the underworld nexus of the 1990s and 2000s and said that Mumbai’s problems ended only after the encounters started. “The whole of Mumbai city got clean, when they started killing them, when the encounters started happening, when there was a fear,” he said.

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Aamir’s Ajay is a part of a system that is drenched in bureaucracy and he too has to overlook a few rules once in a while but Shetty’s universe completely hinges on the idea that the hero has to take full control of the situation or there would be no justice. This idea in itself fully negates the purpose of law, and its protectors and instead, replaces them with vigilantes. In the same conversation, Shetty insisted that these men are qualified to make these decisions because they are cops. “If a policeman wants to shoot someone, he is a guy, he is a hero… My point of view is like this will not end till the time you don’t take a tough stand. It’s not going to happen,” he said. But choosing to shoot someone, or punish someone is not a part of their job. Rohit’s beliefs and his presentation push these characters into a fantastical territory where instead of playing cops, these men end up playing vigilantes who believe themselves to be morally superior and are empowered with a uniform, that they flaunt as their cape. Simmba even had a scene dedicated to Ranveer Singh wearing his uniform for the first time after he realises that he has to punish the bad guys.

Rohit Shetty’s cops are actually vigilantes who like to pat themselves on the back, and in the last decade or so, in a world which has acknowledged the errors of police’s ways and the cases of police brutality, this doesn’t send the right message.

Aamir Khan and Rohit Shetty come from different worlds, at least as far the world of Sarfarosh and Shetty’s cop universe are concerned. But you never know, there might come a day when IPS Ajay Singh Rathod enters this universe and teaches the vigilantes how to actually do their jobs.