Right Ends, Wrong Means: The Anti-Hero In Hindi Cinema

Towards the end of Raavan (2010), Raagini바카라�s (Aishwarya Rai) husband, Dev (Vikram), accuses her of infidelity, ordering her to take a polygraph test. 바카라�Beera told me that his hands may be dirty,바카라� he says, 바카라�but your wife isn바카라�t pure gold as well.바카라� She pulls the chain of the train and gets off. She meets her abductor, Beera (Abhishek Bachchan), and thunders, 바카라�What did you tell Dev?바카라� Delirious with disbelief that Raagini has returned to meet him, he walks towards바카라�and gawks at바카라�her, as the scene cuts to a flashback.

Beera on a creaking bridge, holding Dev바카라�s hand. 바카라�I can kill you for your wife,바카라� he says, 바카라�and I can save you for her.바카라� He scowls: 바카라�Gold바카라�your wife is gold. My hands are dirty, yes, but I바카라�ve protected your gift with all my heart.바카라� At that moment, both Raagini바카라�and the audience바카라�realise that Dev, the cop, is cruel, while Beera, the criminal, is kind. This scene upends the whole film, making us ask: Who is the hero, who is the villain? Who deserves our empathy, who deserves our scorn? And if Raavan-like Beera, avenging his sister바카라�s death, is both virtuous and vicious, then what does that make him?

An anti-hero. A character who, honouring his own moral codes, bends the rules, mocks the law, and gets what he wants바카라�someone with the right ends but the wrong means. (Unlike the hero, he바카라�s also funny, charming, and suave, questioning our own fealties to good and evil.) But such a figure wasn바카라�t organic to Indian cinema, for it바카라�s had a long history of venerating heroes바카라�and stars. Just consider the country바카라�s first film, Raja Harishchandra (1913), modelled on a king so virtuous that he never lied. In the next two decades, dominated by mythologicals, heroes and villains바카라�inspired by gods and demons바카라�had little moral ambiguities.

That changed with Kismet (1943)바카라�featuring Ashok Kumar as a con man바카라�which, earning more than Rs one crore, was Indian cinema바카라�s first blockbuster. Criminality tailed another leading man (Raj Kapoor) in Awaara (1951), which, pivoting on the nature versus nurture debate, also ruled the box-office. Then came hat-wearing, cigarette-smoking Dev Anand, as a gambler and a smuggler, in Baazi (1951) and Jaal (1952). Inspired by Hollywood noir, they, too, became money-spinners. Like Kapoor and Anand, Dilip Kumar appeared as an anti-hero in the blockbuster Gunga Jumna (1961). Centred on two brothers바카라�a cop and a dacoit바카라�it inspired many movies, including Deewaar (1975), and was inspired by an iconic drama, enlivened by another anti-hero, Mother India (1957).

Two more factors shaped the contours of such characters: Prohibition and organised crime. Call it the tale of two cities: Bombay and New York, the 바카라�50s and the 바카라�20s, the real and the reel, had collapsed into one. 바카라�As in the US during Prohibition,바카라� writes Uday Bhatia in Bullets Over Bombay, 바카라�gangs in Bombay started distributing liquor.바카라� So different gangsters emerged바카라�Karim Lala, Haji Mastan, Varadarajan Mudaliar바카라�mirroring their American counterparts: Al Capone, Salvatore Maranzano, and Lucky Luciano. If the latter inspired Scarface (1932, Capone) and Little Caesar (1932, Maranzano), then the former sparked Deewaar (1975, Mastan) and Nayakan (1987, Mudaliar).

The first wave of Bollywood anti-heroes arrived with Salim-Javed바카라�s 바카라�Angry Young Man바카라�, immortalised by Amitabh Bachchan in the 바카라�70s. Besides the actor and the conditions precipitating such a character (inflation, corruption, organised crime), these dramas shared something else: a lack of fathers. In Zanjeer (1973), the protagonist바카라�s parents are murdered. In Deewaar, the father, a trade union leader forced to cut a deal with the factory owners, leaves his family and town out of shame (much like the father in Mother India), making his son a figurative 바카라�orphan바카라�. Vijay grows up to not remember his dad as much as the tattoo on his forearm: 바카라�Mera baap chor hai바카라�. In Trishul (1978), Raj (Sanjeev Kumar) leaves his girlfriend, and subsequently their child (Bachchan), to marry a rich heiress. This crisis of masculinity met a figure like Bachchan who assuaged the lack in every way possible: through his commanding physique, tall frame, rich baritone.

In the next decade, the anti-heroes continued to roar. 바카라�On an average, the commercial industry in the 1980s produced about 130 films annually,바카라� writes Ajanta Sircar in Framing the Nation. 바카라�Of these, roughly nine per cent were commercially successful. The love-story and the anti-hero genres, however, consistently produced at least one major hit each year, right through the decade.바카라� Unlike the 바카라�70s though, here the fathers played more visible바카라�and complicated바카라�roles. Take, for instance, Shakti (1982), where the father (Dilip Kumar), a cop, is so self-righteous that he doesn바카라�t even save his abducted son (Bachchan), who becomes a resentful gangster. Or Ardh Satya (1983), whose hero (Om Puri) has grown up seeing his father, a constable, assault his mother. Unable to protect her, this 바카라�impotent바카라� man lives with his anger as an adult when, as a cop, he sees his seniors, like his father, violating their duties. And it바카라�s the metaphorical father in Karma (1986), played by Kumar, a police officer, who enlists three wrong men바카라�convicts in his jail바카라�to do the right thing.

The 바카라�90s, just like the 바카라�70s, welcomed another actor as an anti-hero: Shah Rukh Khan. Less political and more ruthless than the Angry Young Man바카라�Khan flings his girlfriend off a building바카라�s terrace in Baazigar (1993)바카라�his roles comprised an obsessive lover in Darr (1993), a vengeful son in Baazigar, and a gangster in Ram Jaane (1995). The Mumbai underworld kept fuelling the gangster genre in the 바카라�90s, which culminated in the blazing anti-hero drama Satya (1998).

As Khan left such roles to pursue the romantic hero stardom, the team of Satya stuck around: its director (Varma), its writer (Anurag Kashyap), its music director (Vishal Bhardwaj). Inspired by The Godfather (1972), Varma directed Sarkar (2005), modelling Bachchan on Bal Thackeray, making the star바카라�s career come full circle. Bhardwaj produced a searing anti-hero, played by Saif Ali Khan, in Omkara (2006). Five years later, the filmmaker gave a new spin to the character, hinging a drama on an anti-heroine, Priyanka Chopra, in 7 Khoon Maaf (2011). In 2014, adapting Shakespeare for the third time, Bhardwaj gave us Haider, an anti-hero who didn바카라�t hesitate to be anti-state. A similar figure drove Paan Singh Tomar (2012). Kashyap바카라�s penchant for violent, complex characters scaled new heights in the delirious ensemble Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), where heroes were conspicuous by their absence.

Mainstream Bollywood, meanwhile, produced the Dhoom series, which valorised the anti-hero so much that it reduced its heroes to sidekicks. Every film changed the antagonist and increased his cinematic billing바카라�moving from John Abraham to Hrithik Roshan to Aamir Khan바카라�sustaining substantial interest in the franchise. A year after the first Dhoom movie, an anti-hero and -heroine appeared in Bunty Aur Babli (2005), pricking the 바카라�India Shining바카라� bubble with memorable verve and humour. Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai (2010), inspired by Mastan and Ibrahim바카라�s lives, harked back to 바카라�70s masala, replete with delicious dialogues and calibrated melodrama.

Around the same time, a new character entered Hindi cinema: the deceptive anti-hero. In A Wednesday (2008) and Kahaani (2012), the villain is a hero and the hero a villain, concealing their true identities from the people inside (and outside) the films. In Special 26 (2013), a 바카라�CBI officer바카라� (Akshay Kumar) first fools the investigating officers and then, in the climax, fools us along with them. In the next few years, even bigger stars surfaced as anti-heroes. Sridevi played a vengeful mother in her swansong, Mom (2017), punishing her daughter바카라�s rapist. Raees (2017) had Shah Rukh Khan as a Muslim don, who, after rising in the bootlegging business, enters politics바카라�a Bollywood character showing rare political bite in post-2014 India.

The recent anti-heroes, though, haven바카라�t emerged from Bollywood but south Indian cinema. The Malayalam thrillers Drishyam and its sequel (remade in Hindi starring Devgn) doubled up as ingenious suspense dramas and social commentary, where the 바카라�little man바카라� flips the bird to the cops. The Tamil thriller Vikram Vedha (2017), based on the Vikram-Betaal folklore, complicated the notions of good and evil, featuring an anti-hero so charming and compelling바카라�Vijay Sethupathi in the original and Roshan in the remake바카라�that he elicited both smiles and gasps. But the most successful anti-hero films gave Bollywood an existential crisis: the KGF series (2018, 2022) and Pushpa (2021). The anti-establishment machos are back in Hindi films, too, as evidenced by Khan in Jawan (2023), where he plays an Army officer father and the vigilante son.

But in today바카라�s Bollywood, reduced to a propaganda factory, it바카라�s difficult to find true anti-heroes, as there바카라�s little difference between the heroes and the villains. Consider, for example, Thackeray (2019): a hero, an anti-hero, or a villain? Or Thalaivi (2021): a hero, an anti-hero, or a villain? Or Swatantrya Veer Savarkar (2024): a hero, an anti-hero바카라�you get the drift. But even beyond them, Hindi cinema has produced so many protagonists with nauseating entitlement바카라�men who stalk women, disregard their consent, objectify them바카라�that those heroes, in fact, look like villains. So it바카라�s only natural that, honouring such 바카라�tradition바카라�, Kabir Singh (2019) and Animal (2023)바카라�escalating vile masculine instincts바카라�have hit the box-office jackpot. At a cursory glance, sure, you can call them anti-heroes, as these amoral protagonists are discontented and angry. Angry at what though? A typical anti-hero protested the status quo. In these movies, the anti-heroes, representing the status quo, wallow in self-pity and imagined grievances, projecting themselves as victims. Maybe this, too, makes sense, for it represents a cultural point so low that even anti-heroes snub it.

(This appeared in the print as 'More Than the Hero')