{"id":5860,"date":"2016-07-19T07:29:14","date_gmt":"2016-07-19T01:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5860"},"modified":"2026-07-17T21:53:52","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T16:23:52","slug":"fifteen-years-swades-shah-rukh-khan-mohan-bhargava-patriotism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=5860","title":{"rendered":"In a World Crazy Over Rahuls and Rajs, Why Shah Rukh Khan\u2019s Mohan Bhargava Stands Out"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<span class=\"dropcap\">\u201cJ<\/span>ab hi hum muqable mein dabne lagte hain, hum ek hi cheez ka sahara lete hain: sanskaar aur parampara.\u201d\u00a0\n\n(Whenever we start to lose, we fall back on virtue and tradition.)\n\nIt was an audacious dialogue 15 years ago, when Shah Rukh Khan\u2019s Mohan Bhargava voiced it in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Swades<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">; it\u2019s a piercing one now, at a time when the country is in the grips of an almost unprecedented hour of civil disobedience \u2014 facing off, as it is, against the Centre to resist the discriminatory Citizen Amendment Act and the reprehensible<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/pov\/india-against-caa-protester-dont-hesitate-to-ask-questions\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> National Register of Citizens.<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\n\nOur GDP growth is at a six-year low. A much-delayed damning report revealed that unemployment in India was at a 45-year high in 2017-18, and continues to soar. Our finance minister routinely makes jarring and ridiculous statements about the state of the economy, and generally appears to be as clueless about how to fix it as the morning-walk mafia of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/social-commentary\/caa-protests-has-the-older-generation-let-down-indias-youth\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">middle-aged men<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in our neighbourhood park.\n\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1576676806.jpg\" alt=\"swades 2\" width=\"718\" height=\"407\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-57370\" \/>\n\n<figcaption>\n<p>Swades showed us an alternate version, a version that started with one man\u2019s emotional response to one person and one problem, then one more, and one more.<\/p>\n<p>Ashutosh Gowariker Productions<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nAt a time when we should be asking some excoriating questions of the government that came into power with a thumping majority on the promise of economic development, we\u2019re being forced to ask ourselves and each other: Who gets to be <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/bollywood\/celebs-caa-protests-sushant-singh-akshay-kumar\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Indian<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">? And until when? That\u2019s some genius deflection from one\u2019s own crushing failures.\u00a0\n\nSince it\u2019s the season of amendments, I\u2019ll make one of my own to <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Swades<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019 most trenchant dialogue, \u201cJab hi hum muqable mein dab ne lagte hain, hum ek hi cheez ka sahara le te hain: mazhab.\u201d\n\nMazhab, or religion, will get India every time.\n\nI don\u2019t know whether to congratulate<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/bollywood\/panipat-review-bollywood-historical-epic\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Ashutosh Gowariker<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for making a socially inclined film so thoughtful that it continues to be relevant even a decade and a half after its release, or mourn the fact that so little has changed in India that a work of art that captured the reality of time so long ago feels eerily contemporaneous even now. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in between. But what I can say with certainty is that its beauty \u2014 then, and now \u2014 lies in its simplicity.\u00a0\n\n<blockquote class=\"quote--center\"><p>What I can say with certainty is that Swades\u2019 beauty \u2014 then, and now \u2014 lies in its simplicity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<i>Swades<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> was sandwiched between other patriotism-themed movies like <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mission Kashmir<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Refugee<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/bollywood\/hrithik-roshan-super-30-mohenjo-daro-kaabil\/\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fiza<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gadar: Ek Prem Katha<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LOC Kargil<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Hero: Love Story Of A Spy<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. We were used to seeing our nation-loving heroes in fatigues, yelling slogans, launching grenades, firing guns\u2026 Basically doing things that made the blood roar in our ears and adrenaline course through our veins. I like to think of these movies as little ampoules of deshbhakti, to be consumed tri-annually on the Republic Day-Independence Day-Gandhi Jayanti trifecta.\n\nAnd suddenly, in the midst of this testosterone-fuelled party we got the anodyne Mohan Bhargava (Shah Rukh <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/bollywood\/suhana-khan-vogue-cover-shah-rukh-khan\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Khan<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">) who just wanted to go back to his safe, comfortable, studious life at NASA, just with his Kaveri Amma in tow. He wasn\u2019t drawn to India by a burning desire to change its destiny \u2014 all Mohan wanted was to locate the motherly woman he had allowed himself to neglect with as much expediency as his privilege would allow, and take her back with him. His most pressing worry, whether the bathroom in the village would have plumbing.\n\nMohan, unlike his <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/pov\/citizenship-amendment-act-minority-indian-politicians\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">patriotic<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> peers, was the kind of deshbhakt we could imagine ourselves being, some day. We can\u2019t imagine ourselves running headfirst into enemy camps at the border, but we <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">can <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">imagine ourselves being moved to tears when a farmer who can barely afford to clothe his family offers the little food he has to the men who have arrived to collect rent. We can imagine ourselves weeping when a young boy who should be in school is selling chai at the station. And we can imagine ourselves feel anger bubble and spill over when the future of the country is being deprived of education due to caste and gender discrimination.\n\n<blockquote class=\"quote--center\"><p>Mazhab, or religion, will get India every time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\u201cJo kabhi nahi jaati, ussi ko jaati kehte hain.\u201d (Caste is the thing that can\u2019t be cast away)\n\nIt\u2019s what Mohan is told when he tries to advocate for equal treatment for all. It\u2019s tragic that even today, we can still hear the echo of these sentiments. We hear it every time a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/politics\/rohith-vemula-bhima-koregaon-dawn-dalit-identity\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dalit<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> student commits suicide after facing unbearable harassment at the hands of upper-caste classmates. And every time young men and women are killed in the name of family honour if they have the temerity to fall in love with someone outside their caste. Mohan\u2019s distress and inability to comprehend the many, many fault lines that divide India are our own, as we go about lives in our little, sheltered, cosmopolitan bubbles.\u00a0\n\nBut then, so are his victories. I\u2019ve seen <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Swades<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> at least half a dozen times, but even now, I can\u2019t help but let out a small whoop and wipe a tear of joy when that damned sheet separating the two castes comes down in the middle of \u201cYeh taara, who taara.\u201d And every time the kids receive their textbooks \u2014 tribal kids, upper and lower caste kids, both boys and girls, I feel an indescribable warmth spread in my heart. Who is to say that setting 20 kids onto the path of education not as much of an act of patriotism as fighting a war in its name is?\n\n<i>Swades<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is a movie special in its smallness. Mohan doesn\u2019t burst onto the screen with all the pomp and circumstance of bravado. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/series\/when-millennials-grew-up\/goodbye-2010s-bollywood-heroes-heroines\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bollywood<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, much like the government, has, for too long, fed us an idea of nationhood that is so much bigger than ourselves, most of us tend to struggle to understand our place in it. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Swades<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> showed us an alternate version, a version that started with one man\u2019s emotional response to one person and one problem, then one more, and one more. Sometimes, while caught up in the frenzy of loving the idea of a country, we forget to love the people that make it what it is. In this polarised, divisive moment that we\u2019re currently living, it\u2019s good to be reminded, in the style of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Swades<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, that sometimes lighting even just one bulb is enough.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bollywood, much like the government, has fed us an idea of nationhood that is so much bigger than ourselves, most of us tend to struggle to understand our place in it. Swades showed us an alternate version. In Mohan Bhargava, it gave us a deshbhakt we could imagine ourselves being, some day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":306,"featured_media":5863,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3114],"tags":[9793,9725,9788,9755,489,152],"class_list":["post-5860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bollywood","tag-15-years-of-swades","tag-ashutosh-gowariker","tag-caa","tag-nrc","tag-patriotism","tag-shah-rukh-khan"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>In a World Crazy Over Rahuls and Rajs, Why Shah Rukh Khan\u2019s Mohan Bhargava Stands Out<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Bollywood, much like the government, has fed us an idea of nationhood that is so much bigger than ourselves, most of us tend to struggle to understand our place in it. 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In Mohan Bhargava, it gave us a deshbhakt we could imagine ourselves being, some day.","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Sonali Kokra","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5860#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5860"},"author":{"name":"Sonali Kokra","@id":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/#\/schema\/person\/467643c35de7aba9f94af624e4a1cc7c"},"headline":"In a World Crazy Over Rahuls and Rajs, Why Shah Rukh Khan\u2019s Mohan Bhargava Stands Out","datePublished":"2016-07-19T01:59:14+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-17T16:23:52+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5860"},"wordCount":1092,"image":{"@id":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5860#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1576676348.jpg","keywords":["15 years of Swades","Ashutosh Gowariker","CAA","NRC","patriotism","Shah Rukh Khan"],"articleSection":["Bollywood"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5860","url":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5860","name":"In a World Crazy Over Rahuls and Rajs, Why Shah Rukh Khan\u2019s Mohan Bhargava Stands Out","isPartOf":{"@id":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5860#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5860#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1576676348.jpg","datePublished":"2016-07-19T01:59:14+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-17T16:23:52+00:00","author":{"@id":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/#\/schema\/person\/467643c35de7aba9f94af624e4a1cc7c"},"description":"Bollywood, much like the government, has fed us an idea of nationhood that is so much bigger than ourselves, most of us tend to struggle to understand our place in it. Swades showed us an alternate version. In Mohan Bhargava, it gave us a deshbhakt we could imagine ourselves being, some day.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5860#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5860"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5860#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1576676348.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1576676348.jpg","width":1520,"height":850},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5860#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"In a World Crazy Over Rahuls and Rajs, Why Shah Rukh Khan\u2019s Mohan Bhargava Stands Out"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/#website","url":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/","name":"Arr\u00e9","description":"In every person lies a creator and in every creator, an enterprise.","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/#\/schema\/person\/467643c35de7aba9f94af624e4a1cc7c","name":"Sonali Kokra","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c77f3072d1ce1711927565d23ac41cbea9af9876dad957ed121a66cb4df2aab8?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c77f3072d1ce1711927565d23ac41cbea9af9876dad957ed121a66cb4df2aab8?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c77f3072d1ce1711927565d23ac41cbea9af9876dad957ed121a66cb4df2aab8?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Sonali Kokra"},"url":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?author=306"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1576676348.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/306"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5862,"href":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5860\/revisions\/5862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}