Akshay Kumar’s recent release, Sooryavanshi has opened to a vast audience bringing in big numbers at the box office. The film is the first in Bollywood to screen in cinemas across the country after the ongoing pandemic which caused many theatre halls around the world to shut down. While Sooryavanshi has also crossed the Rs 100 crore mark internationally, a prominent journalist from India penned an opinion piece accusing the film of Islamophobia – and it is something that worries her with the film’s success. Rana Ayyub feels that Akshay Kumar’s Sooryavanshi promotes Islamophobia.
Akshay Kumar as Sooryavanshi
In an opinion piece that famous journalist Rana Ayyub penned for The Washington Post, she claims that the film promotes Islamophobia. In her piece, she claims that several scenes in the film “paint Muslim men as colluding to seduce or kidnap Hindu women or girls and convert them to Islam”. But that is not the only thing that makes the film discriminate against Muslims, she added.

Rana Ayyub wrote: “Every third frame of the film is a bloodcurdling Islamophobic image. While an upper-class Hindu character gives lessons in patriotism, the Muslim antagonist responds with hate. He is ungrateful, with a long beard and skull cap.” She continued that while Akshay Kumar’s Sooryavanshi talks about the 1993 blasts in Mumbai, he “conveniently ignores the 1992 anti-Muslim carnage” before it. She added that the character and the film also fail to acknowledge the 2002 riots of Gujrat, Malegaon blasts in 2006 and 2008 which killed several Muslims.

The journalist also calls out Karan Johar, the producer of the film, for backing Sooryavanshi, considering he was the same filmmaker behind My Name is Khan, starring Shah Rukh Khan, which touched upon the plight of Muslims around the US after the 9/11 attacks.

On the other hand, Rohit Shetty has denied any accusations of the film being discriminatory towards any religion. In fact, he stated that the caste of any other detail of the antagonist in the film is something that filmmakers don’t even think of.