Indian film actor and singer Ayushmann Khurana has made quite a name for himself with a string of quirky, off the beaten track Hindi movies. Khurana (5 million twitter followers) doesnt have the star power of megastars like Shah Rukh Khan and Akshay Kumar (38 and 32 m twitter followers), or even more recent stars like Ranveer Singh (13 m) and Varun Dhawan (11 m).
But he has now delivered a string of superhits, starting with Dum Laga ke Haisha, Bareilly Ki Barfi, Shubh Mangal Saavdhan, Badhaai Ho, Article 15, Dream Girl and most recently, Bala since 2015. This is a better ratio than any other actor or actress in Indian cinema. Due to the low cost of his movies, some claim that Khurana has made more money for distributors in India in the last two years than all Bollywood stars in the last two decades.
It is important to note that unlike Indian movies of the past, the role of the protagonist in these movies is not ‘heroic’. Khurana, in all these movies, is playing a rooted, local role, not some generic ‘larger than life’ hero. Apart from Dream Girl, Khurana’s name indicates that the role is that of a ‘UP Brahmin’, although his Brahminness is not central to the movie’s plot.
The actresses in these movies are Bhumi Pednekar (Marathi), Kriti Sanon (Punjabi), Sanya Malhotra (Punjabi), Nusrat Bharucha (Gujarati) and Yami Gautam (Garwhali). Like Khurana (Punjabi), none of them trace their last name to Uttar Pradesh.
I find it interesting that Bollywood cannot find local UP actors to represent what it thinks are genuine UP roles. I also find the insistence on the protagonists being Brahmin interesting.
My own explanation for this phenomenon is that UP is one of the least urbanized states in India. India’s major urban centres, even Delhi, do not have a majority of Hindi origin people. Actors typically come from urban backgrounds, and other linguistic groups have seen more urbanization for historical reasons.
This creates an interesting dichotomy where these urbanites grow up thinking that their nation has a certain core, which they do not know intimately. But since Bollywood does claim to represent the nation (“Bharat ke dil main ek gaon, Ramgarh”), these non Hindi actors have to represent something UP. It seems that the imaginary of UP in their eyes is of Brahmins, Muslims and crime.