The first movie of the Dabangg franchise, one of the highest-grossing Indian films worldwide, has Bollywood’s most celebrated actor, Salman Khan, playing the lead as a top cop. An iconic scene in the movie, that also appears in the trailer, shows Chulbul Pandey (Salman Khan) roughing up a goon and mouthing a line which translates to, ‘the consequence of assaulting a police officer is 21 years of prison, but if the same officer assaults you, he not only gets promoted but is also rewarded with a medal for bravery.’
The audience applauds every time the hero delivers such one-liners. From the commercial success of the film, one can comfortably assume that for most Indians, there’s little to dislike in a swaggering hero who romances the ladies, beats up the bad guys, and dons his sunglasses with equal aplomb. But every time Bollywood nudges its viewers to cheer at the punches landed by uniformed officers on screen, it unwittingly endorses a culture of State-sanctioned brutality and normalises toxic hypermasculinity in professions which ought to ensure the security of citizens.
Characters like Chulbul Pandey and Bajirao Singham (Singham), who populate Bollywood’s cop universe, are indeed caricatures at best. However, what indiscriminately lies at the heart of all their portrayals is the valourisation of machismo or brute masculine energy. Ironically, even a cop film franchise with a female lead is titled ‘Mardaani,’ meaning masculine, almost romanticising the quality rarely found in a woman, thereby making her deserving of her post.
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