Can we still love billionaire Shah Rukh Khan in Modi's India?

There was a time when Bollywood was said to be India's conscience.

Today, it feels more like its PR department.

As India convulses under one of the most divisive regimes in its modern history, with Muslims lynched over rumours, journalists jailed, dissenters silenced, and universities turned into ideological training camps, its film industry's brightest stars, the same faces who once made India dream, now seem content to dream with their eyes closed.

And among them all, one name towers above the rest: Shah Rukh Khan.

The man who taught an entire generation how to love. The man whose dimples once stood for secular India's innocence. The man who, at 60, has just become India's first billionaire actor - boasting a net worth of $1.4 billion.

The man who made an entire generation believe in love, and now, apparently, in late-stage capitalism.

Shah Rukh Khan became the bridge between the protectionist past and the free-market future.

The timing? Impeccable. Because what better moment to cross the billionaire line than in a country that is busy drawing new lines between citizens and outsiders, Hindus and Muslims, insiders, and expendables?

In a country of 1.4 billion people, there are only 358 billionaires - roughly 0.00002% of the population. That's enough to be treated like a god.

But what it means for the "King of Bollywood" to become a billionaire in 2025 in India, where inequality has reached levels worse than under colonial rule, where the middle class gasps for air as jobs vanish and prices soar, and where Muslims, his own community, face the most perilous conditions since the state's founding in 1947.

And still, he - like his peers - has had nothing to say. Nothing on lynchings. Nothing on the Citizenship Amendment Act. Nothing on Kashmir, Gaza, or the growing architecture of hate built under Narendra Modi's reign.

To understand SRK's rise is to understand the story of modern India itself.

A Muslim man, married to a Hindu woman, raising children who could choose any faith they liked - what could be a better secular fairytale?

When India opened its markets after the Cold War, neoliberalism and nationalism began to march hand in hand. As Hindu nationalists tore down the Babri Masjid, Hindi cinema teamed up with multinational brands to sell the dream of a modern, global India.

Shah Rukh Khan became the bridge between the protectionist past and the free-market future.

His success as an outsider, a middle-class Muslim boy from Delhi who made it big in a nepotistic industry, offered millions a myth to believe in: that hard work, charm, and talent could still triumph over hierarchy. 

That India was, despite its flaws, still a land of possibility.

He wasn't just the hero on screen; he was the metaphor.

He reassured a fractured nation that love could overcome everything - class, caste, religion.

The Indian film industry has long danced to the state's tune, but under Modi, the choreography has become eerily synchronised.

"His personal life mirrors the idea of India," an entertainment journalist told DW in 2023.

A Muslim man, married to a Hindu woman, raising children who could choose any faith they liked - what could be a better secular fairytale?

Except it was never just a fairytale.

It was a performance - one that allowed both the Hindu right and the liberal elite to feel comfortable.

To the right wing, he was the "good Muslim" - polite, apolitical, non-threatening. To the liberal class, he was proof of their own tolerance. Their affection for him became the moral cover for a system that demanded submission from its Muslim citizens.

The price of peace is complicity

By the time Narendra Modi rose to power in 2014, Shah Rukh Khan had already made his choice.

In 2015, when he barely murmured about "growing intolerance" in India, the backlash was swift and ferocious. Suddenly, the man once hailed as India's global ambassador was told to "go to Pakistan." 

The message was clear: he was allowed to entertain the nation, not question it.

It didn't take him long to understand that his fortune depended on silence.

"His personal life mirrors the idea of India," an entertainment journalist told DW in 2023.

That silence, in turn, became his business model.

His production house, Red Chillies Entertainment, grew into a media empire. His cricket franchise, Kolkata Knight Riders, became one of the IPL's most profitable teams. He invested in startups, edutainment franchises, and digital platforms. His wife Gauri Khan diversified into design, real estate, and lifestyle brands.

Every corner of Indian consumerism seemed to bear the Khan signature.

And then came the endorsements - dozens of them. 

Hyundai, Tata, Reliance, Byju's, ICICI, Tag Heuer, Dubai Tourism, and more. Many of these corporations have documented ties to Israel's military-industrial complex, which profits directly from the destruction in Gaza.

One of his car ads once carried the tagline: "Be the better guy." The irony writes itself.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that SRK is no longer an artist.

Photo: Collected

He's an empire - and like all empires, his morality has been outsourced to marketing.

He is, as The Financial Express once wrote, "the Warren Buffett of Bollywood."

Except Buffett never starred in films that preached moral courage and resistance.

Being a billionaire during a genocide

Muslims in India today live in existential fear.

Their homes are bulldozed without trial. Their businesses are boycotted. Their students are beaten in universities. In Kashmir, Israeli-style tactics are used to control the population.

And in Gaza, as families are wiped out on live television, India's ruling party cheers on Israel, and its Bollywood darlings stay silent.

When the genocide began in October 2023, Indian Muslims took to the streets in solidarity. Many were beaten, arrested, and dumped outside their cities. Others were charged under draconian laws for merely holding "Free Palestine" signs.

SRK, meanwhile, made his Met Gala debut in New York. Draped in black Sabyasachi, bejewelled and solemn, he smiled for the cameras as protesters outside shouted for justice.

The contrast could not have been more damning: children buried under rubble in Gaza; a billionaire wrapped in couture under chandeliers.

The Indian media, predictably, called his appearance "historic".

And then, in September, came the perfect metaphor for the age of obedience:

On Narendra Modi's 75th birthday, Shah Rukh Khan posted on X,

"Your discipline, hard work and dedication towards the country can be seen in this journey."

The Prime Minister's Office couldn't have written it better.

When the genocide entered its sixth month, Khan joined Salman and Aamir in Saudi Arabia for the Joy Festival - an event designed to launder the kingdom's image. There, the trio laughed, posed, and reminisced. They joked about starring together in a film if "someone funded it".

The silence of the stars

The Indian film industry has long danced to the state's tune, but under Modi, the choreography has become eerily synchronised.

Actors who dare speak out - think Swara Bhasker, or before her, Naseeruddin Shah - are branded "anti-national" or see their projects vanish overnight. The rest watch and learn.

For the Khans - Shah Rukh, Salman, Aamir - the stakes are higher. 

Their silence is not merely self-preservation; it's branding. They have mastered the delicate art of being Muslim enough to sell secular India's nostalgia, yet docile enough to soothe its insecurities. 

The price of their peace is everyone else's peril.

This silence, however, is not neutral. It is participation.

When the rich and famous choose not to speak, they lend legitimacy to power. They normalise violence by omission. They turn fascism into lifestyle content. It's how a billionaire can post a Met Gala selfie while Gaza burns, and a nation nods along.

Now, India is living through open-air apartheid - bulldozers tearing down Muslim homes, citizenship laws redrawing who belongs, and mobs policing love itself. Yet the biggest Muslim actor in the country, adored by hundreds of millions, has chosen to hum lullabies to power.

Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar, Alia Bhatt, Deepika Padukone, along with others, have learned the new survival mantra: Speak only to sell. Protest nothing. Wish Modi on his birthday, promote nationalism in your next film, and for God's sake, don't mention Muslims unless they're terrorists or sidekicks.

The art vs artist conundrum

Defenders of Shah Rukh Khan argue that he can't speak. That he would be boycotted, blacklisted, destroyed.

But that argument collapses under the weight of his privilege.

When your art exists within an authoritarian state, neutrality becomes propaganda.

He is too big to cancel. Too rich to fear. Too powerful to plead helplessness.

His silence is not fear; it's an investment strategy.

He has learned how to be just Muslim enough to preserve his global brand, yet docile enough to comfort the Hindu majority.

He has mastered the art of being uncontroversial in an age that punishes honesty.

But when your art exists within an authoritarian state, neutrality becomes propaganda.

German philosopher Theodor Adorno once said, "Every work of art is an uncommitted crime."

By that measure, Khan's crime isn't what he says, it's what he refuses to say.

SRK's billion-dollar empire thrives on his ability to remain uncontroversial. His image, smiling, sophisticated, secular, is the lubricant of a machine that feeds off compliance.

To separate art from the artist works only if art is free from power. Bollywood today is not.

It is sustained by corporate patronage, censorship, and nationalist narratives. Every film, brand deal, and award ceremony is a political act, even when it pretends not to be.

In that sense, Khan's silence is not absence. It is an endorsement.

What does it mean when our heroes stop being human and become corporations?

When moral courage is replaced by market value?

SRK's billion-dollar empire thrives on his ability to remain uncontroversial. His image, smiling, sophisticated, secular, is the lubricant of a machine that feeds off compliance.

Each time he refuses to speak, his stock rises a little higher.

Each time he praises power, another door opens.

His movies once taught us to stand for love and truth.

Today, they teach us to stay quiet and buy another Hyundai.

Loving him anyway (sort of)

To love Shah Rukh Khan in 2025 is to love a mirror that no longer reflects you.

It reflects power, privilege, and the price of survival.

Yes, he shaped our youth. He taught us to love. His films still play at weddings and on lonely nights when nostalgia feels safer than news.

But, maybe love, too, demands accountability.

Maybe the truest tribute to the man who once told us "Kal Ho Naa Ho" is to ask why he refuses to say "aaj kya ho raha hai."

We can still love the art, perhaps, but not innocently.

Because in Modi's India, silence itself has become the loudest form of speech. And our beloved stars, it seems, are speaking volumes.

We can love the nostalgia he gave us, the stories that shaped our adolescence. But let's stop pretending that he represents the people, or the India that was promised.

The man who once told us "love overcomes all" now models how money overcomes everything, even moral gravity.

And maybe that's the real tragedy of Bollywood today: its biggest stars aren't heroes anymore. They're shareholders.

Zarin Tasnim is an Online journalist at The Business Standard

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard