Sooryavanshi to Satyamev Jayate 2, why the new-age police costume in Hindi cinema seldom goes beyond a khaki blur-Entertainment News , Firstpost
Gone are the days when the reference to a ‘police ki vardi’ referred to the sanctity of the uniform, and the police-protagonist was sometimes incorruptible, a symbol of integrity, or of simmering anger against the system in which they were a part.
Ranveer Singh, Ajay Devgn, and Akshay Kumar in Sooryavanshi
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On our way back from an ad film shoot in Goregaon Film City, Mumbai many years ago, I commented to my husband that I was very impressed by the level of security there. “So many policemen wandering around any time of the day,” I marveled. He had a moment of puzzlement on his face before he broke into laughter. It seems all my ‘policemen’ were actors in the police costume for various TV serial shoots happening on neighbouring sets.
It is a bit like the Film City grounds these days in the cinema. Police films are everywhere. Within the last month, I watched Bunty Aur Babli 2 in the cinema hall, featuring the delightful Pankaj Tripathi playing Inspector Jatayu Singh. Sooryavanshi had just passed through, with three ‘heroes’ (Ajay Devgn, Ranveer Singh, and Akshay Kumar) in iconic roles as police officers Singham, Simmba, and Sooryavanshi. Trailers during intermission informed me that then-upcoming films Satyamev Jayate 2 and Antim: The Final Truth had more police heroes in sharply ironed police costumes as protagonists. Phew.
Until the 1970s however, the police uniform was a rarity in films, even though there were characters who were police officers. It was with “the coming of Salim-Javed that Hindi cinema finally got a sharply etched cop character” with films like Zanjeer (1973) and Deewar (1975). Since then, there has been no looking back.
Still from Zanjeer
From a character role usually essayed by actor Iftikhar to the ‘good cop’ heroes like Shashi Kapoor in Deewar, Om Puri in Ardhsatya, and a slew of Prakash Jha films, to the ‘bad cop’ in Dabangg and the films that followed, Bollywood cop stories are now a genre in themselves.
What is the police uniform costume we commonly see on screen? A khaki brown shirt with collars, trousers held up by a tan belt with official insignia, a name badge on the right chest, and on the right chest, either a corded rope (lanyard) used to hold the police whistle or insignia that signifies rank.
Salman Khan as Chulbul Panday in Dabangg
Police uniforms, in reality, have other distinguishing features that define rank or region of the wearer, such as the headgear, the lanyard, the colour of shoes, the colour of the belt, sleeves, and shoulder, all closely defined in central and state rulebooks. In fact, to use police uniforms, technical permissions need to be obtained, and often, a legal team in the production unit has to pass the styling of uniforms. In 2016, Kherwadi police filed an FIR against actors and a director who used the uniform without permission.
Styling a police character in a Bollywood film is therefore both a constraint and freedom. Costume designers need to go by the rulebook and follow a template, but can explore extending the character through other accessories and props.
For women police characters, other elements like the hairstyling is also something to play around with. For instance, Inspector Jatayu Singh’s leather jacket or Chulbul Pandey’s sunglasses and belt in Dabangg all add that special zing to the character.
In recent films, it seems like there is little detail on the police costumes. It is just a blur of immaculate khaki with accessories, the insignia dispensed with, as if these little things do not matter any more. Perhaps this is in line with the lack of nuance in representation of police heroes in recent times, where the supercop protagonist is a one-shaded character given to violence and masculine swaggers, and signifies only the coming together of state power and masculine power.
John Abraham in Satyamev Jayate 2
This is quite different from the police inspector characters in iconic films over the decades, where the policeman and the police uniform represented the honest officer in a corrupt system, or a complicated masculinity with an intensely vulnerable and angry inner world. Critics have lamented that the Hindi film policeman of today needs a makeover through a more mature and nuanced representation.
Women police protagonists are often required to play out the same template, such as in Mardaani. But occasionally, attempts to humanise the character is through women police characters where they are able to break the need to be the “supercop,” and show their struggles and vulnerabilities, such as in Delhi Crime or Soni (both on Netflix India) – both also showcasing excellent details in police costuming.
Still from Delhi Crime
Gone are the days when the reference to a ‘police ki vardi’ referred to the sanctity of the uniform, and the police-protagonist was sometimes incorruptible, a symbol of integrity, or of simmering anger against the system in which they were a part. Today, the Bollywood cop is just a character, and the police costume a vessel in which the Rs 100-crore hero pours his monetizable personality.
Manjima Bhattacharjya is the author of Mannequin: Working Women in India’s Glamour Industry (Zubaan, 2018) and Intimate City (Zubaan, 2022).
