PK (2014)

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

PK opens with an alien, played by Aamir Khan, landing in the Rajasthan desert on a research mission. Within hours a thief steals the device that is his only link back to his spaceship, and PK, naked and uncomprehending of Earth's customs, is told by everyone he asks that only God can help him get it back. What follows is literal minded and relentless: PK visits temples, mosques, gurdwaras and churches in turn, imitating the rituals he sees, hoping one will connect him to the god who has his device. He concludes that no single religion has failed him, but that self proclaimed godmen who claim to relay God's own instructions have, a failure PK names the wrong number.

The device turns out to have been found by Tapasvi Maharaj, a popular godman who built a following by claiming it fell from the heavens as a sign of his own divine authority. PK's confrontation with Tapasvi, staged as a televised debate, exposes a specific miracle the godman had predicted as logically impossible, and the film stages this exposure as its climax. Notably, PK never shows a deity on screen: every ritual and act of devotion is filmed as human behavior, including Tapasvi's own staged theatrics. The film's target throughout is not belief itself but the human intermediaries who claim to broker it.

Directed by Rajkumar Hirani and written with Abhijat Joshi, PK became the first Indian film to gross more than one hundred million dollars worldwide and the highest grossing Bollywood release of 2014, alongside strongly positive reviews from Indian critics for Aamir Khan's performance and the film's willingness to turn broad comedy toward a serious subject.

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

PK's satire of godmen and organized religion did not go unanswered. In the weeks after its December 19, 2014 release, Hindu organizations including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena united in public opposition, arguing the film insulted Hindu religious sentiment, in particular a scene involving a devotee dressed as the god Shiva. Effigies of director Rajkumar Hirani and star Aamir Khan were burned, posters were torn down, and cinema ticket counters were vandalized in several Indian states. Hundreds of police complaints were filed against the filmmakers under penal code sections covering promoting enmity between groups and outraging religious feelings, and the World Hindu Council called for the film to be banned and for an inquiry into how the censor board had approved it.

Government response was measured rather than restrictive. Maharashtra's chief minister ruled out any formal investigation and pledged police protection so screenings could continue, and PK went on playing through its record breaking run. Hirani responded that the film had no intention of hurting anyone's sentiments and that its target was the abuse of religion by dishonest intermediaries, not religious faith itself, a distinction he said the protests had missed. A smaller, parallel wave of Muslim clerical concern raised separate objections to specific scenes. Two years later, a peer reviewed academic analysis published in the Journal of Religion & Film treated the film as a serious intervention into how contemporary Indian cinema stages questions of religious authority. The controversy did nothing to slow the film at the box office.