In a viral video, Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) is seen using the word ‘idli’ along with gibberish to invite Telugu actor Ram Charan on stage at the pre-wedding celebrations of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant in Gujarat’s Jamnagar. The video, which was originally posted on Reddit, went viral on Monday, March 4, with several people calling Shah Rukh racist towards his south Indian contemporary.
The video is rather blurry and does not show the actors’ faces. ‘Nacho Nacho’, the popular track from Rajamouli’s celebrated RRR, is heard playing in the background as SRK, Salman Khan, and Aamir Khan are on the stage. It is to be noted that ‘Naatu Naatu’, the original Telugu version of the song, won an Oscar in 2023 for Best Original Song. SRK first invited Ram Charan to the stage by calling his name, but then went on to say a bunch of Tamil words like ‘saapttiya’ (have you eaten), ‘sowkiyama’ (are you fine), and ‘idli’ along with other unintelligible gibberish that sounded like a mangled mix of Tamil and Telugu.
This homogenising of south Indian languages and actors was widely criticised by many, including Ram Charan’s wife Upasana Konidela’s makeup artist Zeba Hassan. Zeba posted the video on her Instagram stories and claimed she walked out after the “disrespect” meted towards Ram Charan. Her story read, “Bhend idly vada Ram Charan kahan hai tu? I walked out after this. So disrespectful towards a star like Ram Charan.”
It can be observed that even in mainstream Bollywood films, including SRK’s Chennai Express (2013), south Indians are caricatured as ‘idly-vada-sambar eating’ people whose separate state-wise identities, spoken languages, or individual personalities seldom go beyond such tropes. A more recent film, Meenakshi Sundareshwar (2021) starring Sanya Malhotra, also showed similar stereotypes about Tamilians, slotting them as people who drink filter coffee, have a shrine for Rajinikanth in their homes, and spout the superstar’s dialogues from memory. The film was criticised for portraying the characters as “pure vegetarians” despite being set in Madurai, a city famous for its non-vegetarian delicacies.
Ram Charan is a revered star in the south who works predominantly in the Telugu industry and had recently shot to international fame after the Oscar win for the song in his film RRR. Several users on X called out SRK’s stereotyping comments and pointed out how even big stars like Ram Charan are not immune to racism from their north Indian colleagues. Others questioned whether SRK would have made similar comments about the Ambani family, who are Gujaratis.