In the end, at least in India, it always comes down to films

Irrfan Khan has to be one of India's most talented film actors. After wowing the world with his roles in Mira Nair's film, The Namesake and in the Angelina Jolie starrer A Mighty Heart, in which he played a Karachi top cop investigating the death of the celebrated journalist Daniel Pearl at the hands of the Al Qaida, Khan is back doing what he loves best: being different from the Bollywood ratpack.

Point is, there's space in Bollywood for him to exist. Besides Shah Rukh Khan, the uncrowned king of India, Salman Khan, whose waxed chest and off-screen exploits sometimes sets the box-office afire, and Saif Ali Khan, the cutesy boy next door, Irrfan Khan's brooding looks and understated acting is electrifying the national imagination these days.

It happens, of course, that all four men are Muslim. The fact that all four are also heroes of our time, when the landscape is rife with horrifying slander and cold-blooded justification of the killings of two other Muslim men, Sohrabuddin and Rizwanur, speaks to the credit of common folk, who also happen to love films.

It is this common ground that is up for grabs as Gujarat, one of India's richest states and birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi, went to the polls. The soil of Gujarat has always been replete with ironies. The Mahatma, a devout Hindu, fought all his life against the communalisation of India, but he fell to a Hindu assassin's bullet soon after the partition of the country.

And now, once again, a churning seems to be afoot. For the last five years, Gujarat has been synonymous with the inflammatory politics of Narendra Modi, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader who swept to power in 2002, after instigating a pogrom in which nearly 3,000 Muslims are believed to have been killed.

But over the past few weeks, as if Modi's campaign of hate is wearing thin. The wonder is that his traditional power base - from the poor and middle classes in the tribal and urban areas, including the disaffected and the disenfranchised which typically make up the lumpen base of many political parties - may be turning against him.

Their argument is that they were asked to be Modi's sword-arm against the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. But, in the aftermath of the massacre, when the outcry against the killings swept the country and would not quiet down, when the Supreme Court itself took cognizance of the attacks, it was none other than Modi which threw them into jail and treated them like trash.

It is this possible turning of the Hindu middle class against the "Hindu'' chief minister of Gujarat that makes this election such a key reference point in Indian politics.

Modi, whose one great success has been in delivering essentials like water and electricity to people in the rural areas, has, in fact switched from promoting his "development agenda'' in his election rallies to appealing to the baser instinct. And that's where Sohrabuddin, who was killed in a fake encounter by his own police a couple of years ago, comes in.

Modi, justifying the fake encounter, paints Sohrabuddin in all kinds of colours. Then he asks the crowd what should have been done to him. "Kill him, kill him,'' they chant.

Unfortunately for Modi, the rest of the Indian political class is up in arms against his election rhetoric. So is the Election Commission, as well as the Supreme Court.

In 2002, Modi won Gujarat because, after the Gujarat riots, he had managed to sway the Hindu middle class in his favour. In 2007, if he loses control of his bastion, it will be because the middle classes, both Hindu and Muslim, have voted against his politics of hate and separation.

Other side

On the other side of the Indian landmass is Kolkata, where the death of a young graphic artist named Rizwanur Rahman has galvanised the middle classes. Rizwan was married to a rich, young Hindu girl called Priyanka, and it is alleged that her family had him murdered because they didn't approve of their marriage.

He loved her, she said she couldn't live without him. For the past two months, there is little else the newspapers have talked about in that part of the world, except the lives and love of this young couple so cruelly separated in death. Whether Rizwan committed suicide, or his death was aided and abetted by Priyanka's family, the twists and turns of this real-life story are as gripping as the stuff of a Hindi movie potboiler.

In the end, at least in India, it always comes down to films. Some would argue that politics have similar endings, both happy and sad, and whatever the outcome, it has a definite impact on you.

Listening to politicians sell their dreams in Gujarat these days, whether Modi or Sonia Gandhi's evocative "merchants of death'' phrase against Modi's groupies, is as mesmerising as the webs of wonder that the Khans of Bollywood weave so effortlessly.

Which is why 2007 has been such a watershed year for India. There's the landmark Shah Rukh Khan movie Om Shanti Om, in which Shah Rukh plays a Hindu boy called Om without the least trace of self-consciousness. Bollywood reinforces India's secular credentials precisely because it doesn't pretend to be high culture.

The common folk, those who come out in droves and vote during elections, have already crowned Shah Rukh king of their hearts.

And what of Irrfan Khan? Last heard, he was asked by Mira Nair to play the role of a homosexual in her newest film, called the Migration. Once again, this Khan has proven that he enjoys being different.

Jyoti Malhotra is the Diplomatic Editor of The Telegraph newspaper, India.