Subhash K. Jha on Aamir Khan's 'Satyamev Jayate': A Thought-Provoking Show

When Satyamev Jayate premiered on May 6, 2012, with an episode on female foeticide, it did something Indian television rarely attempted: it treated a national shame as prime-time material, researched and presented with unusual seriousness. And almost immediately, a second conversation started — not about foeticide, but about Aamir Khan's tears.

Film critic Subhash K. Jha was among those who found the second conversation absurd. His argument was straightforward: the show was well researched, the topic was volatile and important, and the energy being spent on auditing the host's emotional authenticity was energy stolen from the issue itself. Change on this scale is hard; nitpicking the messenger's feelings was, in his view, a way of avoiding the message.

The critics' case wasn't entirely empty. There is a legitimate question about whether celebrity-led activism converts viewers or merely entertains them, and whether tears on television substitute for the unglamorous work of policy and enforcement. Aamir Khan was, after all, an actor — and the suspicion that emotion was being performed rather than felt was never going to be fully answerable.

But Jha's counter had force. The first episode put sex-selective abortion — a practice with deep roots in dowry economics, son preference, and uneven enforcement of the law against it — in front of an audience of millions, in multiple languages, on a Sunday morning. Whatever one thought of the host's delivery, the subject had never received that kind of platform. Dismissing the show because the anchor seemed too emotional was, as Jha saw it, a sophisticated way of changing the subject.

The deeper point survived the 2012 debate: a thought-provoking show is judged by the thoughts it provokes, not by the tears it sheds. Satyamev Jayate went on to tackle dowry, child sexual abuse, and medical malpractice in subsequent episodes — and the argument about whether television could carry that weight continued for as long as the show ran.