Veer Pahariya was not a name most Indians were familiar with until recently. His fame, if any, was limited to micro fandoms that lurk in the chattiest corners of Reddit, tracking every man alive (or dead) that someone like a Sarah Ali Khan or Janhvi Kapoor has dated.
All that changed within a couple of weeks. Ahead of his Bollywood debut, a phantom legion of diehard fans who had never existed suddenly sprang up, flooding social media with reels and posts about Pahariya that took over our feeds like wildfire.
Pahariya made his debut in director Abhishek Anil Kapur’s action-drama Sky Force, playing second lead to Akshay Kumar. Tenuously based on real events surrounding the Sargodha airbase attack during the India-Pakistan war of 1965, Sky Force saw Pahariya portray a fictionalised version of Squadron Leader Ajjamada Boppayya Devayya in a bid to depict the Indian Air Force's bravery during the war.
His portrayal of Devayya, the only Indian Air Force officer to be posthumously awarded the Maha Vir Chakra, was criticised for misrepresentation. Devayya’s on-screen version is a Tamilian, even though the real-life Devayya belonged to the Kodava community.
But distortion of history is neither uncommon in Bollywood films nor is it the worst thing plaguing Pahariya’s moment in the spotlight.
As Bollywood struggles to crown the next big superstar, the curious case of Veer Pahariya’s sudden fame can be seen as an intriguing case study.
Who is Veer Pahariya?
Despite being a debutant, Pahariya is very much a part of the current and newest generation of celebrities that trace their roots to India's political and Page-3 elite.
Pahariya is the grandson of Sushilkumar Shinde, a prominent leader in Maharashtra politics, former minister in Manmohan Singh's Cabinet, and former Maharashtra chief minister. His father Sanjay Pahariya is a business tycoon affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and his mother Smriti Shinde owns a production company, Sobo Films Pvt Ltd.
Despite being fresh off the boat in Bollywood, his political connections have already landed him in controversy.
Marathi stand-up comedian Pranit More alleged being assaulted by a gang after his performance in Solapur, where he made a joke on Pahariya.
Soon after the attack on the comedian, Pahariya was swift in apologising to More and distancing himself from the attackers, denying any prior knowledge of the incident or support for the violence. An FIR has been filed in Solapur against the main attacker, Tanveer Shaikh, and a group of men who threatened More with further violence if he continues taking digs at Pahariya.
The implications of political clout being used to silence art and criticism may seem sinister but are in line with the pattern of muzzling dissent in vogue in the current Indian zeitgeist.
The incident is, however, the latest in a long list of baffling developments in Pahariya’s still nascent career. An overactive PR (public relations) machinery and relentless promotions have been nothing more than manufactured noise. His publicity crusade has been aggressive, riddled with tone-deaf memes and hyperbolic claims aggrandising the impact of his debut and talents. And it has done little to garner the kind of excitement his team might have hoped for.
Making of a ‘Superstar’
In Pahariya’s case, his political background perhaps adds to his popularity. When Riteish Deshmukh debuted, him being late Union minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s son added to the fanfare even though it did not quite catapult him to any sensational kind of stardom.
Though the film Sky Force itself has earned some murmurs of praise for playing down the jingoistic narrative, it received the approval of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh as well who lauded "the makers of the film for their efforts". The fact that the attack on the comedian took place in Solapur, Shinde's former constituency now held by his daughter, Congress' Praniti Sushilkumar Shinde, may also be suggestive.
A quick look at the actor's social media fanfare, followers, and comments revealed a mix of organic fans, bots, and overtly nationalist accounts. Post More's accusations, Pahariya's main page has been re-sharing the reels of the actor's trolling by the comic, perhaps in an attempt to wear out the unsavoury backlash the attack was ushering in an attempt to depict Pahariya as one who can take a joke.
It isn’t solely Pahariya’s team yielding bizarrely inauthentic promotional tactics though.
Actors who have come into the industry through nepotistic connections have always wielded their influence on the tides. Rasha Thadani, actor Raveena Tandon’s daughter, who made her debut in January with the box-office dud Azaad, is already being turned into a social media ‘favourite’, with a teary Raveena often spotted complimenting her daughter’s dancing skills.
This is again a discourse from which indie darlings like Preeti Panigrahi, or even the ones with mainstream hits under their belts like Sparsh Shrivastava and Pratibha Ranta, are regularly excluded from.
Aamir Khan’s son Junaid, who is currently busy promoting his sophomore outing in Bollywood, does not have an official profile on social media. Yet, our feeds are flooded with posts about him extolling the virtues of riding autorickshaws instead of his (father’s) BMWs or showing him lugging an omnipresent backpack everywhere he goes to promote Loveyapa.
This is a covert form of garnering social media clout in a day and age when casting teams are increasingly being pressured to hire actors and influencers who have a larger social media following. Abhishek Banerjee, who runs Casting Bay, cautioned Bollywood against this practice last year, about the risks of prioritising social media popularity in casting decisions. He emphasised that the issue isn’t about influencers transitioning into acting but rather the industry selecting actors based solely on their follower count.
As Banerjee points out, the problem is not that children of actors want to follow in their parents’ footsteps. It gets problematic when this new ecosystem of star kids is feeding into and taking advantage of the creator economy. They are brands first, actors later.
Charisma has been replaced by followers and like counts. Their social media following, often inflated with inactive and bot accounts, in addition to the army of organic and inorganic fan pages, boosts them to be the more viable casting options. This line of thinking is conflating social media fame with grassroots popularity, which cannot be bought or manufactured.
The End for 'Outsiders'?
Actors like Ayushmann Khurrana and Rajkummar Rao ruled the roost for a while. But they were defined as ‘character actors’ who eventually became stars. Your regular rags to riches story. The nature of superstardom, however, had changed by the time this generation of actors came into the picture and they benefited from it only to a certain extent. Since then, promising batches of actors have neither been treated as the next big deal by the industry nor the media.
They are praised and then left to their own devices. Actors like Kani Kusruti, Anasuya Sengupta, and Chhaya Kadam will have to pay their dues for years before adequate adulation, often from foreign shores, and still not be considered for protagonist roles by mainstream production companies.
Radhika Apte, Jaideep Ahlawat, and Vijay Varma (both of the latter Film and Technology Institute of India alumni) have been doing interesting work for years now, but only received bigger platforms and popularity boosts once streaming platforms promised a more democratised playing field.
The surge of over-the-top (OTT) technology had disrupted the traditional studio system. The birth of the next big star should have happened in the laps of its decentralised avenue.
However, industry rumour has it that Netflix India has also been showing writers the door unless a star kid comes attached with their script. From shoddily written OTT films like Murder Mubarak and Archies to box-office flops and critical rejects like Sky Force and Ulajh, there is ample reason for the growing disdain towards the way Bollywood is trying to shape its star system, and failing repeatedly.
The stakes of success in Bollywood have always been high but the competition is tougher now if you come from a not-so-well-connected background.
Big production houses like Yash Raj Films (YRF) and Dharmatic do not invest the time or resources to groom or prop up newcomers. Hollywood has its own issues and exclusionary circles, but the rise of actors like Zendaya, Josh O'Connor, and Paul Mescal speaks to a growing preference for talent that feels genuine, fresh, and raw.
Audiences today, especially younger ones, are drawn to actors who are open about their flaws, who advocate for meaningful causes, and who have a distinct voice, whether that’s through their work or their personal brand. The rising frustration stems from the industry's over-reliance on dynastic privilege and its apparent disregard for merit.
You cannot PR-engineer genuine charisma, the illusive ‘It’ factor. Gen-Z, a digital-native generation, is adept at reading through the facade.
Veer Pahariya is simply the latest symptom of a problem that has been thriving for over a decade.
This growing trend of casting actors based on social media influence ties into a larger concern — the increasing politicisation of Bollywood and how influencers with large followings can be wielded to mould the political mood of the nation.
With soft to hardcore right-wing propaganda films (from Uri: The Surgical Strike to The Kashmir Files) being actively promoted while critical films face direct or indirect suppression, the industry’s ideological and moral make-up hangs in the balance.
(The author is an independent film, TV and pop culture journalist who has been feeding into the great sucking maw of the internet since 2010. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)