Unfairly ignored for 'Swades' in 2004, Shah Rukh Khan ends 'National Award - Best Actor' jinx with 'Jawan'

In Chak De India, there is a sequence in the climax portion when Kabir Khan (played by Shah Rukh Khan) gazes at the Indian national flag, moments after his women's team has won the World Cup. It is an expression of joy, relief, redemption and what not, all mixed together and Shah Rukh portrays the moment with utmost perfection. In a different perspective, that feeling is exactly what the man must be feeling on Friday (August 1, 2025) as he is awarded with the National Award for the Best Actor, an accolade that he will share with Vikrant Massey who has won the award for his role in 12th Fail.

Known for his charisma and infectious energy on screen, Shah Rukh Khan's acting prowess may not match up to the elite performers of Indian cinema like a Naseeruddin Shah or a Nana Patekar or an Om Puri just to name a few. However, he has often also been understated in many of those films where his performances were highly laudable. Chak De India was one of those rare films that got Shah Rukh the recognition he deserved as an actor. However, due to better contenders, he missed out on a National Award that he almost won in 2004 for Swades. That was the closest he had come to glory, only to miss out to Saif Ali Khan who won it for Hum Tum.

At that time, actress Sharmila Tagore, Saif's mother, was part of the award jury and hence, gaining the award only misfired for Saif as many felt that Shah Rukh was robbed. 21 years later, the 64-year-old is on the other end of the spectrum, given that Jawan is nothing more than a mainstream commercial film in which he played to the gallery with aplomb. While his performance was still magnetic, particularly as the aged father character Vikram Rathore, you could easily point out a plethora of more deserving performances that could have gotten the award in Shah Rukh's spot. But then, this award is probably more about karma giving 'King Khan' his due, an award that he deserved long back but didn't get and while debates will continue about his eligibility to have won the award, the fact is that he has. Like Saif did in 2004.

The National Award win means that the 2020s only gets sweeter for Shah Rukh who has no releases in four of the five years this decade. However, the only year that he did have releases, 2023, saw him in three films with Pathaan and Dunki being the other films that year. The comeback film was Pathaan, SRK's first film in five years since the debacle of Zero. It was arguably the lowest point in his otherwise successful career and Shah Rukh's box office clout was in the doldrums. Questions were asked of whether he could ever stage a comeback as mainstream hero and whether he should perhaps focus to characer roles as most superstars do once they lose their sheen.

SRK, though, bounced back in his trademark fashion with Pathaan and Jawan both being record-breakers in Bollywood history and the fact that they came as successive releases in his filmography tells you the magnitude of his comeback. Meanwhile, Dunki was only a moderate success at the box office but still, in totality, SRK's three films tallied a massive 2500-plus crores worldwide - a phenomenal achievement indeed. It was the kind of comeback that one would associate with Shah Rukh but not what anyone had anticipated prior to Pathaan's release.

Having won a plethora of Filmfare Awards and other media awards in the past, a National Award at this stage of his career might have come as a surprise gift for the showman of Bollywood. In three months, Shah Rukh will turn 60 and given the frequency at which he is doing films since the 2020s, it remains to be seen as to how many releases he would have for the remainder of the 2020s. His contemporaries in Salman Khan and Aamir Khan, both of whom had better successes in the 2010s, now find themselves in lean phases respectively. While Salman hasn't had a big success since Tiger Zinda Hai in 2017, Aamir's last major box office hit was Dangal that released in 2016.

Meanwhile, Shah Rukh has redeemed himself with Pathaan and Jawan, and the National Award win is the icing on the cake for the superstar for whom this will feel like a weight off his shoulders. Despite all of his box office glory, acting recognition is something that SRK has always craved for. In many of his interviews, he would often speak of those films that didn't do well, films that he had chosen for content and not commercial viability. Like a Swades or a Paheli or a Dil Se. Shah Rukh always yearned for recognition in content oriented films but ironically, that had rarely happened. Today, Shah Rukh Khan, arguably among the biggest entertainers in Indian cinema, will feel like he has hit a full circle with this National Award.

An award that he deserved in 2004 for Swades, is finally his in 2025. Karma certainly does know how to surprise people. For a man who has spent 33 years in the film industry and entertained millions of people globally, this is a moment of reckoning that he always deserved.