Bodyguard Salman Khan's Dialogue and Russell's Paradox

The title of today's post may seem bit confusing as I am comparing a movie dialogue with the famous Russell's paradox. Well relax for now, this confusion will be cleared in a while.

Salman Khan in Bodyguard  Movie

Before going further, something about Salman Khan. If you are a Bollywood movie fan then you must be aware of him or probably one of his fan. He is one of the Indian Movie star who has given many hit movies and still continuing. 

To read more about Salman Khan read this IMDB page.

Bertrand Russell

Now about Bertrand Russell. He is one of the famous mathematician, logician of 20'th century. The famous Russell's paradox was stated by him whereby he showed the inconsistency in set theory. 

To read more about Bertrand Russell and his work read this Wikipedia article.

At this point, I think it is better to understand the Russell's Paradox through a well known example of barber's dilemma.

Barber's Dilemma:

Consider a small town where there is only one barber. The barber is supposed to shave all those men who can not shave themselves. Now question is "Who shaves the barber?". We can have two answers to this question but both leads to contradiction.

Answer 1)Barber shaves himself. This is a contradiction as barber can not shave those men who can shave themselves.

Answer 2)Barber doesn't shave himself. This is also a contradiction as barber is supposed to shave only those men who can not shave themselves.

You may like to read about it in detail in this wikipedia entry on Russell's Paradox.

Let us now come to the subject of today's post and find out how Bodyguard's Movie dialogue is another example of Russell's paradox. This Wednesday Salman Khan's movie "Bodyguard" has released. This movie has a dialogue which caught my attention and made me compare it with Russell's paradox. The whole dialogue ( in Hindi ) delivered by Bodyguard (the protagonist) is given below.

"मुझ पर एक एहसान करना के मुझपर कोई एहसान न करना."

It literally translates into English as "Do me a favor that don't do me any favor".

In my opinion this statement is contradictory. The protagonist is asking for a favor of not doing any favor to him. But by doing no favour we are doing a favor to him. Lets ask a question to ourselves. Are we doing a favor to the hero?

Answer 1) No. We are not doing any favor. This is contradiction as you are doing a favor by not doing a favor.

Answer 2) Yes. We are doing a favor. This is also contradiction as you are not asked to do any favor.

That's it. I hope I have proved my point. However your suggestions and comments in this regard are most welcome.

P.S. : I think this post is complete without video of the dialogue which inspired this post. Watch it below and all the best to Salman Khan for Bodyguard.