"The film is mainly entertainment," Shah Rukh said in a telephone interview in New York on a trip last week to promote his new film, My Name Is Khan (MNIK), releasing in the US Feb 12.
"If some issue is taken back home, I always tell people if they can take back a little more than an empty pack of popcorn, that's interesting...that's an added advantage to an entertaining film."
Shah Rukh, who plays a Muslim Indian with Asperger's syndrome living in the US, finding his marriage to a Hindu single mother (played by Kajol) crumbling post-9/11, wouldn't agree that it's the Islam angle that is grabbing the most attention in the US.
"A film normally deals with lots of issues, comedy, or it's a tragedy or a serious film or a dramatic love story like ...Khan is meant to be," he said. "If one starts talking or deciding on issues before a whole film is seen, it's kinda not right to do, specially as a filmmaker.
"Normally, a film is more than the sum of its parts. It's not like it's a love story, it's got a Karan Johar touch to social cinema, it has an angle of religion, it also has a part of politics, it has a world-shaking incident as a backdrop, it also has a lot of sweet songs. It combines all that.
"To me as a filmmaker, or part of a film, any aspect of the film can only be decided once one has seen the whole film. But there's no denying that there is an aspect of religion in the film."
Nor would Shah Rukh look at this and other recent Bollywood films about the fate of Indian Muslims in the US post-9/11 as an effort to redress any negative images people may have formed about Islam over the last nine years.
"Films normally are for entertainment. One doesn't really make a conscious decision to make a statement with it. Within entertainment, if a statement gets made, it's really nice for a filmmaker.
"You know, maybe 3 Idiots talks about education, but it's an entertaining film. Similarly Chak De! India talks about patriotism, but it's a sports film.
"You can have issues related in a film, but when filmmakers of commercial proportions like Karan, myself and Kajol and all get together, it's not to highlight an issue because it's too expensive as a commercial venture to make a film about an issue and not entertain."
To Shah Rukh, "the most interesting part of the fact as an actor is that I'm playing a character who's got Asperger's. It's also not in any which way to show it in a light which is not nice...but for an actor that's a great thing to do, you know, to play a (person with a) disorder like this which very few people know about."
"Hopefully, I'll be able to convince people about it when they see (the film). I don't think at least commercial filmmakers from India really make a big-time film which is localised or even localised by an international issue," he said.