Rishi Kapoor as Murad Ali Mohammed and Taapsee Pannu as Aarti Mohammed in Mulk

There are three operative words in the title of this piece – “Muslim”, “Hindi” and “Identity” as if these are mutually exclusive terms that need to be brought under a single umbrella. Why? Would anyone think of naming an article “The Hindu in Hindi Cinema?” or, “The Parsee in Indian Cinema”? Because the mainstream identity of most characters in Hindi films represent the Hindu majority. While very few films centered on Parsees find place in the history of Hindi cinema before the term “Bollywood” became infra-dig. Then why pick on the Muslim representation in Hindi cinema as if it needs special focus?

The answer is simple – the Muslim identity and its representation, especially within the matrix of modernisation within India has changed our perspective towards the Muslims, more often prejudiced against than for and this reflects itself through the creations of filmmakers. Add to this the volatile environment of the currently politically constructed “communal” conflicts that do not really exist and yet are reiterated everyday by a gossip hungry, maliciously greedy media often disguised as “objective and neutral reporting.”

Aristotle said, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” In other words, when individual parts are connected together to form one entity, they are worth more than if the parts were in silos. Let us try to apply this to Mulk, the recent film running in Indian theatres right now. Directed by Anubhav Sinha, the film narrates a story centered on a Muslim family living with feelings of brotherhood with their Hindu neighbours. But was all that bonhomie for long years just a mask that revealed the ugly face of suspicion when Maulana Murad Ali’s (Rishi Kapoor’s) nephew (Prateek Babbar) is caught as a dreaded terrorist? The nephew, accused of bombing a bus that killed innocents, is trapped in his own house till the upright police officer Danish Javed (Rajat Kapoor), also Muslim, shoots him down. Was this an encounter killing that may never have happened if the officer had not been prejudiced against his own?

The entire family including the father of the terrorist, Murad Ali’s younger brother Bilaal (Manoj Pahwa) is interrogated so ruthlessly for days on end that, with a heart problem, he dies while being taken to hospital. His wife and daughter are brought in for questioning while Maulana is arrested for being complicit with his nephew in terrorist activities. He persuades his Hindu daughter-in-law Aarti Mohammed (Taapsee Pannu) to plead in his defence because though he is a lawyer himself, it would be impossible for him to prove in court that he really loves his motherland (India) and will never ever go away to Pakistan, a sign chalked outside the wall of his ancestral home.

It is a beautiful film whose main agenda is to underscore the constant shadow of suspicion Muslims, old and new, who chose to stay back in India when the Partition took place must live in never mind how much in harmony they have lived through generations with love and a sense of deep belonging.

Rekha in Umrao Jaan

But take a closer look and you discover that Mulk is a very cleverly made mainstream film with the usual clichés the box office demands. There is a group song-dance number performed at the birthday of Murad Ali Mohammed where he himself has taken charge of cooking the biryani and the kebabs with some romantic teasing with his wife Tabassum (Neena Gupta). Sinha also brings in a Hindu daughter-in-law who is a qualified lawyer that subtly underscores Murad Ali’s secular beliefs. There are dynamic action scenes with the chasing of the young terrorist, the public bus bursting into flames, the police doing a combing operation in Murad Ali’s residence ending with the young man being shot down. The police interrogation of Bilal Ali underscores how the police force is prejudiced against anyone who has the label “Muslim” written on his forehead. The prosecution lawyer, Santosh Anand (Ashutosh Rana) does not make any pretence to hide his terrible hatred for Muslims and the entire court, filled with Hindus, giggles at his extremely derogatory jokes around Muslims.

Murad Ali is absolved of his crime and his long-time Hindu friends approach him with sheepish faces but he keeps his distance. There are songs too, and one really good one on the soundtrack. These are the cinematic clichés not to talk of the technical excellence and the outstanding performances of all the actors including the underrated Kumud Mishra as the balanced Hindu judge.

The point one is trying to make here is that all these commercial clichés may appear clichéd when taken separately but, taken together as a symbiotic whole, Mulk comes across as a very powerful political statement on the increasing lack of secularism that had evolved into virtual hatred for the Muslims that has bestowed on Muslims the rather dubious shadow of bearing a “terrorist” identity.

Pukaar is considered one of the earliest Muslim social films

There is a very politically constructed and intentionally designed cliché in the casting itself. Every member of the acting cast is Hindu in real life. Explaining why he designed this to be so, Sinha said that if he had taken Muslims to play any role in this film, it would have “infected” the point he was trying to make. What does “infected” mean in this context? Sounds quite ambiguous to this writer.

Gone are the days when the Muslim identity in Hindi cinema celebrated the Muslim ethos with the dignity it deserved. Late Iqbal Masud in his seminal article Muslim Ethos in Hindi Cinema extolled the virtues of filmmakers like Sohrab Modi, Guru Dutt and Shyam Benegal who, though non-Muslims, could have staked their claim over the representation of the Muslim ethos in Hindi cinema. Manmohan Desai, who was partly responsible for the creation of the celluloid image of Amitabh Bachchan, went on record to state that if Muslims did not like a film, it flopped.

Dr. Seemin Hasan in her paper, Locating the Muslim Identity in Popular Indian Cinema (November 10, 2012) writes: “The Muslim community of post-partition India occupies an in-between space beyond the self and before the other.” This may have had some truth in it way back in 2012, but today, the Muslim may not be dressed or behave or speak like he/she did in earlier Muslim Socials such as Mere Mehboob or Chaudhvin Ka Chaand or Pakeezah, the celluloid Muslim is quite definitely “the other”.  In fact the evolution in the mutations that have happened in the representation of the Muslim in Hindi cinema has been one of discontinuities, non-linear and non-evolutionary.

Meena Kumari in Pakeezah

The strong presence of the Muslim, man or woman in Hindi cinema can be traced back to the 1920s when a then-homogenous Indian audience thoroughly enjoyed fictionalised “historical” romances like Anarkali (1928), Noorjehan (1923), followed by Sohrab Modi’s thumping hit Pukar (1939). With the 1940s came Humayun (1945) followed by Mumtaz Mahal (1952) and the great blockbuster Anarkali directed by Nandlal Jaswantlal. They were richly mounted, period costume dramas with scintillating songs and music and loud melodramatic acting which the audience loved and the thought of being overly representative of the minority community did not occur even once.

Alongside were mainstream films with modern storylines that featured a Muslim man or woman in an interesting cameo one film after another. One of the best examples is B.R. Chopra’s Dhool Ka Phool (1959) where we find a Muslim fakir bringing up a little infant whose religion he does not know and sings, tu Hindu banega na Mussalman banega, insaan ki aulad hai insaan banega. The illegitimate child abandoned by his mother for fear of social ostracism, turns out to be Hindu by birth and this film is one of the first mainstream films in Hindi to strongly recognise the secular identity of an Indian.

Farida Jalal in Mammo

On the other hand, one also saw the Muslim identity in courtesan-centric films like Pakeezah, Benazir and Umrao Jaan that reflected yet another image of Muslim aristocracy and feudal lifestyles. They belonged to typical romance sometimes ending in tragedy. Stories that brought out the pathos of Partition among common Muslim families such as M.S. Sathyu’s Garm Hawa and Shyam Benegal’s Mammo were mere drops in the ocean that catered to a niche audience. Mahesh Bhatt’s Janam was a different cup of tea that presented a very good though a crassly commercial account of the victimisation of a Muslim and his dead mother during the communal riots in Mumbai. Many years later, who would have dreamt that the imaginative Vishal Bharadwaj would be inspired by William Shakespeare’s Hamlet preceded by Macbeth to make two Muslim-centric films like Haider and Maqbool, where Haider is placed very topically within the unrest in Kashmir with the drama tilted in favour of the mother who, unlike in the original, is martyred by Bharadwaj?

Garm Hava with Balraj Sahni as the lead actor

The picture is different today. It is as if the average Muslim is trapped in the identity of a terrorist or a mafia goon or a professional killer, almost without exception. A bit of ‘lip service’ is paid by putting in a few Hindu members of terrorist or mafia groups but one understands the psychology – it is ‘lip service’ for fear of reprisals on grounds of communal partisanism to the majority community. The Central Board of Film Certification has sometimes put its foot firmly down in having scenes deleted from some films for fear of hurting the sensibilities of the minority community. Mani Ratnam’s Bombay is a case in point. Ravi Vasudevan in Bombay and its Public (Journal of Arts & Ideas, No. 29, January 1996) opines that the CBFC’s insistence on deletions of the given scenes was prompted by the censor board’s anxiety that they would lead to a re-kindling of anti-government sentiment among Muslims many of who assumed that the demolition of the Babri Masjid was a failure of the government to represent their interests.

Rajeev Khandelwal in Aamir

From the mafia, gangster, terrorist, goon and professional killer at home, reflected in umpteen films from Company to Once Upon a Time in Mumbai to Nishikanth Kamath’s Mumbai Meri Jaan to Amir and A Wednesday, the Muslim suspected as terrorist is now neatly placed on foreign soil such as in the US, UK, Istanbul, Kabul, London and Pakistan. What necessitated this geographical/cultural/political shift to a different country? Are the producers afraid of the CBFC clamping a ban on their films? Or, is it because it is easier to get dates of top stars and shoot a film in a single schedule entirely on foreign soil? Or, are the powers-that-be behind these films scared of communal reprisals at home from both the majority and minority communities?

Shahrukh Khan’s My Name is Khan was shot entirely on American soil. No one even listens to his complete sentence when he says, “My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist” and pounces on him by presuming precisely the opposite. “My Name is Khan is a mirroring of the times, of wounds deep and fresh, through the eyes of a man whose autism – Khan has Asperger Syndrome, a high-function variety – makes him take things as they are without bitterness or sarcasm,” film critic Pratim D. Gupta points out.

Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol in My Name is Khan

Mulk is an excellent example of how a single film can at least make a sincere and honest attempt to dispel the long-held belief among the majority that Islam and terrorism go together and that, mainly after 9/11, the two are inseparably mingled. The main thesis is to state:
 

1. That if one member of a Muslim family turns out to be a terrorist it does not automatically ghettoise his entire family, women included, as terrorists.
2. That the identity of a Muslim like any Hindu or Christian or Parsee or Sikh, is inseparably integrated into his/her national identity and not communal identity.
3. That it is not necessary to turn the term “identity” on its head and try to tag the Indian Muslim as one whose religion matters more than his/her country which is a prejudiced perspective on all Muslims.
4.  

At one point during her argument, Aarti sharply points out that Indian Muslims like Murad Ali chose his nation over his religion during the 1947 riots and the Hindu friends who rescued him during the 1947 riots turn against him the very minute his son is declared a terrorist. During the court questioning, where his defence lawyer who is also his daughter-in-law, adopts the strategy of a prosecution attorney, questions the court why systemic violence against adivasis and Dalits by upper caste Hindus is not considered as acts of terrorism. Murad Ali adds his own logic by asking why violence during the anti-Sikh riots in 1984, the progrom in Gujarat in 2002 and the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 are not considered acts of terrorism.

According to Syed Ali Mujtaba, Muslim characters generally get a raw deal in Hindi films. They are depicted as smugglers, rowdy history sheeters dressed in lungis and sleeveless singlets that run counter to the general appearance of an average Muslim in Indian society. He says that the characterisation of most Muslim women as tawaifs and nautch girls with Muslim names twists the image of the Muslim woman. Words like “Pakistan”, “Kashmir” and “The Taliban” are no longer identified with countries or states or reactionary militant groups but as symbols of evil so far as Bollywood cinema is concerned. “Kashmiri militants are shown as gun totting bearded guys wearing skullcaps fighting the Indian security forces. Kashmiri militant’s linkages move in a linear direction to identify with Pakistan and Talibans. Characters dressed in Afghan outfits with a scarf over the shoulder are shown mouthing some Arabic words, scheming to launch Jehad against India,” says Mujtaba.

Will films like Mulk make at least a dent in this school of representation and reception of the warped, twisted and distorted definitions of the Muslim identity in Indian cinema?

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum
 

The post The Muslim in Hindi Cinema appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image Courtesy:New Indian Express
 
“Period” was a word that spelt blasphemy in Indian families up until recent times. Or, does it still exist for girls and women, who are trained to refer to periods as “that time of the month,” or, “chums,” or, as Akshay Kumar’s Padman shows, “five day cricket match?” The taboo around the subject, however, does not prevent boys on the streets from making fun of women when they “sit outside,” or, when a girl becomes “siyani”—which occasions a grand celebration of the girl’s first period. Akshay Kumar’s film focusses on this, and how the girl herself thrives on being the centre of attention with all the chutzpah and the jewellery and the music and song, without really understanding what the future holds for her.

But, wait. Arunachalam Muruganantham, on whom the movie is based, has been the central subject of two, very good documentaries in the past. Two noted documentaries have been made by two different people over two years. One is The Menstrual Man (2013), made by the Singapore-based Amit Vrimani, and the other one is The Pad Piper, by Akanksha Sood Singh, which bagged the award for the Best Science and Technology Film at the 61^st National Film Awards. The award was bestowed “for its portrayal of a sensitive man with a profound belief in appropriate technology, who came up with a simple piece of engineering – an affordable sanitary napkin that has had an extraordinary impact on the health of millions of poor women.”

Sood, who made The Pad Piper, says, “A man trying to break into a market shrouded in mystery and myth surrounding women was intriguing. The reality was shocking. I always thought women use cloth as an alternative. But sand, newspapers, cow dung? And those who don’t wear under garments? My mother, like most mothers, advised me to not go to the temple or touch pickle during my periods. When I would ask her why, she did not have convincing answers. After a point, I stopped believing in these myths. Then, I wondered—what about women who are considered “dirty” when they bleed and are thrown out of the village for 3– 5 days, abandoned in a hut with little food, no company, and no bath? Do they know they have a choice? They did not. Then Muruganantham arrived and changed their lives.”

Vrimani’s film had sold-out screenings at both the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival (Toronto) and the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam, arguably the two most influential documentary festivals in the world. “…We were among the audience favourites at both,” says Virmani, adding, “We got a lot of social media buzz because people [were] inspired by the story and [wanted] to share it with their friends. Rosie O’Donnell watched the film and tweeted about it, encouraging her fans not to miss the film. All very humbling but, more importantly, also a confirmation that the film’s themes of hope, triumph, and female empowerment resonate with people everywhere.”

A third film, a docu-fiction, Roll Number 17, was entered at the 23^rd Kolkata  International Film Festival last year, in the documentary and short film section. Directed by Dhananjoy Mandal, the film was a celluloid adaptation of the real-life tragedy of Ananya, a girl in VIII standard of a co-educational school in the Sundarbans, who fell victim to a fatal disease from infection due to the lack of access to toilets and hygiene. She stopped attending school after she fell ill, never to come back again. The Principal of the school said that the drop-out rate and absenteeism among girls in the school was very high, mainly because of their periods and the inaccessibility of hygienic ways of dealing with it.

Her grief-stricken friends were doubtful about whether they would ever be able attend school, especially during their periods. This is when the concerned headmaster, with his single-minded commitment and dedication, decided to solve the problem. He approached several NGOs and government departments for funding, and succeeded in building two hygienic toilets, one for boys and one for girls, in the school. Worried about unhygienic practices by girls during their periods, he gathered funding to set up a sanitary napkin-vending machine within the school. Girls were required to use the vending machine to get their napkin. This created a new culture, a new social practice, and a new way of looking at girls. But this film was rejected by the selection committee and is waiting to see the light of day. However, this is the only film that shows the breaking of this social taboo without referring to the work done by Arunachalam Muruganantham and is based on actual events that happened in the relatively remote area of the Sundarbans.

The one thing that Akshay Kumar has done through his entirely mainstream film, with songs and romance and a touch of romance beyond marriage, is that it has truly drawn a lot of attention—of the good kind among the general population— to the issue at hand. Padman is a masala film from beginning to end, but it has a purpose to serve and, set as it is in the middle of a small town in Madhya Pradesh, it reveals the crudeness of the local people (among both men and women) towards life, in general, and towards this “woman’s problem,” in particular. His long lecture, the climax of the film, at the United Nations is both melodramatic in the extreme and, also, derogatory of Lakshmikant’s own invention because the similarities he draws between (and among) Superman, Batman, and Spiderman on the one hand, and that of the Padman on the other, slights and sidetracks the entire contribution of the innovative scientist-cum-social activist at one go. The comic characters like Superman are fiction and are based on pure fantasy, while Arunachalam is a man who actually exists and is still striving to spread the distribution of his machine to women across the country.

Pricking the conscience are the wrong ways in which the film’s promos came across which, at times, reduces the agenda of the film to a poor joke. “The Padman Challenge,” as it was dubbed, according to this writer, did not achieve even half of what the film achieved through specially organised screenings in schools with the aim of raising  social awareness and education, both for the students and for the teaching faculty. The Padman Challenge was created as a social media campaign where celebrities, mainly from the tinsel world of Bollywood, were invited to take the challenge which required them to pose with a sanitary napkin in their hand and post the picture on their social media sites. So, stars like Aamir Khan, Deepika Padukone, Katrina Kaif, Tiger Shroff, and Akshay Kumar himself, posed with sanitary napkins in their hands. They are smiling into the camera, as if they are posing for an ad campaign and not for a socially productive act. Their flippant smiles belie the seriousness of the pad, and its importance for rural women’s health,  for their “selfies” or whatever. Why?

Looking at the spread of the movement, one feels that this challenge was not really necessary. Chanakya Grover in his enlightening piece, Just the Beginning of the Challenge (The Spectrum, Tribune, Sunday, February 18, 2018) writes, “It would be prudent for us to realise that it is but a small step towards a revolution; and certainly not a Pan-Indian one because the women who need our support, who need sanitary pads or menstruation cups, don’t know about them or can’t afford them. They are not online, not logged on to Twitter, Instagram, are unaware of the fancy Snapchat stories and don’t read newspapers.”  He goes on to add, “They would certainly benefit more from a one-to-one talk about the issue and a free sample of pads and menstrual cups, than with our online posturing. Well-researched, result-oriented campaigns educating women and men alike on menstrual hygiene would help more than the synthetic online campaigns.”

However, the film and its promotional campaign across the country brought to light others who are engaged in similar campaigns. Shobhon Mukherjee lives in Bansdroni, a Kolkata suburb. He was pleasantly surprised with a phone call one winter morning when the caller informed him that Akshay Kumar wished to talk to him. The actor spoke to him for a few minutes and told him to carry on the movement he had pioneered himself. What movement? Shobhon, who, after the release of Padman has been dubbed the “Padman of Kolkata,” had begun a unique movement in the city. What movement? “It is a very small attempt to alleviate girls of a regular problem but it is also a very important one,” he says.

He visits public toilets across the city and places sanitary napkins in boxes that he makes out of empty ice-cream cartons. The young man—who is doing his post-graduation in Geography, pursuing a diploma course from the Indian Institute of Health Training, and running a magazine, all by by himself—began this crusade in October last year. “It was triggered by a small incident. A friend of mine, whom I was supposed to meet, called me up and said she that could not make it because she had just gotten her periods and was not carrying any sanitary napkins with her. That set me thinking—hundreds of girls and women, students, housewives, working women, mothers, sisters, they all face the same problem every other day. They do not always have napkins, or, even if they do, there might not be a public toilet nearby.” He calls this Project Bandhan; bandhan means  “bonding.” He chose this name, firstly, because it was a way of “bonding” with his “sisters,” (he began this movement just a day before Brother’s Day), and, secondly, because the “bonding” stands for the bonds that exist between a mother and her children. Till date, Shobhon has placed these boxes in the ladies’ section of 15 public toilets across Bansdroni, where he lives, and in Ganguli Bagan, Garia, Rath Tala, and Kalighat, after obtaining clearance from the respective councillors, who were quite cooperative.

Like Lakshmikant Chauhan, Shobhon has also been at the receiving end of brickbats, negative reactions, acidic barbs, and potshots, especially from men. “A social media page, sarcastically, asked me why I was doing all this even after the film’s release. This is not true at all. I am determined to go on doing what I had decided to do. I saw the film but I was already doing it in a different way with a different agenda. What the film has done is that it has brought attention to me and to my work and that has been a great help. I do not recall anyone calling me to commend me for this work,” he adds. A local pharmacist was puzzled when he noticed that Shobhon came to his shop to buy sanitary napkins every week. But, when Shobhon explained the reason, he accepted and supported the movement. Shobhon is not very comfortable with the nickname “The Padman of Kolkata.”

His friends, family members, the local councillors, and some strangers have not only appreciated his work but have also come forward to help in their own way. His parents—his father works in a bank and his mother is a housewife—have encouraged him every bit of the way. He began with his personal savings, but, as the news spread, money began to pour in. The first help came from an unknown person in Manipal. Now, money keeps pouring into his bank account and his PayTM account, from students, IT people, and others, ranging from Rs 50 to Rs 100. “But, this positive change has come only after Padman released,” he admits.

Shobhon’s activism is only one side of the awareness campaign. Padman, the film itself, is helping in a large way in dispelling myths, breaking taboos, and spreading the message of the importance of hygiene among growing girls through special screenings across cities. A special screening of the film was held for 400 girls studying in ten schools within Balurghat city, and ten neighbouring villages, by the district magistrate Sharad Kumar Dwivedi. Many of the girls came out of the screening and admitted that they did not use sanitary pads because they could not afford them. This open admission, of not being able to use pads, is itself an example of girls talking openly about periods and its associated problems. Twelve members of a local women’s NGO, Alo, had also been invited to this screening. They informed the girls that they were soon planning to release cheap sanitary napkins in the market. The Alo Female Co-operative Credit Society, together with multiple Self Help Groups, has begun its mission to produce sanitary napkins for women residing in rural areas. Sources at the organisation claim that 20 women have already been trained, and have started making the pads. A packet containing ten pieces of these pads will be sold for Rs 27.

After the show was over, the girls came out of Satyajit theatre to click selfies in front of the poster of Padman. Nandita Das, Headmistress of Ayodhya K.D. Vidyaniketan, watched the film along with her students. “This is a very timely film that, I hope, will raise awareness among the girls. I always keep a stock of sanitary pads in my office to fulfill the needs of the girls who need them suddenly. But it is still very expensive for girls in small towns and villages, and it is necessary for the state government to supply cheap sanitary pads to schools.” Krishna Karmakar, assistant teacher at Kabitirtha Vidya Niketan, said that 60% of the girls in her school did not use sanitary napkins. She added that, along with the girls, their mothers should also watch special screenings of Padman  so that they become aware of the dangers of unhygienic menstrual practices.

The girls agreed in that they could not afford to buy sanitary napkins and pads. They belong to a cross-section of schools where Padman  was being screened specially for them. There are other issues too, for them not using pads—they were shy to ask their families for money to buy pads, or, they felt uncomfortable visiting shops to buy pads, even if some of them could afford them. After watching Padman, however, they are convinced that they will be able to cross these social and family hurdles, and gather the courage to come out of their shells and talk about periods openly.

The two questions that keep nagging us, however,  is, (a) why do women always need a man to deal with their problems? Does this not reaffirm the role of patriarchy in society and in the economy? (b) Why must  a film like Padman, which is very serious and socially relevant, fall back on a production house that calls itself  Mrs. Funnybones Movies? This is not funny, really.

First published on Indian Cultural Forum
 

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