SubscribeBollywood: Honor your (and India’s) Muslim Heritage
While Bollywood has made significant strides in the last decade, I am still disappointed by one major aspect of the movie industry, and that is in its portrayal of Muslims and Islamic culture.
In the 1950′ through the 60’s, many Muslim actors would often change or hide their names to conceal their religion. Ironically, this is also when “Muslim” films surged, and were amongst the most popular and memorable films of the era. These films didn’t just have Muslim protagonists, but were rich with Islamic culture and the Urdu language.
Dil hi to Hai was one of the biggest hits in the early 1960’s. The film starred two of the most popular actors of that generation– Nutan and Raj Kapoor, who played Muslim characters on-screen, although they were Hindu in real life. Their religious background had no role in the story. It was a comedy with a heavy emphasis on music.
The film was an example of the fact that Muslims were a part of Indian society as much as Hindus were. The film did amazingly well, and the music is still amongst the most memorable from that era.
The films Umrao Jaan and Pakeezeh were about tawaifs, or courtesans, who performed traditional dances for their male audience, called mujras. The mujras originated from Mughal courts, where they were performed for Mughal leaders. Mujras were not only a major part of Muslim heritage, but of the history of India. These two films, and many with similar themes, were rich with Urdu poetry. The female leads in these two films are remembered as two of the best roles portrayed by women in Bollywood.
Here is one of the most famous songs from the 1981 film, Umrao Jaan, where actress Rekha is performing a Mujra:
Films like Bahu Begham and Chaudhvin ka Chand similarly displayed clothing, language, and other cultural aspects of Muslims in India.
After the heavy usage of Muslim culture in films in the 1950’s through 80’s, there was a slow decline in any diversity in films. By the 1990’s and early 2000’s, the once flourishing Islamic culture in Bollywood films had all but vanished. Eloquent Urdu was replaced by everyday Hindustani (a combination of Hindi and Urdu), and character names were chosen from the most typical of Hindu names.
1990’s to mid 2000’s were some of Bollywood’s darkest times, when creativity was scarce and risks were rarely taken. Artistic merit was lost in films, and so was any hint of diversity of religions. Ironically, this is also the period where the most famous stars were Muslim, but rarely played their religion.
In 2000, there was some glimmer of hope. There was a growth of films centered around Islam, but sadly, the films would often be about terrorism or communal riots. Take Dev, for instance. Fardeen Khan and Kareena Kapoor both followed the Islamic faith, but the film was about communal riots in Mumbai. In Fanaa, the characters again were Muslim, but the main actor, Aamir Khan, was a terrorist.
After the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai in 2008, a slew of films with Muslim protagonists released, such as New York, Kurbaan, and My Name is Khan. But again, all these films had a subject matter revolving around terrorism. Before the attacks, there were many like Veer Zaara and Refugee, which had the backdrop of India-Pakistan tensions.
It’s great that Bollywood no longer ignores political and social issues, but the message that is sent is troubling as well. Much of the Hindustani music, language, and culture has Muslim roots, so why not bring back the beauty of the films of bygone eras and make films with families by acknowledging this fact without tying the culture to terrorism?
What’s important to keep in mind is that Bollywood films are hugely popular in the Middle East, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. Although Muslim culture varies in different regions, it’s still a pity that these regions no longer see the eloquence of Islamic culture in Bollywood films, without the usual terrorism or violent undertones.
Of course, there are some filmmakers who dare to venture away from commercial Bollywood. Vishal Bhardwaj is one of Bollywood’s best and most sought after filmmakers. His critically acclaimed film Maqbool took place amongst the underworld in Mumbai. The film is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and is dark, beautiful, and bold, and ripe with Islamic culture. In an interview with Filmfare, Bhardwaj, who is Hindu, told the magazine that “I love the Urdu language. I love the tehzeeb and the rishton ki nazakat (delicacy of relationships) which is a part of Muslim culture.”
The one place where Muslim heritage has revived is in Bollywood’s music. This aspect is comforting, but avoiding films with Muslim characters is not only detrimental to society, but also to filmmakers who are losing out on the artist merit of the culture.
As Bollywood moves into a new progressive era, it needs to take a few lessons from the movie industry’s roots.
Kashmir and Bollywood’s Curfewed Night
A few nights ago Pankaj Mishra and Basharat Peer, the author of an eloquent and heartbreaking memoir Curfewed Night got together to discuss Kashmir at the Asia Society in Manhattan. It was an evening of serious discussion and serious questions, prompted by the recent US publication of Peer’s book, which is a very personal history of coming of age in Kashmir in the late 1980s and early 1990s, amidst India’s brutal military occupation. In a rare occasion of levity—prompted by a question of mine that I thought was going to keep the conversation on its serious trajectory—Peer discussed actress Priyanka Chopra’s recent Twitter experience about her filming the new Vishal Bhardwaj film Saath Khoon Maaf in Kashmir.
Priyanka tweeted, “kashmir is absolutely safe and definately a place i wanna come to on a visit.. stay on a house boat.. walk around the lake.. mmmm.. 
” But when she returned to India, she tweeted, “Back to civilization,” which caused some offense. She corrected this by tweeting further, “by back to civilization i meant coming back to my regular life.. kashmir has been amazing and i love it.. you guys MUST plan holidays here!!”
Peer’s mirthful and sympathetic (well, slightly) tone toward Chopra points to a much bigger issue. One of the obstacles to peace in Kashmir is that fact that both Pakistan and India have tended to overcompensate and use Kashmir to project there own rhapsodic fantasies onto it. (Peer discusses this at length in the discussion, of which the full conversation can be viewed here.
In particular, Hindi cinema has tended to reinforce an ahistorical notion of Kashmir as India’s Paradise. For decades, Kashmir was the lush backdrop for some of the most exquisitely romantic song and dance sequences. To give Ms Chopra the benefit of the doubt, location filmmaking is gruelingly dull. Remember the fuss created when Sienna Miller, fatigued from filming The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, described Pittsburgh as “Shitsburgh”?
But Priyanka Chopra, wittingly or not, was playing into this ecstatic and traditional honeymooner narrative of Kashmir.
In this clip from the 1970’s super hit film Bobby, Kashmir is the dreamy backdrop for young Rishi Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia.
Political events in Kashmir over the last generation has made it all but impossible for Kashmir to be represented in this way. And as Hindi cinema has grown richer and more global, the whole world
is now its theater when it comes to song sequences. And Kashmir, in the Bollywood film imagination, has become a Paradise Lost. The treatment of Islamic fundamentalism and the Kashmiri insurgency in films like Fiza and Mission Kashmir — both of which curiously star Hrithik Roshan as a dream boy Taliban — are in many respects political cop-outs,
even if they at least acknowledge a history of state violence, repression and discrimination in India against religious minorities. Suketu Mehta in his staggering book, Maximum City, tells of the experience of being politically at “left angles” while writing the screenplay of Mission Kashmir with Vinod Chopra, “I do not believe in the mouths of my characters,” he wrote. “The script,” he complained, “keeps making half-hearted attempts to balance the view of the Indian state with that of the Kashmiris.” Mani Ratman’s visually very beautiful Roja of 1994 plays virulently plays into this tragic- paternalistic and Indian nationalistic Paradise Lost narrative. (Ananya Jahanara Kabir has an interesting discussion of Roja in her book Territory of Desire.)
Where, one wonders, is the bold, Pontecorvo-or Loach-like filmmaker to unsettle this and turn Bollywood’s treatment of Kashmir upside down? Could a filmmaker of the dazzling and subversive talent of Anurag Kashyap frame Kashmir in a non-nationalistic way? There are rumors that Arundhati Roy–a brave writer who is never one to shirk controversy—is writing a novel set in Kashmir. And one can hope that there is a filmmaker who has the sensibility to render Peer’s eminently cinematic memoir to the screen.
Out with the Old, in with the New (Music)
As Bollywood is making innovative strides in music, the people who are most affected by the changes are the ones who benefited from mass producing repetitive songs without a hint of creativity in the 1990’s and 2000’s.
Nadeem-Shravan, a popular music duo who were popular in the 90’s to mid 2000’s did produce some music in the past few years, but each soundtrack failed miserably. Their cliche tunes and inability to create music that may sway from songs that were once guaranteed hits have made them incapable of competing with Bollywood’s new string of musicians who have abandoned the old rules and have morphed India’s music scene.
Earlier this week, Shravan (of Nadeem-Shravan) complained that Bollywood music has left behind local sounds, and that Hollywood has been the Hindi movie industry’s biggest influence. Shravan may not have been listening to any Bollywood music these days. In fact, classical sounds, both Muslim and Hindu, have reemerged in Bollywood like never before.
But that may be a part of Shravan’s problem. Along with more classical influences, Pakistan has begun to make a powerful presence in India. He said:
“If a Pakistani artist releases an album or a song with a video, it gets heavy rotation, at the expense of talented Indian artists. We respect artists from every country, but we need to promote our own Hindustani musicians as well.”
First of all, Indian artists are hugely popular in Pakistan, so why not vice-versa? Also, it is sad that Shravan is speaking of competition, rather than unison, especially when speaking from a platform of music, where artists should promote cultural exchange. In a previous post, I wrote that Pakistani artists have stated that they believe their popularity grows when they make it big in Bollywood. Sadly, Shravan frowns on this ground breaking change in Indo-Pak relations.
Shravan, like Nadeem-Shravan’s music, clearly represents sentiments of the past that have evaporated in Bollywood. Not only has Bollywood’s music progressed, but so has the industry’s ideals.
Here’s a song with local flavor that Shravan probably didn’t catch (even though it was one of the most popular songs last year):
Remembering The Greatest Khan
Hm. Who is The Greatest Khan? Some might think Shahrukh. or Salman. or Aamir. or Saif. or Genghis? All wrong.
The Greatest Khan is the man who made sufi music popular among the masses, who became the most popular Pakistani artists in the world. It’s none other than Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
Khan was recently selected as one of the 50 Greatest Voices of All Time by NPR. This made me think of the legacy he left. Not only was he one of the most inspiring performers of all time, he also mastered the technique of bringing various forms of music together and intertwining them in a way that had never been done before.
To imagine monumental classical music singers such as Ghulam Ali, Pandit Jasraj or Farida Khanum collaborate with London based DJ Bally Sagoo, or with Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder is laughable. But Khan did it all. Not only did he bring the east and west together through music, he reunited Hindustani and Sufi music in a way that had never been done before.
In my last post, I wrote about the new wave in contemporary music that is now experimenting with mixing different sounds from all around the world to create global and original pieces. Khan was the pioneer who paved this path for future musicians. The best example of his melody of Hindustani raaga and Sufi music was through his incorporation of sargam in his qawwalis. Sufism is the mythological branch of Islam, and music plays a huge role in the religion. Qawwalis are the best known form of Sufi devotional music.
Sargam, on the other hand, is an innate quality of raagas. The sargam represents the scale in raagas, and consist of seven notes: sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, sa. Each sargam has a different sound. They symbolize Hindustani music. Khan incorporated Sargam into his qawwalis.
A Pakistani Singer in an interview recently stated that artists in the country receive more respect when they perform in Bollywood. The very fact that there is a growing relationship between the countries through music (Bollywood films are banned in Pakistan) is because of Khan.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s influence is boundless. He composed some music for Bollywood films, influenced groups like Pakistan’s Junoon and singers like India’s Kailash Kher. He is not known as the world’s greatest singer purely for his voice and performance, but for his innovation and ability to transcend borders and politics and bring people together through music.
Here is a personal favorite:
A mainstream piece:
A link to a video of Khan combining qawwali with sargam.
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