The ‘othering’: how Muslim identity evolved in Hindi cinema down the ages

For a little over 300 years, the Mughals ruled over much of India. For a little under three decades, between 1940 and 1967, they reigned over the silver screen. The stories, real or imagined, of Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan even Bahadur Shah Zafar, were brought to the screen by names as formidable as K. Asif and M. Sadiq.

The ‘Muslim Historical’ became a genre by itself in Hindi cinema. The films portrayed Mughal emperors as larger-than-life figures, wedded to the principles of justice and unity. As Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen write in Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema (Tulika), “The Muslim Historical of this period presents an image of the Mughal Emperor as a unifying force, who sought to embrace rather than erase forms of Hindu religiosity and culture.”

A case in point was the Krishna Bhakti song at Akbar’s court in Mughal-e-Azam. But the Muslim identity in cinema couldn’t be confined to kings and queens. An off shoot of the royal sagas was the ‘Muslim Social’ which came replete with nawabs, Urdu shayari, sherwanis and salams. Mere Mehboob was a classic example as was Nikaah.

Changing phase

Then there was the ‘Muslim Courtesan’, as seen in Kamal Amrohi’s cult movie Pakeezah, Muzaffar Ali’s classic Umrao Jaan, and to a lesser extent B.R. Chopra’s Tawaif. Over time, the fully clad courtesan became superfluous to the needs of changing cinema. The ‘Muslim Social’ faded away and the ‘Muslim Historical’ gave way to valiant Maratha sagas. The age of Islamophobia had no space for the all-embracing Akbar, the lovelorn Shah Jahan.

In came Alauddin Khalji, portrayed as a blood thirsty tyrant in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat and Aurangzeb shown as a cruel megalomaniac in the more recent Laxman Utekar’s Chhaava. Between Mughal-e-Azam and Chhaava, Hindi cinema has come a full circle.

Films like Bajirao Mastani, Padmaavat, Kesari and Tanhaji “suitably aligned with the saffronised version of historical narrative,” as Nadira Khatun puts it in her painstaking work, Postcolonial Bollywood and Muslim Identity (Oxford). Incidentally, Khatun’s book, along with Muslim Identity in Hindi Cinema (Routledge) by Asim Siddiqui, and Bhaskar and Allen’s book, is among the more serious forays into deciphering the Muslim identity in Hindi cinema, an identity which has often been projected according to the prevalent political mood of the nation.

Face of menace

For more than three decades after Independence, Muslims were almost always the good guys. They could do no wrong.

There was the ubiquitous Rahim Chacha, played by A.K. Hangal in no less than 60 films. It changed in the new millennium when Muslims ceased to be the good guys on the big screen. Now they were menacing men with guns and growl; the kohl-lined villains were all Muslims, those aspiring to bomb the nation too were Muslims.

Even in films like Iqbal, Chak De India! and Mulk which had positive Muslim characters, the Muslims were “destined to show their loyalty to the state”, as Khatun writes. Though far removed from reality, and clearly driven by politics of the day, it is not the first time this has happened. If in the 1950s and ’60s, the Muslim kings were shown in a positive light, it was thanks to the Nehruvian politics of secularism and socialism — inclusion rather than exclusion was the guiding mantra then.

Today’s films mirror the changed political climate. As Khatun reminds readers, “That these films coincide heavily with the current political narratives can be shown through the example of Tanhaji (2020). Ajay Devgan, who portrays the role of the protagonist, started promoting the film by uploading the trailer on Twitter, writing “4th Feb 1670: The surgical strike that shook the Mughal Empire!’”.

Likewise, Ashutosh Gowarikar’s Panipat released on December 6, 2019, coinciding with the day of the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992. Post-2014, this over-the-top depiction off evil Muslims has caught the eye even of the less discerning.

Holding a mirror

In his meticulously researched work which throws fresh light on the depiction of Muslims in cinema from the pre-Partition days, Siddiqui writes: “In many films since the 1990s, a Hindu hero is depicted waging a battle against Muslim villains who pose a threat to society and national security….A recurrent motif in Hindi cinema since the 1970s is to show a don (Zanjeer, Tezaab, Angaar) or a terrorist being ‘a devout Muslim’…He also appears very cultured, refined and even humane.”

Siddiqui points at Paresh Rawal playing Suleiman bhai, a villain who wears a skullcap, and Naseeruddin Shah’s popular singer Ghulam Hassan who comes to India to spread insurgency. The underlying message was, ‘they’ cannot be trusted. It was, in many ways, the beginning of the othering of Muslims in Hindi cinema.

Or, as Siddiqui writes, there were films like Parinda, Maqbool and Mohra where Muslim gangsters lived in a decontextualised world. Again, from the always-praying Rahim Chacha of countless potboilers to the drug-sniffing Abdul Khan of Parinda, Muslim characters had come a long way.

The reality was, of course, far removed from a Mohra or a Tezaab. It was left to a sensitive Garam Hava by M.S. Sathyu, Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro by Saeed Mirza and Mammo by Shyam Benegal to tell us there was a Muslim world where there was no emperor, no courtesan and no gangster, a society where people had dreams; they had their fears too. Just normal people.