The portrayal of the Muslim in Hindi commercial cinema comes from a series
of preconceived notions about the people, the traditions and their culture.
But the stereotype has changed in forty years, says Iqbal Masud.
 

It all began with "Pukaar", which for me establised the Muslim stereotype dressed,
but often condescended to light flirtation. They were never common or mean. the women
were tall and slender with lovely necks like Naseem's ...we watched with a kind of
desperation the ripples on her throat when she sipped water. They all spoke chaste Urdu.
Their watchwords were Justice and Loyalty.

Then, in the forties, there was a transition to modernity.  These were "Muslim Socials"
showing the Muslim family in the age of the common man. The men wore sherwanis, the
women shalwar kameez. But the parameters had not changed.

Seeing Muslims at prayer, E.M. Forster said, "They had chosen obedience and the reward
of such obedience is beauty"; contrasting them with those who "lived in the unlovely chaos
between obedience and freedom". the Muslim "socials" chose obedience, hardly daring to
peep into the chaos outside of them. this trend continued from the forties into the sixties.
Among the socials churned out during this time were "Dard", "Palki", "Chaudvin Ka Chand",
and "Mere Meboob". The world was middle-middle class world, heartbreaks were middle-class
problems too, and the whole ambience wa poetic, precious and lyrically decadent. But there
was another side to this development. "Muslim culture" was being "sold" to non-Muslims in an
idealised form and it was this form that pressed Muslims into conforming to that image.

But, perhaps I am being unfair. Even the makers of Muslim socials could not shut their
eyes and ears to history. Nirad C. Choudhari called the Muslims "The Least of the Minorities".
The process of economic decline of the Indian Muslims began long before Partition and
continued unabatedly after it. The proportion of the "absolutely poor" among them rose
sharply, the size and population of their ghettos increased, and job opportunities for their
young shrank. Their loyalties became, and remained, suspect.

An underlying note of increasing misery is heard in these socials ---children taken from
orphanages and groomed as husbands for daughters, girls being considered for "sacrificial"
marriages to save the havel is from being auctioned. Melodramatic ? Yes. But indicative
of a real, calamitous decline.

To bring this decline up-to-date we now have the latest version of the Muslim stereotype
the Bandit with a Golden Heart. In two bandit movies, released in the last two
years "Ahinsa" and "Ganga Aur Suraj"--he is the secon d-in-command of The Gang--
secretly decent, wearing an Allah disc, dying for the right cause and proclaiming
very audibly his faith.  You can almost hear the patronage: "They have their points,
these Muslims".  From Shahensha to Daku--- a long journey is charted in film
stereotypes.
 

Two Muslim socials need comment. The first is Kamal Amrohi's "Pakeezah". "Pakeezah"
is not really about a courtesan. It is the spectacle of Shurafa (upper-middle class) culture
in decline. In fact, the graveyard scene where the abandoned courtesan (Meena Kumari's
mother in the film) lives and dies is central to the film. Kamal said he hunted the length
and breadth of the land for a suitable graveyard. Meena Kumari herself (the courtesan) is
saved not by the will of the community but by chance. The claustrophobic atmosphere
of a Muslim middle-class family has been brilliantly captured in "Pakeezah". There
is a funereal ambience in the film which expresses the community's neuroses and
anxieties.

And so to M.S. Sathyu's "Garam Hawa"--a landmark in the history of Muslim socials.
It does not run away from the Hindu-Muslim problem nor does it view it rosily
(like Shantaram's "Padosi"). It asks inconvenient, embarassing questions.
A grateful salute to Sathyu for that. Why then, a friend asks, do you have reservations
about the film ?

Firstly, it does not tackle with a sense of history, the tangled question of Muslim identity.
Few characters are shown going to Pakistan out of conviction or ideology.

Surely this is a limiting historical vision. Secondly, a prominent character who goes to
Pakistan is made the subject of extremely superficial satire. Third, the stereotype of
Muslim "poetic" ambience is retained inspite of being explicitly mocked. The seduction
of the girl takes place under the shadow of the Taj; the girl's suicide is unbearably
glamourised; and, the old women's attachment to the haveli is excessively sentimentalised.
Finally, having Mirza and his son join the procession is yet another cliche - "Muslims have
joined the maInstream and their problems have now merged with the problems of the people".
 

I think it is not leftism, but fashionable, facile leftism (a very different thing) which has
limited the otherwise remarkable "Garam Hawa " .An expert on modern Islam,
G. H. Jansen, has said: "Islam is not merelya religion. It is a total and unified way
of life; it is a culture, a civilisation. It is a spiritual and human totality". This may be
anathema to some progressives. But unless the graininess, the irreducible Muslim
quality of life of the community and its economic deprivation is accepted and displayed
warts and all --without aggression or apology, no credible film about Indian Muslims
can be made.

In the post -"Garam Hawa" period, three trends become noticeable. One is the
continuation of the old haveli family drama. Prime recent examples of this are
"Nikaah" and "Deedar-i-Yaar".

"Nikaah" is an interesting film seen from the angle of the Muslim stereotype. Though
it claims to boldly tackle a burning social problem-- that of "accelerated " Muslim divorce
(legal, even if frowned upon by the theologians) --it does so within such conventional
parameters that its point is blunted. Take the "hero", played by Raj Babbar. He is
paan-chewing, sherwani-clad poet --a throwback to the "Mere Mehboob" days.
Salma Agha, is the typical delicate-as-a-flower kurta and gharara girl, lovable and
helpless as a gazelle. The whole ambience of the film is as Nawabi as it was in the
sixties, the fifties, the forties ...Indeed the filmic Muslim middle-class is the one fixed
star in a turbulent firmament. On the surface, there is some advance in the critique
of Muslim society as in "Nikaah" when the quick divorce is shown to be disastrous.
But the way Salma wails at  the end to protest against the practice is as reactionary
as a surrender to it.

To put this in a different way, as long as the form of the Muslim social is imprisoned
in the U.P.Persian Urdu culture elegant-men, delicate-women trap you will never get a
progressive or even a common or garden realistic, film about Indian Muslims. In fact films
such as "Nikaah" will only strengthen the status quo in middle-class Muslim society.

"Deedar-i-Yaar", another travesty of Muslim social life, was a bad mix of "Mere Mehboob"
and "Nikaah". By the time it was released the public had had a surfeit of "Muslim" culture
and the film flopped at the box-office.

The second trend seen in the post -"Garam Hawa" period is an updated "Padosi" theme.
It must be said to the credit of the popular and commercial Hindi cinema that it has always
preached communal harmony -- but, by i ts very nature has not projected harmony in
acceptable cinematic terms. "Abdullah" is an awful example of raucous propaganda in
favour of national intergration. Raj Kapoor play the part of a "good" Muslim who brings
up a Hindu boy in the Hindu faith. The point about such "integration "films is that they
play up religiosity so much that unwittingly they become vehicles of religious propaganda.
Filmic "integration" does not encourage liberalism within the respective religions.

The last trend in the depiction of the Muslim stereotype, perhaps, corresponds to the
actual social or economic situation of the majority of Muslims. This stereotype can be
given the generic name of Miyanbhai, corresponding to the Sam Spade stereotype for
the Black in American films. He has some resemblence to the Daku mentioned earlier
but the film is urban-based. There is a whiff of the smuggler about him.

He generally lives in a sleazy part of the town, is sleepy, sensuous and riotous in turn.
When he has a family it is usually large. He talks in his own patois --in fact he glories in it.
But with all this, he still has a heart of gold and, like the daku, will lay down his life for a
friend. He is also religious in a blind and emotional fashion and you can usually see visions
of hajis milling round the Kaaba during qawwalis, which the Miyanbhai  either attends or in
which he participates.

These are high emotional moments for the Muslim audience which cheers and throws coins.
It would be easy to look down on this kind of emotional outpouring. But let us look at it in
this way. A large number of lower-middle class Muslims live alienated lives in ghettos. They
cannot relate to a Shahenshah, a junior Daku or a poet. They can, however, relate to a little
man who preserves his integrity -- Kulbhushan in that decent little film "Nakhudatt, who
educates a Hindu boy, or Johnny Walker in the recent "Rishta Kagaz Ka" who protects and
helps Nutan -and can laugh and cry with him. Sentimental, yes. False ? No.

It has been a long journey from Shahenshah to Miyanbhai. But It has been a journey of
truth -a sad truth, perhaps, but a truth nevertheless.