ABSTRACT
India is home to one of the world’s largest populations of Muslims, estimated at around 170 million, but as this is only thirteen per cent of the total population they form a minority community. A high proportion of Muslims, as stars, writers, directors and musicians, have shaped the mighty Hindi film industry (also known by many other names including ‘Bollywood’ or the ‘Bombay popular film industry’) yet the norm for the film hero remains that of the Hindu, north Indian, upper-caste male. Muslims are depicted in most genres of Hindi cinema, in particular in the omnibus category of the ‘Social’ – a film set in the contemporary world whose melodramatic mode mixes several genres. Yet representations of Muslims are problematic and rarely uncontested, especially where films depict marriages between Muslims and Hindus. Bombay (1995), directed by Mani Ratnam, which had a Hindu-Muslim couple facing religious riots in Bombay, ran into controversy when Bal Thackeray, leader of the Shiv Sena, was approached for his approval to allow the film to run in Bombay cinema halls, while there was an armed attack on the director’s house. The industry has always vigorously defended itself against charges of Islamophobia in its representations of Muslims, pointing out that it has always employed a high proportion of Muslim personnel whose culture has been important in this as well as other forms of Indian public culture, ranging from music to literature,1 while also keeping a careful eye on its large Muslim audiences and the censors who are sensitive to all cinematic representation of minorities. Over its hundred-year history, the Hindi film industry has produced a loose generic group of films concerned with religion as part of everyday social and cultural life among Muslims that is usually described as ‘Islamicate’, following Mukul Kesavan who uses the term from Marshall Hodgson’s The Venture of Islam to:
The sub-genres of the Islamicate film include the Arabian Nights fantasy, the historical film (e.g. Pukar, 1939, dir. Sohrab Modi; Shahjehan, 1946, dir. A R Kardar; Mughal-e Azam, 1960, dir. K Asif) set mostly in the Mughal world, the courtesan film set in the Nawabi (approx: ‘princely’, or ‘courtly’) world (eg, Pakeezah, 1972, dir. Kamal Amrohi; Umrao Jaan, 1981, dir. Muzaffar Ali) and the Muslim Social set in contemporary times (eg, Nek Parveen, 1946, dir. S M Yusuf; Chaudhvin ka Chand, 1960, dir. M Sadiq; Naqli Nawab, 1962, dir. Tara Harish; Mere Mehboob, 1963, dir. H S Rawail; Mere Huzoor, 1968, dir. Vinod Kumar; Mehboob ki mehndi, 1971, dir. H S Rawail). These sub-genres, like all generic categories in Indian cinema, are used somewhat loosely by film scholars and there is much overlap between the Islamicate historical and the historical genre, while there are a number of courtesan films set in the non-Islamicate world.
