As time went by, different facets of the Hindi cinema started showing the complicated identity of Muslim — sometimes tendentious and at other times perverse and unreliable.
Key Points
- From the 1960s, we come across a plethora of Hindi movies that portray the Muslim in a ‘midway position’ — that is to say, to mark the urban and rural setting alike in the Indian film industry.
- As the Muslim in Amar Akbar Anthony is a Gandhian, those who figure in Coolie are entrenched in the values of secularism and communal harmony.
- The long running stream of Islamaphobia all over the globe has helped many directors to cast their eyes on the Muslim as the terrorist.
Muslim identity was always a contested field in public lives, education systems and in art and culture.
Is the Muslim given the status of expressing her/his identity in tandem with the surroundings of change?
What if the Islamic tag attached to them gets strewn off at every step of their articulation?
Would they have an identity of their own in a country that produces relentlessly thousands of stereotypes?
These questions have been plaguing us for a long time.
To be born a Muslim, it seems, is to live in perpetual fear and anxiety.
It is interesting in this context to examine the representation of Muslim identity in Hindi cinema.
Mohammad Asim Siddiqui’s book Muslim Identity in Hindi Cinema opens up a huge arena of debates related to the past of the Hindi film industry, now famously known as Bollywood, going back to the pre-Independece times and from there to contemporary times.
As time went by, different facets of the Hindi cinema have started showing the complicated identity of Muslim — sometimes tendentious and at other times perverse and unreliable. Hindi cinema is incomplete without the Muslim.
Outlined in six chapters, this book tries to tease out different strands connected to the portrayal of the Muslim — sometimes tauntingly on the screen and at other times, by developing the historical context of the Indian Muslim both in the city and in the rural premises.
The author interestingly traces the development of Hindi movies, which according to him ‘cannot be conceived without the basic elements of tragedy, comedy, action and character’.
This statement, though it hits with the nail on our heads, invites a much nuanced discussion of Hindi movies in the wide and scattered belt of Indian soil.
The depiction of Muslims in biopics is far different from the old and the new historical and war films, where they are deeply portrayed with some sense of affection and charm remains.
In movies such as Noorjahan dating back to 1923 to Pukar and Mumtaz Mahal (both hailing from the late 1930s), we have an affectionate portrayal of the historic Muslim.
A historical romance like Mughal-e-Azam has attracted thousands on account of its interesting sequences of love, but ‘radically departs from the inclusive vision of history’.
However, the tracing from the early historic Islam movies to Dhoom 3 in contemporary times is a little maverick and sudden jump, which in all sense make us aware of the perpetual presence of Indian Muslim all over the celluloid.
The author thoroughly analyses Dhoom 3 from different points of view.
This movie has shed the established notions of Islam in the Indian subcontinent from many angles, yet as we know, is not free from certain type of stereotyping the Muslim.
The author’s analysis of the ‘non-digetic sounds’, it must be noted, is an important step that decodes the setting and acting.
How the music structures certain scenes and actions also signifies the way in which the Indian Muslim is understood.
The long transition to represent the Muslim from the methodologies of cinematic techniques, needless to say, is an important feature not only in the history of Indian cinema, but in the narrative stylistics of Indian Muslim.
Furthermore, the author glances at certain decades that have produced films where the Muslim is represented as the lover, saviour, policeman and the custodian of peace and prosperity.
It is true that from the 1960s, we come across a plethora of Hindi movies that portray the Muslim in a ‘midway position’ — that is to say, to mark the urban and rural setting alike in the Indian film industry.
As the Muslim in Amar Akbar Anthony is a Gandhian, those who figure in Coolie, as the author points out, are entrenched in the values of secularism and communal harmony.
Such depictions, in addition to the values ascribed to them, mark a specific cinematic understanding of the Indian Muslim, which the author is not highlighting in the book — the mutual coexistence with all classes and castes of India.
Moreover, such depictions point out the cultural shift from the pre-independent India to the post-Independent nation.
The citation by Shyam Benegal, the author uses, needs to be seen from the post-independent status of the Indian Muslim.
Rage, Religion and Riots
The chapter Rage, Religion and Riots invites our attention as it outlines the reasons behind the socio-political conditions of the Indian Muslim and the further portrayal of her/him in Hindi movies.
From where does the idea of the Muslim a dangerous sect arise? What are the parameters that sidelined the Muslim to the margins?
How did the Muslim disappear from the major discourses in our academies? What made the visual culture of Bollywood isolate the Indian Muslim?
These questions are addressed here with much introspection.
Charting from the critique of Hindu extremism as depicted in Yash Chopra’sDharmputra (1961), sailing through the Partition riots and Mumbai violence over the Ayodhya dispute, the author attempts to bring out the ways in which the directors tried to portray the Muslim as a special category — the friend, the enemy, the innocent and the tyrant.
The question unanswered here is perhaps how most of these directors have a one-sided dimension to chart out the Indian Muslim in the pretext of the political and communal violence the country witnessed in recent decades.
A film like Kai Po Che situates the Gujarat violence at its heart. However, the portrayal of Muslims in the movie is highly ambivalent.
On the one hand, it does not give us any political undertone of the cause of the violence; and on the other, it distills one section of Muslims in the movie.
Though films such as Mr and Mrs Iyer are meticulously analysed by the author, we expect some more political tone attached to these movies.
The socio-cultural context in which the identity of the Indian Muslim is weaved in these movies is much more nuanced and thoroughly overstated.
Finally, the chapters dealing with Muslim gangsters, dons and terrorists are the thought provoking ones in this book as they unravel mysteries shrouding the Indian Muslim in the postcolonial Indian State.
Along with the Muslim gangster, one needs to point out, the rise of the new underworld of Hindi movies — the one successfully depicted in several non-Hindi movies from Tollywood.
The ghettos where the Muslim population thrives are the parasitic spaces of the Nation-State.
In the last few decades, the Muslim ghettos have played a crucial role in the construction of the Islam identity as spaces of communication, hidden ploys and gender reformulation.
The discussion of Aamir and A Wednesday are based on these ghettos.
If Akshay Kumar acting as Shoaib is modelled on Dawood Ibrahim in Once Upon a Time in Mumbai Dobaara, it must be remembered that such a portrayal also offers its historic roots to the ghettos of Mumabi.
Post-9/11 Narratives in Hindi Cinema
The book extensively gets into the reasons of constructing Muslim as the terrorist. This is inextricably related to the post 9/11 world order.
The long running stream of Islamaphobia all over the globe has helped many directors to cast their eyes on the Muslim as the terrorist.
The most plaguing factor here is how can one distinguish the depiction of a terrorist Muslim from the non-terrorist?
The visual media and their ways have successfully structured a dangerous platform (needless to say not just in the Bollywood) to recognise the Muslim as the terrorist.
The analysis of a film like Yahaan based on the Kashmir political condition, the author argues, is an excellent example that can be set against Shaurya, which is ‘open to different kinds of readings and appropriations in a changed climate in India’.
All these observations underline the fact that the depiction of Muslim in Hindi cinema is the product of different narratives and counter-rhetoric that constitute the new sense of the Nation-State.
One of the main pitfalls of this book, despite all its meritorious study of Hindi films, is the lack of discussion of different ideological set ups that constituted the Muslim in movies and the relationship of that to the make-up of the Nation-State.
As various chapters have sought out to demonstrate, the discussion in this book have some pan-Indian and global significance, informing us about the ways in which Muslim identities are constructed.
Likewise, Asim Siddiqui’s meticulous research has given us in the wake of wider conversations of on bringing Islamic diversity to Hindi movies.
Tapping a variety of sources, challenging myths and crossing many disciplinary boundaries, this books gives us an acute, thought provoking analysis to look at the construction of Muslim in Hindi movies.
The scope of the book, therefore, is beyond academic. This will be the platform for any further discussion in the visual media to understand the depiction of Muslim in these turbulent times.
Muslim Identity in Hindi Cinema by Mohammad Asim Siddiqui. Routledge, 2025. Rs 1,785.
Krishnan Unni P is Professor of English at Deshbandhu College, Delhi University.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff