Interrogating Practices of Gender, Religion and Nationalism in the
Representation of Muslim Women in Bollywood: Contexts of Change, Sites of
Continuity
Nazia Hussein and Saba Hussain, University of Warwick
Abstract
Through a discourse analysis of four
commercially successful Bollywood films between 2012-2013, this paper
investigates Bollywood’s role in creation of hierarchical identities in the
Indian society wherein Muslims occupy the position of the inferior ‘other’ to
the superior Hindu ‘self’. Focusing on Muslim heroines, the paper demonstrates
that the selected narratives attempt to move away from the older binary
identity narratives of Muslim women such as nation vs. religion and
hyper-sexualised courtesan vs. subservient veiled women, towards identity
narratives borne out of Muslim women’s choice of education, career and life
partner, political participation, and embodied practices. However, in
comparison to signs of change the sites of continuity are strongly embedded in
the religious-nationalistic meta-narrative that drives the paradigms of Indian
femininity/ womanhood. To conclude, the nature of the recent deployment of
Muslim heroines in Bollywood reinforce the hierarchy between the genders
(male-female), between the communities (Hindu-Muslim) and between nations
(India- Pakistan).
Keywords: Muslim women, India,
Gender, Nationalism, Identity, Hindu-Muslim relations, Representations,
Religious discourses
Introduction
On the 3rd of July 2013, India's top investigation agency, the Central
Bureau of Investigation (CBI), told a court that police and intelligence
officials from the state of Gujarat killed 19 year old Muslim student, Ishrat
Jahan, and three male companions in a ‘staged’ encounter in 2004. The Gujrat
police on its part continues to allege that Ishrat and her companions were in
fact ‘terrorists’ (BBC 2013; Ayub 2013). Commonly referred to as Ishrat Jahan
fake encounter case, this has since spiraled into a political slugfest that has
exposed fault lines around issues of terrorism, nationalism, Muslim identity
and gender in India. A spokesperson of the then key opposition party in India,
Minakshi Lekhi, asserted on Times Now TV channel that ‘here was a girl travelling
with men unrelated to her’. She further added, since Ishrat came from a
deprived background, she was a ‘fit case’ for being a terrorist (Viz
2013). These statements come vis-a-vis the CBI’s report
ascertaining the staged character of encounters and the alleged ‘terror links’
of those killed are yet to be established. Even though Lekhi’s deeply sexist
and communally presumptuous statement was widely criticised, she found ample
political support demonstrating some of the techniques deployed in creating a Muslim
‘other’ particularly through the body of the Muslim woman in India (Viz 2013).
Since then with the triumph of the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janta Party
(BJP) in May 2014, the voices othering Muslims and other minorities
through the body of the Muslim women have not only become louder, but have also
become more mainstream. For instance, the 'Bahu lao, beti Bachao campaign'
being run by Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh, Bajrang Dal, Viswa Hindu Parishad –
affiliates of the ruling party (Indian Express, 13 March 2015) which
asks Hindu men to marry Muslim girls and purify them (read: convert to
Hinduism) as a measure to deter Muslim men from marrying Hindu women – a
phenomenon popularly referred to as Love Jihad. These ‘real’ incidents
remind us of the gendered nature of India’s communities and the deeply
religious nature of Indian nationalism highlighting key issues and identifying
areas of future reflections under the theme of gender, nationalism and religion
in India.
In this article, we use the example of Bollywood’s representation of
Muslim women given its global recognition and its position as an influential
cultural product, which both constructs and disseminates the important paradigm
of ‘Indian-ness’ and ‘collective identity’ (Mishra 2006; Ansari 2008; Osuri and
Ghosh 2012). In fact, its widespread local and global reach heightens
Bollywood's significance as a potent discursive tool that serves the purpose of
legitimizing (and illegitimating) certain identity claims. Our research
findings suggest that, in recent times, there have been several cinematic
attempts to somewhat re-cast female Muslim characters as the 'new age girl who
does not desist from bending the conservative (Muslim) societal norms' (Daily
Mail, 15 Feb 2013). However, these ‘new’ representations of Muslim women in
Bollywood neither challenge stereotypes about Muslims subordinate position through
their portrayals as anti-nation or as the ‘other’ (Hirji 2008; Khan 2009; Jain
2011; Kumar 2013) nor do
they offer a nuanced picture of the association of Muslim religious practices
with women’s experiences of gender injustice (Agnes 2012; Sachar 2006;
Kandiyoti 1994).
Our overarching aim is to contribute towards discussions on intersection
of religion, nationalism and gender, in imagining and representing Muslim women
in India. Specifically in this article, we
argue that such representations create a hierarchy of identities wherein Hindu
identities get classed as the 'superior' and Muslims as the inferior ‘other’.
Following Das (2006), we argue further that
Bollywood’s strategic deployment of Muslim women becomes
a ‘discursive apparatus' of maintaining a communalised, Hindu patriarchal
social structure at three inter-connected levels: among the genders
(ordering of women by men); among communities (bordering between Hindu
and Muslim communal identities) and, inter-state othering between Indian
and Pakistani identities’ (Das 2006: 373).
Within the time frame of 2012-2013, we found four commercially
successful, mainstream Bollywood movies released which portrayed Muslim women
as the primary heroine of the movie. In two of these movies, Ek Tha Tiger (2012)
and Agent Vinod (2012), the Muslim women characters are represented as Pakistani
Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) spies in love with Indian Research and
Analysis (RAW) agents. In the other two movies, Ishaqzaade (2012) and Raanjhanaa
(2013), the Muslim women characters are represented as small town
Muslim girls from north India with an active interest in politics.
In our study, we adopted the methodological approach of critical
discourse analysis: ‘looking at narratives of movies as active in constructing
social reality offering definitions and categorisations which are linked to wide
social and cultural structures, relations and processes’ (Aapola 1997: 50).
Our focus in this article is the discourse (discours) instead of
the story (histoire) of the plots of the movies- a conceptual
distinction popularised by film theorist Christian Metz in his seminal essay
entitled 'Story/Discourse (a Note on Two Kinds of Voyeurism) published in 1975.
For Metz (1975), discourse is the rhetorical dimension of the story, i.e. the
way it is made to persuade and manipulate the audience, in contrast to the
story itself that seems to exist in its own world. Using the narratives of
female Muslim characters in the selected movies, we demonstrate that certain
hegemonic discourses around the nation, religion and gender are legitimised for
the audience of these movies. By exploring this intersection of
narratives on gender, nations and religion, within the narrative plots of the
movies and the characterisation of the central characters, we attempt to
contribute to the existing literature on the construction of national identity
through women’s representation in popular culture.
Our analysis is divided under three broad types of narratives drawn from
the characters of the Muslim women in the selected movies: the first concerns Narratives of Choice, which includes various aspects of Muslim
women’s lives such as cross-cultural love, career, education, etc. The second
considers Narratives of Political
Participation, which explores the representation of Pakistani Muslim
women in a non-traditional role of spies. This section critically examines the
dynamic between the tendency of representing Muslim women as sexualised damsel(s) or as agents of political change.
The final theme of the Narratives
of sartorial display delves into the stereotypical embodied
representation (through clothing practices) of Muslim women in contrast to the
Hindu women, which depicts the non-nationalist/anti-nationalist vs. nationalist
dichotomy of the two sets of women. Our analysis frequently sets the
Muslim characters in opposition to the Hindu characters of the selected movies
to identify the depiction of generalised differences among them with respect to
their relation to the Indian nation, their religion and their role in
intercultural relationships. For example, how the Hindu women choose the nation
as their primary identity while the Muslim women often choose their religion,
and how such binary associations of these women make intercultural alliances
impossible.
Muslims in India: the real and the imagined
The 2006 Sachar Committee report, prepared by the Prime Minister’s High
Level Committee, concluded that a large proportion of the Muslim population of
India suffer from severe deprivation in many social, economic and educational
areas, as well as suspicion of their patriotism. The report also says that
Muslims carry the twin burden of being labeled as anti-national yet
being appeased at the same time. This, according to the report, has
caused strong resentment among Muslims towards their stereotypical representations
perpetuated by the media (Sachar 2006: 11-12).
In her article, which discusses the relationship between women and
nation, Deniz Kandiyoti (1994) argues that multi-religious nation-states like
India form state policies under the name of a secular state, that are
substantially influenced by the norms, values, and lifestyles of the dominant
religious group (Hindu), irrespective of the features of the other religions of
the state. According to research done by Maidul Islam the identity of a ‘Muslim
Other’ in the Indian public discourse is also influenced by decade-long
resurgence of Hindutva[1]
(Islam 2007). The Hindutva discourse views Islam as the sole locus of
Muslim women’s poor socio-economic status, ignoring the persistent and
instituationalised deprivation of Muslims in India. The Sachar Report further
confirms that:
‘The obsessive focus on
select cases of Muslim women passionately discussed in the media results in
identifying the Muslim religion as the sole locus of gender injustice in the
Community. Consequently, the civil society and the State locate Muslim women’s
deprivation not in terms of the ‘objective’ reality of societal discrimination
and faulty development policies, but in the religious-community space. This
allows the State to shift the blame to the Community and to absolve itself of
neglect.’ (Sachar 2006: 12-13)
In addition to the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case, several feminist
authors use the 1985 case of a divorced Muslim Woman, Shah Bano, as an example
of how the Hindu supremacist discourse uses the ‘plight’ of the Muslim woman as
a tactical instrument to repress the religious freedom of the minority and to
ensure its own dominance (Agnes 2012; Kirmani 2009; Kandiyoti 2004). It is
noteworthy that Shah Bano won a case in India’s supreme court granting her
maintenance rights from her husband after separation. However, the adverse comments in the judgement
against the Prophet Muhammad and Islam created a highly disempowering binary
choice between ‘Islam’ and ‘gender equity’ for Shah Bano and for other Muslim
women fighting for their right. Public furor and the possible pressure of being seen as “anti-Muslim”
forced Shah Bano to choose her Muslim loyalty over her legal rights by
rejecting the judgment in her favor. Similarly, during the 2002 Gujarat Riots,
Muslim women’s bodies were subject to endless violence, with plural and new
forms of torture, as with other ethnic conflicts elsewhere in the world. The
Gujarat Riots that killed over 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, destroyed 20,000
Muslim homes and displaced roughly 150,000 people from their homes was unique
in its ‘state sponsored veracity’ of violence against Muslim women (BBC 2004; New
York Times 2014; Varadrajan 2003). However, the gruesome sexual injustice
inflicted on Muslim women during this period was turned into a response to
historic and current Hindu grievances, which justified the communal carnage
(Agnes 2012; Anand 2007). As we now see in the recent Ishrat Jahan fake
encounter case, Ishrat’s identity as a Muslim woman – more so than any other
aspect of her identity – automatically made her a suspect for going against
the Hindu moral order of the Indian nation.
Bollywood, as a popular cultural medium, can be seen to disseminate and
reinforce this popular ideology of mistrust and suspicion towards the Muslim
community of India. Bollywood movies have in essence created stereotypical
images of Muslim characters with clichéd forms of cultural and religious
symbols like ‘beard’ and ‘caps’ for men and conservative Islamic headscarf or
‘burqa’ for women creating a monolithic portrayal of the community.
Simultaneously, these portrayals completely ignore the regional and
socio-economic differences within the community. The portrayal of Muslim men as
terrorists, villains and gangsters has also been a recurrent theme in Bollywood
movies (Islam 2007: 405-406). During the 1990s, the depictions of rogue Muslims
were restricted to Kashmiri separatists and their sympathisers along with
the underworld/mafia concentrated in Mumbai. Many films during this
period told the story of the Indian (predominantly Hindu) family threatened by
the Islamic terrorist, thus demonising the Muslim ‘other’ (Hirji 2008; Jain
2011; Rajagopal 2011). In fact, in most movies Hinduism and its cultural
symbols came across as ‘the norm’ through the elimination of the other
religions in the country (Rajagopal 2011). This coincided with the coming to
power of the Bharatia Janata Party in India with its strong Hindutva identity
created in the 1990s through the Ram Janmabhoomi[2]
movement, and the subsequent demolition of the Babri Masjid and the associated
communal riots. The Muslim as terrorist genre of movie became popular in the
1990s and themes has been elaborated and diversified in recent times with
specific references to the trans-national nature of terror since the events of
9/11 in the USA. For example, in Faana (2006), one of Bollywood’s
biggest stars Amir Khan plays the role of a Kashmiri separatist named
Rehan acting violently against the Indian nation. Although the political
ideology of Azadi (independence) from India is mentioned in passing in the
film, it is framed from the beginning as being in contrast to the patriotism of
the Muslim female lead Zooni and her school teacher parents, who are showcased
as the co-opted depoliticised ‘Good Muslims’ in Mamdani’s (2004) formulation.
Needless to say the character of Rehan in narrative plot is the embodiment
of Mamadani’s fanatical ‘Bad Muslim’ that frequently challenges
“national order of things” (Malkki 1992: 34). The plot of the ‘story’ of Fanna
appears to occur in isolation from the complex political realities and people’s
ideological positionings in Kashmir, by labelling all forms of political
dissent from Kashmiris as terrorism or anti-nationalism towards India. This
theme has frequently been replicated in many plots of movies churned out by
Bollywood in the 1990s, 2000s and after, where Kashmiris have been replaced by
Indian Muslims, and acts of political descent and disagreement with the Indian
state is labelled as anti-nationalism, constructing a patriot vs. terrorist,
dichotomy.
In the patriot-terrorist binary, as in the Good Muslim-Bad
Muslim binary, it appears that only trustworthy Muslims are those who place
India first. Notably
the title character in Fiza, Sarfarosh’s Salim, Mission
Kashmir’s Inayat Khan and Faana’s Zooni, are all religiously devout
and uncritically patriotic. The good vs. bad dichotomy also encompasses the tradition vs.
modern and religious vs. secular dichotomies wherein Muslims embodied by the
terrorists, the mafia dons, lecherous Nawab,[3]
and so on get presented as inherently incompatible with values of modernity,
democracy and secularism that the post-colonial Indian state espouses for. In
contrast, Hinduism comes to be presented as the philosophy that embraces
modernity, plurality and secularism, leading to popular views such as ‘India is
secular because Hindus respect the other views’ stated by BJP spokesperson Ravi
Shankar Prasad (Source: Zee News 2013).
Hindu-Muslim romances are also another common theme through which
Muslims are represented in Bollywood. Whether it is cross border
(India-Pakistan) or within India, the fear of intermarriage caused the success
of many Indian movies like Henna (1991), Bombay (1995), Gaadar (2001), Veer
Zaara (2004), Fanaa (2006), etc. Movies such as these serve as a reminder of
the impossibility of cross-border or cross-cultural love between Hindu-Muslim
lovers (Hirji 2008).
The nationalist ideology of Bollywood positions Qaum (community) against
Mulk (nation), which is declared as a synonym to Ghar (home) (Fazila-Yacoobali
2002: 184). According to Fazila-Yacoobali (2002), the Mulk is the Hindu,
middle-class, territorially distinct, efficient, benevolent, reasonable, forward-looking
and militarily-vigilant modern nation-state that India aspires to be. On the
other hand, Qaum is constructed as the antithesis of this Indian modernity. It
is constructed as feudal and decadent, unable to keep the sufferings of the
past in the past, unable to move forward, calcified, irrational, sentimental,
somewhat deranged, criminal and ultimately dangerous. Thus the Muslim Qaum is
viewed as threatening towards the Indian modernity because of its association
with the partition and setting up a Muslim Mulk-Pakistan as opposed to the
imagined secular Indian Mulk.
Much like the demonised Muslim man, the Muslim woman has often been
incorporated into the imagination of Bollywood as the inferior ‘other’ to the
‘ideal’ upper caste Hindu woman. This may be best illustrated by more
substantive filmic examples of the nationalist classic, Mother India (1957),
and the romantic classic Mughal-e-Azam (1960). The de-sexualised character of
Radha in Mother India is the archetypical noble Gandhian mother-submissive,
chaste, patriotic and selfless. This sharply contrasts with the character of
Anarkali in Mughal-e-Azam, who is a tawaif[4]
(courtesan) and the ultimate demure seductress and dancer with whom Mughal
Prince Jahangir falls in love and rebels against his father, Emperor Akbar. Radha is represented in a nationalistic
sari, symbolically binding or protecting her body from vulnerability and
permeability of access by men. While for Anarkali, despite her fully covered
body, her breasts are often accentuated by the cut of her dress, her swirling
dances reveal her full leg even though they are covered, and the only exposed
parts of her body, her palms and feet are fetishised through long nails painted
red, jewellery and elaborate dancing gestures using her hands and feet (Dwyer
2000: 148). If Radha represents the ideal of the coherent but gendered
nation, Anarkali represents the selfish, disruptive, rebellious and erotic
presence that disrupts status quo of power (Ansari 2008).
The image
of the veiled Muslim woman has gained iconic status, both in India and
globally. It has become a trope in support of clash of civilisations argument
between the civilised Hindus and the barbaric Muslims in India. Women’s dress in India is produced, performed
and read through an opposition of putatively ‘Hindu’, thus Indian sari, and
‘Muslim’ thus un-Indian ‘veil’[5]
(Osella and Osella 2007). Controversies around the Kashmiri militant group
Lashkar-e- Jabbar announcing that all Muslim women in Kashmir must wear a burqa[6]
became a project of marking and drawing inside/outside boundaries of Indian
Muslims nationalism (Menon, 2005). Muslim women’s choice of clothes became a
symbol of their rejection of nation. Such understandings, discounted a similar
ideology of Muslims, whereby threats to Muslim communities identity or
existence, resulted in the proud assertion of their communities' identity on
the bodies of their women (Menon, 2005). For example, in the state of Kerala
the practice of hijab was rare, but post the demolition of the Babri Mosque, it
became a more widespread practice among Muslims to establish their greater
attachment to Islamic identity, and a response to Hindu chauvinistic
nationalism displayed through the events of the demolision of the mosque
(Menon, 2005; Osella and Osella, 2007).
Such dichotomised representation of Hindu-Muslim women appears in the
imagery of the subservient veiled women evoked in the image of Muslim Pakistani
woman Zara in the movie Veer Zara who always covers her head and wears a salwar
kameez. She is indebted to the Hindu hero for saving
her life and falls in love with him, only to suffer further by her countrymen’s
conspiracy to separate her from her lover for many years. She is
shown to be passive and subservient, in need of protection from the brutish
Muslim man. Unlike the dangerous Muslim man, the Muslim women in Bollywood,
particularly post 9/11, are shown to have some possibility of redemption
through an allegiance to the nationalistic agenda. For instace, Zooni (in Faana)
sacrifices an earthly love for her lover who is a terrorist/separatist for a
larger transcendental love of the nation, much like Mother India described
earlier. In doing so, she creates a space for herself and her son as
depoliticised ‘good Muslims’ within the nationalist space of India (Khan 2009).
By assigning an intense image of the ‘dangerous other’ or the ‘inferior
other’ Kumar (2013) suggests that the image of a Muslim in Indian films have
sociologically broadened the definition of Islamic terrorism. Reducing the
discursive space accorded to Muslims in India and elsewhere making them more
vulnerable to social ostracism, state violence and mob fury. ‘The vileness
of the present discourse is such that it has Muslims forever on the defensive,
which is precisely the agenda of Hindutva and all such forms of
authoritarian ideology’ (Kumar 2013: 464). In the following sections we
illustrate the changes seen in the recent portrayals in of Muslim women in
Bollywood under the heading of the three dominant narratives of change. We also
scrutinise the nature of these changes in then in larger narratives of gender
and religion within the paradigms of Indian identity.
Creating the lived 'other' through
representations in celluloid
Narratives of Choice: Cross-cultural love,
education and public mobility
All the Muslim women characters from the selected movies, Iram in Agent
Vinod, Ek Tha Tiger’s Zoya, Ranjhanaa’s Zoya and Ishaqzade’s
Zoya are represented as educated and mobile in the public sphere either for
education, jobs or political campaigning. It is interesting to note, though
outside the scope of the current article that the culturally and geographically
specific name ‘Zoya’ has assumed such popularity in Bollywood’s
characterisation of Muslim women. These recent portrayals of the Muslim
heroines as cosmopolitan women is a leap forward from the movies of previous
generations, where Muslim women were either depicted as the seductress
(courtesan) or the subservient veiled victim of religion. For example, Zoya in Raanjhanaa
explicitly seeks to attend a University in Delhi outside her home town of
Benaras/Aligarh to escape her conservative Muslim family. Her character in fact
attributes her metamorphosis into a confident politically aware woman to her
association with the secular educational system and a supportive non-Muslim
lover. Ishaqzade’s Zoya, is also shown to be campaigning for
her father's political party, wearing a waistcoat just like her brothers’ who
join her in the campaign, and is represented as bold, vocal and aggressive in
her political pursuit. In fact, she is shown to be fearless in front of the
hero’s gun in the movie, challenging him to shoot her. Such depiction of Muslim
heroines are certainly a change from what Hirji (2008) called the ‘mysterious
figures who veer between innocent damsel in distress or exotic seductress’.
With the exception of Iram in Agent Vinod, all the other three
characters, Ek Tha Tiger’s Zoya, Ranjhanaa’s Zoya and Ishaqzade’s
Zoya appear to actively choose life partners from ‘forbidden’ or
‘enemy groups’, namely a Hindu Tiger, a Sikh Jasjeet and again a Hindu and a
political opponent Perma. While Ranjhanaa’s Zoya and Ishaqzade’s
Zoya have tragic love stories ending in the death of the two partners, Ek
Tha Tiger’s Zoya the Pakistani spy and her Indian lover
are shown to end up being together, in an unnamed foreign/western country. The
happy ending in Ek Tha Tiger’s plot can be interpreted as Zoya having
greater choice and agency in selecting her life partner and creating a space
for themselves to be together, although in hiding. However, this choice can
also be interpreted as her weakness towards earthly romantic love over the
transcendental love for her country, thus pitting her choice of a
Hindu/Indian lover against her choice of a Muslim nation (Pakistan). Additionally,
the Nationalist and/or patriarchal narratives of Hindu Indian men protecting
‘good Muslim’ women from the ‘bad Muslim’ men is visible in varying degrees in
all the four plots. In particular, Pakistani woman assisting an Indian man in discharging
his duties towards his nation also firmly makes a case for the redemption of
Pakistani (Muslim) women through her association with a Hindu man and her
encounter with a Hindu nation.
A closer look at the three choices of partners in the selected sample
reveal that the characteristics of each of these partners are associated with
an ideal ‘Indian Hindu male’. As opposed to the Hindu men, Muslim masculinity
in the selected movies are embodied by the brutish colleagues of Zoya in Ek
tha Tiger, deeply conservative fathers and male relatives of the two
Zoyas in in Raanjhanaa and Ishaqzade. Contrastingly, a chivalrous
Tiger gives up an opportunity to kill his opponent Zoya-the female Pakistani
spy in Ek Tha Tiger, even though the male Pakistanis are not bestowed
with the same kindness. This establishes firmly the possibility of redemption
for Muslim/Pakistani women through encounters with the Hindu men and the
Hindu nation as discussed earlier in the context of the “Bahu lao, beti
Bachao campaign” in some parts of India. On the other hand in Ranjhana,
Zoya’s childhood sweetheart Kundan is depicted as passionate
lover waiting for years to be with his beloved, so much so that he even endears
himself to her family by doing odd jobs for them. He is shown to be gregarious
and big hearted even in the face of Zoya’s refusal to reciprocate
his feelings. Similarly, Ishaqzade’s Zoya falls for the misogynistic
Parma when he expresses his desire to protect her family’s honour equated with
her honour (izzat) by withholding from the public information that can
potentially construed as dishonourable in the wider society. In the plots
discussed above, overall narratives are that of Muslim women being sheltered
and protected by Hindu male characters embodying the chivalrous, strong, and
virile Indian and/or Hindu masculinity as opposed to the brash, uncivilised and
uneducated Muslim masculinity.
These narratives about Muslim women’s choice of relationships, public
mobility and education indirectly help solidify the age old Hindu supremacist
narrative of disruptive Muslim masculinity. Therefore, even when the female Muslim characters are empowered to make
‘choices’ these choices are restricted within the category of benevolent and
virile Hindu men capable of protecting the Muslim women’s and the Muslim
community’s honour. It is also a fact that, while the celluloid depictions of Hindu
hero rescuing Muslim heroine are very common, the reverse scenario
involving Hindu heroine and a Muslim hero is still unimaginable. Thus
continuing two problematic traditions: firstly, that of emphasis on
family and community honour embodied by Muslim women who are finally saved by
Hindu men and secondly, that of demonisation of Muslim men, from whom these
characters need protection.
Narratives of Political Participation:
sexualised damsel(s) in distress or agents of political change?
The most intriguing portrayals of Muslim women in the public sphere in
the selected movies are Iram in Agent Vinod and in Ek tha Tiger representing
Muslim heroines as strong and independent women in the service of their nation
through espionage. Both of these characters demonstrate a seemingly effortless
ability to fit across a range of western and non-western (Pakistan) social
contexts by altering their clothing practices and demeanor, a representation
rarely found in Bollywood before. In addition, the Indian Muslim heroines, Ranjhanaa’s
Zoya is a student activist with a very well defined political agenda for social
change and towards the end of the movie she becomes the leader of a radical
political group. Ishaqzade’s Zoya is also portrayed as having strong
political ambitions including an aspiration to become the Chief Minister of the
state in future, making her the subject of ridicule from the male family
members. The political ambitions Ishaqzade’s Zoya’s are demonstrated clearly in
her actively campaigning for her father’s election and frequently leveraging
the family’s political clout. The character of Iram stands out among the four
in being forced into a career in espionage by the Pakistani secret service
agency in lieu of protection from persecution in a false case. The other three
characters seem choose their political or spy careers actively. However, a
closer examination of these portrayals shows more signs of continuity in
stereotypical representations as those needing protection of Indian (Hindu) men
and the question of women’s position in politics is still represented to be
embedded in a male-centered structure.
For instance, Ishaqzade’s Zoya chooses a career in politics where
she can leverage her family’s political clout and Ranjhanaa’s Zoya is
portrayed as carrying forward the ideological/political vision of her dead
lover. Irum and Ek Tha Tiger’s Zoya are used by Pakistani intelligence
agency to forward their country’s geo-political agendas, often using their
sexuality to distract the opposition. For instance, Iram in Agent Vinod
performs a highly sexual courtesan inspired dance sequence to distract the
enemy, while the hero, an Indian agent, tries to revoke a terrorist attack.
Thus, while Muslim women’s recent portrayals in several movies depict elements
of political participation in most cases, their feminine dispositions are
deployed towards personal, political and nationalist agendas that are not always
controlled by them.
Representation
of Muslim women as political agents, remain embedded in a patriarchal
structures whereby their political agency is converted into sexualised
narratives of damsels in distress, which ultimately helps maintain hierarchical
power relations. Firstly, the very fact that the
two strongest political agents of change, recognised formally by their
government through appointment as spies, are Pakistani and not Indian Muslim
women. Their Pakistani identity frees them from the inevitable comparison
with the ideal Hindu upper caste women as the benchmark against which Indian
Muslim women are measured. Thus they
are represented with greater agency, especially with regards to the diverse
dressing practices and practices of espionage at home and in foreign lands.
Whereas, the Indian Muslim heroines are able to practice their political agency
mostly within the restricted frameworks of family honour and shame.
Secondly, pairing of Pakistani female character with Indian male characters in
the lead allows these films to successfully maintain the communalised,
militarised and a Hindu patriarchal social structure among the genders, and
between nation states (Das 2006). This is captured first in both portrayals by Agent
Vinod’s Iram & Ek Tha Tiger’s Zoya as damsels in distress who
are then the recipients of Hindu male magnanimity and benevolence. In both
cases, the notion that perhaps the female spies are as well trained as the
their male counterparts is ignored largely in a way that focuses somehow on
their gender disposition which requires ‘protection’.
Though
the discussed portrayals of Pakistani women in Bollywood denote some
stereotypical representation of Muslim women, they also assume a futuristic
political agenda wherein unlike the older India-Pakistan related movies the
emphasis on partition and Kashmir dispute are much more muted. In fact there is
a lot of emphasis in the narrative plots of these movies to show that India has
moved on from Partition of India and Pakistan, but Pakistan has not.
Therefore, Bollywood portrayals carry forward singular and simple
construction of Hindu nation and Indians as peace loving, responsible and often
taking a paternal attitude to the actions of an irresponsible, fundamentalist
and tactless Muslim nation Pakistan.
Narratives
of sartorial display: Nationalist vs. Anti-Nationalist Clothing
The Hindu Indian women in the selected films always wear a sari, while
none of the Muslim characters are ever represented in a sari. Muslim characters
only wear salwar kameez,[7]
headscarf[8] or
western attires in the four films. Absence of representation of Muslim women in
a sari marks them as the inferior ‘other’, and the headscarf, often generalised
as the Muslim women’s ‘veil’, is the emblem of those who are ‘totally’ the
other to the nationalist Hindu women in a sari (Dwyer 2000). Ranjhanaa’s Zoya
and Ishaqzade’s Zoya, both from small towns in India, are most often
shown in salwar kameez in contrast to the western attire adorned by the two
Pakistani spies Iram and Ek Tha Tiger’s Zoya. Ishaqzaade’s Zoya
wearing a waistcoat over her kameez, can be viewed as symbol of Muslim League’s
politics in colonial India. While Ranjhaana’s Zoya wear a long
kurta (tunic) and leggings or jeans with a scarf around her neck and sometimes
a waistcoat, coat or a sweater mixing eastern and western attire, only when she
is away from her family, at her university.
Gender analysis of
nationalism demonstrate how communities vest their ‘honor’ on women’s bodies
which reproduces the boundaries of ethnic/nationalist groups (Yuval-Davis,
1989). Traditional Indian garb, like the sari- communicate positive attributes
of ‘honesty’, ‘obedience’ and represent the nation. It is a form of banal
nationalism of Hindu Indian women through their sartorial practices, in the
sense that it is everywhere and unnoticed (Wilton, 2012). The Sari is also
connected to the religious traditions of images of the Hindu goddesses,
reinforcing the identification of the sari with ideals of Hindu womanhood
(Wilton 2012; Tarlo 2007). However, Dwyer (2000) argues that many Muslim women
historically wore the sari and still do, but remain outside nationalist
discourses presented through women’s sartorial practices in Bollywood films.
Thus Muslim women’s choice of rejecting the sari becomes representative of
rejecting the nation. Western clothing also represent a challenge to Indian
sartorial conventions, whereby Hindu nationalists still prefer the sari, while
the young ‘modern’ women prefer Western style clothing (Wilton, 2012).
Western clothes are still considered more ‘revealing’ than the sari, and thus
only acceptable among unmarried younger women (Dwyer, 2000). But, a shift is
evident in the young, professional and urban Indian woman’s choice of clothing
in India, whereby in Indian newspapers and magazines most of the women are
pictured in western-style clothing (Wilton, 2012). This is also reflected in
Bollywood where heroines are now tall, thin Caucasian looking young girls often
with blue eyes, fair skin and a western accent dressed in western style
clothing conveying a modern and cosmopolitan look, able to shift comfortably
between different global contexts and settings (Bahl 2005: 106).
All Muslim heroines represented in the sample movies wear the salwar
kameez and are represented, at least once in each of these movies, in a
headscarf (either when they are praying, participating in religious ritual of
death or in a formal occasion representing the Islamic nation in an
international event), and Iram and Ek Tha Tiger’s Zoya almost always
wear western attire, such as miniskirts with knee high boots, short dresses and
hot pants. This ensures that the Muslim women in the selected films do not
challenge the status quo around the hierarchy between the superior,
idealised and nationalist Hindu women and the inferior, conservative and
anti-nationalist Muslim women even through sartorial practices.
But for the Muslim heroines of the selected sample, western wear is
still not ‘the norm’, particularly when they are in India. They only represent
a form of fusion clothing practice especially when they are in public spheres
in cosmopolitan settings, outside their family’s scrutiny. Thus although many
Bollywood movies represent their Hindu heroines in western style clothing
conveying a modern and cosmopolitan look, Indian Muslim heroines such as Ranjhanaa’s
Zoya and Ishaqzade’s Zoya are never represented in fully western
garb. Thus they are depicted as conservative and backward, thus inferior to the
modern and cosmopolitan Hindu Indian characters in various other movies of
today.
This can be further explained through the representation of the two
Pakistani Muslim heroines in predominantly sexually suggestive western wear.
Iram and Ek Tha Tiger’s Zoya, playing Pakistani ISI agents in western
countries wear western clothes being represented in a highly sexualised manner.
The only time they wear ethnic clothing, is when they are either in the company
of their fellow Muslim countrymen. In these movies, they entice the Hindu
heroes (and other men) through their beauty and sexuality, are deceitful and
dishonest, just like the courtesan characters in old Hindi films. In fact, Iram
in Agent Vinod performs a courtesan inspired dance sequence to keep the
man she is spying on enticed. Thus the western garb of the Pakistani spies are
deployed as tools of seduction by their countries and they also use their
sexuality through courtesan inspired dance to enter enemy units. Such depiction
of the Pakistani ISI agents represent them as inferior to Indian women as they
use their western sexualised sartorial practices to seduce the Hindu heroes
disrupting the Heroes’ duty to the nation. While Indian women wear western garb
as a sign of progressiveness and modernity, leading India into globalisation.
Through analysing the impossibility of representing the Muslim women in
India in either the nationalistic sari or western wear to represent their
modernity, in the selected movies, we have demonstrated that Muslim women’s
sartorial practices is a site through which hierarchies among the communities
(Hindu women and Muslim women) and between India and Pakistan (Pakistani Muslim
women and Indian women) are maintained.
Conclusion
This article has identified a number of contexts of change in the
representation of Muslim women in recent Bollywood movies. First context of
change is that Muslim characters are now being portrayed as occupying central
roles in the plots of commercially viable mainstream movies such as the four
movies from 2012-13 discussed in this paper. Secondly, there has been a
distinct diversification in the portrayals of Muslim women in different roles
and contexts. For instance, as this paper has shown, fulfilling roles of spy,
political campaigner, etc. and making active choices in terms of education,
career and life partners. This represents a change where the intersection of gender,
nationalism and religion now form their public identities, as opposed to
orientalist depiction of restrictive private lives of veiled women in previous
generation of movies. The selected portrayals attempt to break free of the
Madonna/Whore complex,[9] enabling
Muslim heroines to possess ‘respectable’ yet sexually transgressive qualities
which were historically associated only with the tawaif and had hyper
sexualised negative connotations. Thirdly, Muslim women within India are
represented in fusion wear, combination of eastern and western, in secular
spaces such as the university within India and outside India; Muslim women are
represented in western clothing as opposed to the stereotypical backward and
conservative salwar kameez or the hijab.
In order to make a realistic assessment of the recent representation of
Muslim women in Bollywood, the contexts of change need to be located within the
contexts of continuity of traditional discourse on Muslim women. The four
selected movies represent hierarchical gender relations through the mediated
modernity of Muslim women by the upper caste Hindu man. Iram seeks help from
Hindu RAW agent to put an end to her forced espionage role. Ek Tha Tiger’s
Zoya falls in love with a Hindu man and they start a life together
where he protects her from her Muslim Pakistani countrymen, who are looking to
penalise her for loving a Hindu man and betraying her country. And finally, Ranjhanaa’s
Zoya and Ishaqzade’s Zoya are both protected
by Hindu men from their conservative and aggressive Muslim male family members,
for falling in love with a Sikh and Hindu man respectively. Secondly, there are
strong elements of continuity around asymmetrical Hindu-Muslim relationship in
India. Muslim men are still portrayed as the brash, uncivilised and uneducated
‘other’, from whom the Muslim women need protection. Muslim women are differentiated
from Hindu women through sartorial practices, where they are never shown in a
nationalist sari or fully western garb as representative of modern India.
Muslim women’s identities are constructed through association of her clothing
practices with her religion or sexuality, as opposed to the Hindu women who
chooses her nation. Finally, the impossibility of a romantic relationship
between a Pakistani woman and Indian man is still upheld, as although one of
the inter-religious couples in the four movies end up together, they have to be
in hiding in western countries outside both India and Pakistan to give their
love story a happy ending. The inter-nation friction is represented through the
impossibility of cross-border love, which is still unimaginable if the lovers
are either in India or Pakistan.
To summarise, we find that Bollywood tactically adopts ‘good Muslim
women’ as a discursive troupe to reinforce the Hindu supremacist discourse that
‘Hindu men’ are the protectors of the Muslim women from the ‘bad Muslim’ men.
This conceptualisation then supports and reinforces the opposition between the
Hindu men and the Muslim men, laying down the attributes of the ideal Hindu man
(through the choice of partners) as the yardstick against which the Muslim men
should be measured. Such a discursive practice supports Das’s (2006) model that
representation of Muslim women (and men) in Bollywood helps maintain a
communalised, Hindu patriarchal structure among the genders, between
Hindu-Muslim communities in India and between India and Pakistan as
nations. We argue that ‘good Muslim’ women
do not challenge the status quo of hierarchies between the communities, and
through the acceptance of the benevolence of Hindu men align themselves with
the Indian nation, simultaneously providing a discursive blueprint for the ‘bad
Muslims’ to be accepted in the imagination of the Indian nation. This
potentially helps maintain the Hindutva or Hindu supremacist moral and national
order where violence against the Muslims are rationalised, legitimised and
normalised as strategies for building and protecting a Hindu nation.
Furthermore, the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case, with which we started
this article, is also an example of how this ideology is often also realised
outside Bollywood in real India. The record of change vis-a-vis
continuity in Muslim women’s representation in Bollywood is at best mixed and
its future highly contingent on the political climate of India.
References
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[1] Hindutva (‘Hinduness’, a word coined by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in his
1923 pamphlet entitled Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? ) is the set of
movements advocating Hindu nationalism/supremacy in India. In India, an
umbrella organisation called the Sangh Parivar champions the concept
of Hindutva. The sangh comprises organisations such as the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Bajrang
Dal, and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
[2]
Janmabhomi is a movement of various Hindu political and religious organisations
to reclaim what is believed to be the Ram Janmabhoomi (or birth place of the
Hindu deity Ram) from the Babri Masjid (mosque) constructed by Mughal ruler
Babar. It culminated into the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya my mobs
and subsequent anti Muslim riots in many parts of India.
[3] A Nawab,
is an honorific title ratified and bestowed by the reigning Mughal
Emperor to semi-autonomous Muslim rulers of princely states
in South Asia. "Nawab" usually refers to males; the female
equivalent is "Begum" or "Nawab Begum". The primary duties
of a Nawab was to uphold the sovereignty of the Mughal Emperor alongside with
the administration of a certain province.
[4] A tawaif was a courtesan who catered to the
nobility of South Asia, particularly during the era of the Mughal Empire. The
tawaifs excelled and contributed to music, dance (mujra), theatre, film, and
the Urdu literary tradition, were considered an authority on etiquette.
[5] The veil
is a generalised term used to refer to the practice of Muslim women covering
the head and chest, beyond the age of puberty
[6] An
enveloping outer garment worn by women in some Islamic traditions. Often black
in colour, it covers a woman’s whole body and has a separate headscarf.
[7] Salwar
Kameez is a long tunic like top, with loose trousers and a scarf.
[8]
Headscarves or head scarves are scarves covering most or all of
the top of a Muslim woman's hair and her head, leaving face uncovered.
[9] Madonna/whore
complex refers to the binary representation of women as respectable,
subservient and often publicly inaccessible and he contrasting image of women
as highly sexualised, publicly visible and accessible Tawaifs and dancing girls
(Hirji, 2008).