'Bad' Women of Bombay Films: Studies in Desire and Anxiety [1st ed. 2019] 978-3-030-26787-2, 978-3-030-26788-9

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xx
Introduction: Breaking Bad (Saswati Sengupta, Shampa Roy, Sharmila Purkayastha)....Pages 1-24
Front Matter ....Pages 25-25
Desire, Deviancy and Defiance in Bombay Cinema (1930s–1950s) (Ira Bhaskar)....Pages 27-44
“haan, haan mein alaida hoon!” (Yes, Yes I Am Different!): The Disorderly Bibi in Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam (1962) (Shampa Roy, Saswati Sengupta)....Pages 45-62
The Goddess of Mean Things: The Mother-in-Law in Hindi Films (Mrinal Pande)....Pages 63-71
“ek admi tha, usne shadi karli...” (There Was a Man, Who Got Married...): Female Agency and Domestication in Omkara (2006) (Anjali Yadav, Anusha Choudhary, Divya Gupta, Ifsha Zehra, Neha Jaji Varghese, Prachi Khari et al.)....Pages 73-90
Front Matter ....Pages 91-91
The Politics of Sanitization/Sanskritization: The Court Dancers and Classical Pasts (Rajnartaki, 1941; Chitralekha, 1964; Amrapali, 1966) (Deepika Tandon)....Pages 93-111
Goddess, Saint and Journeying Soul: Courtesans and Religion in Bombay Cinema (1939–2015) (Ruth Vanita)....Pages 113-130
The Prison-House of Performance: The Figure of the Dancing Girl in Bombay Films of the 1960s (Sameera Mehta)....Pages 131-147
Guns, Gangsters, and “gandagi”: The Moll in Hindi Cinema (Neha Yadav)....Pages 149-166
Sex Workers in Hindi Cinema: Imagos and Realities (Rakesh Shukla)....Pages 167-184
Front Matter ....Pages 185-185
The Caged Woman: Female Guilt, Desire and Transgression in Bandini (1963) (Smita Banerjee)....Pages 187-201
“itni bhhi mahaan main nahi hoon, raja!” (I’m not that Great, O King): The Angry Young Woman of the 1970s (Menka Ahlawat)....Pages 203-221
Outcast[e]/Outlawed: The Bandit Queen (1996) (Neha Dixit)....Pages 223-240
The Female “Atankvadi”: Gender, Militancy and the Politics of Representation in the Late 1990s (Isha Purkayastha)....Pages 241-257
Honoured Mother and ‘Honour’ Killing: Ammaji in NH10 (2015) (Nonica Datta)....Pages 259-274
Front Matter ....Pages 275-275
Of Pallus and Pants: Fabricating the New Woman of the New Nation in Andaz (1949), Mr. and Mrs. 55 (1955), Shri 420 (1955) (Nupur Mittal)....Pages 277-295
Consumer Pleasures and Hindi Cinema’s En-gendered Distribution of Moral Capital in Hum Aapke Hain Koun (1994) and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011) (Megha Anwer)....Pages 297-312
Twenty-First-Century Heroines: Modernity in Cocktail (2012), Queen (2014) and Highway (2014) (Puja Sen)....Pages 313-330
Curiosity, Consent and Desire in Masaan (2015), Pink (2016), Lipstick Under My Burkha (2016) and Veere Di Wedding (2018) (Abhija Ghosh)....Pages 331-343
Front Matter ....Pages 345-345
“naye naam nit naye roop dhar” (Don New Names and New Forms Daily): The Figure of the Actress in Popular Hindi Cinema (Shikha Kothiyal)....Pages 347-364
Playing Anaarkali (2017): Gender, Morality and Erotica (An Interview with Swara Bhasker)....Pages 365-373
Back Matter ....Pages 375-381

Citation preview

‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films Studies in Desire and Anxiety

Edited by  Saswati Sengupta · Shampa Roy · Sharmila Purkayastha

‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films

Saswati Sengupta  •  Shampa Roy Sharmila Purkayastha Editors

‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films Studies in Desire and Anxiety

Editors Saswati Sengupta Department of English Miranda House, Delhi University Delhi, India

Shampa Roy Department of English Miranda House, Delhi University Delhi, India

Sharmila Purkayastha Department of English Miranda House, Delhi University Delhi, India

ISBN 978-3-030-26787-2    ISBN 978-3-030-26788-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Dinodia Photos / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

to all those of the English Department of Miranda House who taught us about collective endeavour and especially in this instance Masooma Ali (1941–2015) and Zakia Pathak (1931–2018)

Acknowledgements

Bad Women began more than three years ago on a hot summer afternoon in Miranda House. Teaching was over for the semester but (dreaded) administrative work remained. We realized while tabulating points for fresh recruits—according to the new system under the University Grants Commission—that our brightest graduates needed publications to make their mark. The idea of a Miranda House book with a mix of established and young scholars began to take shape. Why not a book, we thought, that maps the history of desire and anxiety underlying the cinematic representation of the modern “Indian” woman? Hindi films arguably comprise one of the most powerful cultural narratives of contemporary India. Increasingly in the classroom we draw examples from films, and the ideological representation of women in cinema concerns us, teachers as well as students, in particular. Once the idea was mooted, colleagues, ex-colleagues, students and ex-students responded with enthused excitement. Thus began Bad Women, with a particular resonance for the Department of English, Miranda House, known as it is for its examination of patriarchal politics. The circle widened. Palgrave Macmillan, especially Shaun Vigil, agreed that our Bad Women should be set out in the world. Glenn Ramirez, Camille Davies, Carolyn Zhang and Vipin Kumar Mani responded with patience to our multiple queries to ensure that the journey remain a smooth one. Sangeeta Roy set to order a disorderly table of one genre of disruptive women. Sabyasachi Sengupta helped generously in imaging the bad women— both in terms of concept and technique—without which a book about films would have been glaringly incomplete. The end of the beginning seemed near. vii

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Beginnings, however, as Edward Said has cautioned, are not divinely original but secular, humanly produced and need to be ceaselessly re-­ examined. And thus even as the project nears completion, we wonder about our sense of beginning and remember other moments, events and dramatis personae of our department and college that made this beginning and the collective endeavour possible. Our alliterative title gestures at another beginning and process. Bombay, iconically associated with Hindi cinema, is now called Mumbai. Individual chapters have used the term ‘Bombay’ or ‘Hindi’ depending upon the context.

Contents

1 Introduction: Breaking Bad  1 Saswati Sengupta, Shampa Roy, and Sharmila Purkayastha Part I The Disorderly Presence at Home  25 2 Desire, Deviancy and Defiance in Bombay Cinema (1930s–1950s) 27 Ira Bhaskar 3  “haan, haan mein alaida hoon!” (Yes, Yes I Am Different!): The Disorderly Bibi in Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam (1962) 45 Shampa Roy and Saswati Sengupta 4 The Goddess of Mean Things: The Mother-­in-­Law in Hindi Films 63 Mrinal Pande 5  “ek admi tha, usne shadi karli...” (There Was a Man, Who Got Married...): Female Agency and Domestication in Omkara (2006) 73 Anjali Yadav, Anusha Choudhary, Divya Gupta, Ifsha Zehra, Neha Jaji Varghese, Prachi Khari, Shaifali Singh, Soumya Sharma, Tooba Towfiq, and Violina Barman ix

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CONTENTS

Part II The Business of the Body  91 6 The Politics of Sanitization/Sanskritization: The Court Dancers and Classical Pasts (Rajnartaki, 1941; Chitralekha, 1964; Amrapali, 1966) 93 Deepika Tandon 7 Goddess, Saint and Journeying Soul: Courtesans and Religion in Bombay Cinema (1939–2015)113 Ruth Vanita 8 The Prison-House of Performance: The Figure of the Dancing Girl in Bombay Films of the 1960s131 Sameera Mehta 9 Guns, Gangsters, and “gandagi”: The Moll in Hindi Cinema149 Neha Yadav 10 Sex Workers in Hindi Cinema: Imagos and Realities167 Rakesh Shukla Part III The Question of Violence 185 11 The Caged Woman: Female Guilt, Desire and Transgression in Bandini (1963)187 Smita Banerjee 12 “itni bhhi mahaan main nahi hoon, raja!” (I’m not that Great, O King): The Angry Young Woman of the 1970s203 Menka Ahlawat 13 Outcast[e]/Outlawed: The Bandit Queen (1996)223 Neha Dixit 14 The Female “Atankvadi”: Gender, Militancy and the Politics of Representation in the Late 1990s241 Isha Purkayastha

 CONTENTS 

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15 Honoured Mother and ‘Honour’ Killing: Ammaji in NH10 (2015)259 Nonica Datta Part IV The Advent of the New Woman 275 16 Of Pallus and Pants: Fabricating the New Woman of the New Nation in Andaz (1949), Mr. and Mrs. 55 (1955), Shri 420 (1955)277 Nupur Mittal 17 Consumer Pleasures and Hindi Cinema’s En-gendered Distribution of Moral Capital in Hum Aapke Hain Koun (1994) and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011)297 Megha Anwer 18 Twenty-First-Century Heroines: Modernity in Cocktail (2012), Queen (2014) and Highway (2014)313 Puja Sen 19 Curiosity, Consent and Desire in Masaan (2015), Pink (2016), Lipstick Under My Burkha (2016) and Veere Di Wedding (2018)331 Abhija Ghosh Part V The Screening of the Actress 345 20 “naye naam nit naye roop dhar” (Don New Names and New Forms Daily): The Figure of the Actress in Popular Hindi Cinema347 Shikha Kothiyal 21 Playing Anaarkali (2017): Gender, Morality and Erotica365 An Interview with Swara Bhasker Index375

Notes on Contributors

Menka Ahlawat  graduated from Miranda House and obtained her MPhil degree in literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is an Assistant Professor  of English at Mata Sundri College for Women, Delhi University. Megha  Anwer is a Clinical Assistant Professor and the Director of Diversity and Inclusion at the Honors College, Purdue University, USA.  Anwer’s work has appeared in journals such as Victorian Studies, Global South, ARIEL, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Short Film Studies, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, and Wide Screen. Smita Banerjee  is an Associate Professor in English at Delhi College of Arts & Commerce, Delhi University. She has edited a research monograph titled Tawaif and the Travelling Bioscope and published articles on Bengali film industry in the 1950s and popular Bengali film stars, Suchitra Sen and Uttam Kumar. Her script translation of the Bengali auteur Ritwick Ghatak’s film Komal Gandhar (1965) is forthcoming. She is working on a book manuscript based on her dissertation: The Suchitra-Uttam yug; Modernity, Melodrama and Self-Fashioning in Popular Bangla Cinema of the 1950s–70s. Ira  Bhaskar is Professor of Cinema Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has coauthored Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema and is currently working on a co-edited volume of essays, Bollywood’s Islamicate Idioms, Cultures and Histories. She is also editing a volume of Ritwik Ghatak’s xiii

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­screenplays—Ghatak’s Partition Quartet—and is working on her book on trauma, memory and representation in Indian cinema. Swara  Bhasker graduated from Miranda House and has, in a short period, acquired an impressive, award winning and diverse body of cinematic work, which includes commercial hits and content-driven independent projects. Her performance in Anaarkali has been hailed as giving Bollywood a new fierce, fiery, raw and real, flawed and unapologetic heroine. With a Masters in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has done archival research and her articles have appeared widely in several national dailies and magazines. She is also an active cultural and political activist. Nonica Datta  is the author of Forming an Identity: A Social History of the Jats (1999) and Violence, Martyrdom and Partition: A Daughter’s Testimony (2012). She taught History in Miranda House before moving to the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Neha  Dixit graduated from Miranda House  and is  an independent journalist based in New Delhi. She covers politics, gender and social justice in South Asia. She reports for Al Jazeera, Smithsonian, Caravan and others. She has won multiple awards including Kurt Schork Award in International Journalism 2014, Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Woman Journalist 2016 and International Press Freedom Award 2019, among others. Abhija Ghosh  is a PhD candidate in Cinema Studies, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She had been a Fulbright Visiting scholar (2017–2018) at the Center for Culture, Media and History, Department of Anthropology, New  York University. Her present research focuses on memory, nostalgia and romance in 90s Bombay Cinema and its subsequent digital resurgence. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Miranda House, Delhi University. Shikha  Kothiyal  graduated from Miranda House and is an Assistant Professor of English  at Gargi College,  Delhi University. Her MPhil research examined the poetry and politics of incarcerated women in the USA. Her other areas of research interest include African-American literature, feminist theory and speculative fiction.

  NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 

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Sameera Mehta  graduated from Miranda House and obtained her MPhil in literature from Delhi University. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Jesus and Mary College, Delhi University. Some of her previously published work can be accessed in Umbra: A Quarterly Newspaper of Alternative Film, South-Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, and Lapis Lazuli: An International Literary Journal. She’s also a peer reviewer for the journal Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies (LLIDS). Nupur  Mittal graduated from Miranda House  and is an  Assistant Professor of English at Shyama Prasad Mukherji College, Delhi University. She obtained her  MPhil in literature  from Delhi University. Her work exploring postcolonial fiction’s problematization of the grand narratives of normative modernity, has appeared in international journals. Mrinal  Pande  has taught at the Universities of Allahabad, Delhi and Bhopal. She has edited well-known Hindi periodicals, Vama and Saptahik Hindustan. She was the editor-anchor for Hindi news in NDTV and for Doordarshan and also the Secretary General of the Editors’ Guild of India. She was the founder president of the Indian Women’s Press Corps and has been a member of the National Board for Film Certification and the Chairman of Prasar Bharati. Ms. Pande has been writing in both Hindi and in English. Her work covers fiction, plays and essays on contemporary India and its women. She was awarded the Padmashree in 2006 for her services in the field of journalism. Isha Purkayastha  graduated from Miranda House and is a member of English Department, Mallya Aditi International School, Bangalore. She also works as a freelance writer and journalist for various digital publishing platforms. Sharmila  Purkayastha  is an  Associate Professor of English at Miranda House, Delhi University. She is the co-editor of Towards Freedom: Critical Essays on Rabindranath Tagore’s Ghare Baire/Home and the World (2007) and is working on women’s prison writings of the 1970s in India. Shampa  Roy  is an Associate Professor of English at Miranda House, Delhi University. Her articles on topics ranging from memsahibs’ writings to postcolonial pedagogy have appeared in international journals. She has co-edited Towards Freedom: Critical Essays on Rabindranath Tagore’s Ghare Baire/Home and the World (2007) and authored In Zenanas and Beyond: Representations of Indian Women in British Colonial Texts, 1800–1935 (2011) and Gender and Criminality in Bangla Crime

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Narratives: Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Palgrave Macmillan, UK, 2017). Her translation of some early Bangla crime writings will be published by Routledge in December 2019. Puja Sen  graduated from Miranda House and obtained her MPhil in literature from Delhi University. She is an editor for the long-form narrative journalism magazine The Caravan. Previously, she was based in Kathmandu, Nepal, where she worked with the politics and culture magazine, Himal Southasian. She is a contributor to The Wire, Scroll.in, Cityscapes Magazine, The Book Review, among others. Saswati Sengupta  is an Associate Professor of English at Miranda House, Delhi University. Her book, Mutating Goddesses and Gender Rights will be published by Oxford University Press, 2020 and she has contributed to Goddesses: The Oxford History of Hinduism (2018). She has co-edited Towards Freedom: Critical Essays on Rabindranath Tagore’s Ghare Baire/ Home and the World (2007) and Revisiting Abhijñānaśākuntalam: Love, Lineage and Language in Kālidasa’s Nātaka (2012). Her fiction, The Song Seekers (Zubaan and Chicago University Press, 2011), was long listed for the DSC award for South Asian Literature and has also been translated into Italian. Rakesh Shukla  has over three decades of engagement with law, constitutional jurisprudence, human rights and justice melded with training and practice in psychodynamic therapy. His writings on law and psychology have appeared in major newspapers and journals and as handbooks. Deepika Tandon  is an Associate Professor of English, Miranda House, Delhi University. She has co-edited Revisiting Abhijñānaśākuntalam: Love, Lineage and Language in Kālidasa’s Nātaka (2012). Ruth  Vanita former Reader at Miranda House and the English Department, Delhi University, is now a Professor, Global Humanities & Religions and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Director of South & South-East Asian Studies at the University of Montana. Co-editor of Manushi, India’s first nationwide feminist magazine, from 1978 to 1990, she works on Indian and British literature, with a focus on intellectual history. Author of many books and an acclaimed translator of fiction and poetry from Hindi and Urdu into English, her most recent publication is Dancing with the Nation: Courtesans in Bombay Cinema (2018).

  NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 

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Anjali  Yadav, Anusha  Choudhary, Divya  Gupta, Ifsha  Zehra, Neha  Jaji  Varghese, Prachi  Khari, Shaifali  Singh, Soumya  Sharma, Tooba Towfiq, Violina Barman  This group of undergraduate students of Miranda House came together to make a documentary on the representation of Kashmir in Hindi films: “Jannat: Romance, Representation and Reality” (2016). It propelled them towards a critical study of the politics of representation in Hindi Cinema. They are now pursuing higher studies in different disciplines and taking on patriarchy in its many avataras. Neha Yadav  graduated from Miranda House and has worked as a journalist with a digital media company after completing her MA degree from Delhi University. She is working on the Indian graphic novel as a PhD candidate at Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Goa. Her work has appeared in Scroll, The Wire, and EPW Engage among others. She is also on the editorial board of Torchlight, a journal of libraries and bookish love.

List of Tables

Table 9.1 Table 12.1 Table 12.2

The Moll in Hindi Cinema: A Tabular Glance Angry Young Man films Angry Young Woman films

153 205 206

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Shashikala (Anupama, 1966); Waheeda Rehman (Guide, 1965) (Editors’ Screengrab)

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Breaking Bad Saswati Sengupta, Shampa Roy, and Sharmila Purkayastha

hum hein mata-e-kucha o bazaar ki tarah uthti hein har nigah kharidaar ki tarah. (Dastak 1970)1 I am like a commodity in market-lanes all eyes gaze on me as though of a buyer.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that women in Hindi films—rather than Bollywood since it is a brand of films that is not just mimicry of Hollywood—are offered as spectacular objects of desire. The embedded political, aesthetic and moral attributes of this desire, given that the Hindi cinematic tradition, like the Indian market, has been dominated by empowered men, is refracted through corresponding privileged and sectarian interests. Evoking the paradigm of Parsi theatre, an influential precursor to Hindi films, where the young male “baby-faced players of female roles polished and polished the art of female impersonation”, Mrinal Pande has 1

 Lata Mangeshkar; lyrics Majrooh Sultanpuri; music Madan Mohan.

S. Sengupta (*) • S. Roy • S. Purkayastha Department of English, Miranda House, Delhi University, Delhi, India e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_1

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argued that femininity in Hindi films, “have all been created, not born”.2 Yet, this construction of women, despite hegemonic representations and dominant typologies, reveals complex and ambiguous subjectivities. ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films: Studies in Desire and Anxiety is a feminist mapping of the articulation and suppression of female desires in Hindi films. It explores the lineament of evil and the corresponding closure of chastisement or domesticity that appear as necessary conditions for the representation of subversive female desires. The book also foregrounds articulations that challenge and dismantle such imprisonments. Our “ways of seeing”3 and the “visual pleasure in narrative cinema”4 as facilitated by the “camera obscura”—“a metaphor for the functioning of ideology by Marx and for the process of the unconscious by Freud”—is the convergence of representations, power relations and their material bases.5 Films, arguably the dominant cultural narrative of our times, play a significant role in the ideological manoeuvering of desire that has been conceptualized variously as “troubled water” (Sartre), signifying a “lack” (Freud, Lacan), an internalization of social codes and “a function of market economy” (Deleuze and Guattari), gendered and, yet, fundamentally inventive (Irigaray, Grosz).6 Further, this gendered map of desire is underscored by the cultural, social and economic differences among women (Spivak).7 Ashis Nandy in a dismissive mode summarizes that, “the popular Hindi film is not concerned with the inner life of the characters on screen”.8 But Hindi cinema where meaning is fabricated through the warp and woof of songs, choreographed dances, formulaic plots with their predictable generic endings, costumed characters enacted often by larger than life “stars” has developed “a distinctly expressive melodramatic language of affect”.9 The grammar and semiotics of interiority in Hindi films is different from that of realism, the dominant western mimetic mode since the late eighteenth century whose attention to quotidian details helps r­ epresent

 Pande (2006: 1646).  Berger (1972). 4  Mulvey (1998: 57–68). 5  Jones ed. (Jones 2003: 237). 6  Sartre, Trans. Barnes (Sartre 1956: 387; Dollimore 1998: 194; Bogue 1989: 90; Irigarary 1985: 28–30; Grosz 1994: 76). 7  Morton ed. (2003: 83). 8  Nandy (1981: 90). 9  Bhaskar (2012: 163). 2 3

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its plot developments and characterizations as teleological and natural, mystifying in the process its ideological positions. Even a random harvest of Hindi films, where the formulaic, the fantastic and the real cohabit, yields desiring women. The declaration of their agency is quite often through songs, albeit penned by male lyricists and helmed by male directors. The singing female figures are often framed against open and expansive landscapes, quite at odds with the confinements of their domesticated lives: badti chaloon gaati chaloon apni lagan mein aaj mein azad hoon duniya ke chaman mein…. (Chori Chori 1956)10 Singing, I move on in my own pursuit today I’m free in the garden of this world.

This articulation of selfhood that also resonates the decolonized new nation through the evocative word azad/free is often enacted as an exploration of an unknown space visually represented by women negotiating the public terrain on foot, carts, cycles, cars and trains: mausam mastana rasta anjana jane kab kis more pe ban jaye koi afsana... (Satte Pe Satta 1982)11 The weather is carefree, the road uncertain who knows what turn it takes to create a legend.

The female journey is usually truncated by the appearance of the hero and the allure of heterosexual romance but the layering over cannot erase entirely the admission of female picaresque machalti arzoo/intoxicating desire (Parakh 1960).12 This yearning desire to seize the moment is articulated sometimes as an inchoate awakening— chanchal ho gaye ghungroo mere raton raat kya? (Abhinetri 1970)13 Have my anklets become lively overnight?

—and sometimes as a conscious break from the past:  Lata Mangeshkar; lyrics Hasrat Jaipuri; music Shankar Jaikishen.  Asha Bhonsle; lyrics Gulshan Bawra; music R.D. Burman. 12  Lata Mangeshkar; lyrics Shailendra; music Salil Chowdhury. 13  Lata Mangeshkar; lyrics Majrooh Sultanpuri; music Laxmikant Pyarelal. 10 11

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aaj phir jeene ki tamanna hai… (Guide 1965)14 Today, I wish to live again….

Domestic duties, wifehood and motherhood will eventually discipline these women through the teleological plot of traditional satisfaction. But for the moment they revel in their exhilarating sexuality, and in their freedom to explore and challenge institutionalized faiths: hoon abhi mein jawaan ae dil … mujh ko behak jaane de, batein na kar hosh ki… (Aar-Paar 1952)15 I am young right now, my heart let me lose my way, let there be no talk of being sensible… yeh meri zindagi ek paagal hawa aaj idhar kal udhar mein kisi ki nahin; (Ziddi 1964)16 This is my life, an uncontrolled breeze now here, now there, I belong to none; purdah nahi jab koi khuda se bando se purdah karna kya. (Mughal-e-Azam 1960)17 Where there is no veil from God why hide anything from mortals.

However, while gesturing at the symbolic secular-modern as the clarion cry for change— door kahin gujre rail kisi pul pe gunje dhara dhari suno… (Sapnay 1997)18 Somewhere faraway a train crosses a bridge listen to that rumbling echo…

 Lata Mangeshkar; lyrics Shailendra; music S.D. Burman.  Geeta Dutt; lyrics Majrooh Sultanpuri; music O.P. Nayyar. 16  Lata Mangeshkar; lyrics Hasrat Jaipuri; music S.D. Burman. 17  Lata Mangeshkar; lyrics Shakeel Badayuni; music Naushad. 18  Hema Sardesai and Malaysia Vasudevan; lyrics Javed Akhtar; music A.R. Rahman. 14 15

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—the desiring women also admit a more complex internalization: raat aur din key ye do chehere kab tak pehnu kuch to kehre… (Raat aur Din 1967)19 These two masks, of night and day, how long do I wear, please do say…

This raat aur din/day and night of female desires intimated through the telos of the plot, dialogues, songs, camera work, enactment, and so on that threaten to crack the supposedly mirrored images of gendered reality often constitute a dissonance in the films. It is this discordance that comprises the focal point of our book’s exploration of Hindi films’ representation of “bad” women and their disruptive and disorderly selves. Bad! The word may immediately gesture at an essential and a-historical moral universe and to that extent, our use of the term is heuristic. We focus on “bad” women—though of course, we do not assume that ‘bad’ is an autonomous state marked off from the good—as liminal who illuminate the desires and anxieties that society needs to police, marginalize and repress. The bad women who require domestication and/or chastisement also mark the historical moment of their articulation and the power of patriarchy whose success lies in its mutability in negotiating and domesticating the “new woman” of each age. Female desires in Hindi films are engendered and regulated by patriarchal structures of power, but their articulations occur within the experiences of modernity which can never be wholly contained within patriarchy. Modernity is “the self-understanding of a new present and its sloughing-off of some past … marks the dividing line between today and yesterday, between what, at a given moment, counts as new and what counts as old”.20 Contra to this understanding, postcolonial critics in their study of Bollywood insist on the hegemonic presence of Western modernity as the marker of cultural resistance. Besides the neocolonial labelling of Hindi cinema as “Bollywood”, postcolonialism’s denial of the universality of modernity, albeit uneven, is at the heart of its misreading of “Bollywood’s” cultural transformation of the “taproot of Western modernity”.21 But, modernity is also much more than the expected debate between old and new, East and West; it refers to a whole slew of social  Lata Mangeshkar; lyrics Shailendra; music Shankar Jaikishen.  Jauss (2005: 332). 21  Ashcroft (2012: 2). 19 20

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experiences ushered in by the processes of modernization, such as industrialization and corresponding urbanization and the more recent phase of globalization. Whether as “desiring” women who want better worlds of social relationships and opportunities or as the archetypal consumers of the growing markets, modernity creates new women and newer desires and aspirations. In the Indian context, this modernity is coterminous with the promise of equality in a new nation and the shaping of constitutional rights of women as citizens. However, given the chequered realization of these promises, the gendered experiences of modernity and their cinematic representations have never been either static or monolithic. Within this journey of modernity, the gap between female desire and male control is inevitable and the expected stereotypes of “bad” women are never culturally constant. In fact, the supposed causal connections of the plot (and its punitive actions) often constitute the mystified material relations of power. An examination of the politics of familial and the political, the two realms which exhibit patriarchal stereotypes and typologies of female desire, delineate why the personal and the political can never be separated in the context of “bad” women. Also, it is in the process of uncovering the relationship between the popular portrayal of “bad” women and their material contexts that the nexus between patriarchy and other hierarchies, such as class, caste, religion and so on begin to emerge.

Policing the Private Women are hegemonically perceived in familial terms and it is in this context that Hindi cinema overwhelmingly locates them. The typically animated reel family—the supposed repository of ideal collaborativeness and traditional Indianness—is an elite construction of unitary culture that glosses different gendered relations, domesticity, labour and desire. The academic discourse on Hindi cinema, which argues that “the joint family … (is) a defining feature of Indian culture and society … and is a celebration of the Hindu undivided family or Hindu family values”, obliterates the need to see this construct as ideologically marked.22 This essentializing academic discourse is indifferent to the ways in which class, caste, religion and gender help shape a complex variety of households and familial arrange-

 Dwyer (2014: 132).

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ments unevenly distributed across different regional, urban, semi-urban and rural contexts and their cinematic representations.23 The fetishized notions of farz (duty), balidaan (sacrifice), khandan-ki-­ izzat (family honour), parampara (tradition) and so on that gird the master narratives of this idealized family have, of course, been questioned again and again in Hindi films through an appeal for a greater inclusiveness that comprises its enduring charm as also its claim to modernity. The typical plotting of this interrogation follows one of the two trajectories: the conflict between the father and the son or between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law. Young men who defy familial authority or distance themselves from the household and choose an individualistic trajectory become protagonists in coming-of-age films that celebrate their journey of maturation but does not dismantle phallocentric power.24 In fact, the successful end of this journey is often marked by the hero’s ability to choose the “right” girl—the potential adarsh bahu/the ideal wife— after being drawn to and forfeiting the dangerously attractive “other” woman.25 This “other” woman also often becomes synonymous with the “vamp” whose unregulated sexuality and an existence seemingly outside of familial structures is symptomatic of her feudal decadence or western modernity and who then either deserves to die (“an unsplendid, unremarked death”) or disappears by the end of the film.26 The female t­ rajectory 23  In films like M.S. Sathyu’s Garam Hawa (1973), Shyam Benegal’s Manthan (1976), Muzaffar Ali’s Gaman (1978), Sagar Sarhadi’s Bazaar (1982) or Gulzar’s Namkeen (1982), female desire is undermined by the material and familial locations of the protagonist. 24  Some examples: V.K.  Asif’s Mughal e Azam (1960); D.D.  Kashyap’s Maya (1961); Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Asli Naqli (1962); B.R.  Panthulu’s Dil Tera Deewana (1962); T.P. Rao’s Izzat (1968); Madan Sinha’s Imtihaan (1974); Ramesh Sippy’s Shakti (1982); Deepak Shivdasani’s Baaghi (1990); Aziz Mirza’s Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman (1992); Kundan Shah’s Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na (1994);Vikram Bhatt’s Ghulam (1998); Karan Johar’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001); Ayan Mukherji’s Wake up Sid (2009); Imtiaz Ali’s Rockstar (2011); and Vikramaditya Motwane’sUdaan (2010). 25  Some examples are: Kidar Nath Sharm’s Bawre Nain (1959); Dev Anand’s Prem Pujari (1970); Narendra Bedi’s Dil Diwana (1974); Lekh Tandon’s Dulhan Wahi Jo Piya Man Bhaaye (1977); Dasari Naryana Rao’s Swarg Narak (1978); Mansoor Khan’s Jo Jeeta Wahi Sikandar (1982); Deepak Sarin’s Aaina (1993); Kunal Kohli’s Mujhse Dosti Karoge (2002); and Homi Adjania’s Cocktail (2012). 26  Quotation from Pinto (2006: 124). Some examples of this stereotype are Raj Kapoor’s Shri 420 (1955); Raj Khosla’s Kaala Paani (1958); B.S. Ranga’s Pyar Kiya toh Darna Kya (1964); Raja Paranjpe’s Love and Murder (1966); Vinod Kumar’s Mere Huzoor (1968); Bhappi Sonie’s Preetam (1971); Ravikant’s Mere Jeevan Saathi (1972); Brij’s Bombay 405Miles (1980). More recently, the sexually uninhibited and liminal “vamp” figure has, at

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of rebellion, in contrast to male stories, has been plotted as a cautionary tale about the grave perils that await a woman who dares to make and stand by her defiant choices. Thus, female assertion of agency is subsumed in the film’s insistent and overpowering focus on representing her journey of survival outside familial structures in terms of tragic suffering.27 Or, when told in a comedic form, her rebellion is cast as a naïve and tempestuous decision leading inevitably to a series of narrowly missed disasters which only help emphasize the inescapable need for male assistance and familial protection represented in the guise of romance.28 Female “badness” in the context of the family has also been articulated through the figure of a daughter-in-law/wife whose desire for a different lifestyle destabilizes her putative role as an unquestioning performer of familial duties within the idealized parivar/family. This kind of female agency and expressions of desire that attempt to defy the mantras of farz/ duty and parivar/family are seen as deserving of castigation, punishing marginalization or re-integration into the family only after a neutralizing of their agency and assertiveness. Strong statements of self-assertion by daughters-in-law like— main unn ladkiyon mein se nahin jo bezubaan jaanwaron ki tarah sasuralwaalon ki zulm sahti rahein! … .aap logon ke liye toh adarsh bahu wahi hai jo chupchaap badon ki ishaaron par kathputli ki tarah naachti rahe! (Raj Khosla’s Do Raaste 1969)

times, morphed into female protagonists or parallel female leads of films like Amit Saxena’s Jism (2003);Vikram Bhatt’s Jurm (2005); Mohit Suri’s Zeher (2005); Abbas Mastan’s Ajnabee (2001), Aitraaz (2003) and Race (2008). Nevertheless, the telos of the plots of these films also ensure that the femme fatale with her anarchic desires is represented as deserving an inevitable punitive destiny. 27  Some examples  are: Mehboob Khan’s Andaz (1949); S.U.  Sunny’s Babul (1950); Kalidas’s Adalat (1958); Shakti Samanta’s Kati Patang (1970); Shiv Kumar’s Hum, Tum aur Who (1971); Dev Anand’s Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971); S.S.  Balan’s Sanjog (1972); Yash Chopra’s Daag (1973); Shakti Samanta’s Ajanabee and Charitraheen (1974); Dulal Guha’s Do Anjaane (1976); Ramesh Gupta’s Tyaagpatra (1978); Esmayeel Shroff’s Thodisi Bewafaii (1980); Vijay Sadanah’s Pyaar Jhukta Nahin (1985); and Milan Luthria’s The Dirty Picture (2011). 28  Some examples are: Anant Thakur’s Chori Chori (1950);Vijay Anand and Hiren Nag’s Nau Do Gyarah (1957); Raj Khosla’s Solva Saal (1958); Vijay’s Suhana Safar (1970); Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Guddi (1971); S.  Ramanathan’s Bombay to Goa (1972); Mahesh Bhatt’s Dil Hai Ki Maanta Nahin (1991); Anees Bazmee’s Pyaar Toh Honaa Hi Thaa (1998); and Imtiaz Ali’s Jab We Met (2007).

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I am not like those girls who bear their in-laws’ persecution like voiceless beasts… For all of you the ideal daughter-in-law would be one who would silently dance to the tune of the elders like a puppet.29

—reveal their urge to rupture the sentimentalized rhetoric which fortifies the oppression of women within families. This critique of the family is often deflected since the daughter-in-law’s brash modernity is made synonymous with unbridled greed, both sexual and material, which justifies the telos of her punitive destiny. In the familial plot of Hindi films, the oppression arising out of the structural fault lines of the family were often displaced on to the “cruel” mother-in-law and this figuration came to be personified by the actress Lalita Pawar (1916–1998) as “relentlessly malicious”,30 whose typical utterances were: aise kar rahi hai jaise ki iske ma-baap ne dahej mein do chaar naukar saath mein bheje hain! (V. Shantaram’s Dahej 1950) Look at her behaving as if she has brought two or three servants along with her as part of her dowry!

Or, sasural mein nai bahu ki khatir chaar din ki hoti hein … aaj se saare ghar ka kaam tum karogi! (Ram Maheswari’s Neel Kamal 1968) The new bride is pampered only for four days at her marital home ... From today you will do all the housework!

This representation of the mother-in-law as a repository of evil in the formulaic narrative of the family, rather than as a capillary of patriarchal power, insidiously insinuates that a change of heart is all that is required to address disquiet and distress, obfuscating the iniquitous structures of 29  In the same film by Raj Khosla, however, the character of Mumtaz, a college going girl and sister to the “bad” daughter-in-law, asserts in a playful manner to her boyfriend in the hugely successful song, bindiya chamke gi: “main tumse mohabbat ki hai,/ghulaami nahin ki nalma” (I have loved you/I have not enslaved myself). But then she does not go on to challenge the norms of the ideal joint family based on the principles of “sacrifice”. 30  Quote from Gulzar, Nihalani and Chatterjee ed. (2003: 602).

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power endemic to affective constructs. Thus, whether it is the difficult daughter-in-law or the megalomaniacal mother-in law, their final act of repining helps reinforce and consolidate the seductive myth of the family.31 Admittedly, these stereotyped figures have become somewhat attenuated in recent cinema where the overbearing mother-in-law and the aggressive daughter-in-law have been replaced by supportive, friendly and non-intrusive figures. Also, films like Aziz Mirza’s Chalte Chalte (2003), Maneesh Sharma’s Band Baaja Baaraat (2010), Gauri Shinde’s English Vinglish (2012), Ritesh Batra’s The Lunch Box (2013), Vikas Behl’s Queen (2014) and R.  Balki’s Ki and Ka (2016) have attempted to signal the transitioning into modernity by registering women’s aspirations outside domesticity and their questioning of certain traditional roles within marital and romantic relationships. There have also been a recent spate of films that trace the “muffasil” girls’ journey to desired modernity. But most of these films do not dismantle the consumerist patriarchy underlying such dreams and desires.32 Thus, despite the fact that such films have undoubtedly helped raise pertinent questions about patriarchal assumptions, they have done so without necessarily relinquishing normative concepts of good and bad femininity, sexual divisions of labour or hegemonic ideals of good maternity. The evidence drawn from recent successful films also suggests that when confronted with potentially competing claims, good bahus endure humiliation and do not choose fulfilment of personal/work-related ambitions at the cost of familial duties.33 Thus, what has been called the “post-nuptial couple-form of cinema … the multiplex films” of “New Bollywood” do not really enable different kinds of “conjugation”,34 since even in these plots, patriarchies are reconstituted rather than radically challenged or subverted. The social spectrum that these films draw upon is one that emphatically excludes rural and working-class voices and perspectives. As a result, the problematic of female angst and resistant voices 31  Masooma R Ali notes, women in Muslim socials of the 1960s and 1970s “were no different than the other movies of their time” and “the only difference was that she wore burqa and went to college, urs or melas … and ejaculated ‘Hai Allah’ when she came face to face with her boyfriend or admirer”. Siddiqi and Zuberi ed. (1993: 140). 32  Some examples  are: Shaad Ali’s Bunty aur Babli (2005) and Jhoom Barabar Jhoom (2007); Madhur Bhandarkar’s Fashion (2008); Anand L.  Rai’s Tanu Weds Manu (2011); Ashwini Iyer Tiwari’s Bareilly ki Barfi (2017). 33  Ravi Chopra’s Baghban (2003); Nikhil Advani’s Kal Ho Na Ho (2003); Zoya Akhtar’s Dil Dhadakne Do (2015). 34  Gopal (2011: 2, 141, 154).

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continues to be located overwhelmingly in the private struggles of middle class women and answers are sought and found in individual acts of protest rather than in possibilities of collective action against existing systems of power and privilege. The binaries of good and bad femininity as represented in Hindi cinema must be understood as being tethered to the idea of this “normative” family. Of course, there have been incisive explorations of familial formations that help expose the monolithic nature of this construct, the discursive closures that it enforce and the injustices and oppressions—especially related to gender—that it silence. Several films straddling the spectrum of romance to realism have recognized the gendered reality of sex trade that circumambulates the legal family and explores the nature of female desire within it.35 Mapping the terrain of modernity and its consequences on female desire, a fair number of films have also questioned the nature of patriarchy in rural and urban settings. Shyam Benegal’s Nishant (1975) represents female desire as being complicit with sexual exploitation arising out of feudal patriarchy. In Sudhir Mishra’s Main Zinda Hoon (1988), the repressions and evasions involved in being an adarsh/ideal bahu within a joint family in a squalid Bombay chawl end in a psychological breakdown for a young woman. Kalpana Lajmi’s Rudaali (1993) shows how the dalit protagonist Sanichari’s desire for a better life is forever hemmed in by caste-class politics of feudal Rajasthan. As Sudhir Kakar observes, “focus on the family as the exclusive source of satisfaction of all needs, also reflects a continuing lack of faith in other institutions of Indian society”.36 Jabbar Patel’s Subah (1983) provides a simultaneous understanding of how female desire for “work” disrupts bourgeois familial stability and how the bourgeois female can discover a new world of meaningful “work”. Subah shows a range of female destitution arising out of urban and rural poverty as well as the contradictory pulls of discipline and rehabilitation that g ­ overn such women within state-run reformatories. As the superintendent of the reformatory, the bourgeois female protagonist, Savitri, recognizes the ­ ­hollowness of her own domestic identity after her powerful class encounters with rebellious unwed mothers and lesbian women who prefer the 35  Some examples are: Kalidas’s Adalat (1958); Asit Sen’s Mamta (1966); Gulzar’s Mausam (1975); Muzaffar Ali’s Umrao Jaan (1981); Shyam Benegal’s Mandi (1983); Mahesh Bhatt’s Sadak (1991); Madhur Bhandarkar’s Chandni Bar (2001); Srijit Mukherji’s Begum Jaan (2017). 36  Kakar (2007: 215).

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road to death rather than conformity. Similarly, in Mahesh Bhatt’s Arth (1982), the female protagonist Pooja’s patronizing attitude towards her maid’s fractured family slowly changes into one of solidarity and the film ends by suggesting that sustaining affective bonds can be formed across class. In Firaq (2008), the guilt of passivity during communal carnage compels Arati to recognize the oppressive and violent structures of her own family. Unlike earlier films where women left unhappy homes either to embrace death37 or romance, often illusory,38 the protagonists in these later films embark on journeys where their roads and destinations remain uncertain. What is clear, however, is that these women are neither “Mother India” nor “Mrs. India” who aspire to hold together the family and the nation. Female desire in the personal is often unproblematically chained to the idea of the family “as” a nation in the postcolonial discourse. Arguments abound about the 1950s woman being a “sign – a wishful desire for a utopian ­unified nation”, [or that] “… in the 1970s victim woman melodrama is the patriarchal national-popular’s acknowledgement of sexual difference.”39 It is also theorized how “Bollylite travels”40 represent the “new” globalized India’s reliance on an insistence on the family as “the most important trope that Hindi films mobilize to build the idea of the nation”.41 This theorizing of the imagined family, much like the imagined community of the nation, is premised on a static understanding of both family and nation. Such plotting within a linear history that is routed through colonization and decolonization/Nehruvian socialism and ends with globalization. Mapping Hindi cinema as national allegories, a bulk of postcolonial scholarship suggests that the nation is symbolized through images of womanhood: “suffering mother as expressed by Mother India or the vulnerable virgin signified by … the Indian Durga”42 and “the swirl of symbolism [they] generate”.43 Such sweeping metonymic readings deny history: of the nation, of Hindi cinema and of the representation of women in Hindi c­inema. 37  Some examples are: Mohan Segal’s New Delhi (1956); Asit Sen’s Mamta (1966); Bhappi Sonie’s Brahmachari (1968); Shakti Samanta’s Amar Prem (1972). 38  Some examples are: Kalidas’ Adalat (1958), Vijay Anand’s Guide (1965), Vinod Pande’s Ek Baar Phir (1980). 39  Virdi (2003: 86, 151). 40  Joshi (2015: 91–124). 41  Virdi (2003: 9). 42  Banerjee (2017: 9–10). 43  Ellison, Novetzke and Rotman (2016: 161).

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Ironically, unlike this theorizing, Hindi cinema has demystified these bourgeois constructs especially in the contexts of social and political conflicts such as in Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin (1953), Nasir Hussain’s Baharonke Sapne (1967),44 Shyam Benegal’s Ankur (1974), Rabindra Dharmaraj’s Chakra (1981), Gautam Ghosh’s Paar (1984), Mahesh Bhatt’s Zakhm (1988), Khaled Mohammad’s Fiza (2000), Nandita Das’s Firaq (2008) and Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider (2014) among others.

Sanctioning Stereotypes The “bad” women and their fate bring to play the residual, dominant and emergent ideas of their social contexts. But, they are also typified and endowed with a cultural past, overwhelmingly drawn from Brahmanical Hinduism to consolidate the essentialized perception that “it is the very nature of women to corrupt men here on earth”.45 The evocation of prototypes from the Puranas and the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata— the apsarases as celestial seductresses, Kaikeyi as the sexualized and ambitious stepmother, Surpanakha as the sexually forward liminal woman, Draupadi as the aggressive woman in a polyandric relationship and so on—thicken the essentialized perception of women as sexualized and morally wanting through countless retellings of costume dramas and mythological films that constitute “the oldest Hindi film genre”.46 The religiomythico simulacra as ur-narratives continue to be evoked in contemporary films as allusory subtexts even though statistically mythologicals average only about 5 per cent of yearly films from the 1970s as compared to the 70 per cent of Hindi films until 1923.47 The subversion of these constructed monolithic stereotypes of female selves—Gogi Anand’s Doosri Sita (1974) or Mani Ratnam’s Raavana (2010) for instance—is rare. Moreover, in the context of the growing idiom of “hurt sentiment” and the political clout of the custodians of “traditional”  Interestingly, in the second week of its release, the tragic ending of the film was changed.  Doniger, trans. The Laws of Manu (2000: 2.213, 38). 46  Reference to the genre of mythological films from Saibal Chatterjee, “Genres and Narrative Forms”, Encyclopaedia of Hindi Cinema (Encyclopaedia Britannica India Pvt. Ltd. and Popular Prakashan Pvt. Ltd.: New Delhi/Bombay, 2003), 267. 47  Data about mythological films from Derne (1997: 197). Some examples of contemporary films relying on the religious ur-narratives are: Shyam Benegal’sKalyug (1981); Sooraj Barjatiya’s Hum Saath Saath Hain (1999); Dharmesh Darshan’s Dhadkan (2000); Rajkumar Santoshi’s Lajja (2001); Prakash Jha’s Rajneeti (2010). 44 45

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Hinduism, such subversions also face myriad problems from financial support to certification and screening. We also need to be cautious in the face of a growing neo-orientalist critical discourse that argues that Hindi films comprise “a contemporary development of classical … philosophical, aesthetic and soteriological facets of Hindu traditions”48 as a “kaliyuga avatara of Sanskrit drama”49 with “traditional diversity of emotion (bhava, in terms of Indian aesthetic theory)”50 as it ignores the Hindu sastraik texts’ caste-gendered perspective that flattens or demonizes diverse traditions of female agency.51 Equally, the celebration of the transformation of “an ordinary woman into a fierce Goddess”—in a seamless intellectual move from the world of the Devi Mahatmya of fifth century AD to contemporary India—as key to the “subversion of the male gaze” in Hindi cinema to redress wrongs, is both naïve and problematic in its refusal to address the structural and historical oppression/representation of female desire and agency.52 This mythological turn in modern cinema and scholarship, which redresses gendered crime through individual female violence, in effect suggests a refusal to engage with collective political solutions.

Domesticating the Political Cinematically, the representation of political womanhood is anchored within the obligatory moral contexts of corruption and power. Female politicians in cinema are few and this sparsity is at odds with the rich history of successful women politicians who have made their mark within the skewed gendered environment of Indian politics. While the gap between reel and real suggests the former’s overt gender bias, the success of the latter is not necessarily straightforward as it is often underscored by shrewd patriarchal calculations inherent in “ ­ representational” politics. Given the extent and nature of male control in politics, it may well be argued that paucity apart, cinematic depiction is not historically inaccurate as it demonstrates the patriarchal anxieties governing women’s political agency. However, what is  Parciack (2016: 5).  Lal (1998: 232). 50  Booth (1995: 175). 51  We cite as an example the eight forms of marriages mentioned in Sanskrit texts as signalling a plural tradition even as their hierarchical stratification, as in the Manusmriti (second century BC–second century AD) suggests the patriarchal politics of a caste-based society where the patrilineal forms of marriage involving variations on kanyadana or the gift of the daughter are granted a higher status. 52  Erndl (2013: 7). 48 49

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disquieting is cinema’s moral lens which reduces the gendered terrain of political power into a Manichean speculation of good and evil. The Hindi cinematic portrayal of women politicians may be generically rare, but the discussion is important insofar as the moral economy of political power is reproduced and represented through the familial model. Put another way, the pervasive power of the bourgeois family in cinema is such that it enables the visualization of politics and of the political family in functional or dysfunctional terms. Further, the allegorizing drive of the familial trope domesticates statecraft and restricts the issue of political leadership within the conundrum of domestic conduct. The gendered consequence of this overdetermined paradigm is most evident in the depiction of the woman politician as it creates the condition for her double damnation. Within this dystopic canvas, goodness is reserved for those who eschew power, such as Anuradha in Madhur Bhandarkar’s Satta (2003). The obverse is true of Sumitra Devi in Soumik Sen’s Gulab Gang (2014), in which a “bad” and corrupt politician meets a grisly end as expected in a morality tale. The adoption of a misogynistic worldview of female ambition and desire that exceeds the historical problem of lack of female agency, generates the above binaries in “political” cinema. Bad wives and mothers are successful politicians in Gulzar’s Aandhi (1975) and Hu Tu Tu (1999), and female political ambition is schemed and moulded by powerful males such as the industrialist-cum politician father in Aandhi or the go-getter party worker in Hu Tu Tu. The “happily-ever-after” syndrome is not available as female political desire disintegrates the family. Aandhi shows how Aarti Devi’s political ambition causes a rift within her family and the film ends with her remorse when she has to leave her new found domestic happiness. Hu Tu Tu is decidedly darker as it does not preserve any female guilt in Malti Barve and it is left to the daughter to script the mother’s death through a deadly suicide bombing. The exclusive focus on electoral politics without a corresponding examination of the processes of participation implicit in a liberal democracy greatly impoverishes these women-centric political films.53 In none of the films mentioned above, do the leaders have any connection with their people, and as M.K. Raghavendra rightly notes in his review of Prakash Jha’s Rajneeti (2010), “election parties have no ideology or strategy 53  Rajni Kothari defines participation as “the crowning concept of the liberal paradigm of progress, equality and democracy” (1984: 216).

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against their rivals as if the electorate did not have to be wooed with a programme”.54 The transformative power of electoral politics—a possibility in several films, including Vinay Shukla’s Godmother (1999)—is never explored. Even Kissa Kursi Ka (1978), directed by Amrit Nahata, which claimed the Emergency55 as its historical setting, could not escape the heavy moral lens in its depiction of the power-hungry Meera. Since politics is forever reduced to electoral power, these political films fail to harness the burgeoning role that women play in strengthening our democratic polity. Consequently, the depiction of the woman politician stumbles between the bad woman of patriarchy and the power-hungry politician. Not surprisingly, these are two sides of the same coin as political films are latter-day morality dramas. Undoubtedly, a difference is noticeable in films dealing with revolutionary politics which questions the inegalitarian state and polity and those which critique dominant nationalism through the demand for self-­ determination, such as Khawaja Ahmad Abbas’s The Naxalites (1980), Gulzar’s Maachis (1996), Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se (1998), Govind Nihalani’s Hazaar Chaurasi ki Ma (1998) and Sudhir Mishra’s Hazaaron Khwaishe Aisi (2003). Contrary to a reductive reading of female militant as “hyper-­ feminized objects of male desire”, the relation between gender and violence is much more complex.56 The binaries of good and bad are fissured here as the political woman deliberately transgresses her conventional familial roles in order to accept/understand the alternative worldview. In films where the woman embraces violence, she has a fraught relation with alternate politics as the political justification of killings cannot expunge the moral and ethical questions associated with violence. Importantly, while the relation between men and violence is customary and expected, the same cannot be said of women. Consequently, women militants have an unusually difficult role in discharging violence and they pay by dying (unlike men who can eschew violence by reaffirming their faith in the patriarchal state, as in Harry Baweja’s Diljale (1996), Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Mission Kashmir (2000) or Govind Nihalani’s Dev (2004)).57 The female deaths can, and do, exalt the women as tragic heroines but  Raghavendra (2010: 33).  A 21-month-long period of national emergency, from June 1975 to March 1977, was declared by the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. 56  Viswanath (2014: 123). 57  The Naxalite, Maachis and Dil Se show or indicate female deaths. 54 55

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such compensation cannot revoke the unsettling relation that the films set up between gender and violence. Even women who inadvertently are romantically involved with militant men have to pay a price for their desires.58 The lurking moral question associated with female transgression returns: are they bad?

Marketing Desires The distaste for the “bad” woman as signalled by the anxious closure of the films cannot erase the desire that she articulates or arouses. The liminal is attractive, especially in the context of sexuality comprising a major component of these “bad” women. As one of the lesser known male protagonists of Hindi films admits: har haseen cheez ka main talab gaar hoon. (Sudhendu Roy’s Saudagar 1973) I am desirous of all beautiful objects.

Moti, the singer of this confession, is a village palm sap collector who manipulates the labour of one woman to marry another in order to fulfil both his material and sexual desires. The saudagar/trader finally has to admit the folly of his conniving trading in women. This sauda/trade is perhaps paradigmatic of Hindi films’ investment in femininity too, without of course the contrite admission. It derives to a large extent from its conditions of production where the film’s journey from the storyboard to consumption in the theatre is largely controlled by money and technology “and the basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over society is greatest”.59 This is one of the “realities” that hedges Hindi films’ feminine impersonation. It is true that there have been changes in the structure of film production with the Indian state recognizing film-making as a legitimate industrial activity in 1998. This has facilitated varied financing, including loans from banks and other institutions leading to a “‘certain corporatization’, where high-profile Indian conglomerates established new production-­distribution companies or existing … concerns became public limited companies listed 58  Examples of this can be found in Kunal Kohli’s Fanaa (2006) or Rensil D’Silva’s Kurbaan (2009). Mani Ratnam’s Bombay (1993), though also an interfaith marriage, shows the possibility of a happy closure since neither is involved in militancy. 59  Horkheimer and Adorno (2002: 95).

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and traded on the Indian stock market”.60 Recent studies on Hindi films may focus on “the dynamic relation between the expansion of capital into new territories” but in the context of representation of female selves, this cultural capital still demands that the production of female subjectivity be saleable as film-making is “big business” that cannot be indifferent to either the market or the state with its power of certification, censorship and recognition through awards.61 Hierarchical classificatory categories used for mapping Hindi cinema such as popular, mainstream, parallel, blockbuster, art, B-grade signify not only production and consumer power but also investment in projecting and transforming social realities. It is in these interstices that differing cinematic articulations of female desires need to be located. ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films explores these myriad concerns and the hybrid articulations of female desires. The approach is multifocal. Some of the chapters diachronically trace the development, or stasis, in the cinematic representation of the popularized bad female figurations such as the courtesan, the actress, the mother-in-law or the sex worker while some others synchronically map the ideological interpellation of the New Woman of the nascent nation, the dancing girl of the 1960s, the angry young women of the 1970s, the moll, the female terrorist or the gendered consumer of contemporary India. The exercise of gaze in the seen and the screened and the possibility of female agency are explored in the revisiting of specific films that are considered iconic in their representation of deviant female desire and power: Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam (1962), Bandini (1963) and NH 10 (2015). But, can a clutch of essays on more than a hundred years of prolific cinematic representation of female desire—plural and mutating yet typified and structured—map the whole picture? Bad Women is hopefully a beginning rather than a concluding statement.

Works Cited Films Aaina, director Deepak Sarin, producers Pamela Chopra and Yash Chopra, 1993. Aandhi, director Gulzar, producer J. Om Prakash, 1975. Aar-paar, director and producer Guru Dutt, 1954. Abhinetri, director and producer Subodh Mukherjee, 1970.  Ganti (2016: 120).  Punathambekar (2013: 22).

60 61

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Adalat, director Kalidas, producer N.S.Kwatra, 1958a. Adalat, director Kalidasa, producers Mallika Kawatra and N.S. Kawatra, 1958b. Aitraaz, director Abbas Mastan, producer Mukta Arts, 2003. Ajanabee, director Shakti Samanta, producer Girija Samanta, 1974. Ajnabee, director Abbas Mastan, producer Vijay Galani, 2001. Amar Prem, director and producer Shakti Samanta, 1972. Andaz, director and producer Mehboob Khan, 1949. Ankur, director Shyam Benegal, producer Freni Variava, 1974. Arth, director Mahesh Bhatt, producer Kuljit Pal, 1982. Asli Naqli, director Hrishikesh Mukherjee, producers L.B.  Lachman and L.B. Thakur, 1962. Baaghi, director Deepak Shivdasani, producer Nitin Manmohan, Neha Arts, 1990. Babul, director S.U. Sunny, producer Naushad, 1950. Baghban, director Ravi Chopra, producer B.R. Chopra, 2003. Baharon ke Sapne, director and producer Nasir Hussain, 1967. Band Baaja Baaraat, director Maneesh Sharma, producer Aditya Chopra, 2010. Bandini, director and producer Bimal Roy, 1963. Bareilly ki Barfi, director Ashwini Iyer Tiwari, producer Junglee Pictures, 2017. Bawre Nain, director and producer Kidar Nath Sharma, 1959. Bazaar, director Sagar Sarhadi, producer Vijay Talwar, 1982. Begum Jaan, director Srijit Mukherji, producers Mukesh Bhatt and Vishesh Bhatt, 2017. Bombay 405 Miles, director and producer Brij, 1980. Bombay to Goa, director Raj Pendurkar, producer Humayu Rangilla, 1972. Bombay, director Mani Ratnam, producer S. Sriram, 1995. Brahmachari, director Bhappie Sonie, producer G.P. Sippy, 1968. Bunty aur Babli, director Shaad Ali, producer Aditya Chopra, 2005. Chakra director Rabindra Dharmaraj, producer Pradeep Upoor, 1981. Chalte Chalte director Aziz Mirza, producers Juhi Chawla, Shahrukh Khan, and Aziz Mirza, 2003. Chandni Bar, director Madhur Bhandarkar, producer Lata Mohan, 2001. Charitraheen, director Shakti Samanta, producer Debesh Ghosh, 1974. Chori Chori, director Anant Thakur, producer L.B. Lachman, 1956. Cocktail, director Homi Adjania, producers Saif Ali Khan and Dinesh Vijan, 2012. Daag, director and producer, Yash Chopra, 1973. Dahej, director V. Shantaram, producer, 1950. Dastak, director and producer Rajinder Singh Bedi, 1970. Dev, director and producer Govind Nihalani, 2004. Dhadkan, director Dharmesh Darshan, producer Ratan Jain, 2000. Dil Dhadakne Do, director Zoya Akhtar, producer Excel Entertainment, 2015. Dil Diwana, director Narendra Bedi, producer Ramesh Behl, 1974. Dil Hai Ki Maanta Nahin, director Mahesh Bhatt, producer Gulshan Kumar, 1991.

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Dil Se, director and producer Mani Ratnam, 1998. Dil Tera Diwana, director and producer B.R. Panthulu, 1962. Diljale, director Harry Baweja, producer Paramjeet Baweja, 1996. Do Bigha Zamin, director and producer Bimal Roy, 1953. Doosri Sita, director Gogi Anand, producer B.K. Khanna, 1974. Dulhan Wahi Jo Piya Man Bhaaye, director Lekh Tandon, producer Rajshri, 1977. English Vinglish, director Gauri Shinde, producers R.  Balki, Sunil Lulla, and R. Jhunjhunwala, 2012. Fanaa, director Kunal Kohli, producer Aditya Chopra, 2006. Fashion, director Madhur Bhandarkar, producer Ronnie Screwvala, 2008. Firaq, director Nandita Das, producer Shailendra M. Singh, Harindra Singh, and Rahul Merchant, 2008. Fiza, director Khalid Mohammad, producer Pradeep Guha, 2000. Garam Hawa, director M.S.  Sathyu, producers Abu Siwani, Ishan Arya, and M.S. Sathyu, 1973. Ghulam, director Vikram Bhatt, producer Mukesh Bhatt, 1998. Guddi, director and producer Hrishikesh Mukherjee, 1971. Guide, director Vijay Anand, producer Dev Anand, 1965 Gulab Gang, director Soumik Sen, producer Anubhav Sinha, 2014. Haider, director Vishal Bhardwaj, producers Vishal Bhardwaj and Sidhharth Roy Kapur, 2014. Hare Rama Hare Krishna, director and producer Dev Anand, 1971. Hazaar Chaurasiki Ma, director Govind Nihalani, producer Manmohan Shetty, 1998. Hazaaron Khwaishe Aisi, director Sudhir Mishra, producer Rangita Pritish Nandy, 2005. Hu Tu Tu, director Gulzar, producer Dhirajlal Shah, 1999. Hum Saath Saath Hain, director Sooraj Barjatiya, producers Ajit Barjatya and Kamal Barjatya, 1999. Hum, Tum aur Woh, director Shiv Kumar, 1971. Imtihan, director Madan Sinha, producer B.A. Chandiramani, 1974. Izzat, director Tatineni Prakash Rao, producers A.K. Nadiadwala and R.C. Kumar, 1968. Jab We Met, director Imtiaz Ali, producer Dhilin Mehta, 2007. Jhoom Barabar Jhoom director Shaad Ali, producers Aditya Chopra and Yash Chopra, 2007. Jism, director Amit Saxena, producers Pooja Bhatt and Sujit Kumar Singh, 2003. Jo Jeeta Wahi Sikandar, director Mansoor Khan, producer Nasir Hussain, 1982. Jurm, director Vikram Bhatt, producers Aashish Singh, Anurag Singh, and K.P. Singh, 2005. Kaala Paani, director Raj Khosla, producer Navketan Films, 1958. Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na director Kundan Shah, producer Vikram Mehrotra,1994.

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Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, director Karan Johar, producer Yash Johar, 2001. Kal Ho Na Ho, director Nikhil Advani, producer Karan Johar, 2003. Kalyug, director Shyam Benegal, producer Shashi Kapoor, 1981. Ki & Ka, director R. Balki’s producers R. Balki, Sunil Lulla, and R. Jhunjhunwala 2016) Kissa Kursi Ka,  director Amrit Nahata, producers Bhagwant Deshpande, Vijay Kashmiri, and Baba Majgavkar, 1978.  Kurbaan, director Rensil D’Souza, producers Hiru Yash Johar and Karan Johar, 2009 Lajja, director and producer Rajkumar Santoshi, 2001. Love and Murder, director Raja Paranjpe, producer, 1966. Maachis, director Gulzar, producer R.V. Pandit, 1996. Main Zinda Hoon, director Sudhir Mishra, producer NFDC, 1988. Mamta, director Asit Sen, producer Charu Chitra, 1966. Mandi, director Shyam Benegal, producers Freni Variava and L. Bijlani, 1983. Manthan, director Shyam Benegal, producer Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd., 1976. Mausam, director Gulzar, producer P. Mallikarajun Rao, 1975. Maya, director D.D. Kashyap, producer Light of Asia Films, 1961. Mere Huzoor, director Vinod Kumar, producers Malik Chand Kochar and Vinod Kumar, 1968. Mere Jeevan Saathi, director Ravikant, producer Vinod Shah, 1972. Mission Kashmir, director and producer Vidhu Vinod Sharma, 2000. Mughal-e-Azam, director K. Asif, producer Shapoorji Pallonji, 1960. Mujhse Dosti Karoge, director Kunal Kohli, producers Yash Chopra and Aditya Chopra, 2002. Namkeen, director Gulzar, producer Jayant Malkan, 1982. Nau Do Gyarah, directors Vijay Anand, Biren Nag, producer Dev Anand, 1957. Neel Kamal, director Ram Maheswari, producer Pannalal Maheshwari, 1968. New Delhi, director and producer Mohan Segal, 1956. NH 10, director Navdeep Singh, producers Vikramaditya Motwane, Anurag Kashyap, Vikas Bahl, Anushka Sharma, Sunil Lulla, and Karnesh Sharma, 2015. Paar, director Gautam Ghosh, producer Swapan Sarkar, 1984. Preetam, director and producer Bhappi Sonie, 1971. Prem Pujari, director and producer Dev Anand, 1970. Pyaar Jhukta Nahin, director Vijay Sadanah, producer K.C. Bokadia, 1985. Pyaar Toh Honaa Hi Thaa, director Anees Bazmee, producer Gordhan Tanwani, 1998. Pyar Kiya toh Darna Kya, director Sohail Khan, producer Sohail Khanand Bunty Walia, 1998. Queen, director Vikas Behl, producer Phantom films, 2014. Raat aur Din, director Satyen Bose, producer Jaffer Hussain, 1967.

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Raavana, director Mani Ratnam, producer Madras Talkies, 2010. Race, director Abbas Mastan, producers Ramesh S. Taurani and Kumar S. Taurani, 2008. Rajneeti, director and producer Prakash Jha, 2010. Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman, director Aziz Mirza, producers G.P.Sippy and Vivek Vaswani, 1992. Rockstar, director Imtiaz Ali, producer Dhilin Mehta, 2011. Rudaali, director Kalpana Lajmi, producers Ravi Malik and Ravi Gupta, 1993. Sadak, director Mahesh Bhatt, producer Mukesh Bhatt, 1991. Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam, director Abrar Alvi, producer Guru Dutt, 1962. Sapnay, director Rajiv Menon, producer A.V.M. Production, 1997. Satta, director Madhur Bhandarkar, producer Meju Khan, 2003. Satte pe Satta, director Raj N. Sippy, producer Romu N. Sippy, 1982. Shakti, director Ramesh Sippy, producer Mushir Alam and Mohammad Riaz, 1982. Shri 420, director and producer Raj Kapoor, 1955. Solva Saal, director Raj Khosla, producer Chandrakant Desai, 1958. Subah, director and producer, Jabbar Patel, 1983. Suhana Safar, director Vijay, producer R.C. Kumar, 1970. Swarg Narak, director Dasari Naryana Rao, producer Vijaya Productions Pvt Ltd, 1978. Tanu Weds Manu, director Anand L. Rai, producer Shailesh R.Singh, 2011. The Dirty Picture, director Milan Luthria, producer Ekta Kapoor and Shobha Kapoor, 2011. The Lunch Box, director Ritesh Batra, producers Arun Rangachari, Anurag Kashyap, and Karan Johar, 2013. The Naxalites, director and producer Khawaja Ahmad Abbas, 1980. Thodisi Bewafaii, director Esmayeel Shroff, producers Srichand Asrani, Rashid Ismail, and Nand Mirani, 1980. Tyaag patra, director Ramesh Gupta, producer Tanvir Ahmed, 1978. Udaan, director Vikramaditya Motwane, producer Anurag Kashyap, Sanjay Singh, and Ronnie Screwvala, 2010. Umrao Jaan, director and producer Muzaffar Ali, 1981. Wake up Sid, director Ayan Mukherji, producer Hiroo Yash Johar and Karan Johar, 2009. Zakhm, director Mahesh Bhatt, producer Pooja Bhatt, 1988. Zeher, director Mohit Suri, producer Mukesh Bhatt, 2005. Ziddi, director and producer Pramod Chakravorty, 1964.

Books Banerjee, Sikita. Gender, Nation and Popular Film in India: Globalizing Muscular Nationalism (Oxon/New York: Routledge, 2017).

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Berger, John. Ways of Seeing (London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books, 1972). Bogue, Ronald. Deleuze and Guattari (London/New York: Routledge, 1989). Dollimore, Jonathan. Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture (New York: Routledge, 1998). Doniger, Wendy and Brian K. Smith. Translated with Introduction and Notes. The Laws of Manu (1991, New Delhi: Penguin, 2000). Dwyer, Rachel. Picture Abhi Baaki Hai: Bollywood as a Guide to Modern India (Gurgaon: Hachette Books Publishing India Pvt. Ltd. , 2014). Ellison, William, Novetzke, Christian Lee and Andy Rotman ed. Amar, Akbar, Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood and the Nation (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2016). Gopal, Sangita. Conjugations: Marriage and Form in New Bollywood Cinema (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2011). Jones, Amelia ed., The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader (London/New York: Routledge, 2003). Joshi, Priya. Bollywood India: A Public Fantasy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). Morton, Stephen. ed., Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (London/New York: Rutledge, 2003). Nihalani, Govind and Saibal Chatterjee ed. Encyclopaedia of Hindi Cinema (New Delhi/Bombay: Encyclopaedia Britannica India Pvt. Ltd. and Popular Prakashan Pvt. Ltd, 2003). Parciack, Ronie. Popular Hindi Cinema: Aesthetic Formation of the Seen and Unseen (London/New York: Routledge, 2016). Pinto, Jerry. Helen: The Life and Times of a Bollywood H-Bomb (Delhi: Penguin India, 2006). Punathambekar, Aswin. From Bombay to Bollywood: The Making of a Global Media Industry (New York/London: New York University Press, 2013). Sartre, Jean Paul. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, Trans. H.E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library,1956). Siddiqui, Zakia A. and Zuberi, Anwar Jahan ed., Muslim Women: Problems and Prospects (New Delhi: M.D. Publications Pvt. Ltd., 1993). Viswanath, Gita. The ‘Nation’ in War: A Study of Military Literature and Hindi War Cinema (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014).

Book Chapters and Journal Articles Ashcroft, Bill. “Bollywood, Postcolonial Transformation, and Modernity”, Anjali Gera Roy and Chua Beng ed, Travels of Bollywood Cinema: From Bombay to LA (New Delhi: OUP, 2012), 1–18.

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Bhaskar, Ira. “Emotion, Subjectivity and the Limits of Desire: Melodrama, Modernity in Bombay Cinema”, Christine Gledhill ed., Gender Meets Genre in Postwar Cinema (Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 161–176. Booth, Gregory. “Traditional Content and Narrative Structure in the Hindi Commercial Cinema”, Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 54, No. 2 (1995), 169–190. Derne, Steve “Market Forces at Work: Religious Themes in Commercials” in Lawrence A. Babb and Susan S. Wadley ed. Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia (Motilal Banarasidass: Delhi, 1997), 167–216. Erndl, Kathleen M. “Woman Becomes Goddesses in Bollywood: Justice, Violence, and the Feminine in Popular Hindi Film” Journal of Religion and Film, Volume 17, Issue 2 (October 2013), 1–30.  Ganti, Tejaswini, “No One Thinks in Hindi Here”: Language Hierarchies in Bollywood, Michael Curtin, Kevin Sanson, ed, Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), 118–131. Grosz, Elizabeth. “Refiguring Lesbian Desire” in L.  Doan ed. The Lesbian Postmodern (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994),67–84. Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”, Gunzelin S.  Noerr ed. and Edmund Jephcott trans., Dialectic of Enlightenment (Stanford University Press: Stanford, 2002), 94–136. Jauss, Hans Robert. “Modernity and Literary Tradition”, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Winter 2005), 329–336. Kakar, Sudhir. “Family Matters”, India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 33: No. 3/4, India 60 (Winter 2006 – Spring 2007), 214–221. Kothari, Rajni. The Non-Party Political Process”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 19, No. 5 (February 4, 1984), 216–224. Lal, Vinay. “The Impossibility of the Outsider in modern Indian film”, in Ashis Nandy, ed., The Secret Politics of Our Desires. Innocence, Culpability and Indian Popular Cinema (Delhi, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 228–58. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema”, Constance Penley ed., Feminism and Film Theory (London/New York: Routledge, 1998), 57–68. Nandy, Ashis. “The Popular Hindi Film: Ideology and First Principles”, India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 1, Indian Popular Cinema: Myth, Meaning and Metaphor (March 1981). 89–96. Pande, Mrinal. “‘Moving beyond Themselves’: Women in Hindustani Parsi Theatre and Early Hindi Films”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 41, No. 17 (Apr. 29–May 5, 2006), 1646–1653. Raghavendra, M.K. “Rajneeti, Politicians and CEOs”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 45, No. 28 (July 10–16, 2010), 31–34.

PART I

The Disorderly Presence at Home

Meena Kumari (Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam, 1962); Lalita Pawar (Sau Din Saas Ke, 1980) (Editors’ Screengrab)

CHAPTER 2

Desire, Deviancy and Defiance in Bombay Cinema (1930s–1950s) Ira Bhaskar

aah ko chaahiye ik umra asar hone tak kaun jeeta hai kisi zulf ke sar hone tak aashiqui sabr talab, aur tamanna betaab dil ka kya rang karoon, khune jigar hone tak1 (Mirza Ghalib 1954) It takes a lifetime for a sigh to affect Who lives long enough to be conquered and subsumed by love? Love unlimited and desires desperate What colour should I colour my heart until its blood red end? kaisa yeh kanoon joh dil ke khoon se likha jaaye/jaalim hai dastur teri duniya ka hai hai nikli hoon aaj main sulagti chingari ban ke…/woh aag hoon mein jiska koi kayaam nahi…

1  All song quotations used in this chapter have been taken from the respective films, and the lyrics corroborated from the song booklets of these films accessed at the National Film Archive of India. The translations are the author’s.

Ira Bhaskar (*) The School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_2

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ulfat ka nakaam teri duniya mein thokar khaye/ jalta hai gham se dile diwana hai hai (Heer 1956) What law is this that is written with the blood of the heart/Oppressive are the practices of your world, O Lord I have come today as a smouldering spark…/I am that fire that has no lull, no pause... Unsuccessful love receives blows in your world/Passionate lovers burn with grief in your world, O Lord.

Declarations of faith and love; articulations of restless, fevered passion; and expressions of despair, betrayal and burning anger against the world: the song lyrics quoted above and the films discussed in this chapter have at their centre an intense, nonconformist feminine desire that not only challenges the norms of the world to which these characters belong, but also is uncompromising in its devotion to the beloved and to their love in the face of the worst odds. The subversive power of intense desire and a single-­ minded commitment to the object of love is what constitutes female deviancy in the chronotopes of a series of Hindustani films, particularly from Bombay, in the period from the 1930s to the 1950s, though transformed figurations of deviant women continue in the cinema that follows. Interestingly, the figure of the deviant woman is present in different genres—the socials, devotionals, legendary romances, historicals and the courtesan film.2 Containment, domestication and, even, death are often the punishments meted out by these films to their deviant female protagonists. And yet, what is remarkable about these figurations is that while the narrative resolutions of these films may uphold acceptable social structures, the intense melodramatic articulation of feminine desire not only questions the gender norms of these very structures, but creates a powerful affective and emotional surplus that remains unaccommodated. It is the songs of these films that power this articulation; though in some films, dramatic confrontations via dialogue also play a role. Deploying an understanding of the Indian cinematic melodramatic form, and foregrounding the crucial role of music, especially songs, and a stylized, saturated mise-­en-­scene that 2  Hindustani is the word I like to use for Bombay cinema of the period I am discussing because it aptly describes the combination of Urdu and Hindi. Hindustani is the term that was commonly used to designate the spoken language of North India that melded together Urdu and Hindi. Bombay cinema inherited Hindustani from Parsi theatre and is the language used in this cinema from the early sound period all the way through to the end of the 1960s. See Bhaskar and Allen (2009: 3 and 23).

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is intensely expressive of unrealizable emotion and is particularly affective, this chapter examines how the Hindustani cinema of Bombay responded to notions of the normal and the deviant in Indian society in the first two decades of sound cinema. If a number of films of the period indicated were concerned with the question of women’s identity and behaviour, particularly deviant behaviour, then the key questions to pose at the outset would be, what were the significances of this particular focus; what was the nature of the anxiety that caused a repetitive concern with female deviancy; and what light did this intense investment in the representation of female desire throw on the issues at stake. It would be instructive at this point to revisit the debates around the reform movements of the nineteenth century, the questions of women’s education that were central to the reform projects in different parts of India, the sudden disappearance of the “women’s question” from the reform agendas of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and a resolution of this issue with its location in the nationalist ideological realm as argued powerfully by Partha Chatterjee.3 Not only did nationalist modernity demand that women be educated, but also that their education must serve a modern patriarchal vision of nationalism such that educated modern women embody the authentic spirituality of the nation, partner with men to produce the ideal nationalist citizens of the future and inculcate “the typically bourgeois virtues characteristic of the new social forms of ‘disciplining’”.4 Historians have not only detailed the processes of women’s education, but have also described the impact of women’s voices in the public sphere through their writings in women’s journals in Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu and other languages from the turn of the nineteenth century and the first few decades of the twentieth century.5 While the disciplining drive of the education project did succeed in producing “modern” women who subscribed to a large extent to the nationalist role that patriarchy envisioned for them,6 women’s writing in the early twentieth century also demonstrated that education had empowered them to raise questions about gender identities and roles as well as public and political issues. Speaking of Stri-darpan, which was published from 1909  Chatterjee (1993).  Ibid.: 129. 5  See Chatterjee (1993); Chakrabarty (1994); Orsini (1998, 1999); Forbes (2007); Anagol (2007); Minault (2007); Devji (2007); and Yamini Krishna and Teles Da Silva (2015). 6  Refer the discussion of Orsini’s Stri-upyogi literature for women, 1999 and Minault (2007) and Devji (2007). 3 4

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to 1929, Francesca Orsini says that it “championed women’s education and political awakening and fought against gender discrimination, and” Camd, published from 1922 to 1940s, which was the “boldest and most radical of all” and a “unique achievement” in Hindi journalism, “willingly took on holy cows and taboos of all kinds and encouraged women to take a full part in the public sphere”.7 Orsini points out that apart from addressing women on “political, economic, social and historical questions with no censorship of any kind”,8 this journal also had an important role “in introducing and popularizing a notion of ‘the right to feel’ tout court”. The letters and personal accounts published here “legitimized women’s voices”9 and “drew attention to the existence of women’s sexuality and emotional needs, often thematising the thin line between marriage and prostitution”.10 Furthermore, the romantic plots of serialized epistolary novels “created a private secluded space, where fantasy, the ‘mise-en-­ scene’ of desire could be played out”.11 While Camd is symptomatic of the transformations that education had brought about in women’s subjectivities, other journals, novellas, autobiographies and novels written in the early twentieth century similarly demonstrated the impact of modernity on the changing self-conceptions and notions of selfhood of individuals, both men and women, and the manner in which they had begun to think about themselves, their thoughts, desires and feelings. It is this sphere of women’s education, women’s writing and their articulation of their right to feeling and self-fulfilment that caused a deep anxiety around women’s education, empowerment and modernity in the public sphere that impacted cinema’s response to important social questions of the day. With a public sphere resonating with a range of social and political issues, it is not surprising that Indian films responded to these debates in narratives that wove together social and political concerns with romance plots that articulated both the desires and fantasies of self-realization as well as the historical (im)possibilities of their fulfilment. The social as a genre12 specifically addressed the contemporary in these terms, and I would like to begin the discussion of my selected films here with two socials, 15 years apart, Achhut Kanya (1936) and Tarana (1951), in which  Orsini (1999: 138).  Ibid.: 148. 9  Ibid.: 151. Also see Orsini (1998). 10  Ibid.: 153. 11  Ibid.: 153–154. 12  Bhaskar and Allen (2009: 65). 7 8

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the filmmakers responded to some of the debates of their times via their central female protagonists, desiring women whose passion and dedication caused the ire of their respective social worlds. While issues of reform and social reconstruction had engaged social reformers right through the nineteenth century, they had acquired an urgency within the nationalist programme with the articulation of swaraj as its ultimate goal. The caste question was one of the most significant issues that energized the nationalist body politic in the 1930s particularly because of the debates between Gandhi and Ambedkar. Like the Prabhat studios’ devotional films that addressed the iniquitous structures of the caste system,13 Bombay Talkies’ Achhut Kanya too places the question of caste prejudice at the centre of its concerns. Unlike the allegorical mode of the Prabhat devotional films on the lives of various saints from Indian history, Achhut Kanya uses the structures of melodrama and the love story of Kasturi, the untouchable daughter of the railway level crossing guard, Dukhiya, and Pratap, the son of the Brahmin grocer, Mohanlal, to address the trenchant nature of the caste system and the rigidity of caste prejudices. While Pratap and Kasturi’s love cannot be consummated and fulfilled in marriage due to caste taboos despite the deep friendship between their families, the caste question is not addressed just through the injustice that the loving pair is subjected to. In fact, the trenchant nature of the caste system, the pettiness and oppressiveness of the structures and practices of traditional life and the ultimate failure of modernity are deployed to foreground the resistance to change, and the ultimate destruction of the female protagonist who dared to dream and love differently from acceptable social norms. At the same time, Kasturi is not an assertive character. She is childlike, sweet-tempered and poignantly unprepared for the violence that is unleashed against hers and Pratap’s families by the villagers, led by the traditional physician (vaidya) Babulal who uses the pretext of caste contamination to take revenge against Mohanlal for the challenge that Mohanlal’s administering of modern medicine to the villagers poses to his own practice of traditional medicine. Mohanlal is beaten up and his house burned down; Kasturi’s father has an almost deathly fall; and the consequence of these events is that any threat that Kasturi and Pratap’s romance may have posed is negated and the two young people are married to people from their own castes, thus upholding the age-old practice of caste marriages. The brightness and innocence of childhood and adolescence are rapidly transformed into a saddened acceptance of reality by Kasturi.  Bhaskar (1998).

13

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However, the acceptance is not easy; both grieve at their loss—Pratap more obviously than Kasturi who hides her suffering from the world and is very conscious of her duties to both her father and her husband. And yet, the internal emotional condition cannot be completely hidden and it pushes through to the surface in the songs that articulate the inner conflict of the two young lovers. While Kasturi neither protests her destiny nor attempts to change it, her inner suffering is expressed in the song she sings to herself seated by a stream: udi hawa mein jaati hai, gaati chidiya yeh raag aawo pritam hil mil khele prem preet ka naam… mein dukhiyari bichad gayi kake sang khelun aaj The bird flies with the wind and sings this song Come my beloved, let us play the game of love … Separated and in grief Who do I play with

Shot in a slow tempo with Kasturi (Devika Rani) in a medium shot, this song refers to the free and joyous celebration of their earlier togetherness in mein ban ki chidiya ban ke ban ban dolun re (Becoming a bird of the forest, I dance joyously there) contrasting it with the changed present. While Pratap sings of his sorrow initially in kise karta moorakh pyaar, pyaar pyaar (Oh you fool, with whom are you in love), his second expression of grief: pir pir kya karta re, teri pir na jaane koye (Why do you lament and grieve, no one understands your pain) is applicable as much to him as it is to Kasturi who sadly listens to his song from afar and identifies with it completely. The depth of anguish, and the violence of Kasturi’s internal grieving, is articulated through the choric comment on her situation in the wandering woodcutter’s song that occurs at two key points in the film— when Kasturi and Pratap first realize that they cannot be together, and then when Kasturi is with Mannoo, her husband, on the night of their wedding, when its sudden appearance on the soundtrack disrupts her attempts to follow her dharma (duty) in marriage and shatters her composure, bringing her grief to the surface: joh mein aisa jaanti preet ki yeh dukh hoye nagar dhindhora peetti

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preet na kariyo koye mohe chaad chale majhdaar – 3… naiyaa doobti – 2 kit gaye ho khevanhaar -3 …. If I had known That to love would bring such deep grief I would have drummed to the entire world Do not make the mistake of falling in love I am left mid-current And the boat is sinking Where are you my boatman, my deliverer…

The sense of deep disappointment and suffering in love, of being bereft, of experiencing a deep homelessness and a sense of sinking to death, of being unable to cross over, then the reactive declaration of shouting to the world to not fall in love, and the violence implicit in all these emotions is conveyed very powerfully through the lyrics that exteriorize what Kasturi is unable to express. From this point onward, her trajectory can only lead to her violent death under the train she desperately wants to stop to prevent the accident that would take the lives of her loved ones. While she may be deified and celebrated as the goddess who gave her life to save the life of others,14 it is the violence of the destruction of her desire and her being, destroyed by the force of that very modernity15 that had glimmered faintly of the possibilities of transcending tradition that remains with us, as also the poignancy of the declaration that the grief caused by love may not be worth having loved. As an untouchable, Kasturi is made to pay the price of being in love with the upper caste Brahmin, Pratap, even though she does not dare to push her desire forward or even express it to the world. It is as if the very thought of the contact between the castes is contaminating and needs purification, and first the fire that burns and almost kills Pratap and destroys his home, and then the rushing train that destroys her are the cleansing agents that will purify the social body of the pollutant. While female deviancy is punished by this world, it is the memory of Kasturi’s desire, her anguish and her repressed anger and sense of injustice that lives on via the film. 14  The words that are engraved below her bust set up after the death with which the film begins and ends. 15  See Vasudevan (1995).

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In contrast to Kasturi who accepts that she cannot be with Pratap because of her lower caste identity, Tarana in the eponymous film from 1951 refuses to accept the decision of her community to violently separate her from Moti, the doctor who has arrived in her village due to an accident of the plane he was in, while returning from England. Beautiful, vivacious, happy-go-lucky and innocent at the same time, Tarana is the cynosure of all in the village. That Tarana and Moti should fall in love almost immediately is not surprising, for as the educated, handsome stranger and a professional, Moti is a complete contrast to the unintelligent and comic Totaram to whom Tarana has been engaged and who she has no time for even before she meets Moti. In the first six songs of the film that are sung by Lata Mangeshkar for Madhubala’s exuberant performance, Tarana clearly indicates that it is her passion for Moti that the film is privileging.16 With lilting music by Anil Biswas, these songs map the trajectory of the Tarana–Moti love relationship: the rising intensity of her passion for Moti, her quick disappointment and pain at his departure, her joy at his inability to leave when he returns to the village from the boat that is meant to take him away, her teasing plea when they are on an outing together that he must not forget her or break her heart, for the wounds of love have dire consequences, and their intimate togetherness midway through the film when they are alone in a cave where they have sought shelter in a storm.17 That Moti and Tarana have a sense of impending doom is evident in their conversation when Moti wants time to standstill so that they continue to be together, and when death comes, he sleeps forever with his head in her lap. This sequence in the cave is shot with a series of close-ups of the two lovers together, with their faces touching tenderly in an embrace, and with close-ups of Tarana when she is apprehensive of being parted from him. The visual composition and the shot design of this sequence in the cave demonstrate a new visual language that has clearly entered Bombay films, making an aesthetic statement about the depiction of the intimate space of love and desire. Combined with the lyrical performance of the song that Tarana sings to make Moti sleep and rest—be-imaan tore nainwa nindiya na aaye (Oh my darling cheat, sleep does not come to your eyes…), this sequence is clearly the “mise-en-scene of desire” that, as Orsini has pointed 16  Three of these are sung only by Lata Mangeshkar. The three others are duets with Talat Mehmood singing for Dilip Kumar and one has Sandhya Mukherjee singing for Shyama. Lata, however, is the voice for Madhubala. 17  These are the situations that the songs articulate.

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out, Hindi fiction of the 1920s and 1930s had begun to express.18 However, the cinematic form of this expression is highly charged and potent because of the sensorium that film creates which can have an immediate sensuous impact on the viewer. It is this intimate space of love and desire that is extremely threatening to Tarana’s world because of its subversive potential to throw aside the acceptable norms of the social community. And, that is what drives the villagers to believe Totaram’s lies about Tarana being pregnant with Moti’s child, a rumour that he has paid a midwife in the village to circulate. Incensed with this insult to his honour and dignity, Tarana’s father, Surdas, is willing to burn her on her death pyre, the villagers attack and almost kill Moti before he is taken away, and Surdas goes raving mad and burns his house down to ensure that the taint on his reputation is purified and removed. It is worth noting that fire recurs as a literal and metaphoric force in a number of films around this time, almost to suggest that the space of romance with its modern challenge to traditional mores must be destroyed and negated to “cleanse” and preserve the small-minded and self-enclosed spaces of traditional communities. The melodramatic amplification of the hysteria around notions of community honour not only drives Surdas to his death when he learns the truth about Totaram’s machinations to marry Tarana, and he rushes into the burning house to save his innocent daughter, but almost destroys Tarana as well. Having escaped in the nick of time and turning her back on the community that has ostracized her, Tarana has nowhere to go but to seek out Moti. Meanwhile, Moti has his own struggles to face, for his father is determined he marry Sheela, his friend’s daughter, and she possessively wants to win him over such that Tarana is a distant dream. It is the last third of the film when Moti’s grief and loss of Tarana are expressed in the two songs he sings that his passion matches Tarana’s intensity. Seene mein sulagte hain armaan… (Desires smoulder in my heart…) is picturized on Moti and Tarana both singing the same song in their different spaces, yearning for each other, just after Moti has returned home after being beaten up by the villagers. On the other hand, the ghazal,19 Ek main hoon, ek meri bekasi ki sham hai … (With me is present the evening of my helplessness) is sung by Moti when he returns from the village after the fire having been told that Tarana is dead. The hopelessness of a life without her is articulated in Talat  Orsini 1999: 153.  Bhaskar and Allen (2009): 14–16.

18 19

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Mehmood’s silky voice, and Dilip Kumar’s quiet and grieving performance with expressionist lighting and slow fluid camera movements that follow him composing him in medium shots until the end when the camera flows into a close up and cranes back and tilts to his legs pacing the terrace while he sings the last two lines of the ghazal: ab kahan woh zindagi/ jiska mohabbat naam hai Where is that life now/ that is called love.

This last section of the film alternates between Moti and Tarana’s suffering at being separated from each other with Tarana having to endure the humiliation and disbelief in seeing him with another woman. Now, absolutely alone in the world after her father’s death and having misunderstood the presence of Sheela in his home, Tarana is yet not able to abjure her love for Moti. She makes her way to the cave where Moti and she had taken shelter from the storm. Expressionist lighting, fluid camera movements, close-ups are deployed once again as Tarana sings the heart rending woh din kahan gaye bataa, jab is nazar mein pyaar tha … (Where have those days gone, when your gaze was full of love…) remembering the night of loving intimacy between them. It is these idioms of low-key, high-­ contrast lighting, fluid camera work and the song that, as I have argued elsewhere, “reinvented expressionist aesthetics, which resulted in the stylized orchestration of emotion that characterizes the Indian melodramatic form”.20 This amplification and intensification of emotion articulate what is at stake in this film. It is the urgent need for a resolution of the romance that recognizes the significance of the formation of the romantic couple that the denouement works out with Moti’s return to the cave driven by his “madness” for Tarana. With a clearing up of the misunderstandings between them, their intense love is validated and the space of the modern couple opens up. This rite of passage through fire and violence enables the imagination of the modern possibilities of selfhood and existence that accommodates what is otherwise seen as female deviancy. The possibilities of transcending caste, community and social identities to form a new future in post-independent India was an enabling vision indeed, one that also had a significance for reconfiguring gender identities and roles. That this vision was a desire for such an outcome, and not necessarily the reality  Bhaskar 2018: 253.

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of the day does not minimize its relevance for a moment in which different forces were struggling for ascendancy. As social films, Achhut Kanya and Tarana may be seen as films that were important statements on gender and social relations of the day, and as articulations of the visions for the possibilities or lack thereof of social transformation. I turn now to the genre of legendary romances—the tales of committed and doomed lovers like those of Laila–Majnun, Shirin–Farhad, Heer–Raanjha and others—that circulated as poetic testaments to love and were mobilized by Sufis as examples of the relationship between the human soul and the divine.21 The popularity of these tales—in different literary and performative forms—can be seen as a cultural indicator of the significances of romance and the yearnings of the soul as well as the literary achievements in the different languages in which these poems were composed. Several films and different versions of these romances were also made repeatedly at different moments. While there are many examples, I will talk about two cinematic recreations of the Heer–Raanjha legend—A.R. Kardar’s Dillagi (1949) and Hameed Butt’s Heer (1956) in which the portrayal of female desire is intense, subversive and destructive. While Dillagi is a cinematic rendering of the legend, it does not name the central characters Heer and Raanjha. At the same time, the narrative of the film is a recreation of the Heer–Raanjha legend, and as Mala and Swaroop, Suraiya and Shyam enact the roles of these legendary figures. However, there is no family enmity here as per the legend; Swaroop leaves his home because of the ill treatment of his sister-in-law and arrives in Mala’s village where his flute playing enamours Mala and they fall deeply in love. Mala’s father employs Swaroop to look after his cows and Mala and he spend many enchanted hours, with him playing the flute and her singing and dancing. Her uncle Popat is against their love and conspires to have her married and sent to her in-laws’ house. Mala is resolutely committed to Swaroop and does not submit to her husband. Swaroop sets out in search of her, and listening to him singing their song, she goes in search of him. Declaring her faith, she reassures him that she will always belong to him. The husband arrives on the scene and in the scuffle, a gun goes off, Swaroop is wounded, and Mala is dragged back to the house and imprisoned by the family. She suffers ill treatment and the pangs of yearning articulated in the songs she sings. Escaping from her imprisonment with the help of  See Shackle (2007).

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her sister-in-law, she rushes to Swaroop to find that he has succumbed to his injuries. Unable to bear his loss, she falls down dead beside him. In essence, this is the Heer–Raanjha narrative, with a lot of joyous celebration of music, dance and the love of Mala and Swaroop. There are elements of comedy as well with the village girls harassing Uncle Popat. The darker aspects of the Heer–Raanjha tale do surface in the last third of the film and are articulated through the songs sung by Suraiya herself and Mohammad Rafi for Shyam. In fact, the striking feature of the film is Naushad’s music and the songs like the central duet from which the film gets its title: tu mera chand, main teri chandani, main tera raag, tu meri ragini, nahi dil ka lagana, koi dillagi, koi dillagi … You are my moon and I your moonlight, I, the musical structure, you my melody Committing hearts is no flirtatious jest, no flirtatious jest…

As with the other films discussed, it is the songs that structure the narrative of the film. I have argued elsewhere that “The privileging, amplification and orchestration of desire, the structuring of the narrative drive along an emotional line, and the expressive realization of subjective emotion” are key features of the Indian melodramatic form, in which it is the “centrality of the song as the language of the ineffable” and as the “expression of individual desire” that is “central to the process of individuation”.22 Hence, it is that the songs structure the narrative and shape its emotional contours and articulate its deepest significances. The charge of the desire of the two lovers and especially that of Mala that renders the world hostile is evident in all the songs of the film while the last duet sung by Suraiya and Shyam give voice to the destruction that the world has wrought: zaalim zamaana mujhko, tumse chuda raha hai… beete dino ke nagmein, dil aaj gaa raha hai… deewana dekh tera, duniya se jaa raha hai The cruel world is disentangling me from you… The heart is singing the melodies of the past… Your smitten lover is leaving your world.

 Bhaskar (2012: 163).

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While the lineaments of the plot of Heer are basically the same as that of Dillagi, with the exception that the narrative is contextualized in the enmity of the leaders of the villages of Jhang Sial and Takht Hazara to which Heer and Raanjha, respectively, belong, the film’s realization is completely different. The hostility between the tribes is violent; the evil of the uncle is unmitigated and extremely dark; the community’s codes for female behaviour unrelenting; Raanjha is repeatedly the target of extreme violence by Saida’s men; both the desire of the lovers and their suffering are very intense; and very significantly, the power of Heer’s passion and her strength to take on the world for her love embody the subversive potential of female desire and deviancy. As with the other films discussed in this chapter, the narrative develops through the various songs in the film with the structure built by the different arcs of Heer and Raanjha’s enchantment/love and separation, each stage marked by songs that articulate the emotional situation of the protagonists. The first third of the film elaborates on the developing love of Heer and Raanjha, their separation and their coming together when he is drugged, cast out of his home and left by his own sisters-in-law’s men in the riverside retreat of the sad Heer mourning the loss of her lover. Her joyous delight in finding him in her bed results in a burst of song: bulbul mere chaman ke taqdeer mere banke jaago meri tamanna – jaagoǀ Nightingale of my garden Become my destiny Awake my desire – awake.

Heer is mesmerized whenever she hears Raanjha’s flute and their love grows as they spend time together; in different scenes with the two of them, it is Heer’s desirous gaze on Raanjha that the camera captures, and her desire is given full-bodied articulation in another song she sings as she looks at Raanjha’s bare torso as he is about to take a dip in a pond: dhadakena laga dil, nazar jhuk gayi / kabhi unse jab saamna ho gaya … mere sar pe yeh taaj hai ashiqui ka, mera rang hi doosra ho gaya … My hearting starting beating wildly, my gaze lowered as I came upon him … The crown of desire is on head, my colour has completely changed …

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The erotic charge of the lyrics and Heer’s desiring gazes at her beloved privilege female desire concretely and haptically, which is new in the films of the 1950s. At the same time, while Heer sings of her desire for Raanjha, the camera captures her as the desired one; she is backlit and shot in close-­ ups and realized in her beauty as innocence, purity and love. However, it is these very qualities and the self-enclosed nature of their love that flout the conventions of their communities that will not accept the union of the two. Heer is emotionally blackmailed into getting married to Saida, but this does not happen before her declaration of complete commitment to Raanjha and her plea to her parents to value her emotions. When her father condemns her as one with no shame, no honour, she responds in a powerful monologue about the oppressions of parents who strangle to death the desires of their daughters and condemn them to lifetimes of misery. She ends with declarations of the catastrophes that will take place if she is not united with Raanjha. Using images of droughts, poisoned waters of the rivers of Punjab, sterility and deaths, Heer evokes apocalypse as the consequence of her being sundered from Raanjha. The narrative is now at a fevered pitch, the melodramatic conflict and heightening of tone raise the stakes of the clash and infuse the drama of this family with the “excitement of grandiose conflict” in a universe that is “inhabited by ­cosmic ethical forces”.23 Female deviancy acquires here the validation of the “moral occult”24 so central to melodrama. For all her objections to her father’s oppressive insistence on her marriage with Saida, Heer has to succumb to her mother’s blackmailing her with the death of her father and her own widowhood. Heer’s departure for her husband’s home is accompanied by the wounded Raanjha’s heartbreaking song of blessing for her. Heer may be married, but she refuses to allow a consummation of the marriage, is ill-treated, thrown into a dungeon and slowly begins to lose her mind. Meanwhile, Raanjha’s encounter with a Shaivite ascetic who attempts to convince him to give up his quest of Heer and pursue the Lord results in Raanjha’s declaration of him having found the Lord in his beloved, and a commitment that his Ishq (passionate love) demands suffering and torture which he will endure. The narrative here resonates with Sufi mysticism deploying the idiom of the sacred that, as a trope, I have argued elsewhere, “sacralizes the human

 Brooks (1995: 40).  Ibid.: 22.

23 24

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erotic and uncovers the spiritual at the core of erotic experience”.25 The subversive and total commitment of Heer and Raanjha to each other devalues the social responsibilities of home and marriage which Heer refuses to accept. It is here that her deviant behaviour invites the ire of the family, the community and even the state. Having revived from her withdrawal from the world and a slow descent into madness with Raanjha’s song Allah teri khair kare … (May the Lord bless you …) that pierces through her unconsciousness, Heer and Raanjha are dragged to the court where the King and the qazi (cleric) uphold the rights of her husband over her. It is then that Heer challenges the forces of authority just as she had her parents condemning the laws of the state as not upholding divine laws meant for peace and love which the clerics and kings have destroyed by negating the pain and yearning inherent in the quest of God and snatching beauty from love. She also declares Raanjha’s face as her Quran, his love and memory, her worship of the divine. Being unfaithful to him, she would not be able to face Khuda and warns that if she is separated from him in the name of religion, she will burn and that will destroy the world. Her pleas are unheard and as she and Raanjha are taken away, and whipped in a dark, expressionistic mise-en-scene, she looks up at the sky and allows her anger a full articulation: zameen ki khair manaa, aasman ki khair manaa mitane wale, oh mitane wale, ab apni jahan ki khair mana tere jahaan ko pada, diljalo se kaam nahi jalaa ke khak na kar doon, toh yeh ishq naam nahi Oh you people seek benevolence for the earth, and for the skies Those who are destroying me, seek benevolence for your world That has no use for those whose hearts are burning with injustice If I don’t burn this world to ashes, then ishq has no value.

Heer’s prayers are answered; the melodramatic cosmic implications of the confrontation are evident; the city burns in flames; and the King reverses his judgement and returns Heer to her parents, directing the families that the enmity between Jhang Sial and Takht Hazara should end, and Heer and Raanjha should be united. However, Jhang Sial will not allow it, and once again Heer is pushed to accept that her love for Raanjha will destroy her parents, and will be the death of Raanjha who is approaching  Bhaskar (2012: 173).

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her village to wed her where an army of swords await him. She will not allow that and takes the poisoned milk saying that her blood will be the auspicious mark of her marriage, and that she will live and Raanjha will live as their love will be eternal. And, in an extremely affective and melodramatically heightened ending, the dying Heer sings to Raanjha to come to her, for the time of farewell has arrived. aa mere raanjhana, ruksat ka hai sama, aakhon mein dam hai, labon pe ruki hai jaan….. Come to me my Raanjhana, it is time to bid farewell to the world, my eyes seek you out, my life hangs dangerously on my lips as I call you….

Her parents struggle and stagger with the palanquin into which she has climbed as the dying bride, but the eternal beloved. Raanjha frees himself from his attackers and finally arrives to hold Heer just as she gives up her life. Raanjha cannot bear to continue living, and as he stabs himself and falls to his death, united finally with his love, the two defeated slumped parents witness the devastation and tragedy that they and their world have wrought. Even among the legendary romances, this portrayal of Heer is unusual in the powerful and defiant challenge she poses to patriarchy, her ­community and the state. At the same time, in her dedicated commitment to Raanjha and her love, she is like the other heroines of the romances as also of figures like the courtesan Chaudhvin Begum in Sohrab Modi’s ­historical, Mirza Ghalib, who gives up her life for her love, having dedicated herself to working for her beloved Ghalib’s benefit. Her songs mourn her destiny and the impossibility of union, but she does not defy the norms of the world as Heer does. The films discussed and indicated in this chapter have tremendous literal and internal violence as women are forced into situations from which the only escape seems death. It is only in a devotional film like Meera (1947)26 that the protagonist’s defiance is finally accepted as it is sublimated into an act of devotion to the Lord with her apotheosis as the venerated saint poet whose passion for Krishna is celebrated since it is directed 26  “Meera was made and released in 1945 as a Tamil film. In 1947, the Hindi version was released; both versions were box office successes. The films made M.S. Subbulakshmi, who played Meera in a stellar performance, popular throughout India and Sarojini Naidu called her “the nightingale of India.” The films were produced by T. Sadasivam, Subbulakshmi’s husband and directed by Ellis Dungan.

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at a God and not a human being. And yet, Meera is not unlike Kasturi, Tarana, Mala, Heer or Chaudhvin Begum, all women who desire intensely and whose desire is considered deviant behaviour by their worlds. Clearly, their deviancy highlights the anxieties around women’s passions, sexualities, articulations and the challenges they pose to patriarchy. And yet, the expressive forms of these films give body to a vision for a different future for women that struggles for an appropriate historical birth.

Works Cited Films Achhut Kanya. Director Franz Osten. Producer Himanshu Rai. 1936 Dillagi. Director A.R. Kardar. Producer A. R. Kardar. 1949 Heer. Director Hameed Butt. Producer S. Mukerji. 1956 Meera. Director Ellis R. Dungan. Producer T. Sadasivam. 1945; 1947 Mirza Ghalib. Director Sohrab Modi. Producer Sohrab Modi. 1954 Tarana. Director Ram Daryani. Producer K.S. Daryani. 1951

Books Bhaskar, Ira and Richard Allen. Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema (New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2009). Brooks, Peter. The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama and the Mode of Excess (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984). Chatterjee, Partha. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

Articles

and

Book Chapters

Anagol, Padma. ‘Rebellious Wives and Dysfunctional Marriages: Indian Women’s Discourses and Participation in the Debates over Restitution of Conjugal Rights and the Child Marriage Controversy in the 1880s and 1890s’, Women and Social Reform in Modern India, Volume I. Eds. Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2007), 420–457. Bhaskar, Ira, “Allegory, Nationalism and Cultural Change in Indian Cinema: SantTukaram”, Literature and Theology, Vol. 12, No. 1 (March 1998), 50–69. Bhaskar, Ira. “Emotion, Subjectivity, and the Limits of Desire: Melodrama and Modernity in Bombay Cinema, 1940s-‘50s.” Gender Meets Genre in Postwar Cinema. Ed. Christine Gledhill (Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 161–176.

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Bhaskar, Ira. ‘Expressionist Aurality: The Stylized Aesthetic of Bhava in Indian Melodrama’, Melodrama Unbound Across History, Media, and National Cultures. Eds. Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 253–272. Brooks, Peter, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama and the Mode of Excess. (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1995). Chakrabarty, Dipesh. ‘The Difference-Deferral of a Colonial Modernity: Public Debates on Domesticity in British India’, Subaltern Studies VIII: Essays in Honour of Ranajit Guha. Ed. David Arnold & David Hardiman. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 50–88. Devji, Faisal Fatehali. ‘Gender and the Politics of Space: The Movement for Women’s Reform, 1857–1900’, Women and Social Reform in Modern India. Volume II. Eds. Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2007), 99–114. Forbes, Geraldine. ‘Education for Women’, Women and Social Reform in Modern India. Volume I. Eds. Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2007), 83–112. Krishna, C. Yamini & Emilia Teles Da Silva. ‘Construction of Indian femininity and masculinity in Filmindia magazine 1946–1948’, South Asian Popular Culture, Vol.13, No. 3 (2015, 183–198). https://doi.org/10.1080/147466 89.2015.1126912 Minault, Gail. ‘Sayyid Mumtaz ‘Ali and Tahzib un –Niswan: Women’s rights in Islam and Women’s Journalism in Urdu’, Women and Social Reform in Modern India. Eds. Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2007), 70–88. Orsini, Francesca. ‘Reading a social romance: Cand hasinom ke khutut’, Narrative Strategies: Essays on South Asian Literature and Film. Eds. Vasudha Dalmia and Theo Damsteegt (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 185–210. Orsini, Francesca. ‘Domesticity and Beyond: Hindi Women’s Journals in the early 20th century’, South Asia Research, 19, 2, (1999), 137–160. ‘Reading a social romance: Cand hasinom ke khutut’, Narrative Strategies: Essays on South Asian Literature and Film. Eds. Vasudha Dalmia and Theo Damsteegt (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 185–210. Shackle, Christopher. ‘The shifting sands of love’, Love in South Asia: A Cultural History, ed. Francesca Orsini (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd, 2007), 87–108. Vasudevan, Ravi. “Film studies, New Cultural History and Experience of Modernity,” Economic and Political Weekly, v. XXX, no. 44, Nov 4, (1995), 2809–2814.

CHAPTER 3

“haan, haan mein alaida hoon!” (Yes, Yes I Am Different!): The Disorderly Bibi in Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam (1962) Shampa Roy and Saswati Sengupta

Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam (King, Queen and Knave 1962) based on a popular Bengali novel by Bimal Mitra (1953), though a modest commercial success, is considered to be an iconic Hindi film.1 Its status derives overwhelmingly from the pivotal character of Chhoti Bahu, the youngest daughter-in-law of the wealthy Chaudhury family which is precariously poised on the brink of decadent oblivion as the nineteenth century draws to a close in colonial Bengal. Eschewing the sacrificing/accepting model of the Hindu wife, Chhoti Bahu demands that her sufferings be addressed, especially in terms of her sexually sterile life. She impersonates the ways of ‘public’ women, the perceived site of deviant sexuality, to get her debauched husband’s attention and is brutally silenced. We argue that the 1  Mitra (1953/1974). The film won the ‘President’s Silver Medal’ and the Filmfare Award, the most prestigious corporate and critical recognition of its times, for Best Film, Director, Actress and Cinematography.

S. Roy (*) • S. Sengupta Department of English, Miranda House, Delhi University, Delhi, India e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_3

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film, despite its focus on female angst, continues to propagate the ­essentialized binary opposition of purity and pollution in its representation of Chhoti Bahu and the other female characters. In the climactic scene of the film, the disinterred skeletal remains that are accidentally discovered within the crumbling Chaudhury haveli (mansion) are recognized by the ‘Overseer Babu’, the male protagonist Bhootnath, as being those of Chhoti Bahu. His shocked exclamation, ‘Chhoti Bahu!’, the focus of the camera and the high-pitched background notes of a flute underline the moment as one of melodramatic horror at the unearthed secret. It is also a moment of intense personal trauma for Bhootnath. He collapses on the ground after dropping the sola topee and blueprint that mark his identity as an authoritative colonial official. As he looks on in stunned silence, an image of a bejewelled Chhoti Bahu bearing the identifiable marks of Hindu marriage, especially the sindoor (vermilion), is superimposed on the derelict mansion. Her voiceover— maang sindoor se bhar dena re, jisse log keh sakein sati-lakshmi chal basee! Fill the parting of my hair with sindoor so that people can say a sati-lakshmi has died!

—and the glowing image of her visage with a contented smile playing upon her lips overpower the horrific reality of the discovery of her remains.2 The appalling crime that is uncovered—the brutal murder, the hidden body, a disappearance that was never reported or investigated—is thus barely registered in the film which is preoccupied with establishing that Chhoti Bahu died as a ‘sati-lakshmi’, the paradigmatic ideal wife of Hindu Brahmanical patriarchy. Sati recalls the goddess as the sacrificing wife whose myths ideologically sanctioned the horrific practice of widow immolation in parts of India, especially Bengal, while Lakshmi is the golden deity of happy conjugality.3 The proverbial coupling of sati-­lakshmi signals the acceptance of violence that may be visited on the wife in the cause of marriage as sacrament. Guru Dutt’s film, despite being placed within the context of early twentieth-­century Calcutta/Bengal where the codification of crimes and  All translations, unless otherwise stated, are by the authors.  The Sati Abolition Act was passed in 1829 by the colonial government though in 1840 the Indian Penal Code distinguished between voluntary and forced Sati. The Government of India enacted the Sati Prevention Act in 1987 that makes it illegal to abet, glorify or attempt to commit Sati. 2 3

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formation of the police department happened as early as 1860, refuses to show the gruesome  discovery of the hidden ‘body’ within the frame of legal modernity and to represent Chhoti Bahu as a victim of a homicide worthy of investigation and punishment.4 Case records and journalistic reports of late nineteenth-century Calcutta, which document several crimes in which women appear as victims, suggest that in spite of the formalizing of forensic, policing and legal procedures, such crimes often drew extremely prejudiced investigative and judicial responses. Attempts were made to manipulate or silence discomfiting evidence of domestic violence and ‘honour’ killings. What became more important in the investigative and legal processes‚ was the character of the murdered woman which, then, determined the kind of justice she deserved.5 In Mitra’s novel, the old servant Bansi talks about a ‘bloodstained carriage’ returning to the haveli that night and there is a clear suggestion that the Chaudhurys had bribed the local police after killing the recalcitrant Chhoti Bahu.6 This collusion between the rich babus and the local darogas/constables, which helps cover up crimes against the women of elite families, is expunged in Guru Dutt’s film. In fact, Dutt’s film despite drawing attention to its status as a period drama through visual cues like carefully designed costumes and lavish sets, excises much of the rich complexity of the historical moment in Mitra’s novel. The film ultimately works largely in terms of implacable binaries in its representation of women. The angst-­ ridden male protagonist—played by Guru Dutt who is also the producer of the film—despite his role of ‘overseeing’ the city’s move to modernization, chooses to see the evidence of Chhoti Bahu’s murder in terms of her contentment at having died with the markers of devout wifehood displayed on her battered body. Killed on suspicions of adulterous transgression, it is more important for the filmic narrative to consolidate her credentials as an exemplary sati-lakshmi.  Mitra’s novel takes as its context the period of 1897 (the year when Bhootnath comes to the haveli) till what seems like a bit after 1911 when the Calcutta Improvement Trust, where Bhootnath is employed as an Overseer, was formed. 5  In three of Daroga Priyanath Mukhopadhyay’s immensely popular case accounts (titled Darogar Daftar, serialised between 1891 and 1903 and based on his actual investigated cases as a Daroga (constable)), for instance, the ‘punishing’ of the adulterous/transgressive woman by members of her family (by killing and mutilating her) lead to an unsympathetic and half-hearted investigation as also to a considerably light sentence for the perpetrators once they are apprehended. See Girijasundari, Aashmaani Laash (The Mid-Air Corpse) and Kaata Mundu (Severed Head) in Mukhopadhyay (1892–1903/2004). 6  Mitra (1953/1974:518). 4

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I The main narrative of Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam begins through Bhootnath’s memory, who as the Overseer Babu is now supervising the razing of the Chaudhury mansion that had once given him shelter and which now lies in a shambles. Even as he looks on, the derelict mansion dissolves into its past splendour through a catalogue of images: imposing gates, liveried guards, retinue of servants, neoclassical lions, naked female forms in marble and so on. Of all these, the camera, through a tighter shot, foregrounds two giggling young women waiting in a phaeton whose staging in the mise-en-scène immediately marks them as ‘public’ women. A startled Bhootnath, now in his retrospective just-arrived-from-village persona, draws attention to these women not being in ‘purdah’—a polyphonic term that ranges from the inner quarters to the veil to signify the modesty of women and their segregated lives. It is in this context that the film, within a few shots, introduces the men of the haveli—the native comprador class, the rentier-absentee landlords created by the revenue policy of the British ‘Permanent Settlement’ of 1793—who depart with a retinue of toadies for an evening of decadent sexual pleasure. Concubinage in its many avataras—the courtesan, the sex worker, the mistress and so on—existed in Bengal prior to the advent of the British as the sanctioned play of male libido in patriarchal societies. But like all other socioeconomic formations, it too is affected by the colonial regime.7 Many of the displaced dancers, musicians and singers of the dissolved Mughal courts of North Indian cities migrated to Calcutta that was the emerging colonial metropolis of power. The wealthy native babu, the capillary force of British imperialism, flaunted the ‘nautch’ girl as a mark of his social arrival. But the beshya/baiji—as the sex workers and/or courtesans were most popularly referred to from the late eighteenth century in Bengal— also comprised women from across religious communities and caste hierarchies who were individually deserted or devastated as a social group because of crop failure, famines, price rise, epidemics, lost traditional vocations and so on. These distressed women flocked to Calcutta to end up usually as maids in mansions or as beshya/baiji in brothels.8 Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the historical context of the film’s fl ­ ashback,  Banerjee, (1993: 2461–2472); Chatterjee (1993:159–172).  A Calcutta survey of 1850 reveals that out of 12,000 sex workers, nearly 10,000 were abandoned Kulin widows. Chakrabarti and Chakrabarti (2013: 36–7). 7 8

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developments in the arena of cultural modernity like the gramophone and the proscenium theatre aided the emergence of some former beshya/baiji as professional artistes. The film however reduces this diverse social reality and stereotypes the ‘whore’—through songs, dance, props and attire—in opposition to the ‘upper’ caste Hindu wife. Indeed, the opening shot of the ‘dancing girl’ is framed, through cross-editing, by the male domestic help’s narration of how the ‘witch’ has taken Chhote Babu away from his wife, the sati-­lakshmi, who is the personification of virtue.9 And, it is this essentialized binary opposition of purity and pollution—the wife and the whore—that shapes the tragic stature of Chhoti Bahu’s transgression that lies at the heart of the film.

II Chhoti Bahu is first introduced in the frame narrative through Bhootnath’s recollection as inviting him to enter her andarmahal, the feminine inner world both spatial and emotional. Then, as the film begins to unfold the past, the images and the sounds of the deepening night coalesce with a haunting song from within the somnolent haveli signalling Chhoti Bahu’s lonely vigil for her truant husband. And, Bhootnath is mesmerized. jiya bujha bujha   naina thake thake piya dheere dheere chale aao. The heart is listless   the eyes tire return my love slowly softly.

Songs have been an integral part of Hindi films since the technical availability of synchronized sound film in 1930.10 Playback singing, recorded by professional singers and lip-synced by the actors on screen, is phenomenally popular in India. This prolific usage of songs has been critiqued as gratuitous interruptions symptomatic of Hindi films’ ‘refusal to confront Indian reality’.11 Drama, dance and music have, however, always been 9  The word ‘upper’ signals the oppressive caste hierarchy of Brahmanical Hinduism and has been retained here to foreground the a priori stratification that is embedded in the language and practice of caste. 10  Skillman (1986: 133–144, 133). 11  Manuel (1988:174).

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interconnected in many Indian classical and folk traditions, and there is a growing critical recognition that songs as cinematic device comprise a complex intertextuality that reveals the play of ideologies, aporias and closure in Hindi films. The crucial shift in Chhoti Bahu’s life, from the earlier listless state of neglect by an indifferent husband to the promise of a new intimacy with him, is also registered by a song. This second song begins with Chhoti Bahu lowering her gaze, slowly and sensuously, into a hand-held mirror. A range of sensory images of her elaborate ritual of getting dressed meld with the lilting cadence of the song whose lyrics evoke romance through references to the East wind, the swing, the open windows and so on. The song’s repetition of the word ‘jhat’/fast also reveals a quickening impulse of desire: piya aiso jiya mein samaye gayo re ke mein tan man ki sudh-budh gawan bethi… My beloved has so engulfed my being that I have lost my bearings, physical and emotional, entirely…

This is the landscape of female eros familiar to the audience of Hindi films, through endless retellings, in its evocation of the Shringara rasa which relates to ‘the union of man and woman’.12 The articulation of female desire through this genre, however, is never a sterile repetition of the formulaic. It has been used, for instance, in other films of the same period to variously represent a bride awaiting her fate, a courtesan getting ready for an assignation, a girl bedecking herself for her lover or a wife celebrating her state of dishabille. In some instances, the genre is used for a public proclamation of female desire, while in others, it is an admission in solitude.13 The generic tropes of these songs help communicate the interiority of female desire while the specifics anchor the articulation in the context of the individual film. Picturized entirely indoors in an overladen room with the silent presence of helping maids and a prominent bed that the director admittedly used as ‘symbolic of her loneliness and empty ­sexual life’, the song piya aiso foregrounds both the upper-class context of  Ghosh trans. The Natyashastra (1967: VI.46).  khanke kangana bindiya hase (Dr. Vidya 1962); sakhi re mera man uljhe tan dole (Chitralekha 1964); chanda ja re ja (Man Mauji 1962); dhoondo dhoondo re sajna (Ganga Jamuna 1961); diya na bujheri (Son of India 1962); tum humko dekh (Zindagi aur Hum 1962). 12 13

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Chhoti Bahu’s traumatic solitude as wife and her intense romantic-erotic longings.14 Female erotic desire, always held to be potentially transgressive from a patriarchal perspective, is halted in this instance by the prominent reference to sindoor both in the lyrics and the repeated images of Chhoti Bahu applying it in the parting of her hair and forehead during the final segment of this song. Sindoor plays an important symbolic function in the Brahmanical Hindu signifying order and marks the wife’s especial virtue as griha-lakshmi, the goddess of the domestic realm, who resonates tradition, harmony, fecundity and conjugal devotion ‘so pleasing to cultural nationalists’.15 Indeed, the transition of Chhoti Bahu, from the wasted woman of the first song to the one who anticipates conjugal fulfilment in the second song, is effected in the film through her procuring of the talismanic ‘Mohini sindoor’ through Bhootnath. And, the promise of the sindoor is heightened by the arrival of her husband, Chhote babu, in the bedroom and his image is shown through Chhoti Bahu’s gaze in the mirror at the end of this song. The gap between patriarchal reality and the reflection of female desire is the tragic denouement of the film.

III The transgressive nature of Chhoti Bahu’s desires is reinforced through the representations of the two other bahus of the haveli. In Mitra’s novel, the two bahus, albeit different from Chhoti Bahu, are well fleshed-out characters. But, in Dutt’s film, they are reduced to one-dimensional stereotypes: Badi bahu is a widow represented in terms of a compulsive obsessive disorder and Majhli bahu is an aggressive defender of the decadent lifestyle of the Babus of the haveli. The upper-class, ‘upper’-caste identity of Badi bahu is first imaged in the film by a shrouded carriage that takes her for a purifying dip in the river Ganga with four maids running behind it (whose class position precludes the protective potential of the purdah). Fetishized by rituals of purity, Badi bahu’s indoctrination within the caste-patriarchal system where the sexual life of a widow ended with the death of her husband and needed to be disciplined—by extremely rigid and austere codes of enforced celibacy, bodily mortification, food restrictions, symbolic relationships with colours  Saran (2008:149).  Sarkar (1999:33).

14 15

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and spaces—is strengthened by her second appearance. This is also the moment of Bhootnath’s first foray into the haveli’s inner quarters. Sitting outside her room in a white saree, nodding with sleep, Badi Bahu has her arms extended while the maid Gindiya washes her hands repeatedly. Her bizarre behaviour and unnatural facial expressions suggest an unhinged mind as she asks the maid how many times her hands have been washed: kitni baar hua ri? How many times has it been?

And, she is told in the stereotyped ‘rustic’ dialect of Hindi films that separates the maid’s world from the elite widow’s: chausathh baar hui gava! It has been sixty-four times.

Despite the possibilities of change opened up by the Widow Remarriage Act (1861), the formalizing of the usufructuary rights of widows over their husbands’ property by the codification of laws, as also the radical marriage regulation of 1872, it was celibate caste widowhood that was apotheosized in late nineteenth-century Bengal. Writings about widows valorized them for unrelenting observance of rituals and complete denial of sexuality.16 And yet, there is enough evidence in newspapers, law reports, true crime accounts by darogas as well as in personal records of the time‚ of widowed women who asserted their agency through illicit relationships and elopements or went to court for restitution of their property-related rights.17 Even in Mitra’s novel, despite her quirks, the widowed Badi Bahu 16  Even writers like Bankim Chattopadhyay who represented widows (for instance Rohini in Krishnakanta’s Will [1878] or Kundo in Bishbrikhha [1873]) in terms of sexual assertion seem to have ultimately ‘punished’ them with brutal deaths or suicide by the end of their novels. There was a spate of novels centred around young widowed women as protagonists like Bidhhaba Bangabala (A Bengali Widow [1875], Nirmala [1895]), Debi na Manabi (A Woman or a Goddess? [1895], Lila [1893], Kamalini [1892], Snehlata [1893]) that extol these women for remaining exemplars of virtue. There were, however, instances of widowed women in zamindari households who administered their estates and were ‘feared for their power, strength and tyranny’ (Borthwick (1984: 21). 17  What also comes through in a number of these writings is that such rebellious acts often resulted in brutal reprisals within families. In several case accounts that Daroga Mukhopadhyay talks of having investigated, he refers to upper caste widows of wealthy households who were

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is a ‘redoubtable woman’ whose decisions cannot be ignored by the men of the family.18 But, Dutt’s film only focuses on Badi Bahu’s pathological obsession with the widow’s flesh as needing ceaseless mortification through punishing regimens in order to keep it ‘pure’. The corpulent and bejewelled Majhhli bahu is but the other face of indoctrinated wifehood as she snarls in defence of ‘rayees gharaane ke mard’—the men of wealthy families. She is unquestioningly complicit in her spouse’s going out for ‘naach rang’—entertainment and pleasures of the flesh—in a world where wives had to find their happiness within the rigid and ennui-inducing confines of the andarmahal.19 Another famous fictional Chhoti Bahu of a wealthy zamindar household of the same historical context, appearing first in Tagore’s novel Ghare-Baire (1914), and later filmed by Satyajit Ray (1985), laments: In our house, in this household of untold luxury, very few women have received the respect that is due to them. But apparently that is the convention here. And that is why despite the fact that all their tears were submerged under the froth of alcohol and the tinkle of nautch-girls’ anklets, my sisters-­ in-­law clung to their one source of pride in order to keep themselves afloat; and that was their pride at being the wives of wealthy households.20

The bahus’ leisured lives were linked to the prestige of the household and made possible by the incessant labour of an army of domestic workers (like Bansi, Gindiya and others) just as the incarcerated purity of their wombs justified the families’ caste patriarchal claims of status. And, nowhere is this gendered inequality more apparent than in Chhote Babu’s patronizing summation of elite female lives as: either killed by family members or exiled to Kashi to spend the rest of their days in abject misery. Also, in the famous Kery Kolitani case that was at the centre of controversies in 1885, the validity of the widowed woman’s claim to her husband’s property was judged by the jury (as also most contemporary commentators) in terms of whether she had been chaste after her husband’s death or not. 18  Mitra (1953/1974: 72). 19  About antahpurs in wealthy households in late nineteenth-century Bengal, Chitra Deb writes, ‘Everywhere, as far as women were concerned, there was overwhelming emphasis on aabroo (seclusion though the word also means honour), purdah, closed windows and doors. Even in their own houses, women were prohibited from stepping on to the courtyards, going to terraces and there was never any question of their crossing the threshold on foot’. Deb (1984:86). 20  Tagore (1916/1994:10).

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kaudiyan khelna, gehne todna, gehne banwaana, so jaana. Playing with cowries, making and remaking ornaments, falling asleep.21

But Chhoti Bahu demands more from life.

IV Shabana Azmi, a leading actress of Hindi films since the 1970s and associated in particular with neorealistic films of serious social concerns, says of Chhoti Bahu that: Meena Kumari’s characterisation in it is a queer mixture of the traditional and the unconventional because (before this) …. there was never a question of a wife expressing her sexuality to her husband and making her sexual demand. That was for the vamp …22

Meanings accrue to films in very many ways one of which is the enactment of the characters and in the context of the Bombay/Mumbai film industry, the actors often encrust the film with not just their own interpretations but also their mannerisms, their typecast characterizations and their personal histories that is grist to the ancillary industry of gossip mills. Meena Kumari (born Mahjabeen Bano, 1933–1972) had already earned the sobriquet of ‘Tragedy Queen’ when she took on the role of Chhoti Bahu and created a record, unbroken still, for being the sole actor to be nominated for the prestigious Filmfare Award for the best actress of the year for Phani Majumdar’s Aarti, A. Bhimsingh’s Mein Chup Rahoongi and Dutt’s Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam. All three of these roles were of the suffering wife—in itself a comment on contemporary society—but while in the first two her characters suffer in silence, Chhoti Bahu demands that her state of neglect as wife be redressed. Meena Kumari, caught in a discordant marriage and eventually dying a death brought on by alcohol addiction, went on record to say that it gave her the greatest of pleasures to receive the award for playing Chhoti Bahu: 21  Perhaps, the bahus’ fixation with jewellery also needs to be understood in a social context where women had little access to immovable property (like land) and where stridhan (the legal term used for property owned indisputably by women) often consisted principally of ornaments. 22  https://youtu.be/KkGGJwEX3ok

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aksar maine apne aapko ghutaghuta hi paya hei aur ya toh bilkul bagi… ‘Sahib, Bibi, Ghulam’ ki chhoti bahu meri humraaz thi … I have often found myself to be suffocated or else entirely rebellious. ‘Sahib, Bibi, Ghulam’s Chhoti Bahu was my confidante…23

Chhoti Bahu’s ‘rebellion’ lies in her decision to impersonate the ways of the ‘public’ women, the site of deviant sexuality, of forbidden pleasures— ‘woh baat’ (that thing) as Chhote Babu calls it mysteriously—that the beshya/baiji alone can provide, according to him. Of course, the transgression is ideologically justified in terms of this being yet another, albeit liminal, way of serving the husband which is propagated as the dharma of Hindu wives: aaj tak kisi doosri aurat ne itna bara balidan diya he bhala? Hindu ghar ki bahu ho kar sharab piya he kisine? Has any woman ever made such a great sacrifice? Has any wife of a Hindu household consumed alcohol?

But, it is still a moment of epistemic break for female ‘virtue’ in the moral universe of Chhoti Bahu. And once again, it is a song na jaao saiyaan (Don’t go my beloved)—sung by Geeta Dutt who too was caught in an unhappy marriage ironically with Guru Dutt and died eventually of cirrhosis of liver—that anchors this tragic, self-destructive decision. This song is picturized in the same room—with its lonely, ornate bed— and Chhoti Bahu is yet again articulating the intensity of her erotic desire but two things are markedly different from her previous songs. The Sati-­ Lakshmi’s transgressive desire is underscored by the stunning spectacle of her drunken movements as her body sways and lurches in ways that have rarely (perhaps never) been associated with good wives in Hindi cinema. Unlike in the earlier song which conveys the breathless anticipation of union with her piya, in this, she directly confronts him with her fierce desire which refuses to be dismissed or denied.24 The song is framed by exchanges between Chhoti Bahu and Chhote Babu, in both of which the figure of the beshya/baiji looms large. Chhoti Bahu in fact begins her song  Ibid.  ‘mein ka karoon ram mujhhe budhha mil gaya’ in Raj Kapoor’s Sangam (1964) is also a song in which a wife attempts to seduce a petulant husband but Vyjanthimala’s dance movements and expressions as well as the song itself make for a more playful, light-hearted situation. 23 24

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as a desperate attempt to hold her husband back when he declares his need to escape the stifling interiors of her room and visit his mistress. He spurns her overtures and states that while she could only give him sukh/pleasure, the baiji represented that something ‘other’ that a wife could never bring to the relationship. Incensed, she hails him and as though picking up the gauntlet, her song expresses her ability to coalesce the devotion of a wife with the irresistible allure of the beshya/baiji. She thus asserts her dangerously potent sexuality. And when the song ends, she tells Chhote Babu that she is even prepared to become one of ‘those women’ whom he keeps for his pleasure in his baagaanbari/the garden house—a suggestion that makes him recoil with disgust. Garam khoon/hot blood—the sign of insatiable sexual appetite—has been proudly proclaimed by Chhote Babu to be the Chaudhury men’s mark of distinction and masculinity. But when glimpsed in the wife, it turns her into a horrific spectre in the eyes of all the men in the film, including Bhootnath. When the song begins, Chhoti Bahu is sprawled on the bed and as Geeta Dutt’s liltingly sensuous voice fills the screen, it conveys both her drunkenness and her overwhelming desire mingled with the soul-searing anxiety of rejection. So forceful is the declaration of her passion that even her irate husband stops to watch her bemusedly. She, then, languidly drags herself up on the bed and with a provocative smile on her face, flutters her eyelashes, grabs his hand and sings of: yeh bikhhri zulfein yeh khilta kajra yeh mahki chunri yeh man ki madira…. These disheveled tresses‚ this smudged kajal, this fragrant veil, this wine-soaked consciousness ….

The phrases are redolent with hints of disorderly female desires, and the stanza ends with the initial plaintive plea of ‘naa jaao saiyyan’—don’t go my love —metamorphosing into a bold assertion of valid entitlement: main tumko aaj jaane na doongi jaane naa doongi! I won’t let you go today, won’t let you go!

The contradictoriness embedded in the phrase ‘machalta hua suhaag’ (the fervent restlessness of my conjugal state) foregrounds the excessive desire despite the formulaic evocation of the tropes of servitude and devotion—

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main tumhri dasi, janam ki pyaasi, … tumhare raste ki dhool le kar main maang apna sada bharoongi… I am your slave, I have thirsted for you over several births… I will fill the parting of my hair with the dust of your footsteps…

She refuses to find fulfilment simply in being a suhaagan (culturally privileged though that state of conjugality may be) whose husband is alive but indifferent.25 In fact, the tables are ironically turned even further when in their heated exchange following the song, Chhoti Bahu hints at her husband’s sexual impotency. For it is he (despite his frequent sneering at her inadequacies), who as she points out, has failed to give her the sukh (happiness) of becoming a mother. The disruptive Chhoti Bahu is silenced. Her sexual rebelliousness threatens and undermines the edifice of ‘upper’-caste patriarchy to such an extent that she must be killed by the powerful Chaudhurys and the questions raised by her must be buried forever. Her murder is commissioned by the patriarchal head of the family, her brother-in-law Majhle babu, and the act is condoned later by the conspiring silence of the rising middle class of colonial modernity, represented by the bhadralok Bhootnath. Thus the two masculine figurations, of a supposedly historical narrative of transition, expose the continuity of conventional Brahmanical-patriarchal politics: the cataloguing of woman in term of an essentialized binary—the whore or the sati-lakshmi wife.

V For a while though, Sahib, Bibi aur  Ghulam holds out the promise of gender emancipation as the binary opposition of the whore in the public domain and the wife in the private expands into the triadic because of the presence of Jaba, the daughter of Subinay babu, the owner of the Mohini Sindoor Company where Bhootnath finds his first employment in the city. Jaba is the new woman. Her modernity is represented immediately and 25  In fact at one point in the song when Chhote Babu is shown losing interest and yawning, Chhoti Bahu, who has just described herself as his daasi (slave), pelts him with flowers with an expression that suggests her determination to have his attention rather than slavish supplication.

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visually by her lace-edged blouses, her slipper-shod feet, her presence in the room where her father conducts business with other men and her easy access to even the street outside where she accosts Bhootnath without purdah. Jaba plays the piano and corrects the proofs of advertisement for Mohini Sindoor with equal ease. The film metaphorically foregrounds this modernity with its play of light and dark. The women of the Chaudhury mansion are often silhouettes, in shadows or framed against dark backgrounds and spatial interiors that are segregated from the baithak—literally the ‘sitting’ rooms—where the men interact with outsiders. In sharp contrast to this low key lighting, Jaba in her first appearance has sunlight falling on her and there are hardly any shadows when she sings, bhanwara bara nadaan hein about the proverbial bee and flowers. Indeed, Jaba’s emancipated social self is the most evident in her dealings with Bhootnath as she teases him: soch lete hein aap? Are you capable of thinking? kya dekh rahen hein aap? What are you looking at? hichkichaiye nahin, keh bhi daliye. Don’t feel shy, say what you have to.

Jaba’s teasing flirtation with Bhootnath in the street is immediately followed by the track shot of the faithful servant of the Chaudhury mansion, running through an alley of streetwalkers to reach the ‘sullied’ quarter where Chhote babu has been spending his nights. His errand is to get Chhote Babu to dip his toe in a little bowl of water with which Chhoti Bahu will break her fast. The premises of the two man–woman relationships could not be more different and are cinematically represented thus. The film first introduces Jaba through the audio track of her laughter directed at Bhootnath’s rustic innocence and for much of the film her laughter and light-spangled presence represent the promise of a new beginning for women, the eradication of— ghise huye reet riwaz worn out traditions and practices. (Jaba)

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Jaba is specifically mentioned in the film, and the Bengali novel, as belonging to a Brahmo family.26 The Brahmos, principally an association of ‘upper’-caste Bengali Hindus, played a crucial role in the genesis and development of most major religious, social and political movements in Bengal (in many instances, also India) from 1820 to 1930, and they argued that the backward condition of women was one of the principal impediments to social progress in India.27 Ram Mohan Roy, the founder of the Brahmo Samaj, was also the significant campaigner against Sati, the caste Hindu brutal practice of burning the widow. The Samaj, from the 1860s, was associated with seeking legal and social sanction for marriages across caste and remarriages of widows that were considered to be transgressive and sinful.28 The Brahmo petition for the Special Marriage Act, which would legitimate individual choice across gender and appeal for male monogamy, was passed in British India in 1872 in a society that practiced polygamous marriages, celibate widowhood, female illiteracy, child marriage and so on in the intertwined contexts of class and caste hierarchies.29 Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam, which retrospectively looks at this volatile period of gendered reform, quite shockingly given Guru Dutt’s reputation as a progressive film-maker, regressively forecloses the advances made through the struggles of the long nineteenth century. Jaba’s final assertion of her individuality in the film is in effect the internalization of the precepts of orthodox Brahmanical patriarchy despite her upbringing: samaj ke bandhan ke liye mein doosre bandhan kaise tore doon? janam, janam ke bandhan he jo…. How can I break my other ties for the sake of the Samaj? Ties that span several lifetimes ….

The Brahmo Supavitra is turned down by Jaba. She chooses not even Bhootnath—and the camera makes us intimate with her obvious attraction for him—but the unknown stranger she had been married to as a child in 26  Originally, the Calcutta Unitarian Committee in 1823, the Brahmo Samaj in 1829 and, finally, the Brahmo Samaj in 1843. 27  Sastri, Vol. II, 1919–20: 263; Kopf (1979). 28   These changes were also being propagated by Hindu reformers like Vidyasagar (1820–1891). 29  The Hindu Widow’s Remarriage Act was passed in 1856. There were factionalism even within the Brahmos and liberal Hindus over the purpose and extent of female emancipation. Kopf (1979: 39–40); Majumdar (2009:167–205).

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the tradition of the most conservative of Brahmanical Hindu practices. She accepts the sanctity of that marriage as sacrament, “even if the husband has married a second time … even if he is of immoral character … even if he is incapable of making [me] happy … even if he refuses to accept [me]…” Her faith now echoes the sentiment of Chhote Babu, the epitome of upper-class, ‘upper’-caste patriarchal decadence: har patni ka yehi dharm hein ke who apne pati ke ghar me jiye aur apne pati ke ghar me mare! It is the sacred duty of a wife that she must live and die in her husband’s home!

The audience and Bhootnath are aware that the groom in question, the Brahman Atulya Chakraborty, is none but Bhoothnath himself. And, thus, the promise of romance mystifies the ideological closure of gender emancipation in the film. In the novel by Bimal Mitra—and the film itself draws attention to this literary inspiration framed as it is by the opening and closing shots of the book—Jaba marries Supavitra who shares her emancipated ideology. This is also true of the Bengali film directed by Kartick Chattopadhyay in 1956. Why was the change effected in the Hindi film that was helmed by men like Abrar Alvi (director and script writer) and Guru Dutt (producer, male lead and director of the songs) who were associated with liberal and progressive ideas? Dead men tell no tales and we may never know the authorial intention/intervention behind the profoundly disturbing changes in the film in the context of gender. And the film, as it begins to track the changes in Jaba—changes which are its very own and different from the novel—uses low key lighting and places her against shuttered windows reminiscent of the Chaudhury women as she sings: meri baat rahi mere man mein … aag lagi jeevan mein. My words remain unspoken … my life set on fire.

The song ends with the gates to the road that she had once accessed easily, swinging shut. Even the last image of Jaba’s conjugal felicity, her head covered appropriately in a version of purdah as she places her hand on Bhootnath’s, cannot quite erase this frightening implication of the re-­ articulation of the modern woman’s subjectivity. The flippant comment

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that Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam is really ‘a Bengali film in Hindustani drag’ glosses over the gendered nature of trauma in a traditional Hindu marriage that could unfortunately be realized across regions and cultures in India.30 Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam is a period film but it suggests that historical evolution or agency is not for women who must be impaled essentially in terms of the patriarchal prescriptions of the chaste and the unchaste. Guru Dutt’s film, much like Majhlebabu and Bhootnath, silences the poignant question raised by Chhoti Bahu: mere bhaag mein itna dukh kyon? Why am I fated for such misery?

Works Cited Films Chitralekha. Director Kidar Sharma. Producer A.K. Nadiadwala. 1964 Dr. Vidya. Director Rajendra Bhatia. Producer Mohan Segal. 1962. Ganga Jamuna. Director Nitin Bose. Producer Dilip Kumar. 1961. Man Mauji. Director Krishnan-Panju . Producer A.V. Meiyappan. 1962. Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam. Director Abrar Alvi. Producer Guru Dutt. 1962. Sangam. Director and Producer Raj Kapoor. 1964. Son of India. Director and Producer. Mehboob Khan. 1962. Zindagi aur Hum. Director Anand Kumar.Producer Rashid Parwez. 1962.

Books Bangla Deb, Chitra. Antahpurer Atmakatha (Kolkata: Ananda Publishers, 1984). Chattopadhyay, Bankim. Bishbrikkha (1873. Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, 1940). Chattopadhyay, Bankim. Krishnakanta’s Will (1878. Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, 1955). Mitra, Bimal. Saheb, Bibi, Golam (1953, Kolkata: New Age Publishers, 1974). Mukhopadhyay, Priyanath. Darogar Daftar. Vols I & II (1892–1903, Kolkata: Punashcha, 2004). Tagore, Rabindranath. Ghare-Baire (Kolkata: Visvabharati, 1916/1994).  Kesvan (2008: 66–8. 67).

30

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English Borthwick, Meredith. The Changing Role of Women in Bengal 1849–1905 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984). Chakrabarti, Kunal and Shubhra Chakrabarti. Historical Dictionary of the Bengalis (Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2013). Ghosh, Manomohan trans. The Natyashastra (Calcutta: Calcutta Granthalaya Pvt. Ltd., 1967). Kopf, David. The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). Majumdar, Rochona. Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal (Durham and London, 2009). Manuel, P. Popular Musics of the Non-Western World: An Introductory Survey (New York/London: Oxford University Press, 1988). Saran, Sathya. Ten Years with Guru Dutt: Abrar Alvi’s Journey (New Delhi: Penguin, 2008). Sarkar, Tanika. Words to Win: The Making of Amar Jiban: A Modern Autobiography (New Delhi: Zubaan, 1999). Sastri, Sivanath. History of the Brahmo Samaj, Vol. II (Calcutta: Brahmo Mission, 1919–20).

Articles Banerjee, Sumanata ‘The ‘Beshya’ and the ‘Babu’: Prostitute and Her Clientele in 19th Century Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 28, No. 45 (Nov. 6, 1993), 2461–2472. Chatterjee, Ratnabali. ‘Prostitution in Nineteenth Century Bengal: Construction of Class and Gender’, Social Scientist, Vol. 21, No. 9/11 (Sep.–Oct., 1993), 159–172. Kesvan, Mukul. “No One Writes to the Prison Doctor Anymore”, Outlook, 19th May, 2008, 66–8. Skillman, Teri “The Bombay Hindi Film Song Genre: A Historical Survey”, Yearbook for Traditional Music, Vol. 18 (1986), 133–144.

CHAPTER 4

The Goddess of Mean Things: The Mother-­in-­Law in Hindi Films Mrinal Pande

The year is 1959 and the cinema hall showing a popular Hindi matinee in our small town is stuffy and full of women. They file in with their children and a male chaperone, usually an unemployed young brother-in-law who obliges all the mohulla bhabhis (the sisters-in-law of the neighbourhood) willingly and fetches them various articles of personal use from the local market apart from offering his services as a sanctioned chaperone to the movie hall. This benefits him in various ways. The bhabhis and their nubile daughters are not merely game for occasional flirting; they also thank him with delicious snacks, presents of colourfully embroidered handkerchiefs and occasionally much-needed cash. Besides, his presence keeps their husbands at ease. Assured by their wives that they will have a male family representative accompanying them to what was a nice ‘family movie’, they permit their brood to go. In small town India of the ‘50s and ‘60s, the matinee audiences were comprised largely of women, children and male chaperones. A film that appealed to this audience that filled the halls and made for multiple viewings guaranteed success for a film. Women trooped into cinema halls with an entire army. Most entered holding an infant with one hand, and a M. Pande (*) New Delhi, India © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_4

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toddler with the other. A balled up handkerchief nestled among pendulous breasts. As they waddled, squeezed their bodies between seats and ­followed the ushers’ torch light beam to their seats, they mouthed shrill instructions for the remaining brood not to dally but just follow Mother. The matinee crowds smelt somewhat damp and brought into the hall a strange cornucopia of smells: talcum powder, ‘Snow’ or a popular face cream, boiled sweets, cooking oil, asafoetida and fried onions from many past meals. The cinema hall was their personal space, a dark cave that helped them escape from the daily drudgery of their overcrowded lives and joint families that denied them any privacy. As the (usually hazy) documentary accompanied by Pannalal Ghosh’s flute and the sonorous voice-over by Devki Nandan Pande began narrating the latest sob story about a flood or drought or some other natural calamity in some part of India, women still smiled and settled in more comfortably in their chairs to wait patiently for the real movie to begin. For the next three hours, Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand or even Bharat Bhushan—exotic well-dressed males from a fantasy land—reigned the cinema theatre. To the women who were also ardent readers of film journals like Filmfare, Sushama, Shama and Chitrapat, the men led excitingly romantic lives, flirting with buxom females in transparent saris in parks, away from their family’s eyes. For the first half of the movie, the lead duo cooed and billed, fought against parents for love and then brought them around after which marriages were solemnized and the young daughter-in-law entered the family. It was at this point that the plot got twisted as the hard-to-please mother-in-law who lorded over the family entered the scene. She would be keen to deny her daughter-in-law any shred of compassionate humane treatment from any member of her clan. The mother-in-law’s wicked relatives crowded around her whispering poisonous gossip. As the poor young wife swept, cleaned and cooked and neglected husband and babies, in the cinema hall hands clutched the handkerchiefs even more tightly and eyes began to tear up in empathy. The constant nagging by the evil mothers-in-law and the husbands’ siblings followed by grumpy evenings with tired and disenchanted spouses were not too unfamiliar to the viewers. Despite this, such unrelieved tragedy was somewhat cathartic for them. Ah, there are others who have it worse! The young wives felt, and their children sensed the women relax. They shushed off queries, scowled at requests for going to the toilet and requested their chaperones to take over so they could watch the plot unfold. Themes for popular films in those two decades were the same old Bible of women’s lives: first fall in love, occasionally run around trees singing

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songs and generally having a ball, get parental sanction after some drama, get married, and hey Presto! suddenly you see your man transformed into a Mamma’s boy, who dotes on his mother and allows her to do unto the mother of his children, what was done unto her as a young wife. Not just this, another Evil soon steps into this already marred tale of conjugal bliss, dressed as The Other: usually a cabaret singer–dancer, all wrapped in furs and silk scarves that she sheds seductively as she sings. ‘Ah men!’ women sighed collectively, ‘they are such fools!’ Or, are they? wonders the jilted young wife pacifying her bawling babies, quietly selling her precious jewellery to make the larger family’s ends meet, still getting yelled at and pushed around as she sits pressing her mother-in-law’s feet late into a lonely night. At this point, tears began to flow freely. Eyes turned dark with rage. But then, the comic subplot surfaced where a fat Tuntun parodied the romantic interludes with a Johnny Walker or Om Prakash. Women once again laughed and sniggered collectively at jokes cracked by a ham and compared him to some hateful male relative in whispers to their friends. The mother-in-law ruling over a joint family as a tyrant, however, remained an impregnable fortress till the end. On screen as in life, she was allowed to spoil and infantalize her male offspring and steadily subvert her young daughters-in-law’s authority and access to justice, by hatching subtle plots with her own sycophantic relatives. The daughter-in-law kept her face averted and cried by the window or in the pooja (worship) rooms. To most women, a Shashikala, Lalita Pawar or Bindu breathing fire and brimstone as the evil mother-in-law was a familiar (though a somewhat exaggerated) figure that they too had suffered. The Indian mothers’ hold over the traditional families was absolute and unrelenting. No one could challenge their authority and their sons’ total compliance to their Mother. When things came to a head, the Mother was entitled to turn out a disliked young wife. ‘Nikal ja tu merey ghar se (Get out of my house)!’, they thundered, towering over some sobbing young wife crumbling and falling at their feet whimpering piteously, ‘Maa mujhe ghar se mat nikaliye. Main itni raat ko barish mein Kahan jaoongi? (Mother, please don’t throw me out of my home. Where will I go on a dark and rainy night?)’. ‘Give her a tight smack!’ A male voice sometimes shouted into the darkness echoing the desires of many young tormented females in the dark hall. Loud giggles were heard following this. Women knew that in real life, no dutiful son or husband even when standing by the side of this fury would take their wives’ side. But her own time will come, they knew, as the popular Hindi saying went, Sau din saas ke, ek Bahu ka. (After a hundred

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days of authority for the mother-in-law, the daughter-in-law’s day shall come!) The women in the audience sniffled and nodded knowingly as a weeping (and often pregnant) young daughter-in-law was thrown out at midnight amid thunder and lightning. Their day will come and then they will do unto their own compliant daughters and daughters-in-law what was done to them, women felt, so there! The circle of revenge was complete, leaving the men out. And yet, in real life as in reel, men continued to be the heroes that held the world together, invested in making films, wrote the film scripts and created the dialogues that created female stereotypes and confirmed all the negative thinking that society harboured against the female of the species. Women may have comprised a larger part of the movie-going crowds by this point but it was their men that paid for the tickets that made the box office cash registers ring. So film critics wrote reviews, so-called progressive group writers wrote scripts and lachrymose songs showing women as witless, gutless beauties and the posters underscored it. Together that was what sold the package to the masses. Tact mixed with good old misogyny demanded, in the film circles as also within the Lakshman Rekha (the imaginary line that set down the boundary of proper feminine conduct) of Indian families, that neither the shrewish mother-in-law nor even philandering men be permanently stigmatized. They remained misguided souls who by the end of the family movie relented and hugged their victims and all was forgiven. The arch seductress and spinner of webs of deceit, the vamp, and some gossipy relative (usually the mother-in-law’s brother, a direct descendent of Shakuni Mama ji, the evil uncle of the Kauravas in the Mahabharat) were left to shoulder the eventual blame for leading the poor mothers and their lambs astray. Script writers saw to it that vamps and villains got their just desserts. But as a damp-eyed daughter-in-law bent to touch her mother-in-law’s feet, she would hug her tearfully and whisper apologies, while the men all around them beamed. Thus, the film ended and the screen went sickeningly blank, and women would say to whosoever may be listening, ‘It was a most enjoyable fillum, so lifelike, no?’. By the late 1960s in India, the sociopolitical dynamics began to change. Bedevilled by financial insecurities, droughts and floods, its armies fighting along the borders against the Evil Neighbour, and the post-Partition generation of rootless refugees spelling out new social equations, the entertainment industry began to re-examine many of its earlier templates. Hindi films faced the challenge of winning young fans who were fast

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turning into literate and demanding citizens and influencing both the voting patterns and the collection boxes. True, even now on the surface, most urban families continued to foster timidity and conformism as great virtues for women. But for men, films like Deewar and Zanjeer were creating new templates for portraying the Angry Young Man of mid-1970s. Women in films still spoke and sang in little girl voices, wore their hair in chignons and covered their heads, but the actors became more westernized in their looks. Rajesh Khannas and Shammi Kapoors swaggered a la popular Hollywood male stars and romanced round the clock, but even a rebellious Amitabh Bachchan or Shatrughan Sinha melted at the sight of The Mother. They cleared their throats before addressing the grey-haired mothers, submitted to baby-like to hugs and kisses and touched the Mother’s feet repeatedly. The Mother’s worth remained more than anything else: ‘Merey paas Maa hai’ (I have Mother) became an iconic line from the hit film Deewar. But slowly, the script writers seemed to be unconsciously imbibing Margaret Mead’s theory that the really powerful and authoritarian woman in our societies is a grey-haired widow. As ageing lead actresses like Rakhee, Sharmila Tagore and Tanuja began to represent the mother-in-law, the figure lost much of its undiluted acid. Earlier, the mother-in-law had used the reflected glory and authority of her husband—the Great Patriarch—to rule in the harem. But now, she lost her husband early on to some tragic accident or a family vendetta-related war and turned into a widow in white, leading a celibate life and focusing all her resources on her young sons, Karan Arjun or Ram Lakhan. Her aura of sadness and her life overburdened with many duties (stitching garments late into the night) did not conceal but totally justified her hold over her sons, and their feelings of veneration for her. ‘Merey Karan Arjun aayengey’ (My [sons] Karan and Arjun will come back to me), the widowed mother declared tearfully to villains who would often kidnapped the Mother, along with the sons’ wives or girlfriends, to lure the hero to their dens of torture. Once the sons rushed in, the villains told them to make the classic Indian choice, ‘your mother or your love’! By the end of the 1970s, Indian women’s quest for sociopolitical equality and their understanding of social inequalities, bad governmental policies and suffocating religious laws led by a nascent women’s movement was too visible to be kept out of film scripts. But as was its wont, for some time films, like the System, continued to depoliticize the women’s movement and channelized the traditional ire of a daughter-in-law against her

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husband’s possessive and greedy mother towards new family-threatening westernized notions, including feminism. The message remained clear: only a woman is another woman’s worst enemy. Men are their only real friends and salvation. Real change began to be visible as a small but articulate group of politically savvy women who grew in the post-Independence India, and had matured in the post-Emergency campuses, chose to enter homes as daughters-in-law with attitude. Many of them had already joined the print media and were writing on and analysing films from a feminist view point. These women were joined by a band of sympathetic men from the advertising, theatre and media worlds who were equally disgusted by the usual tear-jerker family film that underplayed women’s humiliation and the politics of their daily lives within feudal social structures. They began to dream of making films they wanted to see and they articulated in the mainstream media their liking for filmmakers like Hrishikesh Mukherji who were capable of seeing the multiple ironies hidden within Indian families. Hrishikesh Mukherji’s romantic comedies like Chupke Chupke, Golmaal, Naram Garam, Guddi and Khoobsoorat drew young female audiences in droves and they went on to be hits because in them men and women were free to poke fun at each other and their elders’ pet theories, follies and the eccentricities. The mother-in-law (the role was now played by an infinitely more sophisticated bunch of ageing actors like Dina Pathak and Rohini Hattangadi) in many of these new comedies began to be portrayed as a stern but lovable disciplinarian, an iron-fisted matriarch, but one whose patina of misogyny was not permanent and would be worn down eventually by a good-natured and mischievous man and young woman, often the daughter-in-law. The more scholarly filmmakers like Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihlani, Gulzar and others had by now begun to come up with films that tried to go deep into the overburdened lives of rural and urban women. In films like Nishant, Bhumika, Subah, Main Zinda Hoon and several others we saw an entirely different clutch of young wives: played by Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi, Dipti Naval asserted their true worth on celluloid. At the same time, we saw the ageing mother (Meena Kumari in Gulzar’s Mere Apne) as being exploited by the System (read men). Interestingly, most of these films won national and international awards each year, but were seldom successful commercially. Something that would pull audiences in droves, especially small-town women, was missing here. The question was, why? Change takes time to permeate and a one-dimensional portrayal of

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women’s issues cannot undo a multidimensional wrong. Whatever it may be, it was a matter of time before the evil mother-in-law of yesteryears disappeared altogether from Hindi films. All this however impacted the film industry and in time this figure began to lose its black-and-white contours to reveal the shades of grey in mainstream films like Bagbaan, where the ageing mother and father replay Lear to greedy and heartless children. By the time we come to the mothers in Dil Dhadkne Do, the picture has altered totally. In the last decades of the twentieth century, most Indian marriages were still arranged by parents along with the same old considerations of caste and class. There were also an increasing number of dark media stories surfacing, many from among the large diasporic Indian community, about shady deaths implicating dowry-hungry in-laws, who may have killed or pushed a young wife into committing suicide. Women were still being thrown out of their husbands’ houses on perceived or cooked-up charges. Indo-NRI marriages were still unravelling, and men were still the main breadwinners. So female audiences still to be empowered in real life continued to patronize male-centric films like Karan Johar’s or Tarachand Barjatya’s or Yash Chopra’s love-in-Switzerland rom-coms, that stepped over the dark lives of real married couples and celebrated teenage love and tulips far away from India. New villains in families (even among the NRI ones) were fathers out to crush young love. With this the mother-in-law’s stock kept dipping as a certified and credible trouble maker. Instead of Lalita Pawar or Aruna Irani, an Amrish Puri, Utpal Dutt, Kulbhushan Khadbanda or Anil Kapoor became the lightning rods for young audiences’ ire. Humankind, wrote Eliot, cannot bear too much reality. India’s audiences could not either. A few films tried (somewhat crudely) to reveal the warts of our society, Akhir Kyon, Insaaf ka Tarazu, Intaqam or Ankush, but they petered out soon like their arty and more sophisticated versions like Godmother, Gangajal, Astitva or Fire released by the ‘art film camp’. So, the thinking turned towards doing away with the mother altogether and we had good but motherless films like Dev D, Piku, Masan hit the jackpot. But in the entertainment industry, you cannot put down a bad woman. In came Ekta Kapoor, who rediscovered and brought back to life the old vampire in her landmark TV serial, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (For the Mother-in-law was once a Daughter-in-law). The grosser in which our present-day Union Minister for Textiles played the good but no-nonsense

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Bahu (daughter-in-law) Tulsi, holy as a basil leaf but capable of giving the older woman as good as she got, then went on to launch a thousand ‘Saases’ on primetime TV.  So each night, murderously dressed women with lantern jaws surface night after night on the small screen in hit serials with titles like Naagin (the female snake), Sasural Simar ka (Simran’s marital home) and Balika Vadhu (The Child Bride). They take up villainy where the Lalita Pawars and Bindus had left off, bearing exaggerated make up, loads of jewellery and delivering over the top dialogues. Popular television and new mainstream films like Piku, Sarabjit, Chak de! India, Masan and Azhar, with increasingly motherless male-centric plots, are proof that it is wrong to assume that either the marginalized groups or the entertainment media live with the constant thought of revolution. Or that, they see it as a simple solution for the historic harm done to women and other out groups by society and the State. Even when the situation calls for a revolt, most serials and films will look for a way out, seek calm and, most often, the commonplace. This is why after the post-­ Nirbhaya fiery Dharna Pradershans’ (protest rallies) revolutionary fervour for sociopolitical reform seems to have given way to individual angst or hamming by Saas Bahu on screen. In real life, the traditional mother-in-law seems to have squandered most of her credibility for the young and has an empty nest today. For the educated young woman, who chooses her own partner (and may even have first tried a live-in relationship), has lost the final scrap of patience for carrying out filial duties at the cost of their self-image and career. Can ageing feminists be shown pitted against cocky working daughters-in-law who get on their nerves? And, would the young women allow themselves to be restrained by a kind of authority they hate? There is a whole new world out there to be explored by the film and TV script writers.

Works Cited Films Akhir Kyon?. Director J. Om Prakash. Producer J. Om Prakash. 1985. Ankush. Director N. Chandra. Producer N. Chandra, Durgakar. 1986. Astitva. Director Mahesh Manjrekar. Producer R. Sughand. 2000. Azhar. Director Anthony D’ Souza. Producer Shobha Kapoor, Ekta Kapoor, Sony Pictures. 2016. Baghban. Director Ravi Chopra. Producer B.R. Chopra. 2003. Bhumika. Director Shyam Benegal. Producer Lalit Bijlani, Freni Veriava. 1977.

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Chak de! India. Director Shimit Amin. Producer Aditya Chopra. 2007. Chupke Chupke. Director Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Producer Hrishikesh Mukherjee, N. Sippy. 1975. Deewar. Director Yash Chopra. Producer Gulshan Rai. 1975. Dev D. Director Anurag Kashyap. Producer Ronnie Screwvala. 2009. Dil Dhadakne Do. Director Zoya Akhtar. Producer Riteish Sidhwani, Farhan Akhtar. 2015. Fire. Director Deepa Mehta. Producer Deepa Mehta, Bobby Bedi. 1998. Gangaajal. Director Prakash Jha. Producer Prakash Jha. 2003. Godmother. Director Vinay Shukla. Producer Rajat Shukla. 1999. Golmaal. Director Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Producer N. Sippy. 1979. Guddi. Director Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Producer Hrishikesh Mukherjee. 1971. Insaf Ka Tarazu. Director B.R. Chopra. Producer B.R. Chopra. 1980. Intaqam. Director R.K.Nayyar. Producer A.D. Nayyar. 1969. Khubsoorat. Director Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Producer Hrishikesh Mukherjee, N. Sippy. 1981. Mai Zinda Hoon. Director Sudhir Mishra. Producer NFDC. 1988. Masaan. Director. Neeraj Ghayawan. Producer Drishyam Films, Phantom Films, Macassar Productions and Shikhya Entertainment. 2015. Mere Apne. Director Gulzar. Producer Romu, Raj and N. Sippy. 1971. Naram Garam. Director Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Producer Subhash Gupta, Uday Narayan Singh. 1981. Nishant. Director Shyam Benegal. Producer Mohan Bijlani, Freni Veriava. 1975. Piku. Director Shoojit Sircar. Producer N.P.Singh, Ronnie Lahiri, Sneha Rajani. 2015. Sarabjit. Director Omung Kumar. Producer Vashu Bhagnani, Bhushan Kumar, Omung Kumar, Deepshika Deshmukh, Krishan Kumar, Rajesh Singh. 2016. Subah. Director Jabbar Patel. Producer Jabbar Patel, V. Rao. 1982. Zanjeer. Director and Producer Prakash Mehra. 1973.

CHAPTER 5

“ek admi tha, usne shadi karli...” (There Was a Man, Who Got Married...): Female Agency and Domestication in Omkara (2006) Anjali Yadav, Anusha Choudhary, Divya Gupta, Ifsha Zehra, Neha Jaji Varghese, Prachi Khari, Shaifali Singh, Soumya Sharma, Tooba Towfiq, and Violina Barman

The shot- reverse shot technique frames the individual faces of the man and the woman who embrace each other. The camera registers his sudden movement as he pins down her body. But then it draws back; the shot is

As students of the English Department, Miranda House, we came together to make and present a documentary on the representation of Kashmir in Hindi films “Jannat: Romance, Representation and Reality”. This propelled the group towards a critical and analytical study of the politics of representation in Hindi Cinema. Under the mentorship of Saswati Sengupta, we pursued the case of marginalization and fetishization of women characters in Omkara. A. Yadav (*) • A. Choudhary • D. Gupta • I. Zehra • N. J. Varghese • P. Khari S. Singh • S. Sharma • T. Towfiq • V. Barman Miranda House, Delhi University, Delhi, India © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_5

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framed without closing in to register her violation and terror. He holds the pillow over her face. Her hand scratches him. Her legs flail. But the central focus of the frame is the man’s face. Her movements stop. When the camera moves closer to her face there is no visual registration of violence— except for the trickle of blood from the nose. Her face has miraculously, and unrealistically, retained its shape and colour even after being smothered by a pillow to obliterate life. Thus, the camera refuses to reveal the brutality of its male protagonist and the next shot, after the murder sequence, frames his brooding tragic presence. This is the climactic scene of Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara (2006), an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello (1603/4) where the eponymous protagonist is a Moorish general in the Venetian army. The play unfolds the tragic consequence of Othello’s professional preference for Cassio over Iago, the latter’s subsequent villainy in manipulating the racism of the Venetian society and the Moor’s own insecurities in his marriage with the Venetian senator Brabantio’s daughter, Desdemona. Othello’s themes of love, jealousy, revenge and repentance are played out in Omkara too but relocated to contemporary Uttar Pradesh in India, as can be identified by the topography, the dialect and the director’s own admission.1 Othello here is Omkara, a “half-caste” henchman of Bhaisahab, the corrupt elected member of the state’s legislative assembly. Desdemona metamorphoses into Dolly, the “upper-caste” college-going daughter of Bhaisahab’s lawyer.2 Critics and scholars may argue about Omkara that “the narrative itself is quite securely rooted in the setting of Uttar Pradesh”3 where “the question of caste continually resurfaces”4 and through the “humble origin”5 of Omkara “the film re-casts racial threat onto a caste and class-based Oedipal fear”6 but none of them then proceed to see/deconstruct the film in terms of contemporary caste politics of the state, its negotiation with Dalit self-­ representation or the intertwining of caste and gender hierarchies. And perhaps that is inevitable since contentious caste identity is glossed over by  Bhardwaj et al. (2014: v).  Our article  mentions certain significant contrasts and similarities between the English play and the Hindi film in an intertextual reading in the context of our argument. The larger transactions between two historical moments, cultures, texts and forms are beyond the scope of this study. 3  Gruss (2009: 228). 4  Burnett (2013: 59). 5  Milton in Krebs. ed. (2014: 92). 6  Chakraborty (2015: 145). 1 2

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the film’s steady veering off into a more familiar caste-patriarchal obsession with the tragic male individual and his insecure masculinity in the realm of romance. Omkara is represented as a man of few words, in keeping with the actor Ajay Devgn’s off-screen persona, and the many frames of the film where he stands silent, aloof and wrapped in a black shawl function as overt audio-visual attributes of a tragic outsider to a group of trigger-happy henchmen of a corrupt politician. The film, using caste difference only as a narrative trope, in effect stays within the culturally familiar realm of the binary opposition of chaste and unchaste women with its accompanying baggage of praise and blame. Thus, while Dolly is not the central character of Omkara, the entire film revolves around her actions—actual and presumed. She is the girl who asserts her love for the eponymous hero, pushes desire towards the resolution of marriage and transgresses the caste and gender norms of her Brahmanical-patriarchal society, which demands stringent sexual control over women and their wombs that are crucial in maintaining the boundaries between the castes.7 Dolly is disowned by her natal family and eventually murdered by the man of her choice on the grounds of suspected infidelity. In a world, contextually far removed from Shakespeare, the gendered morality underpinning the telos of the tale remains chillingly the same. Brabantio, Desdemona’s father, had warned Othello, Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see. She has deceived her father and may thee. (1.3.293-94)8

And this patriarchal sentiment is echoed in Omkara too: jo ladki apne baap ko thag sakti hai wo kisi aur ki kya sagi hogi? How can a girl who betrays her father be true to anyone else?

Has nothing changed in all these intervening centuries, that the resolution of female agency must still be her death? We deconstruct the film’s mobilization of the trope of romance and jealousy to reveal its entwining caste and gender politics.

7 8

 Chakravarti (1993: 579–585).  Honigmann (1997: 154). All references to Othello are from this edition.

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The Syntactical Representation of Dolly But I do beguile the thing I am, by seeming otherwise9

Omkara opens literally with a conversation about Dolly, or rather with insinuations about women in general and Dolly in particular, as Langda Tyagi of Omkara’s gang informs the young man “arranged” to be Dolly’s groom by her father, that men become “chutiya” after marriage. Chutiya is a popular Hindi abuse that signals patriarchal society’s violent attitude towards women—as objects of both desire and anxiety—meaning as it does, the fucker and the fucked-up. Langda in fact speaks a great deal about Dolly, from the beginning of the film till the end, inducting both Rajju and Omkara, the man she rejects and the man she chooses, into ways of understanding her. The hypnotic strength of Langda derives as much from his malcontent malignancy as from his allusions to the shared discourse of misogyny that is symptomatic of the cultural context of the film and its audience. Thus, even before we see Dolly or hear her, she is represented as an ambiguous object of male contestation and desire by Langda who sets in motion the macabre plot of male power and revenge. The camera, in the middle of the conversation about Dolly with which the film opens, draws back and gives a panoramic view of a dusty, rugged landscape. In the distance, we see the motley crowd of the groom’s party—all men—and a banner tied to a green bus proclaiming “Rajan weds Dolly”. The English script and the sign of the heart appear at odds with the landscape even as the red colour of the words hints at the possibility of bloodshed. The next allusion to Dolly is again through a conjugated reference on the festooned gate under which her anxious family waits for the groom and his party. Ominously, the letter D of her name on the gate dangles precariously. The audience is thus informed of the damage caused by Dolly even before seeing her. In her first appearance on screen, Dolly narrates the course of her love for Omkara for which she compromises her father’s honour. The narrative flashback begins with the camera zooming in on her face. Close-up shots are crucial in shaping the audience’s perception of a character and thus we are cued to delve into her private memory where Dolly represents herself as the active wooer in the relationship—she is the one who confesses, pro9

 Othello (2.1.122–23), 170.

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poses and reasserts her love for Omkara. Indeed, in her memory, it is Omkara who faints on her shoulder when the two meet for the first time in an interesting reversal of the usual gendered stereotype in Hindi films. This articulation of Dolly’s agency in the film, however, is doubly overshadowed even as it is unfolding. The very purpose of narrating these incidents is to seek legitimization for her transgressive act of choosing her own partner from a “lower” caste, from the over-arching patriarchal figure—ironically a corrupt politician, Bhaisahab. She sits surrounded by concentric circles of men in the prison that houses Bhaisahab. The primacy of the male as the arbitrating figure is also suggested by the background song that accompanies the reeling of the events in Dolly’s mind. It is a woman’s memory of falling in love but the voice is male as Rahat Fateh Ali Khan sings: naina thag lenge…naino ka zeher nashila… The eyes will betray you…the poisonous eyes are intoxicating….

The narrative of dangerous love is thus engendered. And the songs of Hindi films that are played with great frequency both for private and public consumption go a long way in strengthening cultural stereotypes. Dolly is introduced wearing a white salwar-kameez with a red sweater and a red bindi, as she speaks of herself as more than “half the wooer” before Bhaisahab.10 Red is considered a fecund and auspicious colour for married Hindu women, but it also denotes fury, passion and untamed sexuality. In contrast, white is representative of the pure but is also the dominant colour associated with the caste-Hindu widow who is held to be inauspicious. At the visual level, the film gestures at the ambiguity of Dolly’s character through this persistent semiotics of the colours of her clothes. In the love-making scene, for instance, Dolly wears a red saree and is presented through the coalescing gaze of Omkara and the camera as a highly sexualized and erotic persona. Again, in a reversal of the stereotypical representation of the wedding night in Hindi films, it is Omkara who lies on the bed with his face covered while Dolly walks with a slow sensuous gait towards him. She has taken off her saree and adorned herself with Omkara’s family symbol of honour, the kamarband or the belt, whose silver glows against the red of her petticoat and the white of her expansive  Othello (1.3.176), 146.

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waist. But Dolly is not married to Omkara yet; this is not how the traditional good woman is supposed to be. The unbridled sexuality in Dolly’s characterization is also suggested by the way Kareena Kapoor, playing Dolly, is made to wear her hair in the film. Hair is a major site of negotiation of the social and the personal as it is not only a special signifier of female beauty but also powerfully charged with sexual symbolism. In her first appearance, Dolly’s long hair is untied which itself serves as the “ocular proof ” of her sexuality.11 In the Indian context, female hair when in a loose state “may signal even more their liminal and dangerous status… [It is also a] sign of a ritually impure state when normal ritual activities and social relations are suspended”.12 In most of the scenes of the film, Dolly’s long hair is unbound and it is only when she is inside Omkara’s patriarchal empire, and house, that her hair begins to follow the disciplinary regime of its structures. In Othello, the Moorish hero was accused of using magic in his seduction of Desdemona. In Omkara, the evils of sexual desire, potency and magic are associated with Dolly from the beginning: jagte jadu phoonkenge re jagte jagte jadu neende banjar kar denge, naina thag lenge… They will bewitch in the awakened state they will turn sterile your sleep; the eyes will betray you….

But Dolly defines herself only in terms of her autonomy in a dangerous contestation of her world’s hegemonic moral economy: hum to apne marzi ke ghulam hein ji bas! I serve only my own wish, that’s it!

Dolly has a definitive sense of self, quite at odds with the way in which the men talk about her and even the bemused Omkara wonders if Dolly is “a fool or a witch” as the film progresses. Dolly’s agency strengthens the traditional suspicion of the female within Brahmanical-patriarchy. Her father, in the beginning of the film, seamlessly moves from eulogizing her as a “flower” to warning Omkara:  Othello (3.3.363), 232.  Hiltebeitel and Miller (1998: 16–17).

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aurat ke tariya-charitra ko mat bhool na Bahubali! Don’t forget a woman’s fickle nature, Bahubali (the strong armed)!

This pronouncement takes place in a metaphorically layered scene with Dolly being depicted as a shadowy reflection on the car pane as her father, from inside the car, tutors her chosen man in the dark ways of women. The patriarchal lesson continuously reverberates through Omkara’s mind, clearly more significant than Dolly’s words and actions of love, to culminate finally in his murder of her. Omkara justifies this violence by reiterating Dolly’s father’s prescription: na apne baap ki sagi hui, na kisi aur ki, tariya charitra! You were neither faithful to your father nor to anyone else, fickle creature!

Omkara and Dolly’s father, despite their differences, thus come together in their understanding of women that has been textualized within Brahmanical-patriarchy since its early history. Manusmriti (early first century AD), the most prominent ideologue of Brahmanical-patriarchy, had, for instance, essentialized women in terms of their inordinate sexual appetite and intrinsic lack of faithfulness: By running after men like whores, by their fickle minds, and by their natural lack of affection these women are unfaithful to their husbands…. (The Laws of Manu, 9.15–16).13

Dolly herself states, at the beginning of the film, her liminality in her recognition that she has crossed boundaries. She justifies this agency in terms of her romantic understanding of her selfhood: hum apne dil ki chaukhat ulangh ke omkara ki dehleej ki dasi ban gaye the. I had crossed the threshold of my heart to be bounded as a slave to Omkara.

It is true that despite her agency Dolly conceptualizes her relationship with Omkara in unequal terms: he is the master to her slave which makes Omkara her rightful chastiser. But between her articulation—and language is socially, ideologically and historically embedded—and her practice, falls the shadow.  Doniger and Smith (1991: 198).

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“…these delicate creatures”: Playing Dolly14 Is female deviancy in Omkara also signalled by the name Dolly, a western import? In the film, the depiction of rural western Uttar Pradesh suggests a very select westernization fetishized by men’s trousers, guns and mobiles. The harsh dialect of the men with its recurring recourse to sexual abuse, their relationships with their women and their jokes about either fucking or abandoning them suggest that this is no place for the ‘modern’ woman. Dolly proclaims to her self-chosen man, “I love you O, yours forever, D” and disrupts the traditional caste-patriarchal conceptual and social arrangements. The name Dolly helps insinuate that the cultural impetus behind the socially disruptive feelings in the woman is her westernization. But Dolly also suggests that which is doll-like: a commodified plaything. Dolly’s audio-visual depiction plays a major role in this infantilization. In the song sequence “o saathi re”, for instance, Dolly is seen playfully running after Omkara and making puerile gestures which reduce the democratic potential signalled by the layered word “saathi” that works across gender to suggest friend, lover and partner. In a later scene, after the date for marriage is set, Dolly again frolics around Omkara like an excited child proclaiming, “Kesu is certain to be forgiven” several times. Kesu, like Cassio in Othello, has been punished by his leader Omkara for dereliction of duty, and Dolly’s intervention here is on the assumed strength of her feminine charm over the men. Thus, the infantilized woman is represented as a potential transgressor which ideologically justifies the male “responsibility” to look after and protect her. It also sanctions systemic gendered oppression and the practices of “discipline and punish” to rein in her disruptive instincts. Dolly has to accept gender hierarchies and recognise that violence may replace love. Rekha Bhardwaj’s female voice sings the haunting words that metaphorically etch the painful erasure of woman’s selfhood as the physically chastised Dolly stares at the open vista of the river and the tiny boat sailing on it from the confinement of Omkara’s house: lakad jalke koyla ho jae, koyla ho jae khaak… The firewood burns and transforms into coal, the coals burn to become ash….

 Othello (3.3.273), 225.

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The first frame of the song has Dolly curled up and crying surrounded by curtains. This sense of imprisonment is picked up in the second frame of the song which has Dolly sitting on the floor of Omkara’s verandah, against the backdrop of the balustrade suggestive of the prison bars that she had looked at quizzically when she had gone to meet Bhaisahab, at the beginning of the film to declare her love for Omkara. The bruised, vulnerable, silent and still presence of Dolly as a darkened silhouette is contrasted against her free self on the swing in a brief flashback. Her silence is even more eerie given her earlier capacity for articulation—from admitting her desires in a highly poetic language to writing letters and singing songs to a rather inarticulate Omkara. Thus, the film that promised an overturning of scopocentric sexism, whereby the female actor’s body is allowed to speak rather than her voice, slowly retracts. The image of the swing serves as a visual metaphor for Dolly’s liminality in the film. The camera focuses on her swinging right at the threshold of Langda Tyagi’s house, reaching for the blue sky, even as its returning movement captures Indu—Tyagi’s wife—engaged in the feminine chore of making cow-dung patties. The framing of the shot makes Dolly oblivious to such duties, but the swing drags her back inevitably, and repeatedly, to the confines of the house. It is while on the swing that Dolly promises Kesu, Omkara’s lieutenant and her own friend from college, that she will help reinstate him. In return, she demands to be taught a popular English song of love: “I just called to say I love you.” The lyrics assume an agency in love. Dolly keeps stumbling over the anglicized pronunciation of the song which suggests the fault-lines of western mimicry by young Indian women. These acts of presumption on the swing end in the ideological closure of Dolly’s murder by her husband on another swing. The deviant woman, and all women as potentially deviant, is thus domesticated by patriarchal violence. Ironically, loriyan or lullaby that is traditionally associated with the caring mother figure is sung in the film by Omkara, which insidiously suggests that he is the primary care-giver for Dolly. But the lullaby is sung after the first night of pre-marital sexual consummation and over the lifeless body of Dolly at the end as Omkara smothers her to death to erase her agency. Soon after this murder, Indu testifies to Dolly’s chaste ways. An anguished Omkara revisits the earlier lullaby with romantic  intensity, which is the prerogative of the male tragic protagonist, even though he is a hired murderer for the local politician:

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naino me tere hum hi base the, hum hi base hain, haina? Your eyes gazed only on me, only on me, isn’t that so?

Ironically, even at this instance, the rhetorical question at the end of the song helps retain the ambiguity surrounding a woman’s character.

Chaste Women and the “Tragic Lodging”15 of the Kamarbandh and the Upavita Female chastity in the film is signified through Omkara’s discourse by the kamarbandh, the ornate silver belt. Across time and space, the girdle has been intimately associated with female sexual power and the patriarchal need to harness it. Aphrodite’s kestoshimas in ancient Greek myths and epics,16 the medieval European myths of the chastity belt,17 the metaphoric girdling of Sita in the Sanskrit epic Ramayana and the punishment she has to face for crossing it, the “sea-girdled Earth” as the wife of Kings in Sanskrit theatre,18 suggest that the belted female is both the product of erotic fantasy and of neurotic obsessiveness concerning how to control, if not subjugate, women’s alleged excessive sexuality in most patriarchal societies.19 The kamarbandh in Omkara is more substantial than Desdemona’s “strawberried” handkerchief in Othello and the misplacement of the silver kamarbandh heightens the heroine’s profligacy. In Othello’s first account of the handkerchief’s provenance, his mother received it from an Egyptian charmer with the promise that it would “subdue my father/Entirely to her love” (3.4.59–60) and it is his dying mother who asks Othello to pass it on to his wife when he married. In sharp contrast, the kamarbandh is Omkara’s paternal heritage: zevar nahin hai, hamare purkhon ke izzat ki punji hai iss ghar ki bahuon ki kamar mein pidiyon se khanakta chala aa raha hai It’s not an ornament; it’s the accumulated honour of my ancestors. It has tinkled around the waists of the daughters-in-law of this house for generations.  Othello (5.2.364), 332.   In Greek mythology Aphrodite is the goddess of love, passion, fertility and procreation. 17  Classen (2007). 18  Eg. Kalidasa’s Abhijnanashakuntalam (III, 206), Rajan, trans., (1989). 19  Classen (2007). 15 16

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And yet the same Omkara also confesses to Dolly that he was born when his father fell in love with a Kanjari, as his marriage did not yield a child. Fetishized by the kamarbandh, the concerned women are never mentioned by their names and a silence surrounds their stories. In the first appearance of the kamarbandh, Omkara places it on Dolly’s neck in a macabre foreshadowing of how it will claim her life too. Omakara’s biological mother functions in the film only in so far as she compromises Omkara’s identity: aadha khoon to tere badan mein us kanjari ka bhi hai. harami sale! Half your blood comes from that Kanjari. Filthy swine!

In Northern India, the term Kanjari idiomatically suggests a moral decadence, social danger, vulgar or disorderly behaviour and across the region, one may hear parents say to ill-behaved children: Kanjaro ki tarah mat karo! (Don’t behave like a Kanjar). In material terms, however, Kanjars form one of the many peripatetic groups of Southern Asia. Anthropological accounts of Kanjars largely define them as a class of endogamous community that engaged in artisanal work of manufacturing and selling terracotta toys, weaving fish nets, winnowing baskets and so on, that go back to early Vedic times. They are held “low” in the caste-category of Brahmanical Hinduism.20 The peripatetic Kanjars are not pastoralists; they are artisans and entertainers.21 The sedentists often consider the Kanjar tribe with disgust, which is also evident from colonial narratives about nomads found in district gazetteers and regional census reports indicating the sedenocentric propensity to term all migratory groups as “pastoral” or “criminal tribes.”22 The criminal aspect woven in the Kanjars’ identity as a tribe can be traced back to the Thuggee Campaign of 1830s that branded entire communities as thugs/criminal tribes, among whom the Kanjars figured prominently, and was enforced by the first Criminal Tribes Act in 1871 in colonized India.23 The Government of India’s Criminal Tribes Law (Repeal) Act was passed in 1952 but the de-notified tribes could not get

 Berland (1983: 27).  Gmelch (1986: 307). 22  Berland (1983: 22). 23  Singha (1993: 84). 20 21

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rid of the stigma entirely.24 In the post-independence period, the Kanjars have also been recognized as part of the “Scheduled Castes”, a term which was first used by the Simon Commission (appointed by the British Government) and exemplified in the Government of India Act 1935, in Section 305.25 The 2011 caste census of Uttar Pradesh enlists Kanjars among the 66 Scheduled Castes of the state, but despite the provisions for the abolition of untouchability and other protective laws, oppressive practices against them continue to exist. One of the leading dailies of North India, The Hindustan Times for instance, in its case study on the Kanjar tribe from Madhya Pradesh admits to their being “shackled” by the police and the land-owning class and “whenever there is a crime nearby the needle of suspicion points to them”.26 Pradeep Kumar (1999), discussing the rise of Bhartiya Samaj Party (BSP) under the leadership of the Dalit leader Mayawati, argues that sub-castes such as the Kanjars are still dominated by the “landowning” Other Backward Castes (OBCs).27 Also, prior to British colonization, the tribes were entertainers for the ruling families but with the erosion of the indigenous feudal patronage, their traditions were lost and many turned to prostitution out of economic necessity.28 In hegemonic representation, Kanjars are still thought of as “external people— socially, morally, and categorically”29 And it is in this “upper-caste” sense that the Kanjar mother of Omkara is invoked in the film which refuses to engage with the idiomatic stereotype that erases the chequered history of a community. The “half-caste” Omkara does not suggest an alterity; he is certainly not thought of as an “old black ram”, a “devil” or a “barbary horse” in his Brahman community.30 He may be the adha-baman member of a Brahmanical Jai Jan Kranti party full of Tyagis, Tiwaris, Chaubeys and Tripathis—all commonly identifiable Brahman caste-names—but he too is similarly identified as a Shukla and wears the upavita, the “initiatory  Saksena (1975: 1).  Ghurye (1919: 306). 26  Madhya Pradesh tribe being shackled to British-era ‘criminal’ tag’, The Hindustan Times (Dec 17, 2014). 27  Kumar (1999: 824). 28  Farrow (2011), https://laurenfarrow.wordpress.com/…/a-new-hope-for-indias-girlsborn-into-prostitut… 29  See Piliavsky (2011: 290–313). 30  Othello (1.1.87, 90, 110), 121, 122, 123. 24 25

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thread of a priest” that signifies the self-proclaimed “upper” caste status of the Brahman men within caste-Hinduism.31 The wearing of the thread is an induction into a system of double hierarchy of caste and gender: “its object was to tie oneself to a particular gotra…a son did not naturally inherit the gotra of his father. The father had to perform a special ceremony to give his gotra to his son”.32 The upavita, thus, marks the adoption of sons by fathers; a ritual premised on the primacy of the father in granting an elite identity to the son and the principle of exclusion of “lower castes” and women. In the contextual world of the film, the upavita of Omkara signals his patriliny and acceptance in terms of caste and community. In fact, when Bhaisahab wins the Lok Sabha election, the bahubali—literally, the strong armed—Omkara is promoted to being the candidate for the assembly election. There is no questioning of his adha-­ baman caste. The formal ritual appointment of the next bahubali, Kesu Upadhyay, is marked by a religious ceremony in a small temple in a gathering of only upavita wearing men that visually represents the political party as exclusively of Brahmans. In the Brahmanical topos of Bhardwaj’s movie, the implications of Omkara’s half-caste identity are thus deemed politically inconsequential even when caste is the foremost tactic of electoral mobilization in Uttar Pradesh—the much-touted “realistic” setting of the film—where political parties overtly and covertly use caste and ethnic identities as their base votes.33 In addition, in the heterogeneous demography of the state, the “Backward Caste” vote bank is a decisive factor for electoral victory. This political dynamic of Uttar Pradesh is entirely neglected in the film even though its protagonist is an adha-baman. The saffron sporting party to which Omkara belongs, along with its fire torch party symbol evokes the Hindutva brigade of Bhartiya Janata Party, which had consolidated its position after the downfall of Congress in Uttar Pradesh’s political map after the 1989 assembly elections. But Omkara appears ideologically blind to the fact that the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections of 2002 which preceded the movie, saw a BJP–BSP coalition government headed by the Dalit leader Mayawati. Political analysts recognize that in the “ethnically  The Laws of Manu (2.44.22).  Ambedkar, Volume I, (1946/1970: 183). 33  “Western UP is the wild-west of India, divided by a deep caste conflict…Unfortunately, mainstream Hindi cinema has always played safe in terms of its language, dialect or realism… while writing the dialogues I was trying to be absolutely real about the way people talk in reality in that area” (Bhardwaj et al. 2014: v, vii). 31 32

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heterogeneous constituencies of Uttar Pradesh, even an en masse support of the upper castes is typically not sufficient to produce a victory”.34 But Omkara eschews any suggestions that the half-caste identity of its hero, who is nominated as the party candidate for state elections by Bhaisahab, endorses an inclusive Brahmin–Dalit concord to ensure an electoral win. Omkara never speaks of caste atrocities, oppression, marginalization or the growing self-empowerment of Dalit groups. Indeed, the embryonic possibilities of Omkara’s “half-caste” identity are drowned by the booming drums and revelry of Bhaisaab’s victory. True, the upavita wearing Omkara is referred to as an adha-baman/ half-caste in the film in three important instances: by the Brahman father of Dolly, by the Brahman Langda Tyagi he overlooks in selecting his successor and in his own confessional moment to Dolly. Certainly, these references to adha/half as impurity signal the ideological and material oppressions of a Brahmanical society, but the film does little to engage with caste politics or its implications on gender. In fact, in the context that two of these three references come from the “bad” men also assuage the sting in the abuse. Omkara’s own articulation is entirely in terms of the dominant ideology of Brahmanical-patriarchy that sanctions the sexual and reproductive use of Dalit women by “upper”-caste men, as he justifies his father’s action: ishq ho gaya tha unhe. He fell in love.

Omkara, the character and the film, appear to be in consensual agreement that while chastity is the yardstick for measuring a female character, the “upper”-caste men can access women across communities for libidinal pleasure or lineage propagation. The cross-cutting editing of the scene where Dolly first wears the kamarbandh as a gift from Omkara in the privacy of the bedroom with the raunchy dance of Billo in public, suggests the potential slippage of female sexuality from the sanctioned marital to the disruptive polymorphous. The cinematic representation insidiously heightens this possibility: both Dolly and Billo wear different shades of red, both discard their garment of  Rajan (1989: 9).

34

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modesty and both wear a silver belt. Later, Indu steals the kamarbandh for its totemic sexual potency for a night of passionate bliss with her husband Langda. This circulation of the belt among the women in the film, from Dolly to Indu and Billo, leads to chaos and death, unlike Omkara’s father’s earlier manipulation of it.

“O fie upon thee! Slanderer!”35 It is through Indu’s characterization that Omkara gestures at a potential narrative of female resistance against patriarchal oppression, especially in terms of its critique of patriarchal and patrilocal marriages. Indu argues that tradition authorizes a view of women as always potentially unfaithful even though, hum apne ghar-bhar, naate sab tyaag kar aap logo ke sansaar mein nange hath chale aatey hein … We sacrifice our own homes and relationships and come empty-handed to your household ….36

A sisterly bond between Desdemona and Iago’s wife Emilia is present in Othello, but Omkara enhances this potential. Transgressing gender norms, Indu takes on the role of Dolly’s kurios37—a (fe)male guardian who protects the latter’s interests in the foreign space of Omkara’s village: mein hoon na teri sab…baba, ma, bhaiya, didi. chal mayke chal! I am here for you- (as) father, mother, brother, elder sister, come with me to your natal home!

Indu takes on the role of the agnate family member who performs the “honour”-killing as she avenges Dolly’s murder. She strikes at Langda with a sickle, and thus what was earlier an emblem of her household duty mutates into a weapon of justice.

 Othello (2.1.114), 169.  Indu refers to Sita’s fabled trial by fire, agnipariksha, from the Sanskrit epic Ramayana (500 BC–200 AD). 37  In Classical democratic Athens that did not recognize women as citizens, “kurios” was the male and legal head of the household. We use the term metaphorically here. 35 36

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If one visual measure of Omkara’s gender politics is the gradual tying up of Dolly’s hair and all that it symbolizes, another is the unbound-hair of Indu in her sickle-wielding avatara where actress Konkona Sen Sharma’s dark-complexion is accentuated along with her kohl-rimmed eyes. The representation gestures at the “black” and militant goddesses of an amorphous Hindu pantheon who, despite their complex histories of origin and appropriation, are also available as stereotyped icons, an “alternative to normal society [for] to mediate on the dark goddess… is to step-out of the everyday world of predictable dharmic order and enter a world of reversals, opposites, contrasts….”38 But this melodramatic transition is mediated by two important scenes that problematize the staging of the romanticized potential of women as avenging goddesses. In the first, Indu slaps her husband Langda as she realizes his evil machinations in using Dolly to get at Omkara but the camera moves to focus on Omkara in a state of tragic stupor even as we hear in the background the sound of Langda abusing and hitting Indu repeatedly. Once again, the camera and Omkara remain indifferent to male violence against wives and women. In the next scene, after she murders her husband, Indu looks down the well and the shot is framed by the camera looking up at her, which separates its vision from hers. Indu’s impending death by drowning conflates the ritual immersion of goddesses with the death of real women. The sacralizing metaphor draws a veil over the possibility of a change in the temporal world propelled by female agency. There is however one woman who eventually gets away in the film where all the major female characters are silenced. This is Billo Chamanbahar (Bipasha Basu), who takes off from Othello’s Bianca. In a world where identities are confirmed in terms of Brahmanical-patriarchy, Billo is the only figure who is identified in terms of her profession. She is a nachaniya, a dancer who is socially implicated with harlotry—perhaps a re-cognized variant of Omkara’s mother, the Kanjari—who is also made available for male manipulation. But Billo, unlike Dolly and Indu, is financially independent, though at the cost of enormous emotional and sexual vulnerability. It is this independence, signified by the red Maruti car in her last appearance, which empowers her to escape the ruined and volatile landscape of Omkara.

 Kinsley (1998:130).

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Works Cited Films Omkara. Director Vishal Bhardwaj. Producer Kumar Mangat, 2006.

Books Ambedkar, B.R. Who Were the Shudras? How they came to be the Fourth Varna in the Indo-Aryan Society (1946, India: Thackers, 1970 reprint). Berg, Charles. The Unconscious Significance of Hair (London: Allen and Unwin. 1951). Bhardwaj, Vishal, Robin Bhatt and Abhishek Chaubey. Omkara: The Original Screenplay (India: Harper Collins Publishers, 2014). Burnett, Mark Thronton. Shakespeare and World Cinema (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Chakraborty, Kaustav. Deconstructing the Stereotype: Reconsidering Indian Culture, Literature and Cinema (Hamburg: Anchor Academic Publishing, 2015). Classen, Albrecht. The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Myth-Making Process (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Doniger, Wendy and Brian K. Smith. Translated with Introduction and Notes. The Laws of Manu (1991, New Delhi: Penguin, 2000). Ghurye, G.S. Caste and Race in India (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1919). Gruss, Susanne. “Shakespeare in Bollywood? Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara” in Sarah Säckel, Walter Göbel & Noha Hamdy ed., Semiotic Encounters: Text, Image and Trans-nation (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2009), 223–238. Hiltebeitel, Alf and Barbara D. Miller. ed. Hair: Its Power and Meaning in Asian Cultures (New York: State University of New York Press, 1998). Honigmann, E.A.J. ed. Othello (London: Arden Shakespeare, 1997). Kinsley, David. Tantric Vision of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahavidyas (California: The University of California Press, 1998). Krebs, Katja. ed. Translation and Adaptation in Theory and Films (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2014). Milton, John. “Theorising Omkara.” in Katja Krebs. Translation and Adaptation in Theatre and Film (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), 83−98. Rajan, Chandra. Trans. Kālidāsa, The Loom of Time (New Delhi: Penguin, 1989). Säckel, Sarah, Walter Göbel & Noha Hamdy. Semiotic Encounters: Text, Image and Trans-nation (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2009).

Newspaper, Journal Articles and Book Chapters Anastasia, Piliavsky. “A Secret in the Oxford Sense: Thieves and the Rhetoric of Mystification in Western India”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 53 (2) (2011), 290–313.

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Berland, J. “Peripatetic Strategies of South Asia: Skills as Capital Among Nomadic Artisans and Entertainers”, Nomadic Peoples, no. 13 (1983), 17–34. Chakravarti, Uma. “Conceptualising Brahmanical Patriarchy in Early India: Gender, Caste, Class and State.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 28, no. 14 (1993), 579–585. Gmelch, Sharon Bohn. “Groups That Don’t Want In: Gypsies and Other Artisan, Trader, and Entertainer Minorities.” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 15 (1986), 307–330. Kumar, Pradeep. “Dalits and the BSP in Uttar Pradesh: Issues and Challenges.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 34, no. 14 (1999), 822–826. Mitra, PunyaPriya. “Madhya Pradesh tribe still shackled to British-era ‘criminal’ tag.” Hindustan Times. Hindustan Times, 17 Dec. 2014. Web. 7 Jan. 2017. http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/madhya-pradesh-tribe-still-shackledto-british-era-criminal-tag/story-QZa4GFsdMZwL2GXYpL9MgI.html Saksena, H.S. “Denotified Communities of Uttar Pradesh in Perspective.” Indian Anthropologist, vol. 5, no. 1 (1975), 1–11. Singha, Radhika. “‘Providential’ Circumstances: The Thuggee Campaign of the 1830s and Legal Innovation.” Modern Asian Studies, vol. 27, no. 1 (1993), 83–146.

E-Resource Farrow, Lauren. “A new hope for India’s girls born into prostitution.” lauren farrow. 4 Mar. 2011. https://laurenfarrow.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/a-newhope-for-indias-girls-born-into-prostitution/. Accessed 7 Jan. 2017.

PART II

The Business of the Body

Vyjayanthimala (Devdas, 1955); Helen (Teesri Manzal, 1966) (Editors’ Screengrab and courtesy Nasir Hussain Films)

CHAPTER 6

The Politics of Sanitization/Sanskritization: The Court Dancers and Classical Pasts (Rajnartaki, 1941; Chitralekha, 1964; Amrapali, 1966) Deepika Tandon

The figure of the dancer has been a recurrent one in Hindi cinema. One of her less frequent avataras is that of the rajnartaki (court dancer). The etymology of the term, derived from the Sanskrit raj (court or kingdom) + nartaki (the female performer) of nritya (dance), signals a sanskritized “traditional” provenance for the dancer. The rajnartaki’s dance in these films draws on forms canonized as classical, as different from folk and Western traditions of film dance. The category of the ‘classical’ is a mobile construct marked by histories of exclusion, appropriation and contestation. The classical traditions which the court dancer films invoke draw authority ostensibly from the cultural traditions of Ancient India.1 However these traditions are products  Ancient India covers the period from earliest times to sixth century AD. Singh (2008: xiv).

1

D. Tandon (*) Department of English, Miranda House, Delhi University, Delhi, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_6

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of cultural nationalisms and the construction of Indianness in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ colonial India. As part of the nationalist ideological project, ‘golden’  mythical genealogies were traced to Brahminical sources,  and social and cultural practices which did not fit into this idea of India were projected as polluting aberrations to be exorcised.2 This narrative of ‘sanitization’ was inseparable from the project of sanskritization whereby marginal communities and heterogeneous traditions were subordinated within a Brahmanical patriarchal culture. The sanitized and sanskritized ‘classical’ pasts thus produced were Hindu, “upper” caste, bourgeois and male. These twin processes of sanitization and sanskritization produced monolithic “Indian” classical pasts, which conformed to Brahmanical patriarchy. In the 1940s, the figure of the court dancer as classical ancestress was featured as a protagonist in at least four Hindi films: Debaki Bose’s Nartaki (1940), Modhu Bose’s Rajnartaki (The Court Dancer) (1941), Kidar Sharma’s Chitralekha (1941) and Nandlal Jaswantlal’s Amrapali (1945). Coterminous with reconstructions of inherited dance conventions into classical traditions, these films contributed to the production and dissemination of sanitized/sanskritized court dancer ancestresses and classical pasts as mediated through literature and cinema.3 Resuscitation of the figure occurs in the 1960s with Kidar Sharma’s remake of his 1941 classic Chitralekha in 1964, and Lekh Tandon’s Amrapali in 1966, with the same eponymous protagonist as in the 1945 film. The court dancer’s moment, however, seems to have passed, as both films failed commercially despite offering grand spectacles in colour and starring two of the biggest names of the time, Meena Kumari and Vyajayantimala, in the lead.4 The figure continues to resurface as a tableau piece in later films like Mushir Riaz’s Mehbooba (1976), Priyadarshan’s Bhulbhulayia (2007), Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Bajirao Mastani (2015) and so on. I propose to examine the mutating figure of the court dancer across three Hindi films: Modhu Bose’s The Court Dancer (1941), Kidar Sharma’s Chitralekha (1964) and Lekh Tandon’s Amrapali (1966).5 These films fashion the court dancers into prototypes of ‘classical’ femininity in performing arts in consonance with caste and class patriarchies, through selec Buddhist textual and visual traditions were another source.  Example, Acharya Chatursena’s Hindi novel, Vaishali ki Nagarvadhu, 1939/1949. 4  Chitralekha (1941) was the second largest grosser that year. See Sharma (2002: 185–87, 250–253). 5  In the absence of the Hindi Rajnartaki, the English The Court Dancer is being used. The earlier Chitralekha and Amrapali were untraceable. 2 3

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tively mobilizing texts and contexts associated with classical canons in literature and dance. The films’ mediation of these heterogeneous traditions produces fault-lines which can potentially rupture the gender, caste and class politics underlying projects of sanitization and sanskritization. The historical contexts of these narratives range from the nineteenth century Vaishnavite Manipur (The Court Dancer) to the Buddhist republic of Vaishali of fifth century BCE (Amrapali) and the sophisticated urban culture of the Mauryan Empire of fourth century BCE (Chitralekha). Collectively, however, these films produce seemingly continuous pasts through an eclectic and anachronistic mix of Brahmanical, Bhakti and Buddhist visual, aural and textual signifiers. For instance, the figure of the nineteenth century Manipuri court dancer in The Court Dancer’s publicity material designed by M. R. Achrekar drew on the Ajanta cave paintings, dated between second century BCE and fifth century AD, on the life of the Buddha and common people.6 A quarter of a century later, Achrekar and Bhanu Athaiya returned to the Ajanta paintings in search of ‘authentic’ Buddhist art and costume designs for Amrapali.7 As features such as devotional music, art-deco statues of nubile apsarases and musicians, a sanskritized discourse recur, the court dancer films fashion a distinctly non-­ Islamic popular vocabulary of the ‘classical’ in Hindi cinema. The court dancers form the artistic, emotional and moral epicenters of these cinematic classical pasts. All three films, however, display unease around the figure of the court dancer as a public performer located within non-conjugal economies of desire and performance. The films’ plots trace the journeys of the court dancers from celebrated dancers and beloveds to the reviled witch/fallen woman/traitor, and finally devotee/renouncer/ patriot through patterns of love and sacrifice. These films idealize the court dancer but do not challenge the fundamental premise of the female public performer as ‘bad’ as the rajnartaki must dissociate herself from her suspect performative contexts. The figure of the court dancer had to be physically alluring, sensual and wise in the ways of the court yet chaste, spiritual, unworldly, and appeal to audiences’ sensibilities. Played by charismatic stars of proven talent, the court dancers’ personae of joyous, intelligent and strong women could deliver perfect sanskritized ancestresses and classical pasts for popular consumption.  Dwyer and Patel (2002: 112).  Compare http://osianama.com/indian-film-cinema-publicity-memorabilia/lobby-window-cards/raj-nartaki-1941-0814477?mastid=54798; and http://osianama.com/indianfilm-cinema-publicity-memorabilia/song-synopsis-booklets/amrapali-1966-1104449?searc h=amrapali&sindex=1 6 7

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Equally, the meeting between ancient court dancers and modern actors with larger than life star-texts, reel and real public performers delighting in their skills, sexuality and success, could disrupt sanskritizing processes.8 These films thus produce desiring women who to different degrees elude absorption into the sanitized/sanskritized subjects of the court dancer films.

Classical Pasts The earliest cinematic predecessors of the court dancers were the apsarases and ganikas who have come to be popularly associated with female sexuality in the public domain, not least through films based on Sanskrit myths and literature, such as Kanjibhai Rathod’s Vikram Urvashi (1920), Mrichchkatik (1920)/The Little Clay Cart, Vishwamitra Menaka (1921), Vishnupant Divekar’s Urvashi (1921), Dadasaheb Phalke’s Vasantsena (1929), among others. The representation of the court dancers in the three films under study carries direct and indirect resonances of apsarases and ganikas from Brahmanical textual traditions. The dominant representations of apsarases in Brahmanical literature as sexualized celestial dancers and seductresses in the court of Indra—the king of the gods—divyavesyas (heavenly courtesans), and paramours of kings in texts like the Natyashastra, a Sanskrit treatise on dance and dramaturgy dated between second century BCE and second century AD and ascribed to the Brahmin Bharata, have subsumed an alternative tradition available in the Natyashastra itself, of apsarases as autonomous dancers created by Lord Brahma to perform the “graceful style” of which male dancers were incapable, and without which dance and drama remained incomplete.9 Ganika literally means the woman of the gan (people or public). As per the Kamasutra, a Sanskrit conduct book on forms and relations of kama (desire), dated between fifth century BCE and second century AD ascribed to the Brahmin Vatsyayana, the title of ganika was awarded in a public assembly to a vesya (prostitute) for her beauty and knowledge of the arts. The Natyashastra describes nartakis (dancers) in similar terms as women well-versed in the 64 arts, including singing and dancing.10 “Respected by the king, and praised by learned men”, the ganika’s luxurious lifestyle and 8  Combining semiotics and sociology, “star text” conceptualizes  the “star image” as an intertextual construct produced across a range of media and cultural practices capable of intervening in the working of particular films, and a text in its own right. Gledhill (1991: xii). 9  Ghosh trans., Natyashastra 1951. All citations are from this edition. Henceforth, NS. NS.XXIV.154, 460; NS.I.42–43, 7. 10  NS.XXXIV.44–48, 532; NS. XXXV.78–81, 548

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knowledge of music, dance, poetry and arts of seduction make her the female counterpart of the rasika (cultured man of taste).11 As wealthy women, the ganikas maintained large households and made endowments toward religious works. The sixth book of the Kamasutra engages with the courtesan as a professional. With “wealth, freedom from misfortune and love” cited as legitimate motives for her liaisons, the courtesan is advised to choose wealth over love and always appear to be in love with her patron for professional reasons.12 The Pali Vinaya Pitaka (dated between fourth century BC and first century AD) cites the high price charged by Ambapali, the legendary ganika of Vaishali, as one of the proofs of her glory.13 The Natyashastra describes the courtesan as the “bahya” (public woman), the other of the “abhayantara” or “homely” woman and differentiates between the expression of desire by the courtesan as nayika/heroine and the “upper”-caste maidenly beloved of Sanskrit drama and poetry; while the courtesan is bold in the expression of desire, the high-born woman is bashful.14 Located outside conjugal economies and monogamous relations, the ganika was everything that the ‘good’ woman of Brahmanical patriarchy, the kulastri, that is, the woman of the kula (clan, lineage), whose chastity was the guarantee of purity of caste and lineage, was not. Sections of the Natyashastra, however, warn against courtesans as mercenary and duplicitous.15 The apsarases and ganikas of Brahmanical and Buddhist textual traditions thus offer plural frameworks for understanding gender relations in ancient India as compared to the monolithic representation of the female dancer as morally suspect.16 The court dancer films too disinherit the apsarases and ganikas in the service of sanitization/sanskritization. Histories of construction of “classical dance” offer a second prism for analyzing the court dancer films as The Court Dancer and Amrapali, ­separated by twenty-five years, mark changing contexts of Hindi films’ engagement with classical traditions. Beginning with the late nineteenth century, professional performers of eroticized dance forms associated with non-­ marital relations and marginalized castes and communities, 11  Burton trans, 1883, Kamasutra of Vatsyayan. http://www.sacred-texts.com/sex/ kama/kama103.htm. Henceforth, KS. See Part I, iii. 12  KS. VI. i. 13  Young (2004: 122). 14  NS.XXIV. 150–151, 460; NS.XXIV.163–167, 462. Kumar ed., NS.XXIV, 1054. 15  NS. XXV.74–76, p. 492. 16  Roy (2010: 113).

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such as nautch girls (court dancers) and devadasis (temple-dancers), were cast as ­prostitutes, bearers of disease, products of unenlightened pasts and corrupt feudal practices by reform movements including the anti-nautch and devadasi abolition campaigns. The reforms resulted in almost complete disenfranchisement of these dancers by the late 1930s.17 The threat of loss of inherited forms, made real by reformist exclusions, lent impetus to nationalist projects of revival of dance traditions but sanitized of professional women practitioners. Movement vocabularies were de-eroticized, and bhakti/devotional elements prioritized over the sringaric/erotic, and the sanskritized performing female body produced, with participation from upper-­caste women.18 These changes facilitated entry of high-caste and middle-class women into public performance as amateur ‘artists’. So called pure origins, were discovered in Brahmanical textual traditions with Bharata’s Natyashastra emerging as the seminal text. The reinvention of sadir, the dance of the devadasis, into Bharatnatyam (Bharata + natya) exemplifies the gender, caste and class politics of sanitizing/sanskritizing reform and revival. With the Sangeet Natak Academy designating Bharatnatyam, Kathak, Manipuri and Kathakali as “classical dances of India” in 1952, the caste-class appropriations constituting reform and revival were absorbed into the official narrative of the classical and the national in independent India.19

The Court Dancer (1941) Reform and revival produced two prototypes of bad and good women: the sexualized professional performer from feudal milieus, and the spiritualized amateur dancer on stage and screen, both of which inform Modhu Bose’s The Court Dancer, starring his wife, the classically trained Sadhona Bose (1914–1973). From an upper-caste and class background and trained in Manipuri and Kathak dance, Sadhona Bose was a “pioneer” of Bengali bhadramahilas’ (gentlewomen’s) entry into public performance on stage and screen.20 Made in Bengali, Hindi and English, Rajnartaki/The Court Dancer was the cinematic version of the Boses’ 1938 dance ballet based on  Srinivasan (1985, 1873–1875) and Chakravorty (2006: 116–120).  Coorlawala (2004: 50–63). 19  Shah (2002: 125–141). 20  Bose (1963: 9–10). 17 18

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Manmatha Ray’s play Rajnati. For producer JBH Wadia the film was a conscious intervention in nationalist projects of reform and revival. The opening credits introduce it as: …the story of the inhumanity of social barriers and of a court dancer in the Kingdom of Manipur in the early years of the 19th Century.

The Court Dancer’s project was to retrieve the “glorious tradition in art, culture and science”, which “so few outside this country know of”.21 Distributed by Columbia Pictures, the film’s combination of neoclassical dances and choreography, technological innovation (epitomized in a dance sequence transposing moon and stars over classical hast-mudras [hand gestures]) and English dialogue was hailed as giving the West the “first real glimpse of this great and ancient land”.22 The film follows the ill-fated love of Prince Chandrakirti of Manipur and Indrani, the “Court Dancer”.23 Sadhona Bose’s established star-text as a classical dancer is foregrounded from the outset.24 The first shot of Indrani shows the court dancer in Manipuri raas-lila costume striking a graceful dance pose, amidst young men and women decorating a Radha-­ Krishna idol in her garden. The camera follows Chandrakirti’s enraptured gaze as Indrani rushes to meet him. Her body language communicates reciprocal desire, which reaches its zenith when Chandrakirti mentions marriage. Indrani celebrates by asking her companions—played by Benita Gupta and Protima Das Gupta—to dance. Indrani’s other desire is for “the sacred dust” brought by High-Priest Kashishwar (Jal Khambata) from the Bhakti saint Chaitanya’s shrine. Indrani’s eyes light up at its very mention but then her face falls. She fears denial being “a mere court dancer”. The first dance, a Manipuri raas-lila combining Sadhona Bose’s virtuosity and Indrani’s spirituality, puts the sanskritized performing body of the “upper”-caste woman on display. The court dancer plays Radha dressing for a tryst with Krishna. The lyrics “tan, man hain pyase” (body and soul thirst after) express Radha’s desire for erotic and spiritual union with Krishna, the consummation of which is signified through their dancing in  Publicity Booklet. Cited in Dwyer and Patel (2002: 117–18).  filmindia (Oct 1941, 3). 23  Prithviraj Kapoor, actor. 24  Famous for stage ballets like Dahlia under Rabindranath Tagore’s direction and Alibaba, made into films in 1930 and 1937 respectively, she was also a choreographer and costume designer. 21 22

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perfect harmony.25 The primary instrument of sanskritization in the film are Vaishnavite Bhakti traditions, of which the raas is one expression, conjoining erotic and spiritual  desire in the non-conjugal love of Radha and Krishna. Indrani dances in a trance. The Prince watches enthralled. The High-­ Priest praises Indrani’s dance as supreme devotion, the Radha-Krishna raas as performed “in the court of divine Indra” and the court dancer as Radha descended on earth. The sanitizing reference comparing Indrani the court dancer’s performance to that of divine  Radha and locating it  in Indra’s court, completely displaces the apsarases, the originary  celestial court dancers who performed in Indra’s court. Learning Indrani’s identity just as he is about to bless her with the sacred dust, Kashishwar recoils in horror. The film again indicts religious and caste prejudice when Brahmin priests deny the devout court dancer entry into the royal temple. Two dances in court at royal command present Indrani as a professional. The court dancer performs, dressed in ornate costume bedecked with jewels. The royal guest praises her dance as incomparable and rewards her with a necklace which Indrani reluctantly accepts, but later flings aside. The sequence distinguishes Indrani from ordinary court dancers driven by pecuniary benefits and establishes the court as an undesirable space where Indrani’s performance objectifies her. Rejecting a royal marriage alliance, the throne, and calls to dharma (duty) toward the country and lineage, for love of Indrani, Chandrakirti represents rebellious modernity. Indrani scornfully rejects Kashishwar’s diktat to give up the Prince but finally agrees. A cold-faced Indrani scoffs at Chandrakirti’s marriage proposal declaring that as loving him would no longer make her queen, she prefers to enjoy the privileges accorded to the court dancer. Chandrakirti stalks off declaring Indrani, “a court dancer after all!” The film generates sympathy for Indrani as a wronged woman, but the stereotype of court dancers as inherently duplicitous stays. The court dancer reappears at home as a devotee—dressed in white, hair loose, a garland of flowers around her neck and sacred mark on the forehead—seemingly sanskritized and sanitized. Impressed by her sacrifice, Kashishwar appoints Indrani the sole custodian of the sacred dust. Meanwhile, a mob storms Indrani’s house to kill the witch who has entrapped both the prince and the priest. Chandrakirti rushes to Indrani’s rescue, but afraid that the mob will kill him, she consumes poison.  Suprava Sarkar, Singer. Timir Baran, Composer. All translations are mine.

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The film’s shying away from “the possibility of bridging the social gulf” between the royal prince and lowly court dancer through marriage throws into relief the limits of the film’s reformist project.26 The Radha-Krishna iconography mystifies the film’s politics. Indrani’s death in Chandrakirti’s arms before a Radha-Krishna idol apotheosizes the court dancer into Radha whose eternally unfulfilled longing is the measure of her devotion. The final shot is a close-up of Indrani’s face in complete repose. The absence of the court dancer’s body, the locus of her emotional, conjugal and artistic desires, visually reaffirms the narrative closure. Sadhona Bose’s luminous presence, spirited acting, sweet face and bright eyes, however, elude such stilling. The court dancer in love is alternately flirtatious, feisty and vulnerable. Indrani playfully banters with Chandrakirti, eyes blazing angrily asserts, “I will not give him up!”, and then turns Chandrakirti away in harsh tones while her eyes brim with tears. The film excludes the overtly sexual but Indrani conveys intimacy and a self-aware desire. A rare scene outside courtly spaces has Indrani expressing anguish at being “Chandra” and “My love” only in private, and “His Majesty” and “the Court Dancer” in all else. Contempt and sorrow intermingle in her voice and face as she reminds the High-Priest of the inclusiveness of the Bhakti tradition of which the sacred dust is but a symbol. The film hinged on Bose’s star-text as a dancer.27 A poster with Sadhona Bose at the center read “With songs and smiles Sadhona Bose dances into your heart in and as Raj Nartaki”.28 Portraits, including the cover of the October 1941 issue of Filmindia, represented her in dance costume as “The Court Dancer”. Sadhona Bose’s star-image is typified by a review of the ballet lauding her as: …an artist from the crown of her beautiful head to the red soles of her hennaed feet…the indescribable quality of her dancing, which gives one the feeling that an Ajanta fresco or some ancient sculptured goddess has suddenly come to life… (The Evening News of India, dt 19.09.38).29

 filmindia (April 1941, 47 and Oct 1941, 16).  Sadhona Bose’s first Hindi film, Kumkum The Dancer, was a huge hit. See filmindia (May 1940, 24). 28  filmindia, 1941 (April, 28–29). 29  Cited in Bose (1967: 430). 26 27

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Sadhona Bose’s stage and screen performances as the court dancer contributed to a popular genealogy for the public performer as “artist” descended from traditions of femininity in the classical visual arts, and divine Radha, whose dance transcends language, time and space. The court dancer’s story of denial and dispossession, however, like those of the professional dancers, the subjects of social reform, remained secondary. The film and its contexts thus refracted the sanitizing/sanskritizing erasures and appropriations informing reform and revival. An extremely successful star, Sadhona Bose left husband Modhu Bose over his refusal to let her work under other directors. Her reportedly extravagant lifestyle, extra-marital affairs and alcoholism eventually resulted in destitution.30 Bose’s story lends itself to a nationalist hagiography of pioneering woman artist and a cautionary tale against the pitfalls of modern female stardom. However, Sadhona Bose, as the “upper”-caste and class artist’s participation in sanskritizing revival, implicates her in the subordination of a different class of dancers as bad women.

Chitralekha (1964) Kidar Sharma’s Chitralekha (1964) starring Meena Kumari carries strong resonances of the professional ganika of classical Sanskrit textual traditions. Based on Bhagwati Charan Verma’s Hindi novel Chitralekha (1934), the plot traces court dancer Chitralekha’s relationship with Beejgupta (Pradeep Kumar), an aristocrat in emperor Chandragupta Maurya’s (324  BCE–187  BCE) court. Lavish sets of palatial mansions with arches, pillars, fountains and statues create a world of ancient opulence and luxury.31 At its center lies rajnartaki Chitralekha—richly clad, covered in jewels, head of an all-female household whose members dance, pour liquor, dress her, all at a hand-clap. The film establishes Chitralekha as a dancer par-excellence through one dance at court where her dance marks her apart from the other dancers despite their wearing identical masks and dresses. Chitralekha’s companions, played by actors Bela Bose and Meenu Mumtaz, perform all subsequent dances, their Kathak-style

 Iyer, unpublished PhD dissertation (2014: 77–80, 107–108).  S.S. Majid. Art director.

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movements in Bharatnatyam-like costumes contributing to the popular vocabulary of classical dance in Hindi films.32 Next represented awaiting Beejgupta’s first visit, Chitralekha shares her restlessness with her companions, sakhi ri, mera man uljhe, tan dolay… …kab unse milan hovay….33 Dear friend, my heart is confused, my body dances… …When will I unite with him

Intoxication functions as a trope for desire in lyrics like “ang-ang mein madira chalke” (wine spills into every part). The sequence sets up a romantic frame pre-empting the manifold images of an inebriated Chitralekha swaying glass in hand and demanding liquor. Beejgupta’s arrival shows the court dancer well-versed in the arts of seduction. Chitralekha fills Beejgupta’s goblet, reclines next to him, commands her companions to dance and declares her intentions toward her urbane visitor, the rasika: ai ri, jaane na doongi apne rasik ko…34 Dear [friend], I will not let my admirer leave…

The film communicates the sexual nature of the relationship via a series of painterly vignettes. Chitralekha eats grapes from Beejgupta’s hand, bites his fingers, and kisses and drinks from a goblet before offering it to him, while he plays with her earring. Beejgupta and Chitralekha’s relationship is non-marital and polygamous. Both mention other relationships and doubt if love exists, but the film attempts to justify Chitralekha’s drinking and sexual history through a narrative of sexual exploitation and abuse from a young age. A meeting between the lovers in a grotto-like setting reproduces the atmospherics of ‘erotic sentiment’/sringara rasa of Sanskrit poetics using

32  Photographic still. http://osianama.com/indian-film-cinema-publicity-memorabilia/ photographic-stills-negatives/chitralekha-1964-0914688?fr=all&mastid=38789&sin dex=11 33  Lata Mangeshkar. Singer. 34  Lata Mangeshkar, singer; Kaifi Azmi, lyrics; Roshan, music.

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cinema’s associative features.35 Shots of glistening lotuses with clouds rushing across a darkening sky, emblems of love in classical traditions in the visual arts and Sanskrit poetics, complement the lyrical verses: chha gaye badal neel gagan par, dhul gaya kajra saanjh dhale36 Clouds gather over blue skies, kohl is smudged as evening falls…

The camera lingers on Meena Kumari’s mesmerizing face and eloquent eyes, tresses gently ruffled by a breeze, then cuts to her bare calves and feet splashing in a pool, producing a soft, sensual femininity. The commanding court dancer resurfaces as Chitralekha imperiously waves an arm and snaps her fingers, directing an enamored Beejgupta to follow. A confrontation between Chitralekha and the renowned Brahmin ascetic Kumargiri (Ashok Kumar) is a key moment in the film. Chitralekha rejects the moral binaries of “bhog”/“tapasya” (hedonism/asceticism) and “paap”/“punya” (vice/virtue) which constitute Kumargiri’s belief system. Kumargiri castigates the court dancer as “kulta” (the woman who pollutes the kula) and “jadugarni” (enchantress). Lurching through her mansion calling for more liquor, head tilted in self-admiration, the court dancer seems literally drunk with vanity. The film, however, produces a free-thinking, learned and articulate woman who is the ascetic’s moral and intellectual adversary who with a mocking smile and questioning eyes challenges Kumargiri: sansar se bhaage phirtey ho bhagwaan ko tum kya payoge…37 You who run from the world, what hope have you of finding God…

Brahmanical codes on marriage provide the most overt sanitizing/sanskritizing strategy in the film.38 A weeping Chitralekha pleads with the Kshatriya Beejgupta to marry the “pavitra devi” (chaste lady), the virginal and shy high-born Yashodhara, and fulfill the upper–caste Hindu man’s “dharma” of propagating his pure lineage. The shastraic courtesan not governed by these norms is recuperated into the court dancer as espouser  NS, VI.44–48, 108–110.  Asha Bhonsle, Mohammad Rafi. Singers. 37  Lata Mangeshkar. 38  For example, Ch.3, verses 12 and 15 in Manusmriti (dated between second century BC and second century AD), Doniger and Smith trans. 1991:44. 35 36

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of Brahmanical caste and gender codes. Chitralekha retires to Kumargiri’s cave to practice tapas, now the Brahmanical renouncer clad in saffron. The developments remain unconvincing as the memory of Chitralekha’s demystification of morality as “reeton par dharma ki mohrein” (seals of religion/duty on customs), in Sahir Ludhianvi’s powerful lyrics, lingers on. Dressed in plain white with no jewels, Chitralekha parts from her sorrowing companions. The camera focuses on a frieze of an apsarases in a white saree rising upwards even as mortals reach out after her. The frieze validates Chitralekha as the dancer who is above worldly ties, but the apsarases sexual and performative contexts are literally not in the picture. Chitralekha emerges as a woman who can overcome worldly enticements, but as Kumargiri succumbs to sexual desire, she continues to carry the aura of a disruptive enchantress. Beejgupta too renounces the world. Dressed in pure white, he lifts up a distraught Chitralekha who is now  clad in muddied garments. The sequence literally represents Chitralekha as a ‘fallen’ woman. The lovers eulogize their love as one that transcends desire. The film sanitizes/sanskritizes the powerful and sexually active court dancer, the equal of Beejgupta the rasika, into a dependent woman of uncertain status. The failure to integrate the rajnartaki into the family indicates the film’s Brahmanical politics. The court dancer can never be good enough as her public sexual pasts and unknown origins threaten the kula. Meena Kumari, with her deep eyes, beautifully modulated dialogue delivery, husky trademark voice, a sideways glance, the lift of an eyebrow, statuesque poses and gestures, brings alive court dancers skilled in the erotic arts. But the court dancer does not dance, and an aging Meena Kumari in cumbersome costumes lacks the lissome grace of Mehtab as Chitralekha in the 1945 film.39 Tellingly, the camera work primarily focuses on Meena Kumari’s face, eyes and hands and cuts to larger than life generic ‘classical’ sculptures of voluptuous, dancing, copulating figures, but the juxtaposition only accentuates the physical  sexual lack. Chitralekha exemplifies the fraught character of sanitizing/sanskritizing projects. The film fails to reconcile the polygamous court dancer with the upholder of Brahmanical codes on chastity, the courtesan with the kulastri, the iconoclast and 39  Compare http://osianama.com/indian-film-cinema-publicity-memorabilia/handbillsheralds/chitralekha-1941-0803642 with http://osianama.com/indian-film-cinema-publicity-memorabilia/song-synopsis-booklets/chitralekha-1941-1105324

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v­ oluptuary with the ascetic renouncer, the voluptuousness of the statues and Meena Kumari’s physicality. Chitralekha as sophisticated, powerful, sexually active, unapologetic, iconoclastic, drunken court dancer played by Meena Kumari exceeds the sanskritizing project. Kidar Sharma’s representation of Chitralekha draws heavily on Meena Kumari’s star-text as a feted actor, exploited beauty and unloved alcoholic. Born Mahjabeen, to Bengali-Christian silent film heroine and dancer Prabhavati Devi (later Iqbal Begum) and musician Ali Bax, Meena Kumari (1933–1972) entered films at age seven and at thirty-eight, died of cirrhosis of the liver. Meena Kumari educated herself, wrote Urdu poetry, married against parental wishes, left director-husband Kamal Amrohi, was unapologetic about other liaisons and financially supported many. A career actor, Meena Kumari became the highest-paid heroine of her times who received top billing and carried films like Sahib, Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962) and Mere Apne (1971) on her shoulders. In Chitralekha she was billed above the hero, second only to veteran actor, Ashok Kumar. Meena Kumari was indeed Chitralekha, not as a tragic victim, but as a subversive professional woman performer.

Amrapali (1966) Lekh Tandon’s Amrapali (1966) relies centrally on the classical training of lead actor Vyajayantimala (b. 1936), whose name heads the acting credits against a backdrop of Ajanta paintings. The film draws on Buddhist legends about Ambapali, the famed ganika of Vaishali who waited on the Buddha, and later became a nun. Amrapali’s love is foredoomed because the soldier she loves is the Magadhan Emperor Ajatashatru (492–460 BC) out on a mission to conquer the republic of Vaishali. The film represents Amrapali as a knowledgeable artist. She spots a flaw in the court dancer’s performance at court and wins the title of rajnartaki in a spectacular dance-off show-casing Vyajayantimala’s skills and renowned Kathak dancer Gopi Krishna’s choreography.40 Responding to a query regarding her parentage, Amrapali declares Vaishali to be both her mother and father. The film’s silence on Amrapali’s social origins fashions the court dancer as the perfect daughter for whom the nation is her family. A sculptor who carves Amrapali’s statue eulogizes her beauty as satya (truth)

 Madhavi. Dancer.

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and shiva (godliness). The film confines the court dancer’s performative and professional agency to selfless service of ‘Nation’ and ‘Art’. Amrapali’s next performance is as a court dancer before a royal audience. Her rich red dress, glittering jewelry and elaborate coiffeur mark her elevated status. Gaze fixed on the doorway, a restless Amrapali keeps lapsing into forgetfulness. neel gagan ki chchaon mein, din rain gale se milte hain, dil panchchi ban ud jaata hai, hum khoye – khoye rahte hain…41 Day and night embrace, in the shade of blue skies, I lose myself, my heart becomes a bird and flies,

Her anxiety gives way to joy when ‘her’ soldier appears. Vyajayantimala, the trained dancer, evocatively executes the movement and emotive vocabulary, mudras and bhavas, of the “heroine in expectancy” thus embodying the court dancer as ‘good’ woman who desires just one man even though she performs before many.42 Two songs place the public performer within private, erotic fantasy-­ scapes. Amrapali wears an ensemble of a bustier, diaphanous veil, the saree drape accentuating  her breasts and waist. In the first, alone in her bed-­ chamber, Amrapali reclines languorously across a sumptuous bed with a veena, a signifier of classical arts in popular culture, and looks invitingly into the camera which pans Vyajayantimala’s face, cleavage, waist and sensuous figure.43 The court dancer exhibits what in Sanskrit poetics are “signs of a maiden in love” such as longing, anxiety, recollection, sleeplessness and feverishness, which the lyrics further underline.44 tumhe yaad karte karte, jayegi rain saari…. The entire night will be spent thinking of you….

Her avowal “meri preet hai kuari” (my love is virginal) makes the nagarvadhu (literally the city’s bride) a potential wife. Singing of her burning  All songs sung by Lata Mangeshkar. Shailendra, lyrics. Shankar Jaikishen, music.  NS. XXIV. 245–247, 472. 43  https://www.osianama.com/indian-film-cinema-publicity-memorabilia/photographicstills-mounted-on-lobby-cards/amrapali-1966-0863696?sindex=0&search=Amrapali%20 1966 44  NS. XXIV. 168–182, 462–464. 41 42

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passion, “virah ki is chita se…” (the funeral pyre of separation), Amrapali implores the absent lover to rescue her. In another song, the lovers meet on a grand pleasure boat with a partially visible luxurious bed. Amrapali’s quivering lips and fluttering lids, even as she leans against a bare-chested, muscular Ajatashatru, communicate sexual arousal. But the courtesan wonders “yeh rog hai kaisa” (what is this sickness) and looks to Ajatashatru to end her tantalizing wait “ab to bata de, ab to bata de” (at least tell me now, tell me now). The sequence ends with Ajatashatru taking Amrapali in his arms and the lovers sinking onto the bed. Unlike the experienced courtesan Chitralekha confident of her amorous prowess, the film sanitizes the rajnartaki Amrapali into a young and artless maiden  who needs to be seduced. The film’s second-half represents the court dancer as a patriot. Learning Ajatashatru’s identity, Amrapali perceives herself as a traitor and tries to resign from her position. The king refuses because she is the beloved court dancer and ideal daughter of Vaishali. Once it is known that the court dancer’s lover is the enemy king, Amrapali is stripped of her title, arrested, attacked and abused as “deshdrohini” (traitoress), and “kulta”, the woman whose illicit relations pollute the kula. A threat to country and family, the court dancer’s desire becomes transgressive. Ajatashatru conquers Vaishali and proposes to make Amrapali the empress of Magadha. Sorrow and anger flitting across her features, Amrapali spurns love, marriage  and power. Stricken at the carnage and destruction of Vaishali, Amrapali joins a line of monks. The film sanitizes and sanskritizes the court dancer into deshbhakt—the bhakt (devotee) of the desh (nation/country). Kneeling with her back to Ajatashatru, a silhouette of Buddha in the distance, against chants of “Buddham saranam gachchami” (take refuge in the Buddha), Amrapali is the woman who makes an independent ethical choice. Vyajayantimala’s angelic face, graceful dance and vivacity juxtaposed against classicist friezes and murals bring court dancers from classical pasts vividly to life. The film uses the vocabulary of classical dance but in complete contrast to The Court Dancer, and produces the eroticized performing female body, its impact magnified through the resources of cinema. The patriot and renouncer lie forgotten. The court dancer’s seductive presence amid opulent settings and enhanced by suggestive lyrics, prevents sanitizing/Sanskritizing closure. Vyajayantimala is a trained Bharatnatyam dancer from an upper-class Iyengar Brahmin family. Vyajayantimala’s mother, Vasundhara Devi, was

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a recognized Carnatic singer  and classical dancer who starred in a few films in the 1940s.45 Vyajayantimala, one of the most popular and critically acclaimed actresses of Hindi films, also starred in many successful Tamil and Telegu films. She  left films in 1968 to pursue classical dance and choreography solely on stage  and was conferred with the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, the highest Indian official recognition given to practicing artists, in 1982. In the section on Amrapali in her autobiography (2007), Vyajayantimala emphasizes that the dances were not “filmy” being based on “clearly defined” classical “mudras”; moreover, she had satisfied both “purists” and “commoners” by introducing “that touch of classicism minus its rigidity”.46 Already by the 1950s, film classical dance was attracting criticism as corrupting purist traditions, included only to enhance the actress’s sex appeal.47 Bali’s retrospective account suggests a similar discomfort with popular ‘classical’ dance in Hindi cinema and her participation in it. The Court Dancer’s sanitizing/sanskritizing cinematic representations of classical dance and court dancers, “evidence of India’s ancient glory… and present progress”, had become the suspect “filmy” other, against the pleasurable incursions of which “classical” traditions of independent India had to be guarded.48 The lasting pleasure of the court dancer films comes from the verve and vivacity with which these actors bring court dancers and classical pasts to life, giving audiences the feisty devotee Indrani, the commanding courtesan Chitralekha and the spiritual siren Amrapali, unforgettable figures who cannot quite be contained within the films’ ideological projects. Amidst these court dancer protagonists and the stars who played them, the friends, companions and servants of the rajnartakis played by “side-actors” and nameless “extras” stand forgotten. The project of revisiting Hindi films’ sanitization/sanskritization of court dancers and classical pasts remains incomplete until these shadowy figures from the hinterland of the court dancer films occupy center-screen. 45  https://in-bookmyshow-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/in.bookmyshow.com/amp/ person/Vasundhara-Devi 46  Bali (2007), https://books.Google.co.in/books/about/Bonding, search results under “Amrapali”, “devadasi”. Bali distances herself from older performative pasts. She terms “devadasi culture” “degenerate” and thanks revivalist upper caste Bharatnatyam dancers for making it possible for Brahmin women to perform on public platforms. 47  Renowned classically trained dancer Uday Shankar at Sangeet Natak Akademi’s first National Film Seminar (1955). Contrast veteran actor Durga Khote’s praise of early actresses and cinema for taking ancient dance forms to mass audiences. See Roy ed., 2010: 184, 238. 48  Patel (1941: 3–4).

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Works Cited Films Amrapali. Director Lekh Tandon. Producer FC Mehra. Bombay: Eagle Films, 1966. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x29cw4g_amrapali-hindi-fullmovie-sunil-dutt-vyjayanthimala-full-movie_shortfilms Chitralekha, Director Kidar Sharma. Producer Karimbhai Nadiadwala, 1964. www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZPeu5Ja560 Rajnartaki/The Court Dancer. Director Modhu Bose. Producer JBH Wadia. Bombay: Wadia Movietones, 1941. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g-zb8-JxeI

Books Bose, Sadhona. Shilpir Atmakath (Calcutta: Granth Prakashan, 1963). Bose, Modhu. Amar Jeeban (Calcutta: Bak Sahityo, 1967). Dwyer, Rachel and Divia Patel. Cinema India: The Visual Culture of Hindi Film (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Ghosh, MM, trans. Natyashastra ascribed to Bharatmuni (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1951). Kumar, Pushpendra ed., Natyashastra of Bharatmuni (Delhi: New Bharatiya Book Corporation, 2010). Mehta, Vinod. Meena Kumari: The Classic Biography (1972, New Delhi: Harper Collins India Ltd., 2013). Sharma, Kidar. The One and Lonely Kidar Sharma [An Anecdotal Autobiography] (New Delhi: Blue Jay Publishers, 2002). Singh, Upinder, A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India from the Stone Age to the 12th Century (Delhi: Pearson, 2008). Young, Serinity. Courtesans and Tantric Consorts: Sexualities in Buddhist Narrative, Iconography and Ritual (New York: Routledge, 2004).

Journal Articles, Essays Chakravorty, Pallabi. ‘Dancing into Modernity: Multiple Narratives of India’s Kathak Dance’. Dance Research Journal 38:1/2, (2006), 115–136. Coorlawala, Uttara Asha. ‘The Sanskritized Body’. Dance Research Journal 36:2 (Winter, 2004), 50–63. Gledhill, Christine. ‘Introduction’. Stardom: Industry of Desire, ed. by Christine Gledhill. (London: Routledge, 1991), xi–xix. Roy, Kumkum. ‘Re-presenting the Courtesanal Tradition’. The Power of Gender and the Gender of Power, Roy ed., (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010), 111–31.

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Shah, Purnima. ‘State Patronage in India: Appropriation of the “Regional” and the “National”’. Dance Chronicle, Volume 25, No.1 (2002), 125–141. Srinivasan, Amrit. ‘Reform and Revival: The Devadasi and Her Dance’. Economic and Political Weekly, 20:44(1985), 1869–1876.

Seminar Lectures (Published) Khote, Durga. ‘The Film Actress and Her Contribution to Indian Cinema’. Paper presented at the first Sangeet Natak Akademi Film Seminar (1955). Indian Cinema in Retrospect, R.M Ray ed. New Delhi: Sangeet NatakAkademi, 1956/2009, 181–185. 1956. Shankar, Uday. ‘The Message of Dance in Films’. Paper presented at Sangeet Natak Akademi’s Film Seminar (1955). In Indian Cinema in Retrospect, R. M. Ray ed. (New Delhi: Sangeet Natak Akademi, 2009), 235–40.

E-Resources Books Bali, Vyjayantimala with Jyoti Saberwal. Bonding….A Memoir, 2007. https:// books.Google.co.in/books/about/Bonding Burton, Richard F, trans. The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayan, 1883. http://www. sacred-texts.com/sex/kama/index.htm

Magazines and Dissertation Patel, Baburao. ed. filmindia (1940): https://ia802900.us.archive.org/9/items/ filmindia194006unse/filmindia194006unse.pdf. Patel, Baburao. ed. filmindia (1941): https://ia801301.us.archive.org/33/ items/filmindia194107film_1/filmindia194107film_1.pdf.

Unpublished Dissertation Iyer, Usha. Film Dance, Female Stardom and the Production of Gender in Popular Hindi Cinema. PhD Diss. University of Pittsburgh: Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, 2014. URL: http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/22815/1/ IyerUsha_ETD_2014.pdf

CHAPTER 7

Goddess, Saint and Journeying Soul: Courtesans and Religion in Bombay Cinema (1939–2015) Ruth Vanita

Recent commentary on cinematic courtesans has coalesced around the view that they represent an “Islamicate” culture.1 Several scholars go so far as to argue that tawaif (courtesan) characters in films typify the oppression and marginalization of Indian Muslims.2 My book Dancing with the Nation: Courtesans in Bombay Cinema (2018) based on 235 films from 1941 to 2016 demonstrates that the majority of tawaif characters are

1  Mukul Kesavan set the ball rolling with his essay, “Urdu, Awadh and the Tawaif: the Islamicate Roots of Hindi cinema,” 1994: 244–57. Many others followed, such as Dwyer, 2004: 78–92; Ansari, 2008, 290–316. Bhaskar and Allen (2009) distinguish the Muslim courtesan from the Hindu one and then focus only on the former. 2  Arora (1995: 59–86).

This chapter is a condensation of Chapter 6, “Religion,” in Vanita, Dancing with the Nation: Courtesans in Bombay Cinema (New York: Bloomsbury; New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, 2018). R. Vanita (*) University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_7

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Hindu and that the courtesan household represents not an Islamicate but a hybrid Hindu–Muslim space. In 147 films, from 1939 to 2015, I found 142 Hindu, 59 Muslim and 56 indeterminate courtesan characters.3 Commentators’ mistaken assumption that tawaif characters are mostly Muslim arises partly from paying excessive attention to a couple of famous films, namely, Pakeezah (1971) and the two Umrao Jaans (1981 and 2006) while downplaying the vast majority of films, and partly from the late Mughal, Lakhnavi ambience of most (but not all) cinematic kothas (courtesan establishments), both in their décor and in their traditions of performance (the mujra, the ghazal and the qawwali). Commentators’ focus on décor and dress while neglecting religious practice and symbols, which are overwhelmingly depicted as Hindu, has resulted in hybrid Hindu–Muslim space being labeled Islamicate. Cinematic courtesans embody Indian hybridity in a distinctive way, just as real-life courtesans did. Because they live in non-patrilineal households and generally do not have surnames, courtesans cannot be contained in the same categories as women of conventional households. Most Indians’ names indicate their religion, but about 22 percent of all named courtesan characters in 147 films cannot be identified by religion. This indeterminacy is highly significant. No other important group of characters in Bombay films is indeterminate in this way. Historically, women from different communities lived together in courtesan households, engaging in a mix of religious practices. They catered to men of different communities, and many courtesans were the offspring of inter-community liaisons and marriages. Courtesans were not sex workers; they were accomplished and educated women, who entertained men (but also all-women gatherings) with music, dance and 3  Saleem Kidwai, in an unpublished report “Tawaifs in Bombay Cinema” (conducted for MCRC, Jamia Milia Islamia University, New Delhi, 2009), was the first to conduct what he terms an informal census, which demonstrated that Hindu courtesans in films outnumber Muslim ones. He counted courtesans in 30 films and found that 34 were Hindu, 33 Muslim and 18 indeterminate. Since he counted all courtesans, including nameless ones, 18 of the 33 Muslim characters he found appeared in just two films, Pakeezah 1972 and Umrao Jaan 1981. My count from a larger sample confirms Kidwai’s finding although my criteria are somewhat different from his. I count only courtesans who have a speaking part or are named. Thus, I exclude the numerous nameless courtesans who appear just to perform a mujra (usually for the villain), and who, if counted, would swell the ranks of the indeterminate as their religion is usually unclear.

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conversation. Many were wealthy women; mothers passed property and skills to daughters.4 Characters in films constantly debate whether courtesans are artists or sex workers, and courtesan characters themselves are depicted as conflicted about their own respectability. In part, this reflects the reality that from the late nineteenth century onward, colonial and Indian administrators categorized and regulated courtesans as prostitutes, while social reformers tried to reform them out of existence. Many courtesans were forced into sex work as the princes and courtiers who were their patrons disappeared. Others became dancers for a new class of patrons who did not appreciate classical training. Films depict these changing realities.

Religious Markers Raj Nartaki (Court Dancer, 1941) is an early film that shows the courtesan’s relationship to different Hindu traditions—she is forbidden to enter the royal temple but a Hindu ascetic welcomes her into his shrine. The film, set in the North-East, upholds her as a symbol of piety and self-­ sacrifice. Numerous later films follow this pattern, with the courtesan emerging as the true devotee opposed to the fake piety of the conventional family that excludes her from their worship. In film after film over the decades (to name just a few, Adalat 1958 and Sadhna 1958; Nartakee 1963; Mamta 1966; Satyakam 1969; Sharafat 1970; Gomti ke Kinare and Amar Prem 1972; Raja Rani 1973; Suhaag 1979; Daasi and Rocky 1981; Doosri Dulhan and Mandi 1983; Devdas 2002), courtesans are shown performing puja at the temple or at home and also engaging in other Hindu practices, for example, Rani in Raja Rani (King and Queen) says that she does not dance on Tuesdays. As in Bombay cinema in general, dargahs appear more often than mosques, and since many women in India frequent dargahs they work well as sites for Muslim courtesans’ piety. In what is perhaps the only interesting feature of Jaanisaar (Life Surrendered, 2015), a group of tawaifs, all clad in black and led by Noor, are shown reciting soz-khwani at Muharram, having closed the kotha for the period. Tawaifs commonly recited soz in Shia-dominated cultures such as Lucknow, but this is the only film that depicts it. 4  For more on courtesan characters in Urdu poetry in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Lucknow, see Vanita (2012).

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A few Muslim courtesans are shown praying; Zohra in Muqaddar ka Sikandar (Master of Destiny, 1978) refers to saying namaz. Sultana in Tawaif (1985) prays to God to save her from a courtesan’s life. In the same year, Salma, in the film of that name, prays at the dargah for her wounded lover’s recovery and sends him tabarruq (an item blessed there). When it comes to identifying the courtesan with religious tropes, Hindu Goddesses and incarnations are ubiquitous, while Muslim figures tend to be legendary romantic heroines (Anarkali or Laila) rather than religious ones.

Polemics and Symbols Polemical debates around the courtesan’s status draw both on Muslim and on Hindu idioms. Debates that reference Islam generally refer to equality as the principle that requires the courtesan’s inclusion; such is Anarkali’s defence speech during her trial in Anarkali (1953). Hindu polemics generally work with the language of devotion, where God takes the side of vulnerable and socially despised devotees. Ancient Hindu symbols are invoked to validate the courtesan’s claims to virtue. The lotus that blossoms in the mire but is held above it by its stalk becomes a repetitive symbol for the pure-hearted courtesan. This begins in Raj Nartaki (1941); the prince refutes his father’s objections to his marrying the dancer with the rhetorical question, “Do you mean the lotus that grows in the mire is too unclean to be offered to the Gods?” The lotus as tag line occurs in too many films to be listed. It is literalized in Teri Payal Mere Geet (Your Ankle-Bells My Songs, 1989). The hero, Premi, compares tawaif Laila to a lotus blooming in the mire and vows to rescue her. When she tests her villainous suitor Beni’s professions of love by asking him to pluck a lotus from a swamp for her, Beni hesitates but Premi swims in and fetches the lotus. Debates around the courtesan are most widely conducted by invoking Goddesses and heroines from the epics and Puranas. To begin with somewhat less glorious figures, she is unsurprisingly compared to Ahalya, the ambiguously adulterous wife of sage Gautama who was turned to stone after she slept with God Indra disguised as her husband; much later, Ram revived her.

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Ambiguous Figures Ahalya is most seriously evoked in Sadhna (Askesis, 1958), when tawaif Champa, posing as a respectable girl, is invited into the puja room by her prospective mother-in-law. All around the room are friezes of Ram, Krishna and other Gods. As the old lady sings what was to become a very popular bhajan, tora manwa kyun ghabraa’e (Why is your heart perplexed? Hundreds of thousands of wretched, unhappy ones have been liberated in this world when they reached Ram’s door), the camera pans round the room, stopping a few times at the frieze of Ram reviving Ahalya. The song is gender-egalitarian, using the word patita (fallen woman) common for a prostitute, along with patit (fallen man)—“lakhs of fallen men and women have been purified at this door.” The courtesan, like everyone else, requires divine grace. Less pleasantly, in Rocky (1981) and Gangaa Jamunaa Saraswathi (1988), the tawaif compares the rather ordinary hero to Ram and herself to Ahalya, just because he has been kind enough to befriend her. Ahalya is not simply a “fallen woman”, though; according to religious narratives, she was miraculously created as an extraordinarily beautiful woman, and she is still worshiped today as one of the pancha kanyas (five virgins). This powerful virginity that is not simply physical is similar to the eternal virginity of the great Goddesses of the ancient Greeks—it suggests a status of autonomous majesty. The courtesan has something of this ambiguous power. Films allude to heavenly nymphs, dancers at the court of Indra, as presiding figures for courtesans. Among these are Urvashi, Shakuntala’s mother Menaka, and Mohini the enchantress who is Vishnu in female form. In ancient texts, these unmarried but auspicious immortals may produce children out of wedlock and can be dangerous if angered. In Anhonee (Impossibility, 1952), the courtesan is named Mohini. Since she turns out to be the legitimate daughter of a conventional family, the name is apt—in Hindu religious narrative, the enchantress Mohini only appeared to be a dancer but was actually the God Vishnu. In Do Anjaane (Two Strangers, 1976), Rekha’s husband, Amit, permits her to perform the role of Mohini, perhaps because of its religious basis. However, the actual performance is an odd combination of mujra and cabaret. Rekha wears a skimpy, bright red variant of a Bharata Natyam costume,

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and she interacts intimately with the two mustachioed demons, but at the end she transforms into Vishnu. Amit has a drunken vision of her as a cabaret dancer whom he sees dancing with his Machiavellian friend, Ronu. After Amit is presumed dead and Rekha lives with Ronu and perhaps other men, a film director refers to her as “Kalyug ki Draupadi”—a degraded, modern form of the epic heroine who had five husbands. Amit himself denounces her as a Menaka or Urvashi who cannot be a wife or mother. Epic heroine Draupadi’s stripping at the hands of the demonic Kauravas in the Mahabharata, an iconic moment symbolizing women’s oppression, appears in many courtesan films. In Raja Rani (King and Queen, 1973), as soon as the deserted wife enters the kotha, a man pulls off her sari. Left in petticoat and blouse, she clutches ankle-bells to her breast, the suggestion being that dancing saves her from sex work. In Ram Teri Ganga Maili (Ram, Your Ganga is Dirty, 1985), after courtesan Ganga talks back to the men who insult her, the wealthy businessman Chaudhari says, “Don’t pretend to be a Sati Savitri,”5 and tells his lackey to expose her before she exposes them. The lackey pulls off her sari Draupadi-style, and she sings her protest song in petticoat and blouse. The most dignified inversion of the Draupadi trope occurs in Burning Train (1980) when courtesan Ramkali herself removes her red sari when a red cloth is required to signal the authorities and married women are unwilling to give their red veils, because these symbolize their marital status. Ramkali, clad in petticoat and blouse, is thereafter depicted as a Mother India figure, cradling a baby born on the burning train.

Goddesses: Saraswati Like other film heroines, courtesans are often envisioned as Goddesses— both the great Goddesses (Saraswati, Lakshmi, Ganga, Durga) and Goddesses incarnated as women (Sita, Radha, Meera, Savitri, Draupadi). The paradox of a woman viewed as “fallen” also being a Goddess fits well both with Hindu devotional narrative’s predilection for the triumph of the humble and with the feminist orientation of courtesan films, providing rhetoric for the simultaneous critique of social injustice and the celebration of female virtue and power. Saraswati is the most obvious model for the courtesan as artist and intellectual. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, both Hindi 5

 A true and devoted wife; refers to characters from ancient Hindu narratives.

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and Urdu poets eulogized courtesans by comparing them to Saraswati. Films may mention Saraswati in passing to praise a courtesan or dancer (often conflated in Bombay cinema), as in the phrase “roop mein Lakshmi, guna mein Saraswati” (Abhinetri 1970 where the stage performer is seen by some men as quasi-courtesan), or more elaborately in Ram Teri Ganga Maili (henceforth RTGM), when head courtesan Rajeshwari, on her way to the temple, tells the new entrant to the kotha, “Saraswati resides in your throat and your face is like Urvashi’s. Lakshmi will kiss your feet  – just learn to dance.” In films of the 1970s, Saraswati becomes a site for conflict over the respectability of music and dance. Does Saraswati preside over the arts everywhere, including in the kotha, or only in respectable spaces such as music schools? Are stages, auditoriums and films respectable or not? In Sharafat (Decency, 1970) and Muqaddar ka Sikandar (Master of Destiny, 1978), Saraswati represents respectable music carefully distinguished from the courtesan’s arts. Schoolteacher Raju agrees to teach tawaif Chanda at the kotha because she challenges him, saying, “Will Saraswati become dirty if she comes here?” Whether Saraswati’s domain excludes the kotha is more ambiguous in Rocky (1981). Lajwanti practices Bharata Natyam in a grand Saraswati temple at home. Her teacher, who wears a large tilak (sacred mark on the forehead), says Saraswati is incarnate in her ankle-bells. But after she is raped and enters a kotha, she sees ankle-bells as symbols of degradation. Hero Rocky’s father calls her a “prostitute” (veshya, randi) and Rocky’s girlfriend Renu denounces her as a tawaif who should not be allowed to dance with respectable people in the disco. Rocky defends her vehemently, saying that Saraswati resides in her ghungroos and that their sound carries him away to the banks of the Ganga and to Madhuban.

Ever Pure: Ganga Ganga is a metaphor for the courtesan’s purity in numerous films because Ganga water is considered pure despite the river’s journey from its source in the Himalayas to the polluted plains. This idea first appears in the climactic concluding dialogue between courtesan Champa and her prospective mother-in-law in Sadhna (1958).

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Mother: [as Champa tries to touch her feet] Don’t touch me, sinful woman. Champa: The Ganga does not become impure by a sinner’s touch, the sinner becomes pure.… [As she steps over the threshold to leave, a tight shot of mother’s hand clasping hers.] Mother: You came into this house as a daughter-in-law. Now you cannot go out as a prostitute. A household is the flowing Ganga. It is God’s temple and a temple door is not closed to anybody.

The B-grade movie Prabhat (Dawn, 1973) was perhaps the first to shape itself entirely around this metaphor. It opens with a voice-over about the Ganga getting dirty as it flows away from the Himalayas, and then tells the story of a Himalayan girl called Sarita (stream) who is tricked into a fake marriage and sold into a Banaras kotha. RTGM took the idea and ran with it, building it into the title, naming the heroine Ganga, and tracing her journey from Gangotri via Rishikesh and Banaras to Kolkata. The famous scene of the girl Ganga bathing in the river Ganga is modeled in part on temple images of river Goddesses as well as on the story of Goddess Ganga who emerges in human form from the river to meet her husband and finally merges with the river. The film’s most chilling line, which exemplifies its premise, is spoken by the man who buys her and modifies an idiom to propose sharing her with his friend: “donon mil baant kar khaa’enge. yeh to ghar ki Ganga hai. jab ji chaahega dubki maar lenge” (We both will share and eat. This is a Ganga that flows at home. We can take a dip whenever we like).

Durga: Easy to Reach Although “Durga” means “hard to reach” this Goddess seems to be easily accessible to courtesans. It is to her that the courtesan prays for her daughter’s success in Mamta (Maternal Love, 1966), it is she who presides over the courtesan’s apotheosis as mother in Amar Prem (Immortal Love, 1972), it is in answer to the Hindu clerk’s prayer to her in the Muslim social Shama (Lamp, 1981) that the courtesan supports the heroine’s testimony, and it is in her temple that the courtesan’s marriage occurs at the end of Amiri Garibi (Wealth and Poverty, 1990). Durga is a form of Parvati, who is Ganga’s younger sister. Bombay movies often show victimized women rebelling against injustice by taking

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on the form of Durga or Kali (e.g., the concluding moments of Mirch Masala, [Spices], 1987). Courtesans are among these women. In Gomti ke Kinare (On the Banks of the Gomti, 1972), tawaif Ganga says that when a woman’s child is taken from her she becomes an incarnation of Durga. The head courtesan replies, turning the metaphor on its head: “A tawaif’s profession is like riding a tiger. It ends either on the pyre or in the grave.” Notice the neat allusion here to both Hindu and Muslim courtesans, and the clever idea that a courtesan who tries to ride Durga’s tiger will come back from the ride with the lady inside. The head courtesan is proved wrong of course, because Ganga ends up as a chaste mother. Durga presides over Amar Prem (1972). The culminating Durga moment is prepared for when a drunkard tries to burst in on a sex worker called Durga who is nursing her sick child. In Pushpa’s old age, while men taunt her as a prostitute, Anand and Nandu compare her to Durga Ma, and Nandu takes her home on Durga Puja day, the film closing with images of her and of ten-armed Durga being simultaneously carried through the streets. The most important Goddess moment in the film, though, has nothing to do with Pushpa. It is when a sculptor comes to get mud from the tawaifs’ and sex workers’ alley, in order to mix it into the clay used to make images for Durga Puja. His assistant asks why he would take mud from that “dirty” area, and he replies that it is tradition. He addresses the courtesans and sex workers as deviyon (goddesses) and tells Nandu that this is very pure mud. This important custom is mentioned in Patita (1980); when a dancer attacks a man who tries to rape her and the policeman doubts that she had any honour to begin with, her friend retorts, “Many helpless women in this trade have enough honour that Durga is seated on mud brought from their doorstep.” The practice resurfaces in Devdas (2002). Heroine Paro prays to Durga for Devdas’s return, and it is to get mud to make the Durga image that she goes to the kotha. She and the tawaif sing a song together on Durga Puja, although the song itself is, rather oddly, about a male lover, not Durga.

Lakshmi: Money and Wifehood Lakshmi represents a paradox crucial to courtesan films because on the one hand she is the most domestic of Goddesses, while on the other hand she is Goddess of wealth. For the good wife, domesticity and money dove-

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tail because she promotes household prosperity. Courtesans generate wealth but cinematic courtesans are often portrayed as diametrically opposed to wifehood, so to what extent does Lakshmi bless them? The singer in Sone ki Chidiya (Golden Bird, 1958) is named Lakshmi which is somewhat ironic because her family exploits her money-making abilities; she gives up her career to marry. The same is true of young tawaif Lakshmi in Nartakee (Danseuse, 1963), who exchanges her traditional skills first for formal education and then for marriage. In other films, the wife is named Lakshmi but the contrast between her and the courtesan is tinged with similarity, for example, in Vaasna (Luxury, 1968), tawaif Saloni repeatedly tells married woman Lakshmi who runs a dance school that there is no essential difference between them, and gives this a religious overtone, saying: “The sculptor makes an image. Take it home, it’s called a Goddess like you. Put it in the market and it’s called a prostitute like me.” In Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam (Master, Mistress and Servant, 1962) the irony is subtler when a wife who displays courtesan-like arts and graces tells the young man (with whom she is suspected of having an affair), to dress her in marital finery when she dies so that people may say, “Sati Lakshmi chal basi” (A true wife, a Lakshmi, has passed away).

Goddesses Incarnate Incarnate Goddesses and saints frequently feature as controlling tropes in courtesan films. Courtesans are often compared to exemplary wives Sita and Savitri. Allusions to Sita are generally low-key but can be deeply moving, as in Amar Prem, when Anand’s song “kuchh to log kahenge” (People will say something or other) advises Pushpa to disregard what people say about her. As he sings the line “Sita bhi yahaan badnaam hu’i” (Sita too was defamed here), he tenderly covers her head with the end of her sari, a gesture signifying respect, holds her face in his hands, and then wipes tears from her eyes. In RTGM, Ganga’s rescuer compares her to Sita, “You have undergone a severe fire ordeal, daughter-in-law. Now Ram must be tested,” and in Aurat Teri Yahi Kahani (Woman, this is Your Story, 1988), tawaif Savitri refers to Ram’s injustice to Sita in a strident feminist mujra. When a courtesan is sarcastically called a Sati Savitri (Sadhna; RTGM), the irony usually turns against the speaker, because spectators know that she is as virtuous or more virtuous than seemingly respectable people. The

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term is debated in Teesri Kasam (Third Vow, 1966), when the man who wants to buy the courtesan derides her aspirations: Vikram Singh: So these days you are intoxicated with the idea of becoming a Sati Savitri? But, Hirabai, one cannot become a Sati Savitri at will. Hirabai: Why not? If connoisseurs like you can turn a Sati Savitri into a marketable woman, there at least a few people in the world who can turn a marketable woman into a decent woman.

Dargah and Temple Performing puja or visiting the mandir (temple) or the dargah is the second-­most frequently depicted activity of a courtesan character (after dancing and singing). Like other characters the courtesan too converses and argues with her chosen deity, asking for boons and making vows. This makes sense because God is seen as the only one who rejects society’s hypocritical pretensions and embraces the outcast. This is most clearly dramatized in Mehndi (Henna, 1958), when Umrao Jaan, having been thrown out by her husband Sultan, sets out for Faizabad with her Hindu ustad. On the road a faqir sings, “One who has no one in this world has God.” They rest at a wayside Shiva temple where a cow grazes, and the ustad consoles her, saying Hindus and Muslims all have the same goal, and one must keep the lamp of faith burning. They proceed to the dargah at Faizabad, where singers sing about God lifting the fallen, testing those he loves and answering prayers. Here, as she and her mother-in-law (whom she has never met) are praying separately, her baby, who has been adopted by her husband’s first wife, crawls to her, which leads to a reconciliation and reunion. The pivotal role played by the dargah here disappears in later versions of the Umrao Jaan story; in the 1981 version she prepares sweet rice to send to the dargah, and in the 2006 version she briefly shelters in a dargah during the 1857 uprising. Both temple and dargah also become scenes of highly unlikely dance performances in courtesan films, as in Kasam Suhaag Ki (Swearing by Marital Bliss, 1989), where the tawaif turned dacoit’s wife leads a female troupe in a frenzied song and dance at the dargah (main ho ga’i deewani, I have gone crazy), which culminates in her taking off her jewels one by one and throwing them to the faqirs who chant “Allah Allah” as she sings.

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Sacred space does not always give the courtesan what she wants, though, and sometimes gives it to her in an unexpected form. In this respect, the cinematic courtesan may be somewhat different from the generic protagonist who generally gets exactly what he or she asks God for. In Deedaar-e-Yaar (Sight of the Beloved, 1982), tawaif Husna first runs into Akhtar at the dargah. After he agrees to come to her kotha every evening she returns to the dargah alone at night, and prays for eternal union with him. This prayer is answered in an ironic way after both of them commit suicide. As Akhtar is dying in his mother’s lap, the scene dissolves into a point-of-view head-on shot of Husna, all in white, walking toward the camera; a cut back to his death dissolves into him walking toward her, with his back to the camera, followed by a two-shot of him wiping her tears. They then both walk toward the dargah, with backs to the camera, his arm around her, and this fades out to the family praying at their graves, which are side by side in the dargah courtyard. Thus, Husna’s prayer is answered but not quite in the way she intended.

Philosophical Debate The only film in which a dialogic debate within Hinduism plays out with some philosophical depth is Ahista Ahista (Gradually, 1981). The courtesan household’s neighbor is an enlightened Brahmin called Dayanand Sagar who appreciates the classical music audible from next-door. His shrewish wife Kaveri is highly suspicious of his love for music and closes windows to prevent his hearing it. Dayanand welcomes the courtesan’s young daughter Chandra to the family puja, overriding his wife’s and mother’s objections by saying that every living being is a form of God. Throughout the film he carries on a debate with Kaveri, which comes to a head when their son falls in love with Chandra. Dayanand says first, that prostitution is not inherited like a genetic disease, and second, that caste, family and lineage (he uses the terms khandan and gharana, the latter referring to musical lineage) are like clothing. One comes into the world without them and takes them off before leaving the world. This alludes to a famous verse (2: 22) from the Bhagavad Gita. Kaveri, however, has the last word, retorting, “But as long as one is alive, one has to wear clothes”. This exchange nicely encapsulates the gulf between the Hindu philosophical basis for sameness and the social reality of difference.

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Renouncing the World Religious renunciation emerges as an alternative ending for the courtesan (instead of marriage or death) in a few films, beginning with Amrapali (1966). Based on the Jataka tale of the Vaishali courtesan who became a follower of the Buddha, the film depicts the courtesan as repelled by her lover King Ajatashatru’s destruction of her city. As day dawns, she walks toward the Buddha and kneels before him to the strains of Buddham sharanam gachhami (I take refuge in the Buddha). Ajatashatru follows her and breaks his sword. Likewise, in Chitralekha (1964), the courtesan and her lover together embrace asceticism. Doosri Dulhan (Second Bride, 1983) is bookended by scenes at a temple in Mussoorie. The film opens with a wedding ceremony; as the newlyweds climb up to the temple, the groom’s mother remembers the past, and the film recounts her memory of how her son was born. It is in this Durga temple that her son’s biological mother, the courtesan Chhanda, employed to produce a child for the couple, became her husband’s second bride of sorts. Here, the sadhu, who thought Chhanda was the man’s legal wife, had put sindur in her hair-parting and blessed her to always be a saubhagywati (fortunate married woman). However, the film is not able to flout the norms to the extent of letting Chhanda live as his second wife although the first wife suggests this. As the flashback ends we are presented with a surprise ending. When the newlyweds and the parents sit outside the temple with other devotees, the same sadhu is seen playing the ektara while Chhanda, in saffron, her hair open, plays and sings a song to Krishna. She places her hand in blessing on the head of her biological son (who does not know she is his mother). Daasi (Maidservant, 1981) has an ambiguous ending, leaving it unclear whether the tawaif intends to renounce the world or commit suicide. We see her walking on the seashore as the sun sets. Her hair is open and she is wrapped in a white sari. The song “shayad ko’i khuda nahin hai,/hota to sunta mera bhi fasana” (Perhaps there is no God, /If there was he would have heard my story too) suggests not so much religious renunciation as death.

Mystical Love The figure of the courtesan alone by the sea at sunset suggests the soul searching for meaning in the universe. Men generally occupy this symbolic position (Pyaasa 1957; Kaagaz ke Phool 1959; Mera Naam Joker 1970;

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Anand 1971), while woman’s wanderings usually culminate in a man (Bandini 1963; Kati Patang 1971). The courtesan is something of an exception. Bridal mysticism in many religions figures the soul as searching for its divine lover. In Bombay films, as in earlier Hindu devotional poetry, woman’s search for a man can symbolize the soul’s search for God; some of the most moving portrayals of this occur in the 1960s and 1970s, centered on the courtesan who feels excluded both from love and from God. In Pyaasa (Thirsty, 1957), the poet’s quest for meaning is paralleled by Gulabo’s pursuit of love. Her elevation by love first appears in the song “aaj sajan mohe ang laga lo” (Today, beloved, embrace me closely) about a female devotee pursuing Krishna. The thirst of the film’s title (it was originally to be called Pyaas or Thirst and was later modified to Pyaasa or Thirsty) refers to a universal phenomenon of which Gulabo becomes the emblem, exemplifying the universe’s yearning to be drenched in love: ka’i jug se hain jaagey more nain abhaagey … jag soona soona laage bin torey premsudha, more saanwariya itna barsa do, jag jalthal ho jaaye … mohe apna bana lo… mori pyaas bujha do, manhar, giridhar, main hun antarghat tak pyaasi… My sad eyes have been searching For many eras … The world seems empty without you Pour out love’s nectar, O dark one, Till the world overflows … Make me yours … Quench my thirst O enchanter of the heart, lifter of the mountain, I am parched to the heart’s core.

The longing can also be reciprocal, as in the duet “chhupa lo yun dil mein pyar mera” (Hide my love in your heart) in Mamta, which praises love’s ineffability. The controlling trope of communion between deity and devotee (both lovers occupying both positions) highlights the paradoxes of their situation. In this film, lovers separated in their youth meet again after she has become a courtesan, and he a prosperous lawyer. Both are unmarried and he adopts her daughter, whom she has kept ignorant of her existence.

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The garbhagriha (literally womb-house) or sanctum sanctorum in a Hindu temple is usually a small, dark shrine, lit by one lamp and approached by one devotee at a time. Yet it is also a public place. The courtesan is a public woman but here she is privately pledged to one person. The public misunderstands their relationship as one of prostitute and client. Neither actor is shown singing. Rather, this non-diegetic song expresses their unvoiced feelings. The female voice sings: chhupa lo yun dil mein pyaar mera ki jaise mandir mein lau diye ki tum apne charanon mein rakh lo mujh ko tumhare charanon ka phool hun main main sar jhukaa’e khari hun pritam ki jaise mandir mein lau diye ki. Hide my love in your heart Like the lamp’s flame in a temple Keep me at your feet I am the flower at your feet I stand, head bowed, dear one, Like the lamp’s flame in a temple.

Halfway through the verse, Devyani closes her curtains and we see her face dimly through them. The lamp’s flame in the innermost part of a temple is generally steady because the air is still; the image of taking the dust of someone’s feet is replaced here by that of a flower offered to a deity. Instead of being dust (dhool), which would have worked just as well with the rhyme, she is a flower (phool), a common image for a beloved in courtesan films. The next verse in the male voice expresses Manish’s contrition for having left Devyani in their youth: yeh sach hai jeena tha paap tum bin yeh paap mainey kiya hai ab tak magar hai man mein chhabi tumhari ki jaise mandir mein lau diye ki. True, it was a sin to live without you So far, I have committed this sin But your image was in my heart Like the lamp’s flame in a temple.

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He now supports her by nurturing her lonely daughter. Here and in the next verse he gives the courtesan the status of a deity that she gave him in the first verse. This dual movement is typical of love-songs in films, drawing on the idea of Radha and Krishna worshiping one another.6 In the third stanza the female voice sings: phir aag birha ki mat lagaana ki jalke main raakh ho chuki hun… Don’t light the fires of separation again I am already burnt to ashes….

The male voice responds: yeh raakh mainey maathey pe rakh li ki jaise mandir mein lau diye ki… I have placed this ash on my brow Like the lamp’s flame in a temple…

The ingenious deployment of the image of ash allows her to tenderly reproach him for having left her and him to transform the idea of death (her turning to ashes) into the idea of holy ash. Devotees of Shiva apply bhasma or ash from the sacrificial fire to the forehead. This signifies both the removal of demerit (somewhat similar to Ash Wednesday when the application of ashes to the brow indicates penance for sin) and also remembrance of mortality and eternity. The Hindu–Muslim syncretism of the producers of Bombay cinema in the 1960s and 1970s is perhaps best demonstrated in the fact that these songs, immersed in the language of Hindu devotion, were written by Muslim poets—Sahir Ludhianvi and Majrooh Sultanpuri, respectively. Bombay cinema is unique in world cinema for the centrality of courtesan characters. Far from marginalizing them it turns them simultaneously into oppressed victims but also embodiments of love, strength and goodness as well as figures of divine presence. 6  As for example in the song, “Mere dil mein aaj kya hai” (Daag 1973), where a husband sings to his wife, “Your desires made me a God and worshiped me/My love is saying that I should make you God.”

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Works Cited Films Abhinetri. Director Subodh Mukherjee. Producer Subodh Mukherjee. 1970. Adalat. Director Kalidas. Producer Mallika Kawatra. 1958. Ahista Ahista. Director Ismayeel Shroff. Producer Sibte Hassan Rizvi. 1981. Amar Prem. Director Shakti Samanta. Producer Shakti Samanta. 1972. Amiri Garibi. Director Harmesh Malhotra. Producer Pradeep Sharma. 1990. Amrapali. Director Lekh Tandon. Producer F.C. Mehra. 1966. Anarkali. Director Nandlal Jaswantlal. Producer Filmistan. 1953. Anhonee. Director K.A. Abbas. Producer K.A. Abbas. 1952. Aurat Teri Yehi Kahani. Director Mohanji Prasad. Producer S. Jain, B. Jaiswal. 1988. Chitralekha. Director Kidar Sharma. Producer A.K. Nadiadwala. 1964. Daasi. Director Raj Khosla. Producer Subhash Verma. 1981. Deedar-e-Yaar. Director H.S. Rawail. Producer Prasen Kapoor. 1982. Devdas. Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Producer Bharat Shah Red Chillies Entertainment. 2002. Do Anjaane. Director Dulal Guha. Producer Tito. 1976. Doosri Dulhan. Director Lekh Tandon. Producer Dharampal Gupta. 1983. Gangaa Jamunaa Saraswathi. Director Manmohan Desai. Producer S. Ramanathan. 1988. Gomti ke Kinare. Director Saawan Kumar Tak. Producer Saawan Kumar Tak. 1972. Kaagaz ke Phool. Director Guru Dutt. Producer Abrar Alvi. 1959. Kasam Suhaag ki. Director Mohan Segal. Producer N.P. Singh. 1989. Mamta. Director Asit Sen. Producer Charu Chitra. 1966. Mandi. Director Shyam Benegal. Producer Shyam Benegal. 1983. Mehndi. Director S.M. Yusuf. Producer A.A. Nadiadwala. 1958. Mera Naam Joker. Director Raj Kapoor. Producer Raj Kapoor. 1970. Mirch Masala. Director Ketan Mehta. Producer Ravi Malik. 1987. Muqaddar ka Sikandar. Director Prakash Mehra. Producer Prakash Mehra. 1978. Nartakee. Director Nitin Bose. Producer Mukund Tiwari. 1963. Pakeezah. Director Kamal Amrohi. Producer Kamal Amrohi. 1972. Patita. Director I.V. Sasi. Producer Mukul Roy. 1980. Prabhat. Director Sikandar Khanna. Producer Ram Dayal. 1973. Pyaasa. Director Guru Dutt. Producer Guru Dutt. 1957. Raj Nartaki. Director Modhu Bose. Producer Wadia Movietone. 1941. Raja Rani. Director Sachin Bhowmik. Producer Jagdish Kumar. 1973. Ram Teri Ganga Maili. Director Raj Kapoor. Producer Randhir Kapoor. 1985. Rocky. Director Sunil Dutt. Producer Amarjeet. 1981. Sadhna. Director B.R. Chopra. Producer B.R. Chopra. 1958.

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Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam. Director Abrar Alvi. Producer Guru Dutt. 1962. Satyakam. Director Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Producer Sher Jeng Singh Panchee. 1969. Shama. Director Naeem Basit. Producer Azra Khan, Kader Khan. 1981. Sharafat. Director Asit Sen. Producer Madan Mohan. 1970. Sone ki Chidiya. Director Shaheed Latif. Producer Ismat Chugtai. 1958. Suhaag. Director Manmohan Desai. Producer Rajinder Kumar Sharma, Ramesh Sharma, Shakti Subhash Sharma, Prakash Trehan. 1979. Tawaif. Director B.R. Chopra. Producer R.C. Kumar. 1985. Teesri Kasam. Director Basu Bhattacharya. Producer Shailendra. 1966. Teri Payal Mere Geet. Director Rehman Naushad. Producer Prem Lalwani. 1989. The Burning Train. Director Ravi Chopra. Producer B.R. Chopra. 1980. Umrao Jaan. Director Muzaffar Ali. Producer Muzaffar Ali. 1981. ———. Director J.P. Dutta. Producer J. P. Dutta. 2006. Vaasna. Director T. Prakash Rao. Producer Kuljit Pal. 1968.

Books Vanita, Ruth. Gender, Sex and the City: Urdu Rekhti Poetry 1780–1870 (Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2012). Vanita, Ruth. Dancing with the Nation: Courtesans in Bombay Cinema (New York & London: Bloomsbury Academic; New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, 2018).

Articles Ansari, Usamah. “‘There are thousand drunk by the passion of these eyes’ Bollywood’s Tawa’if: Narrating the Nation and ‘the Muslim,’” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol XXXI, no. 2 (August 2008), 290–316. Arora, Poonam. ‘A Bicultural Reading of the Courtesan Film,’ in Order and Partialities: Theory, Pedagogy and the Postcolonial, ed., Kostas Myrslades and Jerry Mcguire (New York: State University of New York Press, 1995), 59–86. Bhaskar, Ira and Richard Allen, “The Muslim Courtesan Film,” in Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema (New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2009), 44–64. Dwyer, Rachel. “Representing the Muslim: The ‘Courtesan Film’ in Indian Popular Cinema,” in Parfitt, T. and Egorava, Y. ed., Mediating the Other: Representations of Jews, Muslims and Christians in the Media (London: Routledge/Curzon, 2004), 78–92. Kesavan, Mukul. “Urdu, Awadh and the Tawaif: the Islamicate Roots of Hindi Cinema,” in Forging Identities: Gender, Communities and the State in India ed., Zoya Hasan (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994): 244–57.

CHAPTER 8

The Prison-House of Performance: The Figure of the Dancing Girl in Bombay Films of the 1960s Sameera Mehta

aa jaane jaan… Come, come my love…1

The dancing girl accrues the different functions of an ‘image’ to herself. She is a projection on a screen manufactured for mass consumption— mera ye husn jawan (my beautiful youth)—and yet an intangible presence—main bhi hoon galliyon ki parchhayi (I am also the shadow of the streets); a hypnotizing hyper-feminine ‘vision’ inviting the consuming gaze—tere liye hein aas lagaye (waiting longingly for you)—but sashaying just out of reach of attempts to cage her:

1  The song is one of the most popular examples of ‘cabaret’ songs from Hindi films. Picturized on Helen in R.K. Nayyar directed Intaqam (1969). It is perhaps the only cabaret song sung by Lata Mangeshkar under the music direction of Laxmikant-Pyarelal.

S. Mehta (*) Jesus and Mary College, Delhi University, Delhi, India © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_8

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aankh se masti tapke hein, tapke hein tu dekhe na dil ka sagar chalke hein, chalke hein tu samjhe na…. pleasure in my eyes you do not see the outpourings of my heart you do not understand…

Scarlet nail paint, fur-trimmed fan, sequined eyes and long legs to boot—the dancing girl embodies desirability. Garbed in ‘Western’ clothes, her features adorned with heavy glitzy makeup, she often has anglicized names like Kitty, Sophie, Rebecca and Ruby. Costume, makeup, dialogue and story development—all supplement the attempt to imprison the dancing girl in multiple levels of gazing—the director’s, the camera’s and ours. But she eludes the attempts to fix her performance in reductive stereotypical terms. Dancing wildly, she veers into complicated subject-positions and her eventual marginalization notwithstanding, she demands that the viewer question narratives that always set her up to lose. She is an ideological production, urging questions of visual pleasure: what are the possible ways in which this dazzling ‘vision’ can be read? The Hindi films of the 1960s promise exciting opportunities to engage with the figure of the dancing girl. Here, ‘dance’ refers exclusively to the category of dance numbers that are found in Bombay cinema and have developed as one of its unique inheritances, which are today often referred to under the classificatory marker of ‘Bollywood’ dance. Sometimes composed of a mixture of ‘Western’ dancing styles (Flamenco, Tango, Cabaret), and at others by a set of choreographed movements with an unfixed performative legacy, there is no identifiable historical referent to this song-and-dance sequence that has concretized as a distinguishing feature of Bombay cinema. It is this kind of dance that occupies center stage in my analysis, separate from cinematic representations of nautch, and also from the contemporary label of the ‘item number’, which is historically a post-liberalization designation arguably appended first to Shilpa Shetty’s dance in the movie Shool (1999).2 In the context of dance in Hindi films, the 1960s is also the cinematic decade which saw the firm entrenchment of Helen’s immense popularity as the dancer par excellence. The overlapping of the actor and the dancer in the iconic figure of Helen helps to further problematize the constructed filmic binaries between the female protagonist and the secondary female character. The chapter will deconstruct Shakti Films’ Chhote Nawab (1961), Sachin Dev Burman produced Dr. Vidya (1962), Prithvi Pictures’  For a detailed analysis of the ‘item number’ see Brara (2010: 68).

2

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Gumnaam (Anonymous, 1965), NH Films and United Producers’ Teesri Manzil (The Third Floor, 1966), and Shaktiman Enterprises’ Intaqam (Revenge, 1969), exploring the ways in which the dancer and the dance become the gaping wound, the ‘punctum’3 that throws the possibility of neat conclusions into disarray.4 Recourse to dance, or at least to dance of a certain kind, often underscores the deviation from ‘goodness’ in Hindi films. This is evident in the films under scrutiny, in some of which the dancing girl is not a professional performer but a supporting character (in Gumnaam, for instance). And yet, when she erupts on the screen with her exhibitionist dance number and becomes the cynosure of the desiring gaze, she is established as the ‘other’ to the ‘good’ woman who occupies the domain of controlled femininity. In the films, the relationship between the two ends of this spectrum of feminine behavior vis-à-vis dance is foregrounded in different ways: either the female protagonist looks on (sometimes disapprovingly) from the sidelines as the dancing girl performs for an audience that is largely made up of men (‘o haseena zulfon waali’/O beauty with the flowing tresses); or she performs alongside the dancing girl in a competitive strain (‘aaye haaye dilruba’/Aha dear beloved).5 The third most commonly deployed method is to give the pair of women characters separate performative spaces when they sing and dance (Chhote Nawab), so that they are viewed and judged in distinct ways. Thus, it’s not as if the ‘good’ woman does not dance but the differences in the representation of the dances of the two women help to strongly demarcate the boundaries of filmic femininity. Indeed, even when they are not antagonists, the two women are still differentiated using visual and narrative strategies, one of which is the suggestive dance number. It is therefore not just the dance that maketh a bad woman but also the bad woman that maketh the dance: the strategies that visually demarcate the two women’s dances suggest that despite their similarities in terms of a Westernized education/lifestyle and friendship (Dr. Vidya, Gumnaam), their filmic trajectories will diverge. However, such easy readings are undermined by the fact that ‘film-­ making is a joint venture’ and therefore the impress of a single author’s (in 3  Barthes, Camera Lucida, 1980. Defined as ‘that accident which pricks me’ (but also bruises me/is poignant to me), 27. Concept devised to study the effects generated by the visual medium of photographs, the punctum, is a rupture in the ordained mise-en-scéne. 4  Other Helen movies from this decade like China Town (1962), Jewel Thief (1967), Prince (1969) and Pagla Kahin Ka (1970) also fit this theoretical framework. 5  ‘[O] haseena zulfon waali’, Teesri Manzil, 1966; ‘aaye haaye dilruba’, Dr. Vidya, 1962.

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this case director) subjectivity is complicated by the presence of multiple interrupters in the creation of the final product.6 Acknowledging the ­complex palimpsest of influences, visual cues and femininities that inhabit the filmic landscape, my analysis shall excavate the multifaceted challenge posed by the dancing girl. In Chhote Nawab, Dr. Vidya and Teesri Manzil, for instance, the dancing girl is distinguished from the ‘good’ protagonist through her dangerous sexual allure. But she is also represented as an educated, articulate and self-assured professional who refuses to be bullied by her boss and fearlessly speaks the language of business. She is a competent and financially savvy working woman who does not need the patronage of a male benefactor in order to achieve her heart’s fancies or protect her professional interests. She never refrains from speaking her mind, demanding valid entitlements and sharply repudiating any professional injustices. Furthermore, in all the five films and especially in Intaqam and Gumnaam, the dancing girl deals a particularly strong blow to the dichotomous strategies that are meant to distinguish her as ‘bad’, when she infects the representation of the ‘good’ woman with her own brand of femininity and enables a slippage between the essentialist markers of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ femininity. Not only do the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women forge affective bonds in most of the films, but they also manage to step out of the binary straightjackets and invert the rules of the game in order to assert a restrained independence and in the process, filmic moments are produced when they seem indistinguishable from each other. Angry and violent reprisals follow and moral distinctions are reinforced, but not before the momentary representation of the two women as doppelgangers expose the cracks and fissures in their construction. The final section of this chapter examines the charismatic Helen as the brilliant dancer and ‘bad’ girl par excellence. Not only is she the major unifying strand across the five films, but also it is her iconic presence in all of them that makes it impossible to view the dancing girl in simplistic ways despite her eventual marginalization.

Shanta banna koi khel nahin (Becoming Shanta Is Not At All Easy): Bad or Badass? Stereotypically, womanhood has functioned as the site for the amalgamation of discourses of tradition and modernity in discussions of the Indian nation-state. Modernity for the Indian nation has been inextricably intertwined with notions of Westernization due to its colonial legacy, conse6

 Gabriel (2010: xiii).

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quently, the ‘modern’ Indian woman is simultaneously desired and detested.7 In Chhote Nawab, Roshan (Ameeta) and Sophie (Helen) are represented as a divergent pair of female characters whom the eponymous male hero (Mehmood) encounters and befriends as part of his coming-of-­ age journey to maturation and modernity. A rustic simpleton in the beginning of the film, the Nawab gradually acquires an English education and adopts the city’s social mores like dancing and frequenting clubs. Sophie is the effervescent dancing attraction of the Captain’s Club, and Roshan is the purveyor of sophisticated etiquette for Chhote Nawab’s education. Urban living, while exalted in the film, also presents the threat of excess, such as an affair with the ‘other’ woman, which can undermine the Nawab’s dominant masculinity. The Nawab’s flirtation with Sophie encapsulates these potential dangers, while it is Roshan who can ‘save’ him by offering the promise of a traditional relationship. When Sophie dances, it is in an array of frills, swift tango movements (‘matwaali aankhon waale’/You, with your intoxicating eyes) executed in a space populated by the markers of drunkenness and profligacy. Roshan, too, later enters a kotha (brothel), but this is where the differences between the two women and their performances deepen. As opposed to Sophie’s exuberant joi de vivre, Roshan sings a song of despair and wistful romantic longing (‘chura ke dil ban rahe hain bhole’/He feigns innocence after stealing my heart). As opposed to Sophie’s Western garb as a club dancer, Roshan’s face is modestly veiled and she wears ‘traditional’ clothing. She does not stand up and dance, but rather sits languorously, lyrically beseeching her fiancé to return to her love’s embrace. Roshan (even when disguised as Zeenat Jahan in the kotha), it is made clear, doesn’t belong in the corrupting space of the brothel (matlab yeh Zeenat Jahaan kisi shareef ghar ki ladki hain?/Are you telling me that this girl Zeenat Jahaan belongs to a respectable family?). Sophie in contrast, is morally defined by her profession as a club dancer. She dances in closed spaces with the words ‘Bar’ and ‘Cards Room’ flashing in the background. The resultant mise-en-scéne indiscriminately heaps negative imagery at the door of the dancer, transforming her into a destructive influence at par with (perhaps also accompanying and encouraging) gambling and alcoholism. Conversely, Roshan’s hesitant flouting of sexual respectability is undertaken as a last-ditch effort to save her failing relationship. Her transgression 7

 See Ramamurthy (2006: 197) and Chaudhuri (2012: 283).

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is instantly rewarded by the Nawab’s violent slap which in turn leads to her immediate and contrite return to the familiar geography (sexual and literal) of bourgeois respectability, that is, the home. While Roshan holds the power in the initial sections of the film as she educates the Nawab, she has to renounce it now, as he reasserts his modernized masculinity. Sophie’s hypnotic presence is also hastily dispersed as she is revealed to be an uncaring gold-digger, after which she bids an unceremonious and sudden adieu to the story. A similar opposition between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ femininity is also set up in Dr. Vidya, starring Vyjayanthimala and Manoj Kumar in the title roles as Gita and Ratan, and Helen as Gita’s best friend Shanta. Both Gita and Shanta are urban and college-educated, while the male protagonist Ratan (Manoj Kumar) has never stepped out of the confines of rural existence. The film dramatizes a conflicted response to the figure of the educated Indian woman and a dance programme in which the two friends perform in very different styles, reinforces the film’s predominant perspective on ‘good’ and ‘bad’ femininity. Even before the dance is staged, this viewpoint is largely channeled through Ratan who begins to view shehri (city-­dwelling) women with contempt once he encounters Shanta in the village fields. Betrothed as children, Gita and Ratan have led separate lives: he in the village, she in the city. Initially excited about the prospective wedding, Ratan’s growing disquiet about educated and urban women is irrevocably concretized at the marriage venue when he overhears Shanta taunting his guests as illiterate. Incensed, Ratan assumes Gita to be as arrogant as her friend, and consequently mistreats and abandons her on their wedding night. The rest of the film focuses on how Gita distinguishes herself as the perfect wife who realizes that all her accomplishments notwithstanding, she must, above all, prove her worth as a dutiful wife to her husband.8 The film takes great pains to establish only a specific brand of female education as desirable to the harmonious conduct of matrimony and it is Gita who learns to walk the tightrope of independence and wifely obedience, so that her uneducated husband does not feel emasculated by her accomplishments. The denouement gives us a repentant Ratan embracing a virtuous Gita who vows to throw all her books in the river if he so desires. In contrast, Shanta’s (Helen) inadequacies are foregrounded when her husband chides her and points out her failure to embody the qualities considered befitting in a ‘good’ wife: 8  To this end, Gita, a doctor, disguises herself as an illiterate village belle Vidya in order to win back Ratan’s trust.

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main tumhe ghar ka chirag dekhna chahta hoon, mehfil ki shama nahin. I want to see you as the light of the house, not the life of the party.

Shanta for all her various admirable skills, merits censure for epitomizing the negative aspects of educational over-refinement and the transgressive potential of a frivolous, ‘Westernized’ memsahib. The film, having established the two women as best friends, then pushes them into a forced competition where only one of them can win at the cost of the other’s happiness and success. In a key sequence right before the dance, Shanta petulantly declares that she was dressed for ballroom dancing and could not believe that Gita would choose to perform an utpataang (weird) classically tuned number (‘pawan diwani na maane’/the tempestuous wind won’t listen). In return, claiming a sacred sanction for her performance, Gita piously terms it devtayon ki kala (the art of the gods) and adds that it is mentioned in the Mahabharata. Gita’s ‘classical’ dancing becomes significant, underscoring how the disjunction between characters extends to encompass their dance styles. Sangita Shresthova (2011), in her analysis of “Bollywood” dance, highlights how certain ideological characteristics came to define the classical performing arts during the cultural project of ‘sanskritization’ of dance in the early twentieth century.9 Uttara Coorlawala (2004) equates this ‘sanskritization’ with ‘brahmanization’, under which classicism in technique and costume is championed while “emotions such as lust, sexuality, greed… are purged”.10 Relating it to femininity, Pallabi Chakravorty (2000–2001) explicates how “the revival of classical Indian dance and the construction of Indian womanhood are both reflections of this essential Hindu identity”.11 In another similar paper on Kathak, Chakravorty (2006), focuses on post-independence institutionalization of dance and how the ‘establishment of Sangeet Natak Akademi’ furthered the “national ideology of a pan-Hindu culture, derived from ancient Sanskrit texts” that “helped to textualize Indian dance regardless of their specific regional or religious histories”.12 It can thus be reasonably asserted that a particular kind of ‘traditionally’ oriented artistic performance came to receive cultural sanction, while all  Shresthova (2011: 24).  Coorlawala (2004: 55). 11  Chakravorty (2000–2001: 112). 12  Chakravorty (2006: 118–119). 9

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other variants (including but not limited to Western dance styles) were either excised or used to connote negative character stereotypes. However, as discussed earlier, the desirability of modernity, typically encapsulated in the idea of womanhood and epitomized by the dancing woman, serves to problematize these easy binaries in narrative and dance. In the competition, Shanta, despite her elegant movements, is shown skulking away one long song later (‘aye haye dilruba’), after being trounced by Gita’s crowd-pleasing rendition. When the song begins, the tempo is fast-paced and Helen as Shanta executes her iconic movements. However, as soon as Gita takes the stage, the beat slows down and Vyjayanthimala/ Gita imbues the performance with her fluid ‘classicism’. Gita’s skilled classical movements prove forcibly that in order to win approval, the educated and shehri female professional must be able to slip effortlessly into the roles of ‘Sita’ and ‘Damyanti’ and show that she can straddle modern as well as traditional roles with consummate ease. After the performance, one of the gathered men praises Gita and calls her ‘gold’. Turning to Shanta, he laughingly claims that she is gold too, but ‘rolled gold’ (a counterfeit gold where brass is used). Flaunting her fashionable self in society, hobnobbing with her male friend Kundan, Shanta is meant to be perceived as the stereotype of a ‘too modern’ woman who neglects her husband and her domestic responsibilities. Not only is her performance an also-ran when compared to Gita’s, the admiration she garners for her dance—which includes various men calling her ‘good’—is ambiguous since it’s represented as being indistinguishable from lechery. In Dr. Vidya, Chhote Nawab and Gumnaam, the male characters’ praise of the dancing girl’s performance is accompanied by a lascivious survey of her body that pigeonholes her into the exploitative confines of a sexual commodity. What is also suggested in the films is that it is her risqué movements that have justifiably aroused such a response. Subsequently, Shanta is almost raped by a male admirer at which point Ratan gallantly steps in and saves her modesty. A penitent Shanta begs for forgiveness for having ridiculed him earlier. Forced to mend her ways, she also throws her sari-­clad self at the feet of the husband she had initially spurned. Yet, despite the insistent opposition with ‘good’ femininity and filmic closures that stage the dancing girl’s repentance and reform or her abrupt disappearance, both Shanta and Sophie’s bold and clear-sighted assertion of unconventional femininity in terms of sexual and professional freedom, evades easy definitions and final erasure. In Dr. Vidya for instance, while the female protagonist Gita/Vidya (whose professional status is highlighted

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in the very title of the film) is willing to dispense with her name as well as her accomplishments in order to please her husband, Shanta unabashedly declares that her name is synonymous with hard-earned professional skills and the ability to keep up with the times: Shanta banna koi khel nahin, Shanta mein art hai, Shanta smart hai, Shanta zamaane ke saath chal sakti hai. It’s not so easy to become Shanta, Shanta has art, Shanta is smart, Shanta can move with the times.

Talking about herself in the third person, she thus proudly asserts the importance of being a Shanta: her artistic accomplishments, her intelligence and resilience make her awe-inspiringly different. In the film, she also chooses to estrange herself from her husband, calmly citing ideological differences as the cause: bas yoon samajh lo, dono ke khayalaat mein zameen aasmaan ka farak nikla (You could say our thoughts were as divergent as the earth and the sky). While Shanta’s behavior and language are meant to suggest shocking willfulness (especially when she amusingly likens husbands to coats that can be changed if they are not to one’s liking), the male protagonist Ratan has used the exact same phraseology while citing what is meant to be seen as his perfectly legitimate rationale for turning Gita away from his house: ab mere aur uske vichaaron mein zameen aasmaan ka farak hai (At present my thoughts and hers are as divergent as the earth and the sky). Shanta appropriates the same language to bolster her bid for sexual freedom and distance herself from a spouse with whom she finds no common ground. Much like Ratan, she feels it pointless to carry on in an incompatible marriage and instead chooses to fraternize with Kundan (Prem Chopra) without fear of social stigma. Like the self-assured Shanta who moves in society without a male benefactor, Sophie the celebrated dancer, in Chhote Nawab, revels in her self-­ sufficiency—the fact that she isn’t beholden to any man or woman and is a successful professional. Single and individualistic, she is shown as boldly pursuing the Nawab because her heart desires it. Also, as a professional who is conscious of her rights, she brooks no insults, and delivers a defiant and fitting rejoinder to her employer, the Captain, when he tries to coerce her into staying away from Chhote Nawab: Captain, agar tum samajhte ho main tumhari dhamki mein aajayoongi toh yeh bhool hai tumhari. main apna contract cancel karti hoon (Captain, if you think that I will be bullied by your threat then that is your mistake. I hereby cancel my contract).

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Sophie states unequivocally that she has been contracted as an employee and consequently rebuffs her employer’s casual assumption that he is entitled to interfere in her personal choices. A similar situation is created in Teesri Manzil when Ruby (Helen), the club dancer who is in love with the lead singer Rocky (Shammi Kapoor), uses the language of contractual terms incisively in order to get Rocky to perform with her. She sends her lawyer to Rocky with the injunction that he must be the one to play alongside her during her performance: agar aap khud drum nahi bajaayenge, toh woh dance nahin karengi kyunki uske contract ki yahi pehli shart hai (If you do not play the drums yourself, she will not dance, because that is the first demand of her contract). Ruby is also sexually bold; she verbalizes her desire by leaning in to kiss Rocky when he suggests that he may be interested in furthering their relationship. Exhibiting choice in the selection of a partner, she displaces the traditionally masculine role in courtship and subverts power hierarchies that fix women as coy recipients of romantic gestures. In contrast when the film’s heroine Sunita (Asha Parekh) displays agency and tries to woo the hero through a dance, it is in order to show her contrition at having spurned his love earlier in the film (‘o mere sona re sona re/de doongi jaan khafa mat hona re’/Oh my golden beloved/I’ll die if you continue to be angry with me).

‘koi antar nahin’ (There’s No Difference): Friends and Doppelgangers There is no doubt that all the discussed films take great pains to ensure that the dancing girl occupies a domain that is spatially and dramatically distanced from where the ‘good’ woman exercises her influence; at times the two women even end up occupying adversarial positions. But, every so often, their friendship manages to circumvent the films’ repeated efforts to insulate their performative spaces. More importantly, despite the efforts of the filmic narrative to encourage an unproblematic acceptance of fixed dichotomies, there are moments when the lines between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ become so blurred and shadowy that the two putatively distinct versions of femininity seem indistinguishable. Representational machinations notwithstanding, adversaries momentarily turn into doppelgangers. In Gumnaam this is visually realized in a particularly powerful scene in the initial section of the film when Kitty (Helen), an office secretary, and

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Asha (Nanda), the ‘good’ protagonist, seem like identical images of each other. In the scene, Kitty is depicted sitting and hammering out an energetic melody on the piano. Cut to a later scene, it is Asha (Nanda) the protagonist, who plays the piano and Kitty approaches and stands right in front of her. Both women are dressed in white costumes—Asha in a white suit and Kitty in a white dress (of which only the top half is visible). With Asha’s back to us, all that is visible are the silhouettes of the two women wearing almost identical clothes topped off with similar hairstyles. An interesting mirror effect is birthed by this juxtaposition and a viewer encountering the scene for the first time would be hard-pressed to pick the ‘good’ woman out of the two. Gumnaam, based on Agatha Christie’s well-known murder mystery And Then There Were None (1939), is about eight strangers who find themselves stranded on an island after their airplane crash-lands due to a technical malfunction. They discover and set base in a desolate mansion on the island, but things turn sinister as they begin to get murdered one by one. As the crisis deepens, Kitty and Asha, despite being virtual strangers and occupying divergent positions in the moral spectrum of the film, form a bond and try to look out for each other on the island. Further on in the film, Kitty gets Asha drunk and both of them execute the same boisterous dance movements (‘pike hum tum jo chale’/when you and I drank and set off) under the influence of alcohol. When the song gets over, Anand (Manoj Kumar) storms in and shakes Asha angrily, claiming that after this mad caper there was no difference left between Kitty and her. A near replica of this scene can be found in an exchange between Roshan and the Nawab in Chhote Nawab. Enraged at realizing that Roshan is the tawaif (courtesan) who had just serenaded him, the Nawab manhandles her and shouts in thunderous tones: aaj maaloom huya ki tum mein aur Sophie mein koi antar nahin (Today I have realized that there is no difference between you and Sophie). The central plot in Dr. Vidya is also set in motion by the very idea that Gita is perhaps exactly like Shanta, ‘modern’ and uncontrollable. Where Shanta faces the threat of rape, Gita too is equally vulnerable to violence. When Ratan’s mother finds out that the ‘other’ woman he has been flirting with (interestingly, Gita/Vidya is the ‘other’ woman here) is hiding in their house, she proceeds to the room with the intention of beating the woman whom she blames for corrupting her ‘pure’ son, unmindful of the fact that it had been Ratan who had actually initiated the ‘affair’.

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Gita escapes only because she clarifies that she is Ratan’s legitimate wife ­disguised as the village belle and not somebody else who is his secret paramour. However, the exchange underscores how violent punishments for social transgressions can be mapped onto both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women’s bodies. In Intaqam, a revenge saga that centers around a female avenger called Reeta (Sadhana), not only does Rebecca (Helen), a hotel dancer, empathize with Reeta’s need to take revenge against the brutish Sohanlal, but also actively helps her in her plans and offers her services to aid Reeta at every step. Yet again, their close friendship is an oft-ignored testament to the fact that in films, women need not always be pitted against each other in contentious relationships. While singing the song, ‘kaise rahoon chup’ (how can I remain silent?), Reeta dons a bright red sari in a party and then walks about, drinking and ridiculing the pretensions of the gathering. Rebecca stands close by, twirls a glass in her hand and watches with an enigmatic smile as Reeta proceeds to roll around on the floor, feigning drunkenness in order to dismantle Sohanlal’s carefully cultivated social standing. Reeta and Rebecca are united in their contempt for the socially powerful Sohanlal. While it is true that the ‘good’ woman isn’t really drinking alcohol (Rebecca was sneaking her some cola while she herself enjoyed the bubbly), her behavior suggests that she realizes the constructed nature of moral categorizations, and is not above manipulating them for her personal vendetta. Furthermore, the overarching filmic necessity of differentiation between ‘good’ or ‘bad’ femininity in this film decade was also undermined by the fact that the same iconic playback singers lent their voices to both kinds of embodied cinematic femininity, ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It is not only within the narrative that there are shifting goalposts vis-à-vis ‘acceptable’ femininity, the industry too is characterized by indeterminacy due to the financial and aesthetic demands of role-playing13: Lata Mangeshkar lent her nightingale 13  There is a salient difference between the ‘item numbers’ of today and the designated performances from these five films. The performative aspect of the dances is not papered over with the attempt to ‘naturalize’ the dance and song. Except for Gumnaam’s ‘iss Duniya Mein’, which is shot on a beach, most of the songs take place in a setting where a performance would be expected—club, stage, brothel. Some of the other songs, despite not being in traditional performative spaces, are nevertheless visually differentiated through the insertion of a large audience actively ‘watching’ the women. By watching them watch the women, the extra-cinematic viewer is never really allowed to settle into the comfort of naturalism.

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voice to both the protagonist’s ‘kaise rahoon chup’ as well as the dancing girls’ ‘aa jaane jaan’ in Intaqam and ‘iss duniya mein jeena hai toh’/If you must live in this world in Gumnaam. Similarly, it is Asha Bhonsle’s melodic harmonies that both Sunita (Asha Parekh), the protagonist, and Ruby (Helen) shake to, in Teesri Manzil. The dangerous possibility of there being no real ‘antar’ (difference) between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women, produces rage and punishing violence in the films and the shadow lines that are meant to set them apart are forcibly reinstated. The lengthening of the ‘bad’ woman’s shadow over the filmic text necessitates an immediate undercutting of her influence and of the possibility of a relational synthesis between the two women. Their friendship is disrupted and the ‘good’ woman is shamed and humiliated for venturing beyond the confines of acceptable female behavior and unleashing the potential to be as ‘bad’ as the dancing women. As for the dancing girls, by the end of the film, they are either killed off (Teesri Manzil, Gumnaam), chastised and appropriated into respectability (Dr. Vidya), or simply made to disappear after being abandoned by the male protagonist (Chhote Nawab). On rare occasions, she is awarded a suitable companion (like the comic sidekick in Intaqam14). However, despite such violent reprisals and/or formulaic closures that entail marginalization, the specter once raised cannot be laid to rest. The demystification and undermining of the constructed chasm between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ cannot be entirely erased.

The Body That Launched a Thousand Ships In a scene from Satyajit Ray’s iconic Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest, 1970), the main characters play a memory game wherein the first person says a famous name and every player after that must repeat the previously said name(s) and add to it. In this little exchange, amid Rabindranath Tagore, Karl Marx, Atulya Ghosh and Cleopatra, the name Helen is thrown up. Turning back, one of the members immediately interjects, ‘Helen of Troy or Bombay?’, attesting to the latter’s fascination across geographical and cinematic boundaries. There has not been a single performer after her prolific reign, who has managed to capture the fancy of an entire generation of cinegoers quite like she did. It is Helen who,  Pinto (2006: 133).

14

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almost six decades since she entered the industry, is still synonymous with the figure of the dancing girl. As Pinto (2006) has extensively documented in his biography of the star, she monopolized the field of performance right up till the 1970s. Later practitioners like Aruna Irani, Bindu, and others donned the mantle but could never own it the way Helen wore it like second skin. In a reproduced interview Helen cites Vyjayanthimala as her favorite dancer of all time, and mentions that while she herself has trained in Manipuri, Bharat Natyam and Kathak, she takes credit for introducing cabaret and belly dance to ‘Indian cinema’.15 Also noteworthy is the fact that despite carving her own irreplaceable space in Bombay cinema, the one time that Helen was cast as a protagonist in a musical, the film failed miserably at the box office. Shammi Kapoor, touted as a rebel of the 1960s, also displayed movements that attained a recognizable performative style. However, he managed to shake off the doubts that dogged his career in the initial stages to move into a stronger professional space as an actor. Helen, as Ruby to his Rocky could not demonstrate that same trajectory. Eternally relegated to a supporting role, Helen owned it like nobody else, but, unlike the stereotypical characteristics of her characters, her cinematic career has demonstrated all the complexities of the profession. Real imitated reel as she wound up playing the ‘other woman’ to Salim Khan, providing constant entertainment fodder for the tabloids. It is exceedingly difficult to separate the trope from what is possibly its most iconic avatar. How then are we supposed to deconstruct the common practice of giving her characters anglicized names? Is it Helen’s Indo-­Burmese heritage and her ‘exotic’ beauty that necessitated the idea, or was she the perfect vessel for the depiction of these character types? Perhaps a bit of both instincts worked to fashion her curious cinematic heritage. Helen’s inimitable dance style has simultaneously been idolized and it must not be forgotten that she received a Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. Despite not taking on significant movie roles after the 1980s, she made guest appearances in later films like Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999), and as Miss Monica in Mohabbatein (2000). Both movies feature at least one sequence where Helen breaks into her 15  ‘I’ve no problems with the item no.: Helen Richardson Khan’, SantaBanta.com, 24th January 2008, Web. http://www.santabanta.com/bollywood/18638/ive-no-problemswith-the-item-no-helen-richardson-khan/

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recognizable loping movements in celebration. She has attained the status of a film ­legend, and any analytical exercise on the dancing girl cannot disregard this monumental recognition of the actor and, by extension, her characters. In many ways, Helen epitomizes Elizabeth Francis’s comment on Isadora Duncan’s exploration of the body16: Duncan (Helen) performed the female body differently in a period when the transformation of womanhood was both a source of anxiety and a central element of radical theories of liberation. In this sense, Duncan (Helen) was an event in the history of women’s participation in modernism (feminism). (Francis 25, addendum mine)

Theorizing through the convenience of hindsight, the fanatical cult of the celebrity jostles with the cinematic marginalization of the enacted characters, to complicate seemingly straightforward liberated vs. objectified readings of the dancing girl figure. The fact that the dancing girl is a convenient scapegoat to execute a cinematic coup de grâce is unquestionable: she is the mole placed by the filmic machinery, a disruption allowed only because it creates the space for a forceful consolidation and re-­ establishment of the normative order. However, letting ourselves be gulled by this obvious representational machination would be to overestimate the airtight nature of a closure masquerading as a conclusion. By the 1980s and 1990s, the role of the dancing, sexually liberated woman coalesced with that of the female protagonist (Zeenat Aman, Madhuri, Sridevi), resulting in the reduced visibility of these explicit ‘bad’ dancing girls. Such transmutations attest to the need for establishing a genealogy incorporating earlier archetypes to execute a diachronic study of women in cinema. This chapter hopes to be such a beginning, interrogating the dancing figure’s contribution to the changing cinematic discourse of female sexuality. Articulated in the process is a convoluted ‘bad’ girl who looks us in the eye, offering a world of hypnotic jouissance if only we promise her the last dance. 16  The two women, Duncan and Helen, despite vastly different temporal and geographical contexts, presented alternatives to a classical performing body. Responses to both women’s dancing fixated on binaries and their personal lives. Both have performed the body in a way that does not sublimate it simply as a vessel for choreographed movement. But in terms of their reading of sexuality with respect to dance, Duncan dismissed it while Helen embodied it in all its exotic glory.

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Works Cited Films Bengali Aranyer Din Ratri. Director, Satyajit Ray. Producer Priya Films, 1970.

Hindi Chhote Nawab. Director S.A. Akbar. Producer Mumtaz Films, 1961. China Town. Director Shakti Samanta. Producer Shakti Films, 1962. Dr. Vidya. Director Rajendra Bhatia. Producer Sachin Dev Burman, 1962. Gumnaam. Director Raja Nawathe. Producer Prithvi Pictures, 1965. Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Producer Bhansali Films, 1999. Intaqam. Director R.K. Nayyar. Producer Shaktiman Enterprises, 1969. Jewel Thief. Director Vijay Anand. Producer Navketan, 1967. Mohabbatein. Director Aditya Chopra. Producer Yash Raj Films, 2000. Pagla Kahin Ka. Director Shakti Samanta. Producer Mars and Movies Productions, 1970. Prince. Director Lekh Tandon. Producer Eagle Films and United Producers, 1969. Shool. Director Eeshwar Nivas. Producer Ram Gopal Varma, 1999. Teesri Manzil. Director Vijay Anand. Producer NH Films and United Producers, 1966.

Books Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. Tr. Richard Howard (New York: Hill And Wang, 1981). Gabriel, Karen. Melodrama and the Nation: Sexual Economies of Bombay Cinema 1970–2000. (New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2010). Ghosh, Tapan, Bollywood Baddies: Villains, Vamps and Henchmen in Hindi Cinema. New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2013. Web https://books.google. co.in/books?id=0d6GAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA131&dq=the+vamp+in+bollywoo d&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAmoVChMIyLy8gKDyxwIVhbqOCh0IS g0f#v=onepage&q=the%20vamp%20in%20bollywood&f=false. Accessed 10 October 2016. Pinto, Jerry. Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb (Mumbai: Penguin Books India, 2006). Shresthova, Sangita. Is It All About Hips? Around the World with Bollywood Dance (New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2011).

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Virdi, Jyotika. The Cinematic ImagiNation: Indian Popular Films as Social History (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2003).

Journal Essays Brara, Rita. “The Item Number: Cinesexuality in Bollywood and Social Life”. Economic and Political Weekly 45.23 (2010): 67–74. JSTOR. PDF. Chakravorty, Pallabi. ‘Dancing into Modernity: Multiple Narratives of India’s Kathak Dance’. Dance Research Journal 38:1/2, (2006), 115–136. Chakravorty, Pallabi. “From Interculturalism to Historicism: Reflections on Classical Dance”. Dance Research Journal 32.2 (2000–2001): 108–119. Chaudhuri, Maitrayee. “Indian ‘Modernity’ and ‘Tradition’: A Gender Analysis”. Polish Sociological Review. 178 (2012): 281–293. Coorlawala, Uttara. “The Sanskritized Body”. Dance Research Journal 36.2 (2004): 50–63. “Dancing into Modernity: Multiple Narratives of India’s Kathak Dance”. Dance Research Journal 38.1/2 (2006): 115–136. Francis, Elizabeth. “From Event to Monument: Modernism, Feminism and Isadora Duncan”. Pub. Shri Birendra Saday Dutt. American Studies 35.1 (1994): 25–45. Ramamurthy, Priti. “The Modern Girl in India in the Interwar Years: Interracial Intimacies, International Competition, and Historical Eclipsing”. Women’s Studies Quarterly 34.1/2 (2006): 197–226.

Newspaper Articles Santa Banta News Network. “I’ve no problems with the item no.: Helen Richardson Khan”. SantaBanta.com. 24 January 2008. Web. http://www.santabanta.com/bollywood/18638/ive-no-problems-with-the-item-no-helenrichardson-khan/. Accessed 8 March 2017.

CHAPTER 9

Guns, Gangsters, and “gandagi”: The Moll in Hindi Cinema Neha Yadav

Consider this mise-en-scène: a wide shot captures a group of men dressed in expensive, tailored clothing.1 Casually lounging on leather sofas in a discreet but decidedly exclusive club, they are in the middle of a deal. A sleek, silver briefcase rests amidst free flowing alcohol and partially hidden guns. Within this frame, a single man stands out, the camera focused on him as if he were the centre of gravity. Handsome, suave, he is in complete control of the situation, and sexier for it. On his right, draped on his arm, is the only woman in the group. Despite the camera’s appreciation of her beauty and the skin on display, evidenced by a smooth tracking shot, she holds attention only for a brief moment as an aesthetically pleasing ornament complementing the scene. Before you know it, your eyes are back on the boys and the business at hand. This woman, a non-participant, a silent observer, an afterthought almost, is the focus of this chapter. Meet the gun moll.

1  A French theatre term meaning “staging an action” including setting, costume, makeup, lighting, and the movement of figures. See Pearson and Simpson (2005: 397).

N. Yadav (*) Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Goa, India © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_9

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The Oxford English Dictionary describes a gun moll as “a gangster’s mistress or girlfriend.”2 The etymological origin of the titular gun lies in the Yiddish word “gonif ” which means thief.3 Further, the word “moll” derives from the euphemism “Molly” which has been employed throughout Europe since the seventeenth century, at least, to denote a prostitute. Nate Hendley identifies Little Caesar,4 one of the earliest gangster films that achieved cult status, as the one that “introduced a whole new language to American cinema…(and) popularised now-clichéd gangster-­ speak as ‘gats’ (guns), ‘molls’ (girls).”5 A slew of gangster film in the 1930s and 1940s, like The Public Enemy,6 Scarface,7 The Roaring Twenties,8 Dillinger,9 and so on solidified the most prominent American archetype of the moll: a “typically blonde, air-headed, ex-showgirl”.10 These molls, often the only female characters of note in these films, invariably played sexy sidekicks; Paula Rabinowitz (2005) notes that they were “usually depicted in gangster films as a trophy, an appendage to the rising ‘city boy’ gangster”.11 This characterisation was undoubtedly influenced by, and simultaneously fed into, the perception of their historical counterparts and Claire Potter, in her study of the moll in 1930s, notes that contemporary sources considered them insignificant. Potter also notes how journalist Herbert Corey’s description of “dumb, but not so beautiful” was a shorthand for “dismissing them as a sexual sideshow to the main event of J.  Edgar Hoover’s war on male ‘public enemies’”.12 However disdainful the police and the journalists’ stance vis-à-vis the moll were, it cannot be denied that she caught the fancy of at least some elements of the public: young women13 and movie producers.  https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/gun_moll  Murphy (1991/2001:224). 4  LeRoy (1931). 5  Hendley (2013: 162). 6  Wellman (1931). 7  Howard Hawks, Richard Rosson, Scarface, 1932. 8  Raoul Walsh, The Roaring Twenties, 1939. 9  Max Nosseck, Dillinger, 1945. 10  Duckworth (2010). 11  Rabinowitz (2005: 270). 12  Potter (1995: 43). 13  Potter mentions that with the capture, trial, and ensuing notoriety of Jean Crompton, Pat Cherrington, and Marie Conforti, young women started associating ideas of pleasurable danger and romance with the gangster’s lifestyle and that the 1930s was projected as a period of sexual liberalism. 2 3

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In India, the moll is an indispensable part of Hindi gangster films and her role in crime cinema has grown particularly since the turn of the ­century in films like Company, 14 Maqbool,15 Gangster,16 and Don.17 The first glimmerings can be traced back to the sexualised women of crime dramas of the 1950s where, in films like Baazi,18 Aar Paar,19 and CID,20 the moll shared certain characteristic similarities to her American counterpart. However, her association with gangsters and the world of crime, a sexualised role, as well as the status of a supporting actor were not recast simplistically as the moll’s role was moulded to fit the sensibility of Indian audiences and the aesthetic vision of Indian directors. The characterisation of the early moll exhibited certain fluidity and her role was often conflated with other “bad” women, like the cabaret dancer or the vamp. Against the early representations, the moll’s subject position in recent cinema is a complex and often paradoxical one. She is situated outside the domain of bourgeois structures that grant women “respectability”, like marriage or legal employment. When given a back story, she often occupies the fringes of “respectable” society,21 working as a bar dancer or an entertainer. Her status as an outsider imbues her with a degree of agency yet, at the same time, her representation bears the imprint of certain biases. Company and Maqbool, for instance, portray an explicitly Muslim underworld (and a Muslim moll), suggesting a connection between criminality and a minority community that has historically been a subject of negative stereotypes. This chapter examines the gun moll in Company, Maqbool, Gangster, and Don, focusing not just on the characters’ story arcs but also on the various cinematic and extra-cinematic tools, including casting choices, employed to negotiate with the colluding forces of patriarchy, class, religion, and the demands of the market. Since definitionally the moll, like her American counterpart, is someone who (a) is in a voluntary, heterosexual,  Ram Gopal Varma, Company, 2002.  Vishal Bhardwaj, Maqbool, 2003. 16  Anurag Basu, Gangster, 2006. 17  Farhan Akhtar, Don, 2006. 18  Guru Dutt, Baazi, 1951. 19  Guru Dutt, Aar Paar, 1954. 20  Guru Dutt, CID, 1954. 21  Simran, the moll in Gangster, is described by the film’s antagonist, a cop who represents normative public order, as a “khoobsuratnaagin…ekgandiaurghatiyaladki” (a beautiful snake…a dirty and degraded girl). 14 15

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non-conjugal relationship with a gangster and (b) is aware of the criminal nature of her partner’s activities, the discussion necessarily excludes iconic films, within the genre, such as Satya22 where Urmila Matondkar’s Vidya remains unaware of the true nature of her lover’s work for most of the film’s duration. In studying the relationship between the limits of the crime genre and the representation of the moll, the chapter deconstructs the dominant ideologies and plots the moll’s “rise” and “fall” as a bad woman and explains the extraordinary success of her subversive potential. Her romantic/sexual association with a gangster and, through him, with a world of immense wealth and brutal power play aligns her with the conventional, heteronormative narratives of Hindi cinema. The chapter examines the molls’ pivotal role in the third act of these films and how their actions either initiate or precipitate a crisis that ends in a bloody resolution. Importantly, while they have agency enough to intervene in the narrative plot, their power is curtailed and the bloodshed consumes them. At one level, the moll’s punishment is expected as she is the stereotypical “bad woman” whose transgressions threaten to destabilise the narrative as well as the larger patriarchal symbolic order. At another, the punishment is not all as there are exceptions like Don which provide a triumphant ending to the classic moll story of death and destruction. More importantly, in some others, like in Maqbool, the moll’s subversive potential is much more important than the generic punishment that awaits her. In short, the relation between the moll and urban noir, between genre and type, is not a linear or fixed one. The moll’s historicity, her trajectory from the earliest representations to her realisation in more recent cinema, is discussed in the first section of the chapter. The following section analyses her thematic possibilities in the above-mentioned films where she steps out of her earlier narrative shadows and is transformed into a key player. The concluding section focuses on Maqbool and its conscious Islamisation of the underworld and examines how this political choice of setting affects the representation of Nimmi. Additionally, the analysis attends to the horizon of expectations created through her Shakespearean other, Lady Macbeth, and through Maqbool’s non-narrative strategies Table 9.1 suggests certain patterns even though definitive trajectories are impossible as the moll does not have a clearly defined character in the  Ram Gopal Varma, Satya, 1998.

22

Don

Maqbool Gangster

Company

Aamne Samne Agneepath

Deewar Don

Johny Mera Naam

Jaali Note Jewel Thief

Yes

Yes No

Unspecified

Dancer Nurse

Rita Mary Mathew Saroja

No No

Yes Yes

Unspecified Unspecified

Anita Anita

No

Unspecified Bar dancer

Unspecified

Tara

Yes Yes No No

Yes

Dancer Dancer Dancer Dancer

Lily Helen Julie Neena

No Yes Yes

No

Yes Yes

No

Yes No

No No

No

No No No No

No Yes No

Is she on Does she the poster? discharge a firearm?

Unspecified

Dancer Dancer Unspecified

Profession

Leena Unnamed Kamini

Name

2002 Manisha Koirala 2003 Tabu Nimmi 2006 Kangana Simran Ranaut 2006 Isha Koppikar Anita

1951 Geeta Bali 1954 Shakila 1956 Waheeda Rehman 1960 Helen 1967 Helen Faryal Anju Mahendru 1970 Padma Khanna 1975 Parveen Babi 1978 Arpana Choudhary 1982 Arti Gupta 1990 Madhavi

Baazi Aar Paar CID

Actor

Year

Film

Table 9.1  The Moll in Hindi Cinema: A Tabular Glance

No

No Yes

Yes

No Yes

Yes No

Yes

No No No No

Yes No No

(continued)

No

Yes Yes

No

No No

Yes No

Yes

No No No No

Yes No No

Does she articulate Does she desire for marriage? die at the end?

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Shop asst. Unspecified Hotel manager Film star

Mumtaz Ayesha Vidya

Detective Byomkesh Bakshy

Anguri Devi

Film star

Rihana

Don 2 Shootout at Wadala

Bar dancer

Tannu

2007 Aarti Chhabria 2010 Kangana Ranaut Prachi Desai 2011 Lara Dutta 2013 Kangana Ranaut 2015 Swastika Mukherjee

Shootout at Lokhandwala Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai

Profession

Name

Actor

Year

Film

Table 9.1  (continued)

No

Yes No No

Yes

No

No

No No No

No

No

Is she on Does she the poster? discharge a firearm?

No

Yes No Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No No No

Yes

No

Does she articulate Does she desire for marriage? die at the end?

154  N. YADAV

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early films and undergoes subtle shifts depending upon the films’ subcategories. In the 1950s and 1960s, the moll is relegated to a peripheral role and even when she is part of the “criminal” story, she fails to initiate any crimes and has little or no connection with firearms.23 Her representation discloses the ways in which mainstream Hindi cinema enacts the gendering of the anti-heroic narrative as her screen-time and dialogue is limited in comparison to the gangster or the hero. Since she is often juxtaposed with other female characters who can be rivals or virtuous foils, her character remains static and she does not undergo any growth and is offered little space to articulate her desires.24 The extra-filmic devices reinforce her peripheral status, particularly her erotic potential. In the posters, if she is at all present, she is shown in the shadow or arms of her gangster beau and this absence pays testimony to alarmingly pervasive market perceptions about the centrality of male actors in drawing the audience to the theatres. The exceptions are characters played by Helen whose celebrity sex symbol status guaranteed her a spot on the poster or Waheeda Rehman, who finds a small space in one of CID’s many posters despite this being her debut film. Between the 1970s and 1990s, a change is noticeable as the moll is better defined and is less of a compound of shifting possibilities. As the binary other of the virtuous heroine, she is simultaneously pitted against better known actors, as in Johny Mera Naam, Don, or Aamne Samne. While her professional identity is still not significant as she is realised through her erotic relationship with the gangster, she is given the chance to claim the desire for a “normal” life of marriage.25 However, the normative end of death, disappearance, or prison awaits her in several of the films.26 Only Parveen Babi in her role as Anita in Deewar27 can be said to have the advantage of star power over Neetu Singh’s romantic heroine Veera. Paradoxically, her subordinate status affords her agency and indirect power 23  Aar Paar is an exception where the moll fires a round of bullets at the hero and heroine. 24  Several examples confirm the moll’s subordinate status: in Baazi, Aar Paar, CID, and Jaali Note, the moll is contrasted with the heroine; Jewel Thief gives the “Bond-girl” treatment as the molls have seductive dances and brief dalliances with the hero. However, CID is an exception as Waheeda Rehman’s Kamini represents the redemptive arc of the story. 25  Agneepath and Deewar. 26  Johny Mera Naam, Aamne Samne, Don, Agneepath, and Deewar illustrate these trends. 27  Yash Chopra, Deewar, 1975.

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which, as Bhawana Somaaya (2012) notes, is “at times… better sketched than the heroine’s in what can be seen as a subtle subversion of the very values that the films propagated”.28 Along with the gangster’s illegally accumulated wealth from criminal enterprises, she has a share in the muscle power and socio-political clout that is available to her lover. At a symbolic level, her moral ambiguity challenges gender stereotypes and complicates straightforward binaries of good/evil and wrong/right as she looms like a dark shadow over too-neat resolutions in favour of law and order. Her exercise of sexual agency, however, often makes her vulnerable to slurs within the gang and moral condemnation outside of it. This is especially true of more recent examples of the genre post-2000 where the gun moll is promoted from her supporting status to the sole female protagonist, like Simran in Gangster, Nimmi in Maqbool, and Vidya in Shootout at Wadala.29 Films like Company and Shootout at Lokhandwala30 even feature two molls each.

Anita, Saroja, Simran The moll’s prominence in recent films can be traced back to the release of Satya in 1990 which marked a turning point for the genre vis-à-vis more realistic, geographically specific exploration of the underworld milieu. Rajdeep Roy (2011) identifies this genre as the Mumbai noir, which comprises films that describe the “post 1990s situation, of organised crime in Mumbai representing the culture of the underclass that thrives within it”.31 A series of events, like the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition and the subsequent manhunt for Dawood Ibrahim, the 1997 murder of Gulshan Kumar, the 2002 arrest of Monica Bedi and Abu Salem, not only exposed the connection between the film industry and the underworld but also laid bare the new face of terror. This “transnational play of capital and terror”32 inspired a spate of releases in the 2000s and a new genre aesthetic: a larger geographical canvas, grittier action, slicker production value and a newer, more nuanced approach to the archetype of the moll, since filmmakers now had access to historical referents like Bedi and Vidya Joshi.33Detective  Kothari et al. (2012: Kindle edition, 26).  Sanjay Gupta, Shootout at Wadala, 2013. 30  Apoorva Lakhia, Shootout at Lokhandwala, 2007. 31  Roy (2011: 100). 32  Mitra (2007: 1409). 33  Vidya Joshi was notorious Mumbai-based gangster Manya Surve’s girlfriend. The director of Shootout at Wadala, the film based on Surve’s life and encounter, learned of her existence from a police official he interviewed in the process of making his film. 28 29

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Byomkesh Bakshy34 shares this noir aesthetic even though it is historically removed and set in pre-independence Calcutta. Further, the term “gun moll” or “gangster’s moll” now found a purchase in surrounding discourses with film scholars and reviewers beginning to employ it when discussing relevant films. Don, Company, Maqbool, and Gangster belong to this moment and therefore present ideal subjects for analysis. There are certain thematic similarities that underpin the representation of the moll in three of these films. Anita in Don, Saroja in Company and Simran in Gangster are united by a few undercurrents of theme that become central to the depiction of their character and to the conception of this archetype. All three are young, unambiguously attractive women with minimal personal histories who choose to be in monogamous relationships with gangsters. Unlike the molls of the 1950s noir cinema, these women do not, in most cases, take on the functions of other archetypes, like the cabaret dancer or the vamp. The Helen-style “item number” in the 2006 remake of Don is performed by Kareena Kapoor’s character Kamini. Urmila Matondkar and Isha Koppikar make a guest appearance for similar “item songs” in Company. Gangster, which combines elements of crime drama with romantic tragedy, features no such song at all. In all three of these films, released within years of each other during the 2000s, the moll is consolidated into a distinct archetype. She might be in a heteronormative relationship with the gangster but her location outside the “respectable” structure of marriage differentiates her from the wife. The moral ambiguity in her characterisation separates her from the vamp. She is more essential to the plot than the cabaret dancer or item girl who often only appears for a song-and-dance sequence. All of these factors combine to transform the moll from a peripheral character to the female protagonist. Gangster even goes so far as to make her the central character, the pivot around which the plot revolves, the narrator of her own story. Bhawana Somayaa’s  (2012) dismissal of these recent representations as “mindless sexual objects” (footnote 28) is patently incorrect as Somayaa ignores several pertinent factors: the screen-time commanded by the molls, their acts of agency, their centrality to certain plot points, as well as the camera’s treatment of their bodies. For instance, the moll’s relation with domesticity modifies her reception as a mindless sexual object as these recent films show that the underworld is also structured along expected domestic lines: men engage in public “occupational” spaces  Dibakar Banerjee, Detective Byomkesh Bakshy, 2015.

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while women preserve the “home.” The gendering of spaces questions the obvious binary between the underworld and bourgeois society as a common motif that recurs, through at least three of these films, is of the moll performing domestic chores. In Gangster, once Daya “rescues” Simran from the dance bar, there follows a montage of the two of them creating a makeshift household, where he ventures into the world to perform his duties as a gangster while she cooks for him, does the laundry and serves tea to his gang members. Saroja in Company is, in fact, introduced at the outset in her role as a helpmate when she serves a glass of juice to Malik, the gang leader. Don’s Anita is a one-note character with a comparatively minimal screen-time and one of her pivotal scenes consists of tucking in a seemingly injured Don and offering him water. Saroja in Company is a largely silent presence at home where illegal transactions are made and assassination plans are forged. Her participation in the gang is restricted to banter with some of the more familiar members, in her capacity as the leader’s partner. Malik, portrayed as courteous, loving, and protective, is imbued with all the patriarchal authority of the breadwinner, in addition to the power he wields as a criminal leader, and his will is paramount. This is exemplified in an incident within the film where Saroja, motivated by emotional impulses, tries to interfere in the gang’s business and he shuts her down with one word and orders her to go inside. In Gangster, Simran’s portrayal is complicated by the fact that the film straddles two genres with their own set of very specific conventions. Though it is undoubtedly a gangster film, it is first and foremost a romantic drama, with the subtitle—“A Love Story”—proclaiming as much. Not surprisingly, Simran commands unprecedented screen-time and centrality in the narrative precisely because she also doubles as the romantic heroine. Unlike the other molls, the viewer is treated to the origin story of the gangster-moll relationship here which, with its softly lilting background score and long, sustained romantic shots, is framed like a meet-cute. She is the beautiful, silent, curly-maned subject of crooning melodies, the mainstay of Hindi film romance. She is carefully shielded from most of the gang-related violence, sometimes literally, like when Daya protects her during a shootout with his body, all the while wielding a gun in the enemy’s face. Also, unlike most molls, she is imbued with maternal instincts of warmth and love which she expresses when, for the purpose of disguise, she is forced to adopt a child.

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Further, as mentioned before, the molls play a vital function in the third act, often precipitating the crisis that leads to the bloody climax. Anita in Don is the only person who is privy to Don’s deception and disguises herself as an ambulance driver to help him make his escape from the police at the end. In Company, Saroja makes an emotional decision that triggers infighting within the gang which ends with the death of Malik and imprisonment of Chandu, though she survives. A penitent Simran, betrayed by the cop who used her to capture Daya, kills the cop and commits suicide. Narrative apart, the moll’s centrality to the plot is enhanced by the camera’s representation of her body. Though she is undoubtedly a figure of desire, she is not objectified in the manner “item girls” or cabaret dancers are. Unlike these stereotypes, there are no voyeuristic close-ups or a quick montage of the moll’s strategic body parts. Anita might be in the periphery of several frames but the camera captures her in her entirety, a visual shorthand for emphasising personhood. The visual representation of Saroja during a club sequence is explicitly contrasted with fragmented shots of the “item girl” with quick cuts to the faces of titillated club audience. Simran in Gangster is captured half nude after a lovemaking scene but the softly lit, sustained tracking shot of her bare back ends by lingering on her peaceful sleeping face; the aesthetic of romantic drama suggests vulnerability and beauty rather than objectification. Hence, it is obvious that instead of witnessing a mere sexual object, these molls offer a rather more distinct and nuanced representation than their predecessors.

Nimmi Any discussion of Nimmi, the moll played by Tabu in Maqbool, needs to be prefaced with a reference to the larger context of the criminal underworld as it is portrayed in the film and the remarkable departures it makes from both its source text and contemporary Hindi crime dramas, particularly the decision to imbue the underworld with a particular communal identity. Maqbool: Islamisation of the Underworld? Maqbool, Vishal Bhardwaj’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, was released in 2003 to rave reviews and international acclaim. Aside from strong performances, the film was lauded for its ingenious reworking of the Bard’s play for contemporary Indian audiences, even if the director did

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protest too much about it being only a loose representation.35 Described by Bhardwaj as a “gangster film”,36 Maqbool reworks and relocates the story of ruthless ambition from war-torn feudal Scotland to the modern-­ day Mumbai underworld. One advantage of this particular genre is that the violence and bloodshed that accompanies machinations and treachery in the original do not have to be metaphorised in the adaptation; the clamour of battle is transformed into gang shootouts, even if the body count remains incomparable. The identity of Maqbool’s criminal world is largely, and explicitly, Muslim. It is made evident by several signifiers, like names (Jahangir Khan, Maqbool, Riyaz Boti), costume (skull caps, pathani suits), rituals of worship (the Sufiflavoured music), as well as the language most of the characters speak— Urdu (interspersed with local variations of Hindi). The rationale behind rooting a borrowed story in a certain kind of community—an oft persecuted, minority one—demands scrutiny, if we are to understand the film’s politics of representation. One way of understanding this representation is through biographical reference to underworld dons who made headlines for the 1993 Mumbai bombings in the wake of citywide communal riots following the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. The alleged mastermind behind the attack, Dawood Ibrahim, captured popular imagination as stories of D-Company, his predominantly Muslim crime syndicate, made media rounds; stories of amazing brutality, wealth, and insidious but enormous influence (through connections with real estate, the betting business, and the film industry). However, the overemphasis on identity in criticism can be problematic as an easy assumption is often made between Muslim anger post 1992 and organised crime and terrorism. This assumption, backed by no sociological survey or study, borders on right-wing philosophy that links all Muslim men with criminality and suspicion. A more persuasive reading is provided by Kalyani Chadha and Anandam P. Kavoori (2008) who argue that mainstream Hindi movies have always “othered”37 the Muslim figure, whether through exoticisation, marginalisation, or demonisation. The religious identity of the gangsters is not incidental, a mere detail to add colour to the script. The rituals and rationale of the religion are built into the very skeleton of the film, informing both character motivation and plot. In the film, Abbaji’s influence stems not  Trivedi (2007: 148–158).  Singh, accessed July 1, 2016. 37  Chadha and Kavoori (2008: 131–145). 35 36

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just from wealth and muscle power but also his ability to marshal the minority Muslim vote for whichever politician he favours. Similarly, the authority and openness with which he carries on his dalliance with a Bollywood starlet in Nimmi’s presence seems to derive from the historically sanctioned Islamic practice of polygyny. Even Abbaji’s murder is made possible only when Nimmi has him goad his most faithful bodyguard to break the Islamic tenet of teetotalism, as a result of which he drinks himself into unconsciousness and leaves a sleeping Jahangir vulnerable. The most damning moment, however, is the occasion of Abbaji’s daughter’s wedding, for which some goats are sacrificed, irresistibly reminding one of the Bakra Eid festival where Muslim households ritually slaughter goats and share the meat with family, friends, relatives, and the needy. The scene of slaughter is shot extremely suggestively, with two men in skull caps shown restraining a goat with their bodies. It is the briefest of shots, the frame blocked by walls in such a way that the sliver of men-and-­ goat that is visible creates an almost peep-hole effect, as if one were looking at something forbidden and vaguely wrong. The scene is overlaid with the sound of the men chanting, and is quickly succeeded by one of red blood gushing out of a drain in the wall, with the ominous musical score reaching a crescendo. Another shot captures a bearded man in a chequered dhoti and skull cap washing the blood-stained slaughter ground with a bucket of water while a storm builds up. These scenes are a prelude to the plot’s heart of darkness—Abbaji’s murder. The iconography of darkness, lightning, and storm is combined with musical emotional cues and reinforced with dialogue (Nimmi compares herself to a sacrificial goat, gives Maqbool an ultimatum to kill either her or Jahangir) to link the ritual slaughter of the goats with murder. The visual emphasis on blood38 ties notions of crime, treachery, and religious ritual together. One of the last shots in the film is that of Sameera, Abbaji’s daughter, and Guddu, the son of Abbaji’s right hand man. Unknown to them, Maqbool stands just outside the hospital room with a gun, intending to steal Nimmi’s son, and the camera’s gaze replicates the scene from his bloodshot eyes. Guddu, Sameera’s Hindu fiancé, lovingly cradles Nimmi’s son, whose paternity is left deliberately ambiguous, while Sameera looks on. This scene of almost idyllic domesticity is what prompts Maqbool to give up arms and surrender to a death the plot makes seem inevitable.  Reminiscent of the iconic line of dialogue from the play: “Out, damned spot!”

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Maqbool might be a comprehensive, nuanced, even poetic look at the world of crime but its moral arc still bends towards accepted, conventional notions of right and wrong; its balance restored at the end when the long arm of the law, aided by internal gang warfare, destroys the criminal empire. And the film ensures, through all the devices mentioned above, that the audience does not forget for a moment that this empire was a Muslim one. Biba, Rakhail, Chudail (the Beloved, the Mistress, the Witch) I changed the basic characterisation of Macbeth, by making Nimmi the wife of the King and Maqbool’s mistress which showed that the intentions that motivated her actions were not born out of love. (Vishal Bhardwaj, Interview with Critical Twenties, May 2011)

Lady Macbeth is transformed from the lawful wife of the play’s titular character into the gun moll Nimmi in Bhardwaj’s film adaptation. While officially mob boss Jahangir’s companion, she conducts a secret dalliance with his second in command, Maqbool, and plots with him to depose Jahangir. As a consequence, Nimmi is found guilty not just of ruthless ambition39 but also of sexual faithlessness and betrayal. In recasting Lady Macbeth as a gun moll, the film’s narrative acknowledges her as a powerful figure while simultaneously branding her influence as bad and dangerous. The generic limits of the moll character allow Nimmi to wield a weapon and actually take a life, as opposed to Lady Macbeth who has a qualm of conscience at the last moment. Nimmi occupies a liminal space in the film. She is identified with the domestic space for much of it. She presides over meals, shares a bed with Jahangir, is ostensibly treated with the deference due to the lady of the house and even discharges faux-maternal duties in Jahangir’s daughter’s wedding preparations. The tenuousness of her position, however, is exposed when a frustrated Maqbool slaps her and calls her “rakhail” (mistress) or when a supporting character makes a crack about her being a part of Maqbool’s “inheritance” when he takes over the empire after Jahangir’s death. It is most evident in her own insecurity once Jahangir grows ­enamoured of a Bollywood starlet. And it is this very anxiety, coupled with her desire for Maqbool, which drives her to plot the killing of Jahangir.  This is the fault traditional Shakespearean scholars find with Lady Macbeth’s character.

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Nimmi’s equation with the mob boss is a fascinating departure from the other three films examined in this chapter, since the mutuality is markedly absent in Maqbool. Nimmi’s sexual duties are made distasteful to her by Jahangir’s old age, corpulence, and general ungainliness, a disgust she articulates clearly to Maqbool. Though the film is silent on her backstory and the origins of this relationship, this empty space proves quite exciting in terms of the kind of interpretation it lends itself to. While the moll’s economic dependence is subsumed within the rhetoric of heteronormative love in the other three movies, where the gangster’s status as the provider is naturalised and made attractive through the mutuality of their relationship, Nimmi’s reluctant participation in sexual intercourse lays bare the limits of her agency. This discontent makes Nimmi a more active agent as compared to the other molls since she must scheme and plot for her survival. Her act of subversion is two-fold; first, it lies in her being the desiring subject, a role traditionally reserved for the man in heteronormative romances. Nimmi initiates all flirtation, engineers most clandestine meetings, and masterminds the plan to have Maqbool take over the empire from Jahangir. However, the narrative places gendered limits on her conduct as she accepts Maqbool’s violence without resistance. Nimmi’s passive acceptance is in stark contrast to Maqbool’s “natural male violence”: he slaps her, subjects her to sexual slurs and even threatens to shoot her. Nevertheless, Nimmi has the ability to protect her interest, at least for a while, by picking up the gun, a symbolic phallus. Once Maqbool murders Jahangir, she shoots his bodyguard and makes him the scapegoat. Her trajectory from there is that of Lady Macbeth’s. She is driven mad by guilt, seeing blood where it doesn’t exist and wretchedly anxious to clean it. In another point of departure from the source text, Nimmi discovers she is pregnant and the paternity of the child is kept ambiguous by the film, though a delirious, guilt-ridden Nimmi is convinced she can hear the child crying for its murdered father. While she is a far cry from Lady Macbeth’s “anti-mother” portrayal,40 her lot is not much better as the incessant phantom crying sharpens the lack of paternity and her unworthy motherhood, a charge that is levelled at her by Sameera, who calls her a “chudail” (witch). The plot seems to support this pronouncement since Nimmi, greatly weakened by childbirth, dies in Maqbool’s arms shortly afterwards and the film’s resolution depends upon the audience accepting Guddu and Sameera as better parents for the child.  Chamberlain (2005: 72–91).

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Even within the supposedly lawless world of crime, the resolution is affected by punishing transgressors, both sexual and otherwise, and re-­ establishing the usurped throne to its legitimate heir—Jahangir’s son-in-­ law. It’s not a neat, uncontested conclusion, though, for two reasons. One is the possible fracture in the line of patrilineal succession. Nimmi’s child, now heir to Guddu and, presumably, whatever remains of the empire, could be either Jahangir’s or Maqbool’s. Nimmi, in refusing to conform to the code of female sexual purity demanded by patrilineal societies, is punished by death. The second reason is unique to the cinema in that the audience perception of a particular actor or “star” often plays a role in how a character is perceived. Thus Tabu, as a critically acclaimed actor, commands the kind of audience sympathy that overflows the limits of the character she plays, particularly since her antagonists are played by little-known female performers. Tabu’s last scene, where her dying body is cradled by a loving but defeated Maqbool, overstrains the script’s semantic content and the outlines of her character Nimmi. Tabu’s magnetism and star power complicate a straightforward interpretation of the scene as a “bad woman’s” righteous comeuppance and the tragic grandeur of her character’s death lingers long past the film’s last shot. Nimmi’s lingering death, Simran’s romantic portrayal, Saroja’s domestic habitation or Anita’s deception and escape with the Don suggests that the moll in recent cinema is hardly an absent and mindless sexual object. Instead, she assumes a dynamic role which demands the need for going beyond the conventional binary of the heroine/vamp. Moreover, when “stars” play the moll, the misogyny of the gangster story is countered by the moll’s subjectivity, a grateful departure from the usual story. Yet, the celebrity status cannot evade the gangster story’s persistent reliance on normative expectations and the moll is subordinated within the anti-story. What is unusual is her subversive potential and participation in power struggles which definitely threaten neat resolutions. Her exercise of sexual agency—her “waywardness” in refusing to participate in a self-­perpetuating social order predicated upon marriage, control of female sexuality, and the laws of patriliny—is her biggest act of defiance and the reason most criticism directed her way within these narratives takes the form of moral judgements on her sexual behaviour—“gandi or ghatiya  ladki” (a dirty and degraded girl)—rather than condemnation of her criminality. Perhaps the threat she represents to the structures of power, both civil and criminal, can be best gauged by the high mortality rate of this ­archetype; the gun moll often either dies or disappears without a trace at the end of the film and it is worthwhile to ask why.

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Works Cited Films Hindi Aamne Samne, director Ashim Samanta, producer Shakti Samanta, 1982. Aar Paar, director and producer Guru Dutt, 1954. Agneepath, director Mukul Anand, producer Yash Johar, 1990. Baazi, director Guru Dutt, producer Dev Anand, 1951. CID, director and producer, Guru Dutt, 1954. Company, director Ram G.  Varma, producer Boney Kapoor, C.  Ashwini Dutt, Ram Gopal Varma, 2002. Deewar, director Yash Chopra, producer Gulshan Rai, 1975. Detective Byomkesh Bakshy, director Dibakar Banerjee, producer, Aditya Chopra, Dibakar Banerjee, 2015. Don 2, director Farhan Akhtar, producer Farhan Akhtar, Ritesh Sidhwani, Shah Rukh Khan, 2011. Don, director Farhan Akhtar, producer Farhan Akhtar, Ritesh Sidhwani, 2006. Gangster, director Anurag Basu, producer, Mahesh Bhatt, Mukesh Bhatt, 2006. Jaali Note, director Shakti Samanta, producer Pachhi, Sant Singh, 1960. Jewel Thief, director Vijay Anand, producer Dev Anand, 1967. Johny Mera Naam, director Vijay Anand, producer Gulshan Rai, 1970. Maqbool, director Vishal Bhardwaj, producer, Bobby Bedic, Gdb, 2003. Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai, director Milan Luthria, producer, Ekta Kapoor, Shobha Kapoor, 2010. Satya, director Ram G. Varma, producer Bharat Shah, P. Som Shekar, Ram Gopal Varma, 1998. Shootout at Lokhandwala, director Apoorva Lakhia, producer, Balaji Telefilms. 2007. Shootout at Wadala, director Sanjay Gupta, producer, Anuradha Gupta, Ekta Kapoor, Sanjay Gupta, Shobha Kapoor, 2013.

English Dillinger, director Max Nosseck, producer Frank King, Maurice King, 1945. Little Caesar, director Mervyn LeRoy, producer Hal B. Wallis, Darryl F. Zanuck, 1931. Scarface, director Howard Hawk and Richard Rosson, producer, Howard Hawks, Howard Hughes, 1932. The Public Enemy, director William A.  Wellman, producer, Darryl F.  Zanuck, 1931. The Roaring Twenties, director Raoul Walsh, producer Hal B.  Wallis, Samuel Bischoff, 1939.

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Books Hendley, Nate. The Mafia: A Guide to American Subculture (California: Greenwood Press, 2013). Kothari, Jigna, Madangarli, Supriya and Somaaya, Bhawana. Mother Maiden Mistress: Women in Hindi Cinema, 1950–2010 (New Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers (Kindle), 2012). Murphy, Bruce F. The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery (1991; New  York: Palgrave, 2001). Pearson, Roberta E. and Simpson, Philip, eds. Critical Dictionary of Film and Television Criticism (Taylor & Francis e-library, 2005).

Journal Articles Chadha, Kaveri and Kavoori, Anandam P. “Exoticised, Marginalised, Demonised: The Muslim ‘Other’ in Indian Cinema” in Global Bollywood (New York: NYUP, 2008), 131–145. Chamberlain, Stephanie. “Fantasising Infanticide: Lady Macbeth and the Murdering Mother in Early Modern England,” College Literature. Vol. 32, No. 2 (2005): 72–91. Web. Duckworth, A. R. “Women in Film Noir I – The Central Archetypal Roles,” The Motley View,  (2010):  https://ardfilmjournal.wordpress.com/tag/motifs/. Web. Mitra, Smita. “On ‘Black Friday’,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 42, No 16 (2007): 1408–1410.  Potter, Claire B. ‘“I’ll Go the Limit and Then Some”: Gun Molls, Desire, and Danger in the 1930s’, Feminist Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1 (1995): 41–66. Web. Rabinowitz, Paula. “Social Representations within American Modernism” in The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism, ed. Walter Kalaidjian (Cambridge: CUP, 2005), 261–283. Roy, Rajdeep. “Bollywood and the Mumbai Underworld: Reading Satya In Retrospect” in Locating Cultural Change: Theory, Method, Process, eds. Ipshita Chanda, Partha Pratim Basu (New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2011), 98–119. Trivedi, Poonam. “‘Filmi’ Shakespeare,” Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2007): 148–158.

Newspaper Reports/Interviews Arghya. “The Vishal Bhardwaj Interview.” Critical Twenties. 12 May 2011. http://www.criticaltwenties.in/mediapopularculture/the-vishal-bhardwajinterview. Web. Singh, Prashant. “‘I am my own audience’: Vishal Bhardwaj.” Hindustan Times. 25 December 2015. http://www.hindustantimes.com/bollywood/i-am-my-ownaudience-vishal-bhardwaj/story-CbIQhAmX9yuREg8OqA75BO.html. Web.

CHAPTER 10

Sex Workers in Hindi Cinema: Imagos and Realities Rakesh Shukla

phir meri awaara laash apne is gulabi makbare mein dafan ho jane ke liye laut ayee. Har tawaif ek laash hai. Main bhi ek laash hoon or tu bhi. (Pakeezah, 1971) Again my homeless corpse has returned to get buried in this pink tomb. Every courtesan is a corpse. I am a corpse and so are you. Havaldar Ratan (HR): “Aap”; Nisha (N): “haan, main. Jee main!” HR: “aap yahan kaise”? N: “jaise ye sab”; jee han aisi -waisi. khusar-phusar vaali. (Manoranjan, 1974) HR: You; N: Yes me. It’s me. HR: How are you here?; N: Like the rest; wayward, whispering girl.

The role played by “tragedy queen” Meena Kumari in Pakeezah (trans. “Pure”) and Zeenat Aman—“Zeenie baby” as she was popularly called—as R. Shukla (*) Uttar Pradesh, India © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_10

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the hot, in-your-face bubbly sex worker Nisha in the 1970s Manoranjan (trans. “Entertainment”) illustrate the dominant stereotypes in Hindi cinema.1 The sex worker as brazenly sexual, bold and sassy and the doppelganger as a helpless, pathetic and trafficked victim who was raped and “tainted” are the two staple characterizations perpetuated in the popular psyche by dozens of Hindi films. Much like the opening sentences of a psychotherapy session, which at times encapsulates the script that is about to unfold in therapy, the dialogue excerpted from Pakeezah embodies a number of themes and stereotypes of sex workers portrayed in Hindi cinema. Sex outside marriage as tainting a woman, rape being the equivalent of death for a woman with the survivor being a living corpse and being a prostitute as a fate worse than death, from which the only release is death are popular notions in society. Even in the absence of in-depth research, there is no doubt that the construct of the sex worker in the popular North Indian imagination is majorly shaped by Hindi cinema.2 “phir meri awaara laash apne is gulabi makbare mein dafan ho jane ke liye laut aye” translates as “Again my homeless corpse has returned to get buried in this pink tomb” is illustrative of a film replete with symbolism and the dialectic play of thanatos-eros, death-life, pure-impure and respectable-­disreputable. The title of the film Pakeezah meaning “pure” is a powerful statement in the context of sex and sex work being considered the very epitome of “dirt” and “impurity.” The most famous dialogue of the film is on the theme of dirt and pollution by the hero Salim, who enraptured by the tawaif Sahibjaan proclaims: aapke paun dekhe. Bahut haseen hain. inhe zameen par utariyaga. Maile ho jayenge. I saw your feet. They are stunningly beautiful. Don’t put them down on the earth. They will get sullied.

The mother of the main protagonist Sahibjaan, also played by Meena Kumari, is driven to seek refuge in a graveyard after rejection by her lover’s 1  Manoranjan is an adaptation of the film Irma la Douce, director Billy Wilder, 1963. All translations are by the author. 2  The dialogue from Pakeezah that every courtesan is a copse finds echo in a discussion on the issue of death penalty and rape on the lawns of a women’s college with young women articulating the view that a rape survivor is akin to being dead and therefore capital punishment ought to be meted to the perpetrator.

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“respectable” family. In the stark setting amidst graves there is the dialectic play of the death instinct as the mother dies and the life instinct in the birth of the baby Sahibjaan. Pakeezah, the name given by Salim who loves her, rejects marriage and returns to the brothel and epitomizes the theme in Hindi cinema that all attempts by the sex worker to find love or any other life are doomed. The stigma of prostitution is permanent and irrevocable.

Natal Family, Lovers and In-Laws The elegant courtesan in Muzaffar Ali’s Umrao Jaan, a poetess and singer, is repeatedly referred to as “randi” (prostitute) in the eponymous 1981 film. The film is based on the 1905 Urdu novel Umrao Jaan Ada by Mirza Hadi Ruswa and follows Umrao’s rise to fame. In a poignant moment, Umrao Jaan played by Rekha, returns to her mother who is overcome with emotion on recognizing her as her daughter Ameera. The brother walks in and declares that she is not Ameera but the famous courtesan of Lucknow Umrao Jaan. As she rushes to him exclaiming “bhaiya” (brother) he spurns her: “We thought you were dead. But you are still alive. You should have drowned yourself in a puddle of water. It is better if you leave from here.” The son prevents his mother from accepting her daughter and Ameera turns away, rejected by her family. In Vaastav (1999), underworld Don Raghunath played by Sanjay Dutt is informed by his lover Sonu that she is pregnant. Raghunath orders her to get an abortion. Sonu says she wants to keep the child as it is Raghunath’s. An enraged Raghunath slaps her and drags her by her hair and accuses her of passing away someone else’s “sin” on him in order to trap him. Raghunath picks up a gun and threatens to shoot her. Other people in the brothel rush forward and stop him. He says she is the product of the gutter and must stay in the gutter. The theme of sex workers embodying filth is articulated by the father of the boy who wants to marry a prostitute in Baaghi (1990). Saajan falls in love with the sex worker Kajal and wants to marry her. The father is furious that his son wants to bring the “dirt of the brothel” and prostitution into the house. Feelings of dirtiness within oneself and at a societal level seem to be extremely distressful, intolerable and appear to be often split off and projected onto sex workers,3 thus making it more tolerable. 3  For an excellent compilation for filmic stereotypes, see footage created by Point of View (2008) entitled Zinda Laash.

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We also see the impact of the dirt-prostitute equation in Hindi cinema at play in the field of law. Judges, much like the rest of us grow up seeing films, and imbibe the correlations and stereotypes and are subject to prevailing social taboos and prejudices. However, under the constitution, judges are enjoined to prevent and redress discrimination on grounds of sex, caste, profession, religion and class, which assumes that prejudices must be kept aside. Yet, the contrary can be seen in several court judgements. To cite just one example, in 2004, the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court in a clearly discriminatory manner ordered the selective demolition of the huts of sex workers at the peak of monsoon to cleanse and restore the pristine purity of Goa sullied by prostitution.4

Reification with an Oedipal Twist In Mausam, Dr Amarnath Gill (Sanjeev Kumar), a medical student from the city on vacation in a hill station sprains his ankle and an intimate relationship blossoms with Chanda played by Sharmila Tagore.5 Gill leaves with the promise of a quick return but is amiss. Gill returns 25 years later, by then Chanda is dead and he encounters her daughter Kajli (played by Sharmila Tagore in a dual role). In a shocking encounter, Gill’s daughter Kajli, the spitting image of her mother, propositions him: Kajli: “tu kya dekh raha hai seth? chuski marni hai to upar aa! nahi to phut yahan se!” Kajli: “What are you looking at rich guy? If you want to take a sip come up! Otherwise vamoose!”

The device of the same actress playing the mother who dies as well as the daughter who is a sex worker—also employed in Pakeezah—is reflective of underlying unconscious themes at play of incestuous wishes,  See my account of the discriminatory selective demolition of sex worker homes at Baina Beach, Goa in 2004: “Carrying an order by the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court,… the state government set about bulldozing hundreds of hutments right in the midst of heavy rains lashing the area. The rationale: The restoration of an ‘unspoilt Goa’ by cleansing it of the ‘sin’ of sex work.” Shukla 2004. 5  Mausam, director Gulzar, 1975. 4

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rivalries of mother-daughter for father and at times a daughter’s wish of her mother’s death.6 The remorseful Dr Amarnath Gill brings the daughter home. In the scene, Kajli is wearing her usual clothes. Amarnath Gill: “utho! uth ke kapde badal lo.” Kajli: “dekho mardon kee tarah hokum mat chalana. bibi nahi hun tumhari. kya burai hai in kapdo mein.” Amarnath Gill: “gandi lagti ho in mein! lagta hai koi….bazaari lagti ho inmein.” Kajli: “kya jaante nahi ho kahan se laye mujhe. ….vo nahi suna tumne – kaua chala hans kee chaal apnee bhee bhul gaya. main to apna dhanda hee bhulne lagi thee. aaj jara dhande pe gayi thee isliye… apne grahak ke yahan, vo chaudhury. yaad hai, us din baithe the jab aye the.” Amarnath Gill: “Get up! Get up and change your clothes.” Kajli: “Look don’t order me like men. I am not your wife. What’s wrong with these clothes?” Amarnath Gill: “You look filthy in these clothes! It looks as if….you are an available girl.” Kajli: “Don’t you know where you brought me from…Haven’t you heard – the crow took up the gait of the swan and forgot even his own. I was almost forgetting my business….. So I had gone for business today…. I had gone to my customer, that Chaudhury. Do you remember he was there that day when you had come?”

Gill, enraged at Kajli offering him the money earned from the client Chaudhary, turns her out of the house saying—“keechad se nikli ho, keechad mein he rahogi” (trans. You have come out of muck and will stay only in muck). Kajli returns to the brothel. The exchange with the daughter saying that she had gone to the customer Chaudhury, and then adding, “you remember he was there when you had come” has a “in the face” quality of rubbing the father’s nose in the daughter having sex, possibly as a reaction to and reflection of repressed unconscious taboo attractions.7 Like destinies transcribed in stone in Hindi cinema, not only are love and marriage unviable options for a sex  For an excellent treatment of unconscious themes and Hindi cinema – see Akhtar and Choksi (2005: 139–176). 7  Freud wrote: “We are driven to believe that this rejection is principally a product of the distaste which human beings feel for their early incestuous wishes, now overtaken by repression.” Totem and Taboo, 2001: 20. 6

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worker, even being taken home by the father does not work out. “kaua hansa kee chaal nahi chal sakta”—the crow cannot walk with the gait of the swan—with all its judgemental and value laden implications of the aesthetic beauty and grace of the “white” swan and the “ugly” “black” crow reflecting the virulent racism of Indian society is also used to condemn a sex worker to a life of misery forever.

Chaals, Neighbours and Neighbourhoods The life of isolation is reified at the local level too. In the 1972 film Amar Prem,8 we have the neighbourhood kid Chandu who gets a lot of love and affection from the prostitute Pushpa played by Sharmila Tagore. Reflective of the stigmatization in society of a prostitute with whom respectable society can have no regular interaction, Chandu is beaten by his step-mother and forbidden from visiting Pushpa. The film Mandi (1983) starkly brings out the stigmatization of sex workers.9 Much like Kamathipura in Mumbai occupying prime land10 or the windows rented by sex workers in Amsterdam to be closed and replaced by boutiques and cafes to “clean-up” the red-light area,11 in Mandi the town gets mobilized and takes out a procession for the removal of prostitutes. An excerpt of the speech of the white saree-clad social worker with its appeal to the ancient Hindu culture is worth transcribing in the context of the present times. The social worker thunders: “Will we let a five-­thousand-­year-old civilization crumble into dust? We will never let this happen. Women should be worshipped as goddesses not sold in the m ­ arket!” She requests the sex workers to leave prostitution and in turn is asked by the women as to how will they earn their livelihood and eat! The film Pran Jae Par Shaan Na Jaye (2003) is illustrative of the prevalence of prejudice and stigma across classes.12 The film is set in a chaal in Mumbai.13 Word is spread about a resident: “Mona dhandha karti  Amar Prem, director Shakti Samanta, 1972.  Mandi, director Shyam Benegal, 1983. 10  “This is already visible in Mumbai, where the area in Kamathipura is now being looked upon as prime real estate considering its central location” observe Sahni and Shankar, 2013: 41. 11  See protest account of Amsterdam prostitutes, 2015. 12  Pran Jaye Par Shaan Na Jaye, director Sanjay Jha, 2003. 13  Chaal: These are one room dwelling places in multi storey buildings with a common toilet at the end of the corridor which came up with the setting up of factories and are in working class areas of the then Bombay. 8 9

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hai” (“Mona is a prostitute”).14 The chaal residents get together and break open the door of her home and retort, “Savitri ka natak bahut ho chukka. asal mein dhanda karti hai tu!” (“Enough of play acting like Savitri. In reality you work as a prostitute!”).15 Mona relates the tragic story of the death of her father, ailing mother and education of two younger brothers. Hindi cinema, society and the legal system demand total victimhood from the sex worker to offer sympathy and help. Another resident invoking the pure wife Sita in the epic Ramayana remarks, “sasuri ke tevar to dekho! jaise Sita agnipariksha mein khadi ho! dharti maia uh” (“Look at the attitude! As if Sita is standing in fire as a test! Mother Earth!”). The sex worker as essentially polluting comes across powerfully in the dialogues in Hindi. Comparisons to Sita, who was looked upon as “polluted” due to her abduction by Ravana and had to undergo test by fire to establish purity packs a powerful emotive punch. The central message of these films seems to be that in the ultimate analysis regardless of the love evoked in patrons and lovers or strong family ties and feelings there is no going back or escaping from the stigma for the sex worker with no acceptance in society. The underpinning of the popularity among the male audience of dialogues with the prostitute as “dirty” and our mother-daughter as “pure” may well be incestuous desires and consequent distressful feelings of being “unclean” and “bad,” which are then suppressed, split and projected on to the sex worker. As I have observed elsewhere, “Across communities the split of the woman glorified as wife and mother and woman as sexual object is reflected in the sex worker as immoral, corrupting, polluting and luring men into sin”.16 kaua-hansa/Crow-Swan:

Prostitute-Woman Divide

The portrayal of sex workers in much of mainstream Hindi cinema as being outside the pale of “respectable” and “normal” society is reflective of the schism in society. Furthermore, it has a devastating impact jeopardizing the very life and liberty of sex workers in the legal arena. In a soci14  In Hindi, Marathi and possibly other languages spoken in India, prostitution is referred to as dhanda—translatable as business, not as sex work or prostitution. 15  This refers to the mythological story of Satyavan and Savitri where the wife snatches back her husband from death through her devotion. 16  Shukla (2015: 181–185).

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ety, which reveres motherhood, we find the Supreme Court entertaining a petition by apparently public-spirited advocate Gaurav Jain, who on reading an article in India Today magazine moved a Public Interest Litigation in 1988 to forcibly take away children from their sex worker mothers in order to rescue them from falling into an immoral and depraved way of life. The Court did not think it fit to consider the question of the rights of “sex-worker mothers” to have their children stay with them. In spite of the “best interests” of the child being the sole parameter in questions of custody, it was not thought necessary to ascertain the wishes of the child before adjudicating on the issue.17 The attitude of the “public interest” litigant and the courts probably stems from the stereotype and prejudice of sex worker as “bad” mothers and is at odds with lived realities. Nalini Jameela, the first sex worker to write her autobiography in Kerala and caused a furore as the controversial book flew off the shelves, wrote, “I had got into the trade to support my kids. Like any other job, this one too had been tiring at times. I had carried on for their sake.”18 Like other mothers, a large proportion of women in sex work send money home and are keen for their children to study, enrol them in school, pay the school fee and regularly visit them. Some leave them in their native place with grandparents; others put them in a hostel. A significant percentage supports their old parents too. A vignette from the fact-finding report by Saheli, an autonomous women’s organization and the Peoples’ Union for Democratic Rights, into the “raid and rescue” operation at G.B. Road in Delhi in 2008 (the red-light area of the city) is illustrative: “Here at least, we do not have to go hungry,” said W18 who had come to Delhi 14 years ago.19 Her husband had left her, fell ill and died back in Andhra Pradesh (AP). She had a one-year-old boy and a two-year-old daughter at that time. For three years, she did manual labour in the village—lifting weights, construction work—and barely managed to survive. Then she came to Delhi and joined this profession. Both her children are studying in AP, but they don’t know how she makes a living. W18 goes to meet her children once in every two months. In a society valorizing motherhood, the extreme stigma Gaurav Jain versus Union of India (1990) Supp 3 SCC 709.  Oru Laingikatozhilaliyute Atmakatha (Autobiography of a Sex Worker). 2005. The book went into six editions in the first hundred days. Quote taken from the English translation, Jameela (2007: 37). 19  In the Name of Rescue, Report on the arrest of 75 sex workers in Delhi in January 2008. http://pudr.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/In%20the%20Name%20of%20Rescue.pdf. Retrieved 02.12.2016. 17 18

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tization and prejudice with regard to women in sex work is manifested in viewing them as a separate species devoid of ordinary human emotions. The Supreme Court held that the legal provision empowering Magistrates to order the removal of a prostitute from a locality20 was valid and did not violate the right to equality.21 The judgement took the view that there were “pronounced and real” differences between a woman who is a prostitute and one who is not. The infringements of the fundamental rights of sex workers to move freely and to reside in a place of choice were held to be valid.22

The Times Are a Changing main Julie – ek peshewar call girl. (Julie, 2004) I am Julie – a professional call girl.

In one of the boldest films in Hindi cinema, we have Julie striking at the very heart of hypocrisy in Indian society with dialogues like: Julie: “main Julie. pehchana? nahi. ho sakta hai apke daddy, bhai, boyfriend ya phir apke husband mujshe kahin mile hon. bataya nahin? (huhn) batayenge bhi kaise! kykokin main hun call girl….. log kahte hain main jism bechti hun, lekin asliyat to ye hai kee main mardangi kharidtee hun. vo bhi paise dekar nahi, paise lekar.” I am Julie. Did you recognize me? No. It is possible that your dad, brother, boyfriend or your husband may have met me somewhere. Didn’t mention it? (Hmm) How will they tell you! Because I am a call girl….People say I sell my body, but the reality is that I buy masculinity. That too not by giving money, but by taking money.

The dialogue is striking in its resonance to views by a certain section of feminists and a view articulated by some sex workers. In contrast to the view of sex work as ultimate degradation of women, Existential Feminism deriving from the thought of Simone de Beauvoir takes the view that prostitution allows women an avenue to escape from dependency on men that does not leave them victims but as empowered women.23 In Carol  Section 20 of The (Immoral Traffic) Prevention Act, 1956.  Article 14: Constitution of India. 22  State of Uttar Pradesh versus Kaushailiya AIR 1964 SC 416. 23  See Introduction, Weisberg (1996: 191). 20 21

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Pateman’s words directed towards the role of woman as a sex worker: “The man may think he ‘has’ her, but his sexual possession is an illusion; it is she who has him…she will not be ‘taken’, since she is being paid.”24 Jameela writes “It’s one thing to love someone. It’s yet another to give in just to please him and actually believe that his wishes are more important. We lose our freedom when we submit like that”.25 Shabana, a fiercely independent sex worker working with the Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad in Sangli Maharashtra, often articulates this view in dialogues of the sex workers movement with feminists. The stereotypes of prostitute in Hindi cinema are powerful and it is only interaction with sex workers which can make a dent. Rehabilitation of sex workers is the key word of do-gooders and bleeding hearts. We find Shabana, representing the Veshya Anyay Mukabla Parishad (VAMP) posing the question to a well-known feminist woman lawyer in a dialogue of sex workers with feminists held at Mumbai: “Will you give up your law practice and take up low paid embroidery work?”26 The alternatives offered by government schemes for rehabilitation of sex workers are invariably in the nature of low paid tedious work. Back to the film Julie, where Mihir Shandiliya (an industrialist who falls in love with Julie) says: sadiyon se hum ye mante aye hain, kee agar samaj mein veshyain nahi hoti, to humari bahu-betiyan salamat nahi rahti. Samaj mein balatkar badhte. For ages we hold the belief that if there were no prostitutes, then our daughters-­ in-law and daughters would not be safe. Rapes in society would go up.

Social activists working for the empowerment of sex workers and feminists condemn this mode of thinking; however, it does seem to represent the belief of a significant section of sex workers. Creating an atmosphere where such feelings can’t find articulation may not help in changing the perspective. Openness may help in engaging with the factors at play in the formation of this belief. It may help in exploring whether in a scenario of extreme stigmatization and projection of feelings of “dirt” and “filth” on to sex workers, perhaps the belief of serving society by decreasing rapes and keeping daughters and daughters-in-law safe may be contributing to the self-worth of the individual in sex work.  Ibid.  Jameela, (2007): 67. 26  The dialogue was part of a series of sex worker feminist dialogues initiated by SANGRAM. See Saheli News Letter (2004). 24 25

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Screen Images, Lived Realities The Evil Madam and Brothel Owner. (Sadak, 1991)

Gotya (in love with sex worker Chanda): vo kothe pe jism bechne vaali ek aurat hai. aur vo log meri shaadi us se kabhi nahi hone donge, Ravi…bhag jaana itna asaan nahi. (Sadak, 1991) She is a woman who sells her body in a brothel. They will never let me marry her, Ravi…it’s not that easy to run away.

The heroine Pooja is handed over to the evil Madam—a transgender person named Maharani—by the uncle to get his own daughter, who has been forfeited due to debt, released from the brothel. Ravi’s sister plunged to death to escape from the Maharani, after being sold by her boyfriend to a brothel. The plot is neatly set combining prejudice against hijras and for the Madam as evil incarnate. The evil exploitative Madam and the brothel owner are the staple diet of Hindi cinema and embedded in the popular psyche, including that of well-meaning Non-governmental Organizations working for the upliftment of women in prostitution. Sex workers are street smart and parting with a percentage of their earnings is a contract with a quid pro quo. Given the vulnerabilities and hazardous conditions of work, brothel owners and Madams provide protection from goondas, police and violence from clients. Given the refusal of society to move from stigmatizing morality and work towards better working conditions, the brothel and madam ensure relatively safer work conditions compared to street sex work. The demand of sex workers to be part of the entertainment industry with a legal framework to ensure safe working conditions like the film industry has found little support. Taormino, Shimizu, Penley and Miller-­ Young, speaking of the aims of the feminist porn movement declare, “It favours fair, ethical working conditions for sex workers and the inclusion of underrepresented identities and practices.”27 Seshu and Murthy write, “No one can deny that sex work often involves poor health, financial exploitation and physical and sexual abuse. However, these abuses are not intrinsic to sex work but are the result of the stigmatization and marginalization of sex workers.”28  Penley et al. (2013: Introduction, 9–20, esp.15).  Seshu and Murthy (2013: 16–44, esp.41).

27 28

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The stereotype of the evil brothel has reinforced the “raid and rescue” methodology of “rescuing” adult sex workers staying in brothels of their own volition, resulting in grave violations of the rights of women in prostitution.29 Perhaps a form of self-regulation with the co-operation of brothel owners and madams with regard to entry of minors and coerced trafficking into prostitution may work better. There is a consensus with regard to trafficking—and on the entry of minors in the profession. The difference perhaps lies in the way to go about prevention of trafficking and entry of minors. As observed elsewhere “trying to work from within the profession through gharwalis or ‘madams’ is being tried out by organisations like the Durbar Mahila Samanvaya Committee (DMSC) and VAMP with moderate success.”30

Male, Transgender and Intersex Sex Workers Male, transgender and intersex sex workers constitute a significant proportion of sex workers. The law dealing with sex work was initially premised on the assumption that all sex workers were women. The reality of male, transgender and intersex sex workers was taken cognizance of and the word “person” was substituted for “woman” by an amendment in 1986.31 However, mainstream Hindi cinema does not appear to have taken up the theme or depicted male, transgender or intersex sex workers as a main protagonist. A search throws up Indian Gigolo,32 a three-minute shot by shot retake of the opening sequence of the film American Gigolo (1980)33 with Waris Ahluwalia replacing Richard Gere. YouTube has films like Gigolo Call Boy,34 Small Films 2016 Full HD and Gigolo Husband, Hindi Hot Short Film/Movie 2016.35 29  On the issue of “rights and wrongs” of anti-trafficking methods and human rights violations of sex workers, see Banamallika Choudhary (2002: 20–24), and 2003 report by Empower Chiang Mai. 30  Shukla (2007: 18–21). 31  The 1986 amendment changed the title from Suppression of Immoral Traffic Act, 1956 (SITA) to the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act, 1956 (ITPA). 32  See Eckardt (2015). 33  American Gigolo, director Paul Schrader, 1980. 34  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rh_4FeOGyo. Retrieved 06.12.2016. YouTube has since dissociated its account because of multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement. See information at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rh_4FeOGyo 35  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPJ43DK8iUU. Retrieved 06.12.2016. YouTube has dissociated its account with this film too. See https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=FPJ43DK8iUU

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Revathi A., in A Life in Trans Activism, writes about life as a transgender sex worker: “Transgender people are the most visible among gender minorities. Most people think we are just lazy and so just get into easy options like begging or sex work. Let me ask you, do you think street based sex work is easy or fun? Do you know how vulnerable we are at the hands of the police, rowdies and clients? …Often, we are arrested for a variety of false charges. These include accusing us of obscene behaviour and the use of vulgar language in public, false charges of dealing in drugs, pick pocketing, chain snatching and false cases being foisted on us”.36 The transgender and feminine male identity outside the binary of “man” and “woman,” possibly feeding into anxieties about masculinity provokes extreme violence by state and non-state actors. Local hoodlums demand protection money and free sex without condoms. Resistance results in violent reprisals. Attempts made by male and transgender sex workers to find redress through the law results in further humiliation and demands for free sex by the police.37

Imagos and Realities: Moving Closer? Chameli, the 2004 Kareena Kapoor starrer, engages with a number of issues in a sex workers life and clearly brings out positions reflecting the articulations by the community.38 At the top is the issue of consent and entry into sex work, an issue that has dogged all dialogue with regard to sex work, whether entry is due to being trafficked, physical or economic coercion, or as a result of having been raped and “tainted.” Chameli portrays the position of a number of independent confident sex workers of taking charge of one’s life, regardless of the mode of entry. In fact, Chameli places the issue of entry into the profession in perspective and makes a serious point in an entertaining way—and spins alternate yarns—saying this story will get Rs 500 extra and this version will get Rs 1000 extra from the client. Dev D, a new interpretation based on Sarat Chandra Chattopadhya’s novel Devdas (1917) with Kalki Koechlin as Chandra, makes the same point about exercising agency, regardless of the circumstances of entry into

 Revathi, as told to Murali (2016: 52).  For vignettes of transgender and male sex workers lives see Shukla (2013: 212–242). 38  Chameli. Director Anant Balani (died before completion) and Sudhir Mishra, 2004. 36 37

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the profession.39 Taking off from the episode of the Delhi school girl MMS being shared on the net by her boyfriend. Chandra, the sex worker, does not dwell in mournful victimhood, and is much more of a self-confident and assured individual in her dealings with the world. The recent release Begum Jaan, with the tour de force that is Begum Jaan, the central character, emphatically establishes the irrelevance of the point of entry into the profession.40 The protagonist a young widow sold to a brothel takes charge of her life, opens her own establishment and takes on governments as the Radcliffe line partitioning India and Pakistan runs through the brothel. The theme instantly connects to Manto’s short story “Toba Tek Singh”, which is set in a mental asylum in Lahore some of whose inmates are to be sent to India after the creation of Pakistan and bitingly brings out the bizarreness and absurdity of the partition.41 Violence in sex work by clients, police and goondas is a prime concern of persons in prostitution. Chameli highlights the police violence for extortion and also refuses to go with a client because of history of transmission of disease and bad treatment of sex workers by the client. A client of Chandra, the sex worker played by Koechlin says, “yahan rubber to milega na. vaise mere paas medical certificate bhi ok hai.” (“Will I get a rubber (condom) here. I also have an ok medical certificate.”) Unlike ham-handed government efforts to promote safe sex, the film puts across the point in a manner far more likely to find receptivity, a vital concern of sex workers. The issue of self-respect and dignity is time and again articulated by sex workers. Shabana, regarding the myriad attempts by government to reform and rehabilitate, firmly articulates the view that there are lots of poor people in India and the schemes should address and help them, not target sex workers who earn their livelihood. We find Chameli on being offered money: “dhande waali hun Sahab, bhikari nahin.” (“I do business Sir, am not a beggar.”) Akin to reality, the film shows Chameli extremely sympathetic to Haseena, the transgender sex worker as being comrades, in sharp contrast to depiction in films like Sadak of hijras (ibid) as the very epitomes of evil.  Dev D, director Anurag Kashyap, 2009. The film Devdas has been remade many times. The first version was in Bengali. Devdas. 1928. Director Naresh Chandra Mitra. The first Hindi version was made in 1935 with K.L. Saigal as Devdas, director P.C. Barua. 40  Begum Jaan, director Srijit Mukherjee, 2017. Original version was in Bengali by the same director, Rajkahini, 2015. 41  Manto’s text was first printed in 1953 in Savera, an Urdu magazine. See Black Margins (2001: 212–220). 39

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In tune with articulations by the sex workers movement opting to use the term sex worker in place of the traditional pejorative terms like Veshya is the dialogue by Chandra: “mera bhi ek client hai, kurte vala, us se bhi nai bola jata randi. Commercial Sex Worker – CSW.” (“I also have a client – wears a kurta – he also cannot say whore. Commercial Sex Worker (CSW).”) Devika J., the translator of Nalini Jameela autobiography into English in her foreword writes: “Instead, it highlighted the ordinariness of sex work in the lives of the poorest women, its place alongside other strenuous, exploitative and demeaning work  – situations quite invisible to Kerala’s educated elite. That the boundaries dividing workplace, home and the place of sexual labour are quite unclear emerges in Jameela’s insight that the threat of sexual violence is equally forbidding in all these disparate work places”.42 Films like Chameli and Dev D are significant markers in the depiction of sex workers in Hindi cinema articulating some of the concerns voiced by sex workers movements. Demands for de-criminalization of sex work, inclusion of sex work as part of the entertainment industry and minimum standards of safety and remuneration akin to the film industry as yet have not found expression in Hindi cinema. Again, sex work is not a monolithic construct and takes many forms from the low-end highway sex work, brothel-based sex work to the high-end five-star sex work. Similarly, part-­ time sex work in combination with work in the construction industry, agricultural work or being a housewife are other sectors of the profession. The arena of cyber-sex, a growing sector and the implications, impact and dynamics for sex workers remains an unexplored area. Representations on the silver screen still have to travel a long distance to the realities of a majority of sex worker’s lives.

Works Cited Films Amar Prem, director and producer Shakti Samanta, 1972. Baaghi, director Deepak Shivdasani, producer Nitin Manmohan, Neha Arts, 1990. Begum Jaan, director Srijit Mukherji, producer Mukesh Bhatt, Vishesh Bhatt, 2017. Originally version was in Bengali. Rajkahini, director Srijit Mukherji, producer Shree Venkatesh Films, 2015.

 Devika (2007: viii–ix. Esp xiii).

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Chameli. director Anant Balani (died before completion) and Sudhir Mishra, producer Pritish Nandy Communications, 2004. Dev D, director Anurag Kashyap, producer Ronnie Screwvala, 2009. Devdas first version was in Bengali. Devdas, director Naresh Chandra Mitra, producer Eastern Films indicate,1928 and then by Pramathesh Barua and produced by New Theatres, 1935. Hindi Devdas director Pramathesh Barua, producer Pramathesh Barua and Kidar Nath Sharma, 1936; director and producer Bimal Roy, 1955; director Sanjay Leela Bhansali, producer Bharat Shah and Red Chillies Entertainment, 2002. Julie, director Deepak Shivdasani, producer Jay Agarwal, 2004. Mandi, director Shyam Benegal, producer Bhisham Bijlani, 1983. Mausam, director Gulzar, producer Mallikarunjana Rao, 1975. Pakeezah, director and producer Kamal Amrohi, 1971. Pran Jaye Par Shaan Na Jaye, director Sanjay Jha, producer Raj Lalchandani, Mahesh Manjrekar, Asoo Sahlani and Sagoon Wagh, 2003. Sadak, director Mahesh Bhatt, producer Mukesh Bhatt, 1991. Umrao Jaan, director and producer Muzaffar Ali, 1981. Vastaav, director Mahesh Manjrekar, producer Deepak Nikalje, 1999.

Books Freud, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics. Trans. James Strachey (1913; London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2001). Jameela, N. Oru Laingikatozhilaliyute Atmakatha (Kottayam: D.C.  Books, 2005).  – J.  Devika. Trans. The Autobiography of a Sex Worker (New Delhi, Westland, 2007). Revathi, A. A Life in Trans Activism: as told to Nandini Murali (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2016). Weisberg, Kelly D. ed. Applications of Feminist Legal Theory to Women’s Lives: Sex, Violence, Work and Reproduction (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996).

Articles, Book Chapters, Reports Akhtar, S. and Komal Choksi. “Bollywood and the Unconscious” in Akhtar, S. (ed). Freud along the Ganges: Psychoanalytical Reflections on the People and Culture of India (Other Press. New York, 2005): 139–176. Amsterdam Prostitutes Protest Closure of their windows. 2015. http://washington.cbslocal.com/2015/04/10/amsterdam-prostitutes-windows/.

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“Baina Beach Demolition: what about the sex-worker’s right to shelter?” InfoChange (August 2004). http://infochangeindia.org/livelihoods/131livelihoods/analysis/314-baina-beach-demolitions-what-about-the-sexworkers-right-to-shelter Choudhary, Banamallika. “Rights or the Wrongs?: a Case Study of G.B.  Road rescue-rehabilitation operation”, Namaskar, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Kolkata: Durbar Prakashini, 2002): 20–23. Devika J. “Translator’s Foreword” in Nalini Jameela’s, The Autobiography of a Sex Worker (New Delhi: Westland Books, 2007): vii–xv. Eckardt, Stephanie. “Watch Indian Gigolo, a new short film”, The Cut (Sept 10, 2015): https://www.thecut.com/2015/09/watch-indian-gigolo-a-new-shortfilm.html Empower: “A report by Empower Chiang Mai on the human rights violations women are subjected to when ‘rescued’ by anti-trafficking groups who employ methods using deception, force and coercion” (June 2003). https://www. nswp.org/sites/nswp.org/files/Empower%20report%20on%20forced%20rescue.pdf Manto, Sadaat Hasan. “Toba Tek Singh” in M. Asaduddin Trans. and M. Asaduddin and M.U.  Memon Ed. Black Margins: Sa’adat Hasan Manto Stories (New Delhi, Katha, 2001): 212–220. Penley, Constance, Celine Perreň as Shimizu, Mireille Miller-Young, Tristan Taormino. “Introduction: The Politics of Producing Pleasure” in Tristan Taormino, Celine Perreň as Shimizu and Mireille Miller-Young Ed. The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure (New York: The Feminist Press, 2013): 9–20. Saheli and People’s Union for Democratic Rights. “In the name of rescue: report on the arrest of 75 sex workers in Delhi in January 2008” (2009). http://pudr. org/sites/default/files/pdfs/In%20the%20Name%20of%20Rescue.pdf Saheli Women’s Resource Centre. “The Women’s Movement And Our Troubled Relationship with Prostitution: A Dialogue on Saheli Day” (Newsletter, Sept– Dec 2004). https://sites.google.com/site/saheliorgsite/home/the-womens-movement-and-our-troubled-relationship-with-prostitution-a-dialogue-onsaheli-day Sahni, Rohini and Kalyan V.  Shankar. “From Centre to Periphery and Back, Tracing the Journey of Spaces in Prostitution”, in The Business of Sex (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2013): 99–124. Seshu, Meena Saraswathi and Laxmi Murthy. “The Feminist and the Sex Worker” in The Business of Sex (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2013): 16–44. “Sex Workers: Repositories of the “bad”?” International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 (June 2015): 181–185.

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Shukla, Rakesh. “A Walk through the Labyrinth of Sex Work Law”, in Laxmi Murthy and Meena Saraswathi Seshu Ed. The Business of Sex (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2013): 212–242. “Women with Multiple Partners in a Commercial Construct”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 42, No. 1 (January 6–12, 2007): 18–21.

E Sources Point of View. “Impurities: Zinda Laash, Representation of sex workers in Bollywood” (2008). https://pad.ma/JO/player/GP

PART III

The Question of Violence

Nutan (Bandini, 1963); Hema Malini (Lal Patthar, 1971) (Editors’ Screengrab)

CHAPTER 11

The Caged Woman: Female Guilt, Desire and Transgression in Bandini (1963) Smita Banerjee

Bimal Roy’s (1909–1966) Bandini (1963, The Imprisoned Woman) is one of the few popular Hindi films made in Bombay that has a woman prisoner as a protagonist. Starring the acclaimed female star of 1950s–1960s Hindi films, Nutan (1931–1991), the film won the National award for Best Hindi Film (1964) and the Filmfare award for best actress (1963).1 This chapter focuses on the woman prisoner Kalyani, a transgressor whose story of crime, guilt and desire is narrated from a gendered perspective. The questions posed are: does imprisonment ‘correct’ Kalyani, the deviant woman? How does one read the ending of the film where Kalyani runs towards her ailing lover and turns away from married life? How should one slot this ‘bad’ girl who follows her heart?

1  Filmfare awards were instituted by the well-known newspaper group, The Times of India in 1954 (the same year that National Film awards were instituted). Filmfare is a prestigious popular award given to both commercial and critically acclaimed films and people working in Bombay and regional film industries in India.

S. Banerjee (*) Delhi College of Arts & Commerce, Delhi University, Delhi, India © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_11

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Based on a Bengali short story ‘Tamashi’, written by Jarasandha (1902–1981), Bandini is set in 1930s pre-independence India.2 Kalyani lives with her postmaster father in a village.3 A swadeshi revolutionary leader Bikash Ghosh (Ashok Kumar 1911–2001) is incarcerated by the police there and Kalyani falls in love with him.4 The lovers face slander as Kalyani nurses an ailing Bikash at night in her home, in her father’s absence. They decide to get married, but Bikash is taken away and disappears from her life. Village gossip forces her to leave her home. Kalyani finds employment as a maid in a city psychiatric clinic. When she is assigned to look after a hysterical female patient, Kalyani discovers that she is Bikash’s wife. In an extreme state of emotional trauma brought on by the death of her father, as also perhaps by the frustrations of her difficult life, Kalyani poisons the woman, confesses and is sent to prison. The film begins at this point, when we meet her as a prisoner and she volunteers to nurse an inmate suffering from tuberculosis. The young prison doctor, Devendra (Dharmendra 1935–), is smitten by Kalyani’s devotion as a care giver. The humane Jailor, Mahesh Chandra (Tarun Bose 1928–1972) too is impressed with Kalyani. Driven by a zeal for reform, he recommends that her sentence be commuted for exemplary prison record. He also convinces Devendra’s mother to accept Kalyani as her daughter-in-law after her release from prison. In the penultimate sequence, a chance encounter on the steamer jetty leads her to an ailing Bikash and in the closing scene she chooses to go with him and gives up on the prospect of marriage with Devendra. The film deploys the structural device of using her

2  Jarasandha was the pseudonym of Charu Chandra Chakraborty, an acclaimed Bengali writer. He was a prison officer and retired as the superintendent of Alipore Central jail, Kolkata. Known for his humanistic renditions of prison life, his novel Tamashi was first published in 1958. The dedication for the novel read ‘For those ill-fated women who dream of creating a home while incarcerated’ (Jarasandha 1988). The film Bandini focuses on the principal character Hina while other women inmates appear fleetingly in the film but have their separate life stories in the novel. 3  The village and the city where Kalyani works as a maid at a clinic are unnamed in the film. The film remains vague about specifics of locale. 4  The Swadeshi were revolutionaries who adopted militant means of resistance to British rule. The film leaves out specific historical contexts. However the references to bombings, secret meetings, police raids, Kalyani’s brother’s death in police shoot-out, Bikash’s incarceration and the hanging of a young revolutionary indicate that the revolutionaries belong to the swadeshi movement.

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voice over in flashback as well as her ‘writing’ her life story as a journal for the Jailor, to foreground a gendered perspective.5 To understand Kalyani’s characterisation as a woman prisoner, I refer to one of the most well-known prison dramas, V. Shantaram’s Do Aankhen Barah Haath (DABH 1957) as a point of comparison.6 Both these films can be understood by deploying the Foucauldian insight into the modern penal system.7 The exercise of the gentler method of ‘discipline’, ‘correc5  This use of the ‘embodied voice over’ has been discussed by Silverman in her work on the female voice in Hollywood film of the 1940s–1950s (Silverman 1988). The embodied VO describes traumatic events related to the past that impinge on the present. Silverman’s analysis helps engage productively with this cinematic device of plotting Kalyani’s life story in the film. This film can also be read as a woman’s film, a term used by Mary Doane to analyse some Hollywood films. She seeks to recover a feminine subjectivity via psychoanalysis. Doane discusses films that present us with certain familiar articulations of femininity, which despite their particular historical location can speak powerfully enacting ‘mythemes of femininity (which) trade on their very familiarity and recognizability’ (Doane 1987: 3). It can be suggested that for Indian audiences and Jury in the 1960s, Kalyani’s story of crime and guilt, as well as her nurturing nature and sacrifice might have been seen as such a ‘mytheme of femininity’. 6  It won the National award for Best Film in Hindi and Direction (1958) and the Silver Bear at Berlin International Film Festival. http://dff.nic.in/2011/5th_nff. Indian cinema has fewer instances of the prison film, male prison dramas such as Do Aankhen Barah Haath (1957), Sholay (1975), Anjaam (1994, women prisoners) and Umbartha/Subah (Marathi/ Hindi 1982, life of a female jail warden). For a feminist analysis of women outlaws in Hindi films see Shohini Ghosh, ‘Deviant Pleasures and Disorderly Women: The Representation of the Female Outlaw in Bandit Queen and Anjaam” in Kapur, 1996: 150–183. Ghosh’s essay illuminates the myriad strategies of cinematic representation of female deviancy that are mobilized in these two films. Kalyani is differently represented in Bandini as she is not an outlaw. However I have found this essay useful in thinking through issues of female transgression. This genre seems to be more popular in Hollywood cinema, and on American, British and Australian satellite networks. Its defining characteristics have been well documented and studied in these contexts. See Startup (2000). Also Prison Service Journal Alternative Representations of the Prison and Imprisonment, 2012. This special issue focuses on alternative readings of prison life in the American context, providing an interesting entry to conceptually imagine the varied real life experiences of the inmates’ life and their perceptions about crime and incarceration. 7  I draw upon Foucault’s ideas about the modern penal system, imprisonment and reforming criminal bodies into docile and obedient citizens as formulated in Discipline and Punish, 1976. Foucault describes the modern prison as a panopticon where the prisoners had to remain under surveillance at all times. In a succinct review Garland summarises the manner and method of the modern penal system as discussed by Foucault (Garland 1986: 847–880). The panopticon gaze disciplined and corrected the prisoners by deploying ‘gentler forms of control  – inspection, discipline, normalization’ (849). The guilty person had to be disciplined not by punitive or inhuman torture but by making his/her soul (as the ‘soul is the seat of habit’, Garland, 856) the object of correction and reform.

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tion’ and prisoner reform underlines the contexts of incarceration that we see in both films. It is important to mention that these two prison dramas, classics of Hindi cinema, were made in the 1950s–1960s and can be read as exemplifying a particular agenda of the Nehruvian secular and the ideal of the new nation as an all-inclusive space. DABH narrates the story of six convicted murderers who are sought to be ‘reformed’ by the enlightened jail warden Adinath (V. Shantaram 1901–1990). He takes them to a derelict farm. The warden manages to instil the virtues of hard work in the surly criminals. His guidance succeeds as the labour of the prisoners results in a good harvest. However, the warden is killed by the corrupt local trader. The hardened criminals realise that despite their criminal pasts they still have residual humanity in their souls and can become productive citizens. In this instance, popular cinema provided the affective and emotive space for the unlawful to vie for social inclusion. The National award citation is indicative of the message of the film. Commending the ‘conversion’ of the ‘beasts into men’, the citation concludes by mentioning that the reformed criminals refuse to leave Azad Nagar (the commune), built with the sacrifice of their redeemer, even after Adinath’s death: ‘They are no more murderers but ordinary men.’8 Using the Foucauldian grid one can suggest that the film lays bare the structures of ‘discipline and correction’ used by the warden who attempts to understand the criminals and transforms them. The film ends on an affirmative note as the erstwhile criminals internalise the ‘need’ for disciplining their bodies. Turned into conforming productive citizens, they are happy to labour and toil in their farm. The state project that Foucault’s book lays bare is realised in this film. Bandini too foregrounds issues of prisoner reform, gentler forms of criminal correction and the need for reintegration into society.9 The Jailor, Mahesh Chandra’s attitude to Kalyani exemplifies this. The need to understand Kalyani’s background is shown in a number of prison scenes; she is projected as a courageous and selfless woman dedicated to serving others. Both the Jailor and the doctor are impressed by her educated background and her ‘differences’ from ‘common’ inmates. Her written journal too  http://dff.nic.in/2011/5th_nff  Roy regarded as one of the greats of Hindi cinema of the 1950s–1960s is known for his socialist ideology in the annals of Indian film history. He began his career in Calcutta with New Theatres and subsequently moved to Bombay. His filmography is defined by many expressions of social films both in Hindi and Bengali: Do Bigha Zamin (1953 plight of landless labourer, feudal oppression), Sujata (1959, caste based discrimination), Udayer Pathe (1944/Hamrahi, Hindi), Biraj Bou (1954), and so forth. 8 9

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aids the Jailor in his understanding of her. He is convinced that she deserves a future untainted by her crime and punishment. The sequence where she describes her crime functions to induce empathy with her suffering. The unfolding of the narrative and the murder sequence make it obvious that Kalyani is not a hardened criminal (unlike the murderers in DABH), but an unfortunate woman who kills because of intense psychological pressure.10 It is important to describe the scene in some detail as the staging of her deviant act is meant to draw the spectator into the internal turmoil that she experiences. We know that Kalyani was forced to leave her village due to the scandal involving Bikash. As a maid in the clinic, she shows remarkable patience in dealing with the neurotic demands of the female patient. The sequence where she poisons the woman is a long one. Informed by her village friend, Kalyani goes to the hospital where her father who had come to the city searching for her was admitted. Roy uses a top angle shot as we see Kalyani looking at her father’s inert form shrouded in a white sheet. Then we see her getting up as the soundtrack reverberates with the chants of Vaishnava padabali that her father was fond of.11 She moves in a trance, and we next see her back in the clinic, with the chanting still audible on the sound track. She slowly walks and we hear a shrill screech calling her. It’s the woman who rudely asks for tea as her husband is visiting. Kalyani fulfils her demands but gets a shock on catching a glimpse of Bikash in the mirror as she is about to enter. She spills the tea. Rebuked and sent out by the woman, Bikash remains unaware of Kalyani’s presence. The scene shifts to Kalyani lighting a stove to make tea. At this point, Roy uses a brilliant soundscape of smelting and forging metal with some welding shots of burning flames visible from the windows. The shot composition suggests that the welding is being done outside the clinic.12 The 10  This act of deviancy underscores the stereotype of the woman criminal who is different from the male criminal as she commits the crime under psychological traumatic state. This reinforces the idea of gendered crime where women are categorized as emotional, hysterical, non-rational beings incapable of preplanned motivational crime (see Dykes 2001: 22–30). 11  Vaishnava padabali, lyrics and chants sung in praise of Krishna by Vaishnavas which was a religious sect founded in fifteenth century by Sri Chaitanya in Bengal. The core doctrine imagines Krishna as the supreme deity and promulgates a specific mode of Bhakti (devotion). I shall discuss this devotional philosophy later in the chapter as a significant construct to understand Kalyani. 12  The dense use of sound and dreamlike quality of the scene leaves it ambiguous, it could be suggested that the soundscape and expressionistic lighting is completely unrealistic and it

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hissing sound of the stove, the roaring flames and the hammering and welding metal creates almost an expressionistic dense mise en scene, which is Kalyani’s mindscape of agony. Roy uses a close up of Kalyani lit up from below with unkempt hair and blazing eyes. As she slowly glides past the medicine cupboard, we see the tea cup superimposed against a bottle of poison. The scene cuts to the staircase with a billowing curtain; the loud sound of the earlier sequence is now completely silenced. A cry pierces the still scene and we see a maid rushing out after discovering the dead body. The next sequence is significant where the police are summoned. A perplexed Bikash seems convinced about foul play till Kalyani is brought forward. He changes his statement to claim that his wife had committed suicide. Interestingly, it is Kalyani who disagrees and confesses her crime. She remains firm in her conviction of guilt.13 The characterisation of the shrill and shrewish wife is used to facilitate audience sympathy with Kalyani as is the long murder sequence and her confession. Using the Foucauldian insight, I want to suggest that Kalyani’s punishment and incarceration can be productively read via a focus on her relationship with the humane Jailor and prison doctor. How does the prison system function as a site where the state-society compact tries to discipline this errant and deviant woman? I suggest that their empathy and sympathy for her are discursively encoded within a gendered domain of power as the Jailor can think of only marriage as an option for her. He knows of Devendra’s attraction towards her. He urges Devendra’s mother to accept Kalyani and not send her to the women’s home run by Devendra’s family. He is willing to excuse her terrible transgression of manslaughter because of her mental suffering as discussed above. He presumes Kalyani would be willing to ‘live a second life of incarceration in marriage’, as he jokingly remarks on her release from prison. Despite his good intentions, the Jailor remains the benevolent patriarch who wants to script Kalyani’s post-prison life, regulated and controlled within marriage. He does not feel the need to ask what she desires. While taking on board the humane approach to a woman prisoner, the terms under which she is to be included and ‘accepted’ back into the social is via marriage given that her jail term has shown that she is a nurturing, caring and hard-working woman, whereas in DABH is an outward manifestation of Kalyani’s traumatic mental landscape. I am indebted to Ira Bhaskar’s comments on this scene analysis. 13  Rajadhayksha and Wilemen (1998: 376) say that this film ‘is the only consistent expression of female guilt in Indian cinema’.

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the male prisoners are commended for being reformed into hard-working productive farmers. Has Kalyani been ‘reformed’ and ‘tamed’ into a docile body, expunged of her deviant ways? Does the woman have no agency? I want to read two scenes from the film; Kalyani being proposed to by Devendra and being told of her release by the Jailor, who informs her that Devendra’s mother has agreed to the marriage. In both scenes, Kalyani either articulates her refusal or remains silent. The shots that frame her look and her gaze are important to analyse as these visual cues signal her transgressions. In the proposal scene, we see Kalyani and Devendra standing opposite each other, separated by a flower shrub, a visual barrier that indicates the gulf between them. Kalyani declines his proposal, underscoring the impossibility of the union. Even in an earlier scene, we see Devendra and Kalyani conversing standing separated by a half-open door. As Devendra declares his attraction to her, Kalyani is seen in profile with a frowning look. Her body language and the shot composition clearly signify her mute refusal to fall in docilely with the plans being made for her. In these instances, she remains silent, with a slightly turned face as if she is listening but not agreeing. Despite the reformist agenda and the humanising vision, Bandini gives us a woman prisoner who remains a non-conformist. She resists being included back into polite society, rejects marriage and escapes to be with her lover. Why does Kalyani refuse to ‘conform’, unlike the ‘reformed criminals’ of DABH? What does her silence signify? Kalyani’s silence is taken as acceptance by the well-meaning men around her, never imagining that her silence could be non-acquiescence. The framing of her look with the frown of denial is important in these scenes. The Jailor goes on speaking oblivious of her frown, but the viewers are cued into her disapproval of the plans being made on her behalf. Kalyani’s obduracy and her silence can be read as modes of resistance to patriarchal expectations of her. Her recalcitrance regarding all forms of control and discipline, even benevolent attempts at controlling and reforming her via ‘marriage’ can be understood in the context of her upbringing within a Vaishnava household as discussed later. Kalyani is not an example of frail femininity. She can be located in a grid of strong independent women characters who inhabit Roy’s filmic oeuvre. His associate Bimal Dutta says, ‘In many of the romantic novels of the 1950s that Bimal Da chose you will find that men are weak. Women have always suffered when men refused responsibility; were unable to act… Bimalda’s heroines are “heroic”… his female protagonists stand out as

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brilliant examples of emotional integrity’.14 Kalyani’s strong will is in sharp contrast to Bikash’s lack of initiative. Despite loving Kalyani, he accepts the party’s diktat to marry a woman chosen for him, who would prove useful in the nationalistic cause. In Kalyani, we encounter the figuration of the educated new woman, independent and proactive, one who seems capable of taking charge of her life and destiny.15 Her calm acceptance of her guilt rests on her emotional integrity. Her dedication and selfless prison service are not to my mind an indication of her being tamed into docility or being co-opted by the panoptic gaze of the prison.16 The challenging and arduous tasks that she sets for herself are an indication of her moral convictions, fostered by her nationalist father and revolutionary elder brother. Kalyani’s initial refusal to consider Devendra’s marriage proposal stems from her realisation that she has to pay a price for her crime. In this sense, she resists all attempts to ‘correct’ her. She retains her transgressive desires, masked within her caring and nurturing persona, cloaking her real self from the Jailor or Devendra. This transgressive passionate self is seen in the flashback sequences that stage her desire for Bikash and are useful to understand her decision to choose him. I will use one sequence, the first shot of Kalyani looking at Bikash and three songs to substantiate my argument. It is through Kalyani’s gaze that we first see Bikash. She knows he is an imprisoned revolutionary, kept under guard. We see a shawl clad man’s back and Kalyani remarks, ‘inki hasi to bari anokhi hai’, his laughter is very unique. We are made to look at the woman’s attraction for a stranger and a revolutionary being articulated clearly through her point-of-view shot, where the object of her look is not reciprocating her gaze yet. Later, she is deputed to deliver a message to him by the revolutionaries. Pretending to pluck flowers for puja, she goes inside the compound and knocks on his  Bhattacharya, 167–171.  The modernity thesis that had fashioned itself in the colonial period was the bedrock on which the nationalist imaginary had mapped itself inhabiting a modernity that could demarcate it from the homogenizing template of western modernity. Partha Chatterjee has argued that in the nationalist imaginary this impulse to define Indian modernity as counter to the Western modular forms rested on the separation of the outer and the inner, the material and the spiritual. These negotiations primarily got projected onto the figure of the new woman being directed and circumscribed by the concerns of new patriarchy (Chatterjee in Sangari and Vaid, 2006: 233–253). 16  The panoptic gaze is central to Foucault’s exposition of the modern penal system where the inmates are disciplined with surveillance and coerced into becoming docile subjects. 14 15

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door. We see Bikash open the door and the two figures are seen looking at each other: Bikash inside the darkened room, Kalyani at the doorstep with flowers in her hand. Mishra (2012) interprets this scene as an instance of Kalyani’s devotion to Bikash.17 I do not concur with Mishra’s reading entirely. While accepting the idea/ideal of devotion as exemplified by Kalyani, we need to unpack the nature of the love and devotion/sacrifice that this woman enacts. To my mind, the specific cultural codes of Bengal Vaishnava/Bhakti philosophy and the trope of Radha’s love, passion and devotion can be productively deployed to read Kalyani’s love. I draw on De (1942), Sangari (1990) and Panjabi (2000) to do so. The ethics of Bengal Vaishnavism positioned Radha’s love for Krishna as the highest form of devotion. According to De, ‘the highest ideal of the devotee like that of Radha is the desire of a woman eternally seeking to satisfy her lover’.18 Known for the ‘canonization of erotic love’,19 ‘madhurya rati’, the tender emotional love, it advocated ‘religiously sublimated erotic love’.20 It shifted the ‘emphasis from service and surrender to mutual attachment and attraction between Krishna and the devotee’.21 The Radha theme ‘glorified a woman passionately in love with a man against stiff social opposition and portrays the tragic separation of lovers’.22 In Bhakti, the ‘Radha figure [is] represented as the inseparable shakti of Krishna… she was simultaneously the parakiya, or another’s wife, involved in an 17  Mishra borrows Ravi Vasudevan’s concept of ‘darshana’ as a specific trope of Indian melodrama to read this scene. Vasudevan has used this concept to analyse Parvati and Devdas’s encounter in Bimal Roy’s Devdas (1955). In the scene, we see Parvati lighting a lamp for evening puja as Devdas is seen climbing the stairs to her room. As she opens the door we see Devdas on the threshold, his face lit by her lamp almost as if he takes the place of her lord. The sounds of conch shells add to the idea of the woman performing puja, but her being inside her room is read as a confinement where the historical conditions are not conducive for the realisation of her desire as she is circumscribed by her gender (Mishra and Mishra 2012: 1–12). Interestingly in Bandini Roy again uses a similar shot composition. Here Kalyani is outside while Bikash is inside. Despite the changes, in placing of the actors, the visual cues of the woman’s devotional offering to her lover are repeated. 18  De (1942: 419). See also Sheth, 183–202. Sheth says Bhakti is a form of personal devotion, a reciprocal relationship between devotee and God, its structure of affect is emotion the Hladini sakti (the power that possesses joy) of Radha (183). Preman Bhakti is the highest form of Bhakti for the devotee (191); Madhurya rasa can be love in union or love in separation (194). 19  De, 418. 20  Ibid., 214. 21  See Introduction in Panjabi (2000: 12). 22  Das cited in Panjabi, 12.

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illicit love and hence subject to cruel separation’.23 Sangari says that Bhakti was often a mode of dissent that followed a structure of personal devotion. It made a language available for the female voice, which is given agency as the articulate being, best exemplified by Meerabai and Radha’s love, ­longing and desire as passionate suffering for Krishna.24 The gendered perspective of this form of Bhakti foregrounds the woman in love and her articulate desire for her lover. Bandini foregrounds Kalyani’s love that emerges out of her education nurtured in Vaishnava philosophy as her father is a Vaishnava scholar and we see Kalyani and Bikash discuss padabalis, lyrics praising Krishna and Radha’s love. I now turn to the two romantic songs that signpost her as the Radha image: jogi jab se tu aaya mere duare, mere rang gaye saanjh sakare ja ke panghat be baithun main Radha diwani bin jal liye chali aaun Radha diwani mohe ajab ye rog laga re… Ascetic since you came to my door my days are filled with colours I come away from the well without filling water I am mad like Radha, I have this strange malaise mora gora aang lei le, mohe shyam rang dei de, chup jaungi raat hi mein mohe pi ka sang dei de kahan le chal hain manwa mohe baawri banike… Take my fair complexion, give me his dark colour, I shall hide in the night with my lover, where is my heart leading me in madness

The two songs draw on the linguistic repertoire of the Vaishnava tradition. Both songs are picturised on Kalyani and she sings them. We do not see Bikash except as a shadow in the distance and there is no exchange of  Panjabi, 38.  Sangari (1990).

23 24

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looks between them. The songs express Kalyani’s desire for her jogi, the ascetic, who has come to her door. She wants to give up her fair complexion to embrace his dark tone.25 The first song articulates her burgeoning desire for her lover; the second uses the tropes of female shringar, erotic sensuous beauty, to stage her sense of exhilaration at the prospect of meeting her lover as she adorns herself. Visually, the first song places her in the open fields singing joyously against the blue sky of her blossoming love and attraction, the solitary woman articulating her feelings to the entire landscape. Significantly, she describes herself as Radha, mad for Krishna in her desire. The next song hints at a night time secret tryst with her lover, being led into madness with her passion and desire. These songs and their visual staging are significant registers that map Kalyani’s desires onscreen. Following Bhaskar, I read the use of songs productively as a specific narrative trope, which foregrounds the expressive desires of individual subjectivities that might be socially transgressive and cannot be expressed in dialogue.26 She has insightfully pointed out that the song and its narrative function must not be understood as extraneous or as a paranarrative element in Indian melodramas27; rather its staging, especially in romantic melodramas, ‘expresses the central meaning of the sequence – meanings that have to do with emotional intelligibility and the exteriorising of inner subjective states’.28 To sum up, in Bandini, the specific use of the language of love, longing and separation expressed in the songs is staged through the woman in love, who is invested with the desiring gaze that is denied to the male. The gaze of this desiring woman comes to rest in its final space of devotion in the last sequence of the film. This long sequence begins as Kalyani is being escorted to Devendra’s place and she chances upon an ailing Bikash at the steamer station, going back to his native village. As her mis25  In Bengal Vaishnavism, the ‘syama rang’, dark complexion of Krishna signifies his material and literal manifestation (see De, 250). The fact that Kalyani wants to give up her fair complexion and take on her lover’s darker complexion is indicative of her desire for him. 26  Bhaskar (2012: 161–176). 27  This idea of designating the song as external to the narrative has been read as dictated by using the song as interlude to a segment of the running text (Sangari in Panjabi, 2000: 256–287). Sangari points out that both Prasad and Vasudevan argue that this externalisation of the song is occasioned by the disaggregated nature of the form of popular cinema and its dispersed production circuit (Vasudevan 2000: 10; Prasad 1998: 29–52 cited in Sangari 2000: 275). 28  Bhaskar, 166.

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understandings about his desertion are cleared, she gets to know of his impending death due to tuberculosis. We see Kalyani and Bikash going their separate ways; we hear a singer sitting in a shack on the docks sing a bhatiyali.29 mere sajan hain is paar, main man maar hun us paar o mere majhi abki baar le chal paar main bandini piya ki, main sangini hoon saajan ki mera khinchti hain aanchal man meet teri har pukar My love is on the other shore And bereaved, I am on this side, Boatman, take me to him… I am his prisoner, his companion His cry tugs at my heart

The song is about the pangs of separation, a girl’s viraha, from her saajan (lover), and her plea to the boatman to take her to him. The lyrics accentuate Kalyani’s longing, as the singer sings about being her lover’s prisoner, his companion and that her heartstrings are torn with his every call. We see Kalyani suddenly stop with a startled expression as if she can feel the pull on her soul, and turn towards Bikash’s retreating figure. She starts walking to him as he goes aboard the steamer. Her attendant cries, ‘Kalyani hamara raasta udhar hai’, our destination is that way, she replies, ‘nahin mera udhar hai’, no-no, mine is that way, and runs towards the steamer. We see her clamber onto the moving boat. She finds Bikash on the deck. She goes to him and falls at his feet and he raises her. The two figures embrace, with Kalyani’s profile clearly visible as she closes her eyes in her lover’s arms. Is it the ultimate sacrifice as she chooses her dying lover?30 I read this as the final act of transgression of the recalcitrant woman, who could not be tamed into docility by her punishment and escapes the bondage of matrimony. She chooses her lover, whose wife she has killed.31 Despite the 29  Bhatiyali is a form of folk song sung by Bengali boatmen as they travel downstream. In the film S.D. Burman composed this song using the bhatiyali tune and it is picturised on him. 30  Vijay Mishra has termed the ending as ‘a moral reminder of the need of sacrifice in the wake of the Indo-China War’ (Mishra 2000: 10). 31  It can be argued that the film condones her manslaughter, as I have shown in my analysis and that it presents an anti-feminist negative image by giving us a woman who kills and gets

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embrace, the ending needs unpacking as it is not a fairy tale closure. The ending of the woman prisoner can only begin anew with her dying lover, in some obscure village. We must remember the haunting prison song sung by a woman inmate earlier in the film, aabke baras bhej bhaiya ko babul, send my brother to fetch me Father. The lament of the song articulates the impossibility of the women prisoners finding a brother or a father who could take them away. Kalyani too has no brother or father left, she must choose her own path, however difficult and painful it may be. This trope of the ‘sacrificing’ woman need not be read as a victim narrative, poignant though it is. It can also be one that provides the virahini her agency through her passion and suffering. Her love and devotion are itself a transgressive act. Bandini imagines and stages the story of the ultimate recalcitrant woman who remains the ‘bad girl’, and escapes taming and reform.

Works Cited Films Bandini. Director and producer Bimal Roy, 1963. Do Aankhen Barah Haath. Director V. Shantaram. Producer Rajkamal Kalamandir, 1957.

Books Doane, Mary Ann. The Desire To Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987). Jarasandha. Jarasandha Rachnabali (Kolkata: Mitra and Ghosh, 1988). Mishra, Vijai. Bollywood Cinema; Temples of Desire (New York and London: Routledge, 2000). Panjabi, Kavita (ed). Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia: Love, Loss and Liberation (Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan, 2000).

away with it. My reading of Kalyani’s crime does not see her as good versus bad but as a complex character who loves, kills and is willing to take responsibility for her actions and chooses to script her own story. It needs to be noted that there is no courtroom or sentencing scene in the film. The narrative is not invested in showing us any interiority of Bikash’s wife, and almost seems to absolve Bikash of any responsibility. He is also not given a heroic end, he after all sacrificed his self and his body bears the mark of that sacrifice, he will die of consumption.

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Prasad, Madhava M. Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998). Rajadhyaksha Ashish, Paul Wilemen. Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema (New Delhi: OUP, 1998). Silverman, Kaja. The Acoustic Mirror: the Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema (Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1988). Thoraval, Yves. Cinemas Of India (1896–2000) (New Delhi: Macmillan, 2000). Vasudevan, Ravi ed. Making Meaning in Indian Cinema (New Delhi: OUP, 2000)

Articles Bhaskar, Ira. “Emotion, Subjectivity and Limits of Desire: Melodrama and Modernity in Bombay Cinema 1940s–50s” in Christine Gledhill ed., Gender Meets Genre in Post War Cinema (Chicago and Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 161–176. Chatterjee, Partha. “The Nationalist Resolution of the Woman Question” in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid ed.,  Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2006), 233–253. Clowers, Marsha. “Dykes, Gangs, and Danger: Debunking Popular Myths about Maximum Security life”, Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2001), 22–30. Ghosh, Shohini. “Deviant pleasures and Disorderly Women: The Representation of the Female Outlaw in Bandit Queen and Anjaam” in Ratna Kapur ed., Feminist Terrains in Legal Domains: Interdisciplinary essays on Women and Law in India (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1996), 150–183. Mishra, Manisha and Maitryee Mishra. “Marriage, Devotion and Imprisonment: Women in Bimal Roy’s Devdas and Bandini”, Global Media Journal – Indian Edition/ISSN 2249–5835, Vol. 3, No.1 (June, 2012), 1–12. Sangari, Kumkum. “Viraha; A trajectory in the Nehruvian Era” in Kavita Panjabi ed.,  Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia: Love, Loss and Liberation (Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan, 2000), 256–287.

E-Resources Bhattacharya, Rinki. bimalroy pdf. PDF accessed on 3/12/2016. De, Sushil Kumar. Early History of Vaisnava Faith and Movement In Bengal (Calcutta: General Printers and Publishers, 1942). PDF accessed on 4/5/2017. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1976). PDF accessed on 6/15/2016. Garland, David. “Review: Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish” An Exposition and Critique.” American Bar Foundation Research Journal, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Autumn, 1986), 847–880. PDF accessed on 4/5/2017.

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Kearon Micheal, Tony Fiddler. Prison Service Journal, Vol. 199 (Jan 2012). PDF accessed on 6/15/2016. Sangari, Kumkum. “Mirabai and the Spiritual Economy of Bhakti”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 25, No. 7 (July 7, 1990). PDF accessed on 8/1/2017. Sheth, Noel. “Loving devotion (bhakti) as the best means and highest end in Bengal Vaishnavism”, Disputatio Philosophica, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2001), 183–202. PDF accessed 4/5/2017. Startup, Radojka. Damaging Females: Representations of women as victims and perpetrators of crime in mid-nineteenth century. PhD Thesis (London: Department of History University College London, 2000). PDF accessed on 6/15/2016.

CHAPTER 12

“itni bhhi mahaan main nahi hoon, raja!” (I’m not that Great, O King): The Angry Young Woman of the 1970s Menka Ahlawat

I The decade of the 1970s is acknowledged by film scholars as being crucial for the Bombay film industry in terms of the major cinematic shifts— new scripts and topoi and styles of film-making—which accompanied the changing social and political gears of the moment.1 Popular imagination recognizes the new cinematic pulse of the 1970s most readily in the form of the Angry Young Man. This genre of films began with Prakash Mehra’s Zanjeer (Chains, 1973, written by Salim-Javed), which also catapulted Amitabh Bachchan to stardom as the face of the rebellious persona of ‘Vijay’ (Victory). He went on to enact this role for the next two decades in scores of films: Gulshan Rai’s Deewar (The Wall, 1975), G.P. Sippy’s Sholay (Embers, 1975), A.K. Nadiadwala’s Adalat (Court, 1976), Gulshan Rai’s Trishul (Trident, 1978) and so on. The plotline of 1

 See Biswas (2007: 4), Joshi and Dudrah (2014: 2) and Virdi (2003: 145).

M. Ahlawat (*) Mata Sundri College for Women, Delhi University, Delhi, India © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_12

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these films, albeit with intra-genre permutations and combinations (see Table 12.1), involves vigilante action by the brooding hero, frequently from a working-class background, to avenge social injustices against him or other characters. This chapter, however, would like to throw the spotlight on a different figure. In roughly the same time period when Bachchan’s angry young man was being hailed as a proletarian ‘super hero’, a ‘saviour’, ‘a patchwork of minorities’, who helped inaugurate ‘an aesthetic of mobilization’, there were angry young women (both on screen and off screen—as we see in the rise of various women’s movements around this time) who were struggling with similar emotions without being valorized.2 In contrast to the Angry Young Man, the portrayal of the angry young woman as she seeks redress for her wrongs is strained by a textual tension between sympathy and hostility that renders her, for the most part, a negative character. This is not to suggest that the Angry Young Man’s revenge is not contained and undercut; in fact, film scholars agree that his anger is not as potent as it appears. Endowed with superhuman strength, mental agility and sheer luck, the hero beats up criminals and corrupt politicians, aiding a vicarious wish-fulfilment of the audience, rather than truly challenging the structures of inequality whereby the disenfranchisement of men like him is naturalized through ideological mobilization.3 Despite their seeming rebelliousness, the Angry Young Man films stop short of questioning the legitimacy of the state, toeing the dominant ideological line in order to avoid censorship and commercial failure. However, in three female-centric revenge films, Dewan A.D. Nayyar’s Intaqam (Revenge, 1969), F.C. Mehra’s Lal Patthar (Red Stones, 1971) and A.S.R. Anjaneyulu and Vadye Subhanandu’s Sunehra Sansar (Golden World, 1975), the enactment of the female protagonists’ revenge and the rhetorical discourse framing it‚ render the legitimacy of her anger relatively suspect as compared to her male counterparts. Her quest for retribution is not couched in the laudatory language of social justice, and the injustice against her is not shown to be embedded within social structures (such as patriarchy), unlike the man’s. Hence, it gets cast as an isolated incident of hurt/anger. This is ultimately resolved on an individual level, rather than being afforded a network of solidarity with other women/ minor characters. (See Table  12.2). When her trauma is the result of 2 3

 Kazmi (1997: 31), Tieber (2014: 4) and Prasad (1998: 138).  See Kazmi (1997) and Kazmi in Nandy (1998).

Played by (Actor)

Dockyard worker

Warehouse worker

Labourer

1975 Amitabh Bachchan

1976 Amitabh Bachchan in double role

1978 Amitabh Bachchan

Deewar

Adalat

Trishul

Roti, Kapda aur Makaan

Zanjeer

Singer

Profession/ identity

Why is he angry?

Social ostracizing of unwed mother, who makes him promise he will avenge her

Yes

Corruption; Yes injustices against the poor Unjust Yes imprisonment/ sister’s rape/wife’s miscarriage

Physical fight

Smuggling kingpin

Murders them

Physical fight

Rich, Business unscrupulous rivalry + emotional father manipulation

Smuggling kingpins; incompetent law force

Smuggling kingpin

Rapists/black Physical fight marketing goons

Cold shoulder, visits to mistress

Method and means of revenge

–

Is his anger Who is the given a social/ revenge political enacted on? context?

Resentful of wife’s No superior talent and success 1973 Amitabh Policeman Parents’ murder Yes Bachchan and bootlegging racket 1974 Manoj Kumar, Unemployed, Corrupt Yes Amitabh student government, Bachchan, etc. inflation, gang rape of friend

Year

Abhimaan 1973 Amitabh Bachchan

Movie

Table 12.1  Angry Young Man films

Dies, but son (also played by him) survives and pledges to take legacy forward lawfully Father dies repentant; Amitabh’s character accepted as part of the family

Dies

Order restored by heroes who escape with impunity

Lauded by police

Conflict resolved after he repents

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1971 Hema Malini

1972 Hema Unemployed/ Malini in street double role performer

1975 Hema Malini

Lal Patthar

Seeta aur Geeta

Sunehra Sansar

Why is she angry?

Is her anger given a social/ political context?

Mental, physical No and sexual harassment by relatives Wealthy mogul, Jilted in love; Marginally owner of social factories ostracizing for being unwed mother

Imprisoned Yes under false allegations of theft after she resists sexual advances Mistress of rich Jealousy in love No king

Stenographer

1969 Sadhna

Profession/ identity

Intaquam

Played by (Actor)

Year

Movie

Table 12.2  Angry Young Woman films

Ex-lover

Evil chachi and her brother

The wife, the king

Rich, unscrupulous boss

Who is the revenge enacted upon?

Sows suspicion; leading to murder of wife + her supposed lover Physical fight, general mischief making Financially ruins him + tears family apart

Seduces his son to be able to play with the ‘honour’ of the family

Method and means of revenge

Apologizes and disappears off the scene

Both sisters are shown to be happily married

Repentant; sticks by the now-mad king

Marries the said son; revenge not allowed fruition.

Closure

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Housewife

1991 Rekha

Phool Bane Angaare

Nanny

Housewife

1988 Sujata Mehta

Pratighaat

Khalnaaika 1993 Anu Aggarwal

Secretary

1985 Hema Malini

Yes

Yes

Yes

Her husband, on being convicted of rape, commits suicide

No

Corruption; Yes rape of friend; public disrobing by local gunda Rape; murder Yes of husband

Jilted in love; social ostracizing for being unwed mother

Jilted in love; social ostracizing for being unwed mother

Secretary, lawyer

Durgaa

Rape

Model

1980 Zeenat Aman 1983 Rati Agnihotri, Rekha

Insaaf Ka Tarazu Mujhe Insaaf Chahiye

The lady who filed charges against him

Rapist-­ murderers

Local goon turned politician

Ex-lover and his evil father

Ex-lover

Rapist

Kills with sword on horseback, Jhansi ki Rani style Deceit, murder, seduction

Kills with axe, Kali style

Seduction; shoots him

Legal case against him

Shoots him

Dies

Dies

Court pardons her Rekha dies of sudden heart attack after winning the case; Agnihotri chooses to remain a single mother Court pardons her sentence after Rajesh Khanna swoops in to fight her case Jailed

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circumstances unique to her as a woman (and not, for example, as the member of an economic class)—which is the case in all of my chosen films—it is represented as ‘merely’ a private issue. Moreover, the female avenger’s desire for revenge gets ideologically circumscribed within the traditional discourse on femininity in the Bombay film industry, which swore by a stark division between the ‘good’ heroine and the ‘bad’ vamp. This circumscription is not evident in an explicit identification of the female avenger with the ‘vamp’ per se, but can be gathered through various audio-visual cues, dialogic moments and, in particular, the dénouements of the films, which reveal a mistrust of vengefulness as an affective mode for ‘good’ women and an anxiety to ‘redeem’ the avenger and/or punish her for her transgressive excess.

II The Angry Young Man’s emergence on the cinematic landscape has largely been seen as a response to the socio-political churnings of the late 1960s and 1970s. Javed Akhtar, who created the hero with Salim Khan, admits that this response was instinctual rather than premeditated. Only in retrospect did the two writers realize that the Angry Young Man had inadvertently touched the raw nerve of the public: ‘Hindi films can be regarded as contemporary folklore. And a folk hero, in any period, in any decade, is a personification of the moral values of that decade; he reflects the collective fantasies of the time’.4 The 1960s and 1970s were a period when a host of civil rights movements for gender, class and caste equality had seized India, ‘uncannily’ as Moinak Biswas (2007) remarks, coinciding with the rebellion of the youth of other countries as well, leading to a general expectation and enunciation of change, of a new order.5 The rise of CPIM, Naxalism, labour unions, anti-price organizations, antidowry movements and anti-rape activism is traced back by historians to this decade.6 However, taking a cue from Biswas’s analysis of the Bengali films of the 1970s, it would be wiser to see the film as a text embedded in the historic fabric of its time—uncomfortable with, or only partially cognizant of its fantasies—rather than asking it to account for an objective or accurate depiction of the same. Should the films then be seen not  Akhtar quoted in Joshi and Dudrah (2014: 8).  Biswas (2007). 6  See, for instance, Chakrabarty and Kujur (2009) and Kumar (1997). 4 5

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solely in terms of what they say but what they are unable to? The question is ­pertinent because though there was widespread male and female anger, only one storms the screen glamorously, while the other is tamed and exorcized. The onscreen representation of male anger in movies such as Zanjeer, Deewar and Trishul is worked through the ‘flashback’ narrative technique where, in the initial few minutes of the films, the origin of this anger is clearly tied to a deep wound in Vijay’s past—the murder of his parents in the first film, and abandonment by his father in the latter two. Herein lies the force that propels the narrative forward towards its central act: vengeance. Here too lies the moment which is meant to clinch the sympathy of the viewer with the hero’s cause. The catastrophe that changes the hero definitively is linked to the functioning of the state machinery which victimizes ordinary men and women like him. Due to the demands of the commercial cinematic medium, which thrives on spectacle and must entertain and provide convenient narrative solutions, the unjust system is embodied in the figure/s of the villain: a smuggling kingpin, a ruthless business owner and so on. The conflict is represented in terms of a rivalry between individuals, but through constant dialogic reinforcement, it is made clear that the villain has symbolic value—he is an effluent of a political machine which rewards the rich and corrupt while exploiting the disenfranchised. For instance, in Deewar, Vijay lists all the moments when the nation/ society (‘duniya’, he says) has failed them as citizens—their homeless, starving nights; their mother’s exploitative physical labour; the abuses their destitution has earned them and so on. In Zanjeer, Vijay counters his wife Mala’s (Jaya Bhaduri’s) naïve enthusiasm for home décor with acerbic sarcasm against a politics of insularity and apathy: hum apne ghar mein khoobsurat parde lagwayenge aur main yeh jaanne ki koshish nahin karunga ki iss parde ki doosri taraf duniya mein kya ho raha hai; hamare khoobsurat ghar ke bahar log marte hain toh marte rahein . . . smuggleron ki gaadiyaan masoom bacchon ko kuchalti rahein. mujhe inn sab se kya matlab? We will put up beautiful curtains and I will not try to find out what lies beyond them; if people die outside our beautiful house, let them . . . let the cars of smugglers crush innocent children. What do I care?7 7

 All translations are by the author.

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In Trishul, Vijay’s anger against his father (Sanjeev Kumar) for abandoning his pregnant mother (Waheeda Rehman) in order to marry a rich heiress is not framed only in terms of a response to familial betrayal. His father’s abdication of responsibility, according to him, is symptomatic of drastic class inequality in contemporary society. Notably, Vijay does not present the critique from the perspective of gender and therefore does not question the sexual double standards for men and women which have led to his mother’s ostracization for being an unwed mother while his father is able to gain upward socio-economic mobility. This widens the significance of Vijay’s individual struggle and explains the element of (super)-heroicness to his anger: his battles are on behalf of the dispossessed as much as himself. The villain is shown to be undisputedly undesirable for a healthy functioning of society. Fareeduddin Kazmi (1998) describes at length how the weakening of consensual politics in the years leading up to the Emergency resulted in more and more repressive and populist measures by the state to channel public outrage into vigilante action against the ‘actual’ culprits. By turning it into a law-and-order problem, the blame for the socio-political dysfunction was thereby projected onto others: the figure of the criminal, extremist, terrorist and so on. Citizens in many states were encouraged to pick up arms, take the law into their hand, and weed out so-called criminals and terrorists.8 Another reinforcement of the wider, social dimension of Vijay’s anger is provided by the constellation of ‘minor’ characters; minor, at times, in terms of being part of the minority religion/class—Christians, Muslims, street performers and manual workers—who surround Vijay in the films. This happens quite literally in a particular scene in Deewar, when he has just defeated the henchmen of the local don and put an end to the hafta (extortion money) system for good and is hailed by the dockyard workers with cries of ‘Vijay zindabad (long live)’. Conflating this enthusiasm with that of the filmgoers, one can conclude that Vijay’s anger was meant to be represented and received in a positive light, and the glamorization of it, partaking partially of Amitabh Bachchan’s own phenomenally rising star value, strengthened this. The execution of justice in all three of these films required highly awaited scenes of the physical bashing up of the villains (Deewar, Zanjeer) or their general comeuppance (Trishul)—and though Vijay may have been criticized (by 8

 Kazmi in Nandy (1998: 152).

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other characters) or killed by the end of the film for adopting extra-legal methods (Deewar), he dies a martyr. The legitimacy of his need for vengeance is never questioned.

III But this is not the case in the three female-centric, revenge-themed movies, in which vengefulness is deemed by the politics of the film as a negative emotion to be disavowed by the avenger in order to redeem herself. Despite textual sympathy with her cause, the sweet taste of revenge is not allowed to her unequivocally, interspersed as the narrative is with devices and dialogues that exhort her to forgive, forget and repent. Intaquam The movie is a significant text to read in the context of this chapter‚ as it reflects and reinforces its moment’s socially mandated demarcation between good women and bad women, and is anxious to keep the female  avenger from crossing this line. Rita (Sadhna), a poor and morally upright young woman starts work at Sohanlal’s (Rehman’s) store in order to support her sick mother. A few days into her job, Sohanlal threatens to fire her for resisting a business associate’s sexual advances. When she threatens to complain to the store union, Sohanlal and his manager get her falsely implicated for theft and sent to jail, and by the time she gets out, her mother has succumbed to her sickness. In a commonly used locus of the Hindi film, the temple, where protagonists challenge divine authority for its inability to render justice to mortals, Rita proclaims the birth of a new, faithless subject who will take matters into her own hands. She vows not to rest until she has killed Sohanlal, as he was indirectly responsible for her mother’s death. However, this violent physical agency is not permitted to her. It is toned down to her eventual plan of ‘stealing’ his son‚ Rajpal (in marriage) just as her mother was ‘stolen’ from her. In fact, approximately halfway through the film, significant narrative tension emerges between the path of vengeance on the one hand and the purportedly ‘true’ nature of womanhood on the other. Her partner-in-revenge, Hiralal (Ashok Kumar), articulates this anxiety:

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aurat ka dil bada komal hota hai. woh khud mitt jaati hai, kisi ko mitaa nahi paati. issiliye darta hoon ki . . . darta hoon kahin mohabbat intaquam par qaabu na paale. A woman’s heart is very tender. She can sacrifice herself, but not destroy someone else. This is why I’m afraid . . . I’m afraid that love might overpower revenge.

Though Rita assures him she would not succumb to this ‘weakness’ that is exactly what she does. The triumph of forgiveness and heterosexual love over revenge marks the filmic climax, but it is one that the audience can easily anticipate. The ‘raging fire’ inside Rita which pushes her to ‘stain’ Sohanlal’s family honour‚ is pitted against Rajpal’s (Sanjay Khan’s) misery and heartbreak and is gradually built up to look excessive and unkind. During a pivotal song sequence of the film, Rita frolics about drinking alcohol at a party, stumbling at one point into the lap of a male guest, and proclaims her status as a thief to all and sundry.9 These are of course Rita’s ways of avenging  her own humiliation against the man who caused it‚ since patriarchal logic links familial honour with its female members. However, the radicalism of this approach is undercut in the very next scene, when she is alone with Rebecca (Helen), her cohort in the revenge, who gleefully mentions the seemingly trivial detail that Rita has been drinking Coca-Cola disguised as alcohol. Except that they are not alone: the audience has also been made to strategically eavesdrop on this moment and become privy to their secret. Unlike, then, the seamless identification of the audience with the celebratory masses surrounding Vijay in Deewar, this film makes it impossible for the audience to identify with the morally outraged public of the party which surrounds and watches the stumbling, drunk Rita with shock. In the traditional iconography of the Hindi film, ‘Westernized’ habits such as alcohol drinking and uninhibited enjoyment of oneself at a party amidst the male gaze‚ are signs which earmark the vamp. The connotations of these visual cues, having gathered meaning through repeated use, would be immediately clear to the audience of the time. It is precisely this connection which the movie pushes forward—on the film’s music poster, for example—but ultimately retracts in order to redeem its heroine as a ‘good’ woman whose ‘immoral’ activities are as 9  The lyrics are “kaise rahoon chhup…” (“How can I be silent…”), sung by Lata Mangeshkar, composed by Laxmikant Pyarelal and written by Rajenda Kishen.

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fake as were  her theft charges. (Significantly, Helen, the traditional vamp, is shown guzzling several glasses of alcohol in the same song sequence, which is not shown to need explanation). By differentiating the ‘act’ of Rita’s vengeful activities from the ‘virtuous woman’ beneath it, the film tries to resolve the dichotomy between female virtue and vengeance. The root of Rita’s revenge—attempted sexual harassment worsened by her economic vulnerability—is not investigated with respect to the skewed gender relations in a patriarchal society, and is thus reduced to ‘petty’ and personal vendetta. Indeed, by the end of the film, vengeance is forgotten and patriarchal relations are firmly in place as Hiralal symbolically hands Rita over to Rajpal, and the sanctity of the traditional family is preserved. Lal Patthar The female avenger in this film—village widow Saudamini (Hema Malini)—is the mistress of a troubled, whimsical man, Kumar Bahadur (Raj Kumar) who spends ten years trying to reform and recast her along the lines of a suitable partner for himself. He even renames her ‘Madhuri’. Saudamini/Madhuri, though in love with him, firmly resists most of his attempts to ‘civilize’ her. After a decade, he decides to marry Sumita (Rakhee) (who is half his age and whose permission he does not seek before bribing her father to marry her) and justifies this replacement by comparing Madhuri to an irreparably ‘broken mirror’. Madhuri begins to perceive a pattern in his relationship with women: Kumar Bahadur, an incensed Madhuri taunts, buys women like ‘dolls’ for his entertainment and then gets bored of them. A vengeful Madhuri then manipulates him into believing that Sumita is unfaithful and he mistakenly ends up shooting Sumita and her supposed lover. Madhuri then spends her life with the insane Kumar, playing along with his hallucinations in order to atone for her vindictiveness. Discussing her role in Lal Patthar, Hema Malini, the actress says: Today they make a category to give an award. So you have something like a heroine in a negative role and many such awards. This is done so that people come in large numbers to attend the function. Had that been the case ­during my time, I would have got innumerable awards. For a movie like Lal Patthar, I didn’t get any award because it was a negative role.10  “It is necessary to preserve our classical dance forms: Hema Malini”. Interview with Indian Express (Nov 13, 2015). 10

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It is interesting that despite providing a sympathetic portrayal of the reasons that provoke Saudamini’s vengeance, Hema Malini’s role has been termed ‘negative’ on more than one occasion. Her biography reveals that those close to her tried to dissuade her from playing the foil to Rakhee who enacted the ‘good woman’, for fear of the adverse impact it would have on her career.11 Wikipedia, which represents a common pool of knowledge created by non-specialists, also lists her role as ‘negative’, though, it assures us, she does turn positive in the end.12 Saudamini/Madhuri is strongly assertive of her desires and aspirations right from the beginning of the movie. She is a widow who has no wish to spend the rest of her days in Vrindavan, and responds passionately when Kumar Bahadur initiates sexual contact with her.13 She is shown to enjoy and even initiate romantic encounters in the film, and is happy living as his mistress without ever desiring that he ‘elevate’ her status by marrying her. The film sets up a binary between the rustic femininity of Saudamini, who is loud, unsophisticated and does not control her erotic and emotional flights, and the refined femininity of the accomplished and compliant Sumita, who gives up the man she loves on her father’s command to marry Kumar Bahadur and submits to all his whims. Madhuri, on the other hand, is driven to fury over Kumar’s desertion of her for a new ‘doll’ he has ‘bought’. Besides occasionally smashing mirrors and taunting him, she sets out to drive a wedge between them by suggesting Sumita’s adultery. Though  Madhuri’s hostility towards Sumita is dominantly represented in terms of feminine vice and virtue in the film, Madhuri herself  explains it as her  rejection of the  patriarchal ideal of female self-sacrifice: apna ghar todkar doosro ka basaaun, itni bhhi mahaan main nahi hoon, raja. Wreck my own home to make another’s—I’m not that great, O king.

 Somaaya (2014): ebook.  See Sunehra Sansar in Wikipedia (April 5, 2019). 13  Vrindavan is a city in Uttar Pradesh, India, where a large number of women move after losing their husbands. The choice is not entirely free; the stringent code of conduct regarding Hindu widows means that they are considered inauspicious, and villages often ostracize them, leading to a life of poverty and isolation (“The Indian Town with 6000 Widows”, BBC News. 02 May 2013). 11 12

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There is a running visual metaphor in the movie that compares Madhuri to a tigress that had been hunted by Kumar around the same time he had rescued her from her abusive in-laws: there are constant juxtapositions of the animal’s images and stuffed body next to her (at one point, Sumita appears, too, as a doe, emphasizing the binary) which reinforces the dangerous potential of her anger and pain. The film displays an awareness of the injustice of Kumar’s treatment of her—as a hunted animal—which keeps coming back to haunt him. However, this potential is never fully realized as she is made to repent and leave the household in order to atone. And after he has unwittingly murdered Sumita and her friend in a fit of insanity, she chooses to live with him and help him indulge his fantasies. Thus, the ‘vengeful mistress’ must redeem herself through her undying devotion to the man responsible for her suffering. Sunehra Sansar Unlike in Intaquam and Lal Patthar, the female avenger in this film, Rani Padmavati (Hema Malini), is allowed to unleash the full extent of her vengeance on her perpetrator. Her quest for revenge turns darker when an innocent child dies in its wake. She is also afforded a crucial moment of confrontation with Shekhar (Rajendra Kumar) and his elder brother Shankar (Om Prakash), the two symbols of the father’s Law—‘dharma’— in the film, who preach to her about the ‘venom’ of vengeance and its destructive power, but whom she unflinchingly counters by lambasting age-old sexual double standards for men and women: sadiyaan guzar gayi, itihaas badal gaye, magar mard aur aurat dono wahin hain. mard khilaadi, aurat usske khelne ka maidaan. khel khatm hua, khilaadi chala gaya, maidaan ujadd gaya . . . ek mard aurat ka sab kuch chura leta hai, phir bhi azaad ghoomta hai . . . kya usske liye koi saza nahi? koi kanoon nahi? kanoon ho bhi toh kaise? jo zulm karte hain wahi kanoon banate hain. isiliye maine mardo ki iss andher nagri mein apne kanoon khud banaye. Centuries have passed, histories have changed, but man and woman are still where they were. Man the player, woman the playground. When the game ends, the player can leave, but the playground is now ruined . . . a man can steal everything of a woman’s, yet roam free . . . is there no punishment

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against him? No law? How can there be any, after all? It is the ones who commit injustices that make the law. That is why, in this dark world of men, I’ve made my own rules.

Padmavati rejects Shekhar’s attempts to make her feel guilty by dismissing sacrifice and dharma as ancient tales in male-authored texts which are necessarily biased against women. The film is overwhelmingly conscious of being located at a historical cusp between the old order and an uncertain new one, though it is unable to determine what exactly that might be, and hence its ambivalence about Rani Padmavati, who is the most vocal about this need for change. Her speech is important as it reveals the opposite directions that the film is pulled in. From the beginning, the strain is evident, between the old, patriarchal order, signified by Shankar, who claims the inherent right as a patriarch to choose his younger brother’s wife, and the tragic consequence of this emotional coercion for Savita, Shekhar’s (unbeknownst to him, pregnant) girlfriend whom he abandons for the sake of dharma. However, from the narrative strategies framing  Savita/Padmavati’s anger, the execution of her revenge and the closure of the film, it becomes clear that despite highlighting the plight of single mothers, and the fault lines in the Hindu ideal of the patriarchal family that link the worth of the woman to her chastity, the film is ultimately unable to endorse an overhauling modernity suggested through Padmavati. And it is she who pays the price for this inability. Rather than dedicating a major chunk of the film to Savita’s self-­ fashioning—her refusal to live in obscurity despite facing ostracism  for being an unwed mother, and her rise to become what Hema Malini herself calls ‘an ambitious career woman, Padmavati’—Savita/Rani Padmavati’s past is revealed in a flashback much later in the narrative.14 This is in contrast with the opening sequences of Deewar, Zanjeer and Trishul where a rationalization for male anger is offered fairly early on. Her portrayal for all but the last 45 minutes of the 2-hour-and-30-minute film is that of a ‘vamp’ who has entered the ‘sunehra sansar’ (golden world) of Shekhar and his large, happy family—comprising his extremely docile wife, Laxmi (Mala Sinha), their children and his extended family— in order to destroy it. Theirs is supposed to be a sunehra sansar based on the values of the joint family, opposed to the rootless individualism that  Somaaya et al. (2012): ebook.

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characterizes Rani Padmavati. This is audio-visually depicted through the title song sequence when the camera panoramically captures an idyllic landscape of a farmhouse as Shankar preaches to his young nephews— ‘hum ek hain bhai, chaar nahi’/‘we are not four brothers but one’, and every resource of the house is commonly owned. The stage is thereby set for Rani Padmavati’s disruption of this harmony. She enters as a mysterious and powerful new woman: visual sequences of her unapologetic wealth and regal splendour are juxtaposed against those of the poverty of her factory workers; she is shown to mock union leaders by comparing them to madaaris (monkey trainers) and to wax eloquent about the power of money. In short, she is the rich, ruthless factory owner who, in the popular cinematic/political imagination, had become synonymous with class oppression and cruelty. It is only in the last few minutes of the film that Padmavati voices her own story and exposes the hollowness of patriarchal ideals, which have been responsible for the unmitigated suffering of Shekhar, his wife Laxmi and herself. Significantly, in Hindu religious mythology, Padmavati is another avatar of goddess Laxmi. In her study of the ‘woman question’ in religious Hindu scriptures, Prabhati Mukherjee (1978) contends, ‘Proceeding down the ages we find that the ideal held up before a woman is to be a submissive, dutiful and loyal wife totally dependent upon her husband. An ideal woman is she who is an ideal wife’.15 Laxmi, Shekhar’s wife, is a picture of the ‘good woman’ in the film precisely on account of her loyalty to him as a wife. Even after becoming privy to the story of his abandonment of Savita/Padmavati in the past, and feeling shattered by this knowledge, she resolves to do her ‘duty’ and chooses to support him. The idealized sunehra sansar of the Hindu joint family is sustained by the silence of women. Is it possible, then, to read the rebellious and destructive Padmavati as Laxmi’s angry ‘double’, bringing to the fore the discontents that Laxmi has repressed as a good wife? It becomes easy to see why, at the end of the film, this repressed ‘other’ must be exorcized. The family is the foundational unit through which the nation is imagined, and where the ideological apparatus necessary to maintain the hold of patriarchy, is reproduced for subsequent generations. Therefore, as Shekhar battles for his life, Padmavati becomes contrite and sacrificial, praying to God that Laxmi’s marriage be saved, even if it is at the  Mukherjee (1978: 16).

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cost of her own life. The last scene of the film shows Shekhar, surrounded by his family, reading the letter of apology written by Padmavati, who shifts the blame of her injustices from him to her own taqdeer (destiny), and promises to go far, far away from their sunehra sansar.

IV The attitudes to these characters, positive or negative, often overflow the boundaries of the film and become associated with the ‘stars’ playing these roles, and vice versa. Amitabh Bachchan gained overnight success for the persona he played and became known as the Angry Young Man himself, a view he encouraged in his interviews: ‘there seems to be a strong sense of revolt in me. Probably it is in my genes’.16 In contrast, Hema Malini, who was given the moniker ‘Dream Girl’, after her 1968 debut Sapno ka Saudagar for her highly feminized and glamorous role, was seen as taking risks by playing ‘angry young woman’ roles. Tejaswini Ganti (2004) remarks, ‘In a decade dominated by male-driven action/revenge stories, Hema Malini acted in women centered, small-budget dramas where she played deglamorized characters’. 17 The struggle of the films with their female avengers should not, however, be read purely as ideological conservatism. The female avenger can be understood as the site of a blurring of boundaries, which subsequently allowed the heroine to have more and more traits that were/are culturally defined as unbecoming in women, such as anger, vengeance and rebellion, that were earlier associated exclusively with vamps. The raging and rebellious female protagonists were grey characters who often did meet the end that was pre-defined for vamps, but in the process ended up creating ‘newer modes of femininity and female agency’.18 Virdi, for instance, sees an anticipation of the 1980s ‘female avenger’ movies in G.P. Sippy’s 1972 film Seeta aur Geeta. Interestingly, Hema Malini’s physical bashing up of her evil relatives as Geeta, in a role that was written by Salim-Javed, for a movie that was released a year before their first Angry Young Man movie, Zanjeer, was the influence that paved the way for Jaya Bhaduri’s presence at the fight scene at the end  Mishra (2001: 128).  Ganti (2004: 130). 18  Joshi and Dudrah (2014: 51). 16 17

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of Zanjeer, in which she throws a knife or two at the villains.19 The fact that a precedent to the female equivalent of the Angry Young Man existed but took a decade to properly take off—in the 1980s, when female action films became more common, reflects the extent of the bias that existed against angry, vengeful women during the 1970s. The ‘negativity’ of the female avengers can be seen to arise out of a rubbing of the old tectonic plates with the new. Born where the limits of tolerable rebellion in popular cinema end, it can be seen as an exploration of these limits themselves. The Tables are meant for a general appraisal of the different trajectories that characterize male and female anger in the films of the 1970s. Particularly interesting to note is the difference in the injustice which provokes their respective anger and how the hero’s personal fight is nearly always given a socio-political colour. This does not happen for the angry young woman till the 1980s, when the film Insaaf ka Tarazu, influenced directly by the furore and protests of women’s organizations against a string of rape cases in the country, was to launch the rape-revenge genre, with its rhetoric about nari shakti (woman power), on screen. Also, interestingly, the methods which women adopt to avenge themselves were largely ‘feminine’ in the 1970s and gained a more masculine and mythical tenor with time.

Works Cited Films Adalat. Directed by Narendra Bedi. Produced by A.K. Nadiadwala. 1976. Deewar. Directed by Yash Chopra. Produced by Gulshan Rai. 1975. Intaquam. Directed by R.K. Nayyar. Produced by Dewan A.D. Nayyar. 1969. Lal Patthar. Directed by Sushil Majumdar. Produced by F.C. Mehra. 1971. Seeta aur Geeta. Directed by Ramesh Sippy. Produced by G.P. Sippy. 1972. Sholay. Directed by Ramesh Sippy. Produced by G.P. Sippy. 1975. Sunehra Sansar. Directed by Adurthi Subba Rao. Produced by A.S.R. Anjaneyulu and Vadye Subhanandu. 1975. Trishul. Directed by Yash Chopra. Produced by Gulshan Rai. 1978. Zanjeer. Directed and produced by Prakash Mehta. 1973.  Virdi (2003: 152).

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Books Chakrabarty, Bidyut and Rajat Kumar Kujur. Maoism in India: Reincarnation of Ultra-Left Wing Extremism in the Twenty-First Century. (New York and London: Routledge, 2009). (e-book). Ganti, Tejaswani. Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2004). Joshi, Priya and Rajinder Dudrah. ed. The 1970s and its Legacies in India (London: Routledge, 2014). Kazmi, Nikhat. Ire in the Soul: Bollywood’s Angry Years (India: Harper Collins, 1997). Kumar, Radha. The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India 1800–1990. (New Delhi: Zubaan, 1997). Mishra, Vijay. “The Actor as Parallel Text: Amitabh Bachchan” in Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire (New York: Routledge, 2001). Mukherjee, Prabhati. Hindu Women: Normative Models (Calcutta: Orient Longman, 1978). Nandy, Ashis. ed. The Secret Politics of our Desires: Innocence, Culpability and Indian Popular Cinema. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998). Prasad, Madhava. Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998). Virdi, Jyotika. The Cinematic ImagiNation: Indian Popular Films as Social History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003).

Journal Articles, Book Chapters and E Resources Biswas, Moinak. “Speaking Through Troubled Times”, The Journal of the Moving Image (Dec 2007). http://jmionline.org/articles/2007/speaking_through_ troubled_times.pdf Denselow, Anthony. “The Indian Town with 6000 Widows.” BBC News (May 2, 2013): https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21859622 Kazmi, Fareeduddin. “How Angry is the Angry Young Man: ‘Rebellion’ in Conventional Hindi Films” in Ashis Nandy ed. The Secret Politics of our Desires: Innocence, Culpability and Indian Popular Cinema (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), 134–156. Sahadevan, Sonup. “Interview with Hema Malini”, Indian Express (Nov 13, 2015): http://indianexpress.com/article/entertainment/bollywood/it-isnecessary-to-preserve-our-classical-dance-forms-hema-malini/ Somaaya, Bhawana. Kothari, Jigna., Madangarli, Supriya. Mother Maiden Mistress: Women in Hindi Cinema, 1950–2000 (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2012).

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Somaaya, Bhawana. Hema Malini: The Authorized Biography (Delhi: Roli Books, 2014). Tieber, Claus. “Writing the Angry Young Man: Salim-Javed’s Screenplays for Amitabh Bachchan”, Unpublished article presented at the 7th Annual Conference Screenwriting Research Network, Filmuniversität Konrad Wolf Babelsberg, Potsdam (Oct 17–19, 2014). https://www.academia. edu/15070838/Writing_the_Angry_Young_Man_Salim-­Javeds_screenplays_ for_Amitabh_Bachchan Wikipedia. “Sunehra Sansar”, Wikipedia.org (April 5, 2019). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunehra_Sansar

CHAPTER 13

Outcast[e]/Outlawed: The Bandit Queen (1996) Neha Dixit

When Bandit Queen, a film by director Shekhar Kapur, based on Indian bandit, Phoolan Devi’s life, was released in 1994, Phoolan, who was then freed after spending 11  years in the jail, threatened to immolate herself outside cinema halls and demanded its withdrawal. The film was a biographical account that traced the trajectory of her life from a child bride to a dreaded bandit in the Chambal. Shekhar Kapur admittedly used Mala Sen’s biography—India’s Bandit Queen (Harvill and HarperCollins, 1991 and 1993)—as the primary source for making his film. Notably, Sen was credited as the scriptwriter of the film which won the National Award for the Best Feature Film that year. Indian media and cinema, not different from the global trends, have always indulged in extremes and binaries. A largely male-dominated space, it has either ignored or glorified violence against women or portrayed it as an extraordinary, rare thing stemming from a supernatural situation in a highly sexualized manner. Phoolan Devi, the Dalit icon, a bandit turned parliamentarian who was assassinated at the age of 37, just 7 years after the release of Shekhar Kapur’s biopic Bandit Queen, was more than just a

N. Dixit (*) New Delhi, India © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_13

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victim or a dreaded ruthless bandit as portrayed in the film. Two years after the film, Phoolan told Mary Ann Weaver (article published in The Atlantic magazine in 1996): It’s simply not the story of my life, so how can they claim it is? How can they say ‘This is a true story’ when my cousin Maiyadin, the major nemesis of my life, isn’t even in the film? There’s absolutely no mention of my family’s land dispute. In the film I’m portrayed as a sniveling woman, always in tears, who never took a conscious decision in her life. I’m simply shown as being raped, over and over again.1

Phoolan’s protestations over her representation in Bandit Queen led to a legal battle which, on the one hand, ended in an out of court settlement between Phoolan and Britain’s Channel 4 and, on the other hand, culminated in the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal’s (FCAT) reinstatement of those climactic scenes which the Censor Board (Central Board of Film Certification—CBFC) had objected to. However, the matter reached the Supreme Court after Om Pal Hoon, the President of the Gujjar Gaurav Sansthan, filed a writ in the Delhi High Court stating that his community had been wrongly portrayed and that the depiction of Phoolan was “abhorrent and unconscionable and a slur on the womanhood of India”. The Supreme Court strongly defended the right to representation against charges of obscenity by observing that “No film that extols the social evil or encourages it is permissible, but a film that carries the message that the social evil is evil cannot be made impermissible on the grounds that it depicts social evil”.2 The judgment defended the right of the filmmakers within a wider legal and cultural history of censorship arising out of charges of obscenity. The judgment correctly upheld the right to representation within the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech and expression. But, in doing so, it unproblematically assumed that the film’s representation of repeated rapes could necessarily convey the horror of a social evil. The defense of artistic freedom rested on the assumption that provocative representation can be anchored in an unambiguous narrative with a clear moral message. William Mazzarella rightly notes that the interesting feature of the judgment is not that it insists on the presence of moral message 1 2

 See Interview in The Atlantic (November 1996).  Bobby Art International, Etc vs Om Pal Singh Hoon & Ors (May 1, 1996).

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but “the assumption that the performative intensity and mimetic potential of particular provocative images—which it implicitly acknowledges— could be positively potentiated (in terms of a normative standard of social progress) by means of the formal and narrative structure of the work as a whole”.3 Besides this unproblematic belief in the moralizing narrative mission underlying representation, the judgment conveniently overlooked an important factor: the relation between the historical and fictional subject: Phoolan Devi and her fictional representation as the “Bandit Queen”. Instead, it argued that since three of the Appellate Tribunal members were women, it could hardly be supposed they “would permit a film to be screened which denigrates, insults Indian womanhood or is obscene or pornographic”. Kapur’s claim that the “true story” depicted in the film was intended to shock the viewers into recognizing the revulsion of sexual violence and crimes perpetrated by men has been challenged by feminists who have questioned the film’s Orientalist paradigm, heightened by Kapur’s selective use of Phoolan’s life. While arguing in the Delhi High Court, feminist lawyer, Kamini Jaising had said that “it is wrong to suggest that in order to generate sympathy, for an oppressed woman, it is necessary to show her being raped, gang raped and paraded naked”.4 Precisely, summing up the complex and controversial history of the film’s claim for sincerity on question of representation, Meera Kosambi observed that “film makers have treated Phoolan only as a useful tool-a protagonist” whose position as a poor and illiterate woman, which allows the distortion of her life into a succession of rapes, with the result that Bandit Queen will remain just another commercial “exploitation of the exploited”.5 Extending Kosambi’s argument, this chapter explores the vexing relation between the historical subject and her representation and reconsiders what has been easily brushed under the proverbial legal carpet: the questionable artistic license derived from Phoolan’s controversial “public” status and her decidedly “bad” life. After all, if she were not a victim of sexual violence and had not decided to teach her tormentors by wielding a gun against them, would there be a reason to make the Bandit Queen? Against postcolonial discursive readings of “power effects” or “perplexity” as undertaken by Leela Fernandes or Madhavi Murty respectively, I question  Mazzerella (2013: 103).  Phoolan Devi vs Shekhar Kapoor And Ors (December 1, 1994). 5  Kosambi (1998: 13. PDF version). 3 4

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Kapur’s rhetoric of emancipation which never acknowledges the root cause of systemic violence against women evident in the persistent history of caste and class marginalization in the Badlands of Uttar Pradesh (UP).6 As a journalist who has extensively covered the region, I bring to the paper a complex socio-economic history of gender, caste and class through which I question Kapur’s simplistic formulations in his narration. Additionally, I incorporate Phoolan’s testimonies in her autobiography I: Phoolan Devi: The Autobiography of India’s Bandit Queen published in 1996, two years after the film was released.7 I argue that Phoolan’s voice has been invisiblized and her agency ignored both in Kapur’s film and Mala Sen’s interpretation of her life in her biography of Phoolan.

The Mallah Phoolan: Structural Violence of Caste, Class and Gender Phoolan was born in a Mallah family in Gurha ka Purwa village of Jalaun district of Uttar Pradesh in 1963. Jalaun, a part of Bundelkhand region is known for its arid and ravine lands which are drought prone and the consecutive census figures of 1991 and 2001 show a steady decline in the major occupations, cultivation and agriculture.8 Like elsewhere in the country, land and other natural resources in Bundelkhand are iniquitously distributed between classes and castes. In the Hindu caste hierarchy, Mallahs belong to the lower rung within the “Other Backward Castes” (OBCs). Mostly landless or small landowners, the Mallahs’ traditional occupation centered around the river, and they worked as fisherpersons and boatpersons. Etymologically, the occupational term is derived from the Arabic word Mallah which means to “move its wings like a bird”, and the term is used both occupationally and as a caste name.9 As Asa Doron observes, under colonial administration, the Mallahs were listed as a criminal tribe under the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871, and this stigmatizing classification “greatly amplified their social marginalization”.10 In the postcolonial era, the Mallahs have adopted the “auspicious title of ‘Nishad’  See Fernandes (2001: 49–52) and Murty (2010: 9, 1).  Devi et al. (1996). 8  See entries for Jalaun in “Table 8-Percentage wise break up of main workers (Census 1991–2001)” in “Socio-Economic Outlook of Bundelkhand: Problems and Prospects” (2010), 958. 9  Narayan (2003: 117–118). 10  Doron, July 2010: 759. 6 7

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to denote their extolled mythical ancestry and elevated position within Hindu social hierarchy” (Doron, 760). Yet, they remain marginalized even from their traditional caste occupation. In the past few decades, with the continuous depletion of the water bodies and increased urbanization, a number of them having moved to working as agricultural laborers, sand dredgers or as migrant laborers in bigger cities. Mallahs not just faced untouchability in social life but were also discriminated against in the socio-economic order. The caste category of the Mallahs varies from state to state. While they are placed under the Scheduled Caste (SC) category in Delhi and West Bengal, they qualify as Scheduled Tribe in Bihar. In UP, where Phoolan was born, Mallahs continue to fight their battle to be included in one of these categories to access better socio-economic opportunities through reservation but have been unsuccessful. After becoming a Samajwadi Party MP in 1996, Phoolan formed the Eklavya Sena to fight for the rights of Mallah community. After she was killed in July 2001, leaders from the community, wielding influence in their own pockets, have emerged in various parties. While the Mallahs remain locked in place within the OBC, successive governments, from 2001 onward have attempted to bring in remedies to extend reservations to Most Backward Castes (MBCs) from among the OBC and the “Mahadalits”, the most backward section within the SC. Among the 17 such castes identified within the MBCs, the Mallahs have a significant presence, electorally and politically. In 2017, the Nishad Party was formed just before the UP Assembly elections that banks on votes of fishermen in parts of eastern UP where the Mallah community, which makes up around 4.5% votes, is divided into 27 sub-castes and has a good presence in roughly 125 constituencies along the rivers in UP, where they contribute to the victory and defeat of candidates.11 Notwithstanding the fact that the efforts at extending reservation have not fructified, the importance of the Mallah community and Phoolan’s standing as a “leader of the backward” has brought to the fore the historical marginalization and oppression of those who are “perched on the line of pollution” who “form the lowest rung within the backward caste ladder and are also the poorest section among them”.12 For these

11  Cited in PTI report, “Small is Big in Uttar Pradesh where the die is caste” (Jan 19, 2017). 12  Pai, Economic and Political Weekly, 2001: 3017.

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very reasons, this chapter adopts the term “Dalit” to best brings out the resistant identity of Phoolan and her community.13 While Kapur’s narrative of Phoolan’s life starts with her marriage at the age of 11 to Putti Lal, a widower, who was 20 years older to her, in Phoolan’s autobiography, her story started way before that. At the age of ten, Phoolan took fight with her cousin, Maiyadin, who had allegedly usurped her father’s land. As a little girl, Phoolan not only staged a sit-in protest but also forced the panchayat to reopen the case against her cousin. This assertion by a Mallah girl was seen as a challenge to the patriarchal social order in the village. Phoolan’s own father did not support her in her fight in the legal case. Phoolan’s assertion was seen as so much of a threat to the gender dynamics that soon after, her father arranged her marriage with an older man and gave him a cow as dowry to get rid of her. In the film, as Phoolan’s parents bid farewell to her, Phoolan’s father takes away the small pair of earrings she holds in her fist given by her mother and says: yeh dene ki baat to nahin hui thi len den mein This was not part of the deal.

Notably, while the film does note this detail, it fails to observe how Phoolan, as a young girl, is ripped off even the tiniest piece of material possession that can give her some form of social security. Child marriage is rampant in India. Even while the percentage has fallen from 47 to 27 between 2006 and 2016, according to the National Family Health Survey of 2015–2016, a recent UNICEF report observes that while the decline in child marriages was a welcome sign, the rate of decline “is slow” especially in the age group 15–18 years.14 The root cause behind this practice, and now a crime, since the legislation of Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (PCMA) of 2006 which declared the legal age for marriage for women as 18 and for men as 21, is multifaceted and beyond social traditions. It is a way of controlling women’s sexuality and their entitlement to equal socio-political and economic rights. 13  I adopt and extend the definition provided by Gangadhar Pantawane, founder editor of Asmitadarsh (Mirror of Identity), the chief organ of Dalit Literature to an understanding of Dalit women: “To me Dalit is not a caste. He is a man exploited by the social and economic traditions of this country. He does not believe in God, Rebirth, Soul, Holy books teaching separatism, Fate and Heaven, because they have made him a slave. He does believe in Humanism. Dalit is a symbol of change and revolution”. See Zelliot, 1978: 77–97. 14  See UNICEF report on Child Marriage in India (2018).

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By marrying off Phoolan soon after her protest for economic rights, her father snapped her chances for exploring a more equal life in the patriarchal order. Phoolan’s biography provides us with a perspective to view her as a survivor who rises against the feudal patriarchal order in more ways than one. By not including this important aspect of Phoolan’s life, Shekhar Kapur reduced the narrative of a Dalit woman to that of a victim of ­customs and traditions who displays female wrath against her oppressors. Kapur provides a lazy explanation for not mentioning Maiyadin to India Today soon after the film was released. He said, “If I left out Maiyadeen, I also left out many other things that could have gone against her. I wanted to create empathy for her”.15 Quite clearly, socio-economic vulnerability that forced Phoolan’s father, Devi Din, to brutally marry her off his daughter to a much older man who not just beats her up but also abuses the minor girl. By omitting Phoolan’s assertion for land rights both as a woman and as a Dalit, the film limited Phoolan’s journey to become a rebel as entirely personal and individualistic. Economist Bina Agarwal rightly points that both public and private (familial) land distributions are premised upon patriarchal imperatives, and Phoolan’s disputes can be found in her accusations that her family usurped the government land that was given to her, post her surrender.16 Structural violence is endemic to the existence of Dalit women and, in a study conducted in 2011, in Dalit Women Speak Out, most Dalit women identified their caste, class and gender status as central reason for the violence they endured.17 A number of immediate causal factors for the violence fall broadly into two categories: one relates to coercive violence utilized to maintain caste and gender norms; the second to punitive measures where Dalit women transgress or defy these norms by asserting their rights to equality as well as cultural, economic and political resources. In her 1996 interview with Mary Ann Weaver, “India’s Bandit Queen”, Phoolan says: You can call it rape in your fancy language. Do you have any idea what it’s like to live in a village in India? What you call rape, that kind of thing happens to poor women in the villages every day. It is assumed that the daughters of the poor are for the use of the rich. They assume that we’re their  Interview to Madhu Jain, “Truth on Trial”, India Today (October 15, 1994).  Agarwal, 2003: 198–205. Singh, June 15, 1988. 17  Irudayam et al. (2011: 253). 15 16

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property. In the villages the poor have no toilets, so we must go to the fields, and the moment we arrive, the rich lay us there; we can’t cut the grass or tend to our crops without being accosted by them. We are the property of the rich.

Cases of atrocities on Dalit women are hardly registered by the police. The police either disbelieves the women and their complaints or asks the women to get hold of the culprits themselves. One of the reasons for this could be that police force is often full of upper caste men who ally more with upper caste male culprits rather than ensuring the rule of law and order in their areas. A 2011 study suggests that in cases of Dalit women and non-Dalit accused, the delays in filing an F.I.R. by the police occurred in 54% of cases, delay in arrest of the accused occurred in 77% of cases and delay in filing the Charge Sheet or Summary occurred in 26% of cases.18 In my journalistic interviews, I encountered this systemic injustice among Dalit women of Bundelkhand in February 2017, just before the UP Assembly elections.19 I was told that policemen only register a non-­ cognizable report (NCR) and not an FIR in cases of atrocities on Dalit women. A non-cognizable report (NCR) as defined under the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) is a report for which the police cannot take cognizance or action. It is understood that the police are not bound to investigate an NCR.  In this area, Dalit and tribal women collect wood from the forest as it is their source of livelihood. But they are raped and molested every day in the forests. One of my interviewees, Rupwati pointed to various body parts and said: Take off the pallu of their saree in any village and you will see for yourself its traces on their neck, chest, body. Yet they do not go to the police and complain because they know that the case will never go beyond the police station. It will never reach the court. What is the point of complaining since they will anyway have to go to the forest again the next day if they have to run their family?

Another interviewee, Shanti corroborated: Even the police does not spare us. When we carry wood in the local train to go from one tehsil to the other, the police takes us inside the train toilet to rape us. Even when we have a train ticket.  Ibid, 289.  See my report in The Wire (February 15, 2017).

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In a similar vein, Ramkumari stated that assertions by Dalit women in the form of complaints are also seen as acts of contempt: The land mafia has been all over the place in the last five years. Five beeghas of my land was usurped by the Thakurs last year. I went to both the Lekhpal and the SDM to complain. No one did anything. Meanwhile, the other day my daughter, who was going to college was slapped by the thakur. He said, ‘Why are you studying? Work in my fields because that is what you are born to do. College or no college. Now tell me if this was possible five years back?

These quotes contextualize Phoolan’s objection that rape of Dalit women is neither a rarity nor unfamiliar in India. The sense of entitlement of Thakurs and other feudal land-owning caste men is all pervasive which is why what is extraordinary is that women continue to survive and live through it. When Phoolan challenges the village pradhan’s son’s attempt to rape her in the film, that is rarity. It is not the victim narrative but the survivor narrative that is missing in the Kapur’s film. Similarly, when she is raped by the cops in the film, it seems like she is punished for her individualistic assertive streak instead of the systemic oppression against Dalit women because of a feudal misogynist order. Had Kapur hinted at such sexual violations of Dalit women by upper caste men as an everyday practice in the village and not just for Phoolan, the larger systemic socio-­ economic inequalities could have been addressed which cannot come out in an individualistic narrative like Bandit Queen. Kapur instead sexualized the narrative instead of broadening it to show the reality of everyday life of the millions of Dalit women in India.

Protection of Identity The opening sequence of “Wounded: The Bandit Queen”, a 2007 film based on another Indian female bandit, Seema Parihar, is instructive. Directed by Krishna Mishra and produced by Shri Hari Om Films, Wounded is made on the life of Seema who was abducted at the age of 13 from her village in Auraiya in Uttar Pradesh and was forced to marry the dacoit, Nirbhay Gujjar. The film depicts Seema’s transformation into a bandit. Seema surrendered in June 2000, after 18 years of living as a bandit to the UP police. At one point, Seema appears in the film, and she speaks to some filmmakers who try to convince her to allow them to make a film on her life. She expresses her reservations by saying:

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tum film wale aise hi auraton ko nanga dikhate ho apni film mein. Waise hi zindagi mein humein kitni baar nanga kiya gaya hai. You film guys show women naked in your films. As is it we have been disrobed so many times in our lives.

Seema’s quote is a clear reference to Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen and Phoolan’s objections to being shown naked. In Wounded, Seema eventually agrees when the filmmakers say that they want to cast Seema herself to ensure the authenticity of the story. The film was promoted as the first film where a bandit was cast as herself. Though a poorly made film which failed at the box office, Wounded has a lesson for the privileged, elite filmmakers like Shekhar Kapur: that the agency of a person, no matter how vulnerable or victimized he or she is, matters. In her autobiography, I, Phoolan Devi, she writes: I had seen all kinds of bandits. Assassins had tried to take my life, journalists had tried to get my story. Movie directors have tried to capture me on film. They all thought they should speak about me as though I didnt exist, as though I still didnt have any right to respect. The bandits had tried to torture my body, the others tried to torture my spirit. (464)

While registering her protest against her depiction in the film, Phoolan, in an interview to Madhu Singh of India Today said, “Does anybody have the right to show me being raped even if I were? If they show this film in my village what will people say?”20 Phoolan was released from the jail the same year as when the film was released, and she had remarried and was in the process of repatriation in society. The stigma of being shown nude and raped in a film had serious repercussions on her daily life. In the same interview, she expresses her anger and says, “How can they show a woman like this, baar-baar (repeatedly)? This is all a vyapar (business)”. In the same interview, she also makes it known, how time and again, the film’s producer, S.S. Bedi aka Bobby Bedi dissuaded her from watching the film. She says: When I asked Bedi to show it to me, he said, ‘Pagal ho jayegi if you see it’ (you’ll go crazy). Then I began to think, why are they not showing it to me?  For citation details, see note 14.

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What had they shown? They must have thought I would not be alive when it came out.

The interview also documents the complaint that Phoolan made via her legal representative, Pravin Anand, who wrote to the producer, S.S. Bedi: Your film in as much as it is… a false and misleading version of the true life of our client amounts to a serious invasion of our client’s right of privacy and publicity…The moral question is: what are the rights of a living subject on a biography, especially a film biography?

The primary objection was against four scenes in the film which involved rape, sex and nude scenes. Phoolan in her objection to the scene in the film where Vikram Mallah and Phoolan Devi make love, with her on the top, says: How could he do that? He (Vikram) had a bullet in his back until the end. And look, I don’t even take off my clothes in front of other women.

This scene is not even in the book that Shekhar used to base his film on. Kapur admitted to taking poetic license in the scene and responded: It was not by accident that I showed this. Sex had always been imposed on her, it was associated with violence and rape. This allowed her to flower.

The question then is, how could the filmmaker who wanted to generate “empathy” for Phoolan show complete apathy toward a Phoolan who was alive and attempting to live a mainstream life again? In an interview to host Rajiv Shukla, in his popular 1990s TV program, “Rubaroo”, Phoolan says, “Society thugs made me nude once, they are disrobing me every day. I am alive, why show those four scenes?”21 Phoolan wasn’t the only one to protest. In her review of the film, Arundhati Roy critiqued Shekhar Kapur and producer Bobby Bedi’s complete disregard for Phoolan’s agency as a person to have a say in her portrayal in the film. Recalling Kapur’s introduction at the film’s premiere when he said, “I have a choice between Truth and Aesthetics. I chose

21  Phoolan Devi | Known as Bandit Queen | Rare Interview, News All Time, Rubaru, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8iS-PXYGh4

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Truth because Truth is pure”, Roy savaged Kapur’s “truth telling” by contrasting it with Mala Sen’s writing: Sometimes various versions of the same event—versions that totally conflict with each other i.e: Phoolan’s version, a journalist’s version, or an eye-­ witnesses version—are all presented to the reader in the book. What emerges is a complex, intelligent and human book. Shekhar Kapur wasn’t curious. He has openly admitted that he didn’t feel that he needed to meet Phoolan. His producer Bobby Bedi supports this decision: Shekhar would have met her if he had felt a need to do so. (Sunday Observer August 20th [1994]). It didn’t matter to Shekhar Kapur who Phoolan Devi really was. What kind of person she was.22

Significantly, author, Mala Sen responded to Arundhati’s questions and, predictably, lent credence to the popular conjecture that Phoolan lied. She writes: All the contracts Phoolan signed with Channel 4 were explained to her in detail in the presence of members of her family. Roy says she was exploited because the contracts were in English. It wouldn’t have mattered if the contracts had been in Hindi or Chinese because she does not read or write any language. To protect myself, I got members of her family to counter-sign the contracts. The implication that she was made to sign what she did not understand is not only untrue but potentially libellous…I have nothing against Phoolan Devi, despite all that has happened. I have told her I will try to minimise the potential damage. I am resisting pressure to reveal all that has passed between us.23

Sen’s response rides on the stereotype that a Dalit, illiterate woman and a former bandit is unworthy of a clean testimony. Her agency to dislike, object or refuse is deemed null and void since she signed a contract before the making of the film. This distrust clearly emanates from her caste and class position as opposed to someone like Suzette Jordan who is commonly known as the “Park street rape survivor” who was raped in Kolkata in 2012. Under Indian law, the identity of a victim of rape cannot be revealed without the individual’s permission. Suzette waived her right to anonymity in June 2013 and was applauded for fighting social stigma and  Roy, August 22, 1994.  Sen, March 2, 1995.

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victim blaming. She was from a middle class, English-speaking background and received much deserved support for speaking up unlike Phoolan. Shekhar Kapur’s film was released in 1994 when Phoolan withdrew her objections after the producer Channel 4 paid her £40,000. In a post Nirbhaya society that witnessed the anti-rape movement in December 2012, which led to changes in the anti-rape laws in India, strict codes were laid out for the protection of the identity of the rape survivor. Section 228 A of the Indian Penal Code lays down the provisions which bar the disclosure of identity of the victim of grave offenses such as rape, rape which leads to a “permanent vegetative state”, gang rape, rape committed by a person of authority or by a husband on his wife during separation. Exceptions can arise only with the permission of the investigating officer or by the authorization of the survivor or the family if the survivor is dead or a minor or of unsound mind.24 To get the facts right: since Kapur never showed the film to Phoolan Devi, the question regarding her consent over representation of her life and the sexual crimes against her never arose. In keeping with the “artistic” trend, the 1996 Supreme Court judgment never debated the issue of disclosure. In a recent interview, producer Bobby Bedi stated that “If I had made the film today, I would have no hopes of getting the same judgment”.25 Bedi is correct; not because of the growing conservatism in judicial pronouncements but because of the certainty that the film would have definitely failed before the stringent provisions of “privacy” in the Right to Privacy Act (2017). The Act holds that: While the legitimate expectation of privacy may vary from the intimate zone to the private zone and from the private to the public arenas, it is important to underscore that privacy is not lost or surrendered merely because the individual is in a public place. Privacy attaches to the person since it is an essential facet of the dignity of the human being.26

Way back in 1994, the filmmakers had argued before the Delhi High Court that “public figures” had no right to privacy. In today’s time, Phoolan would have been able to defend herself on the grounds of privacy.  See explanation in https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1696350/  Livemint (July 13, 2018). 26   See nine-bench judgment which declared privacy a “fundamental” right: Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd)…vs Union of India And Ors (August 2017). 24 25

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Postscript: Sexualization of Violence In Bandit Queen, there is a moment when Phoolan comes to meet her parents. After an altercation with her father, she says angrily, “Ghar ki izzat mere kandhon par hi to hai/The honor of the family lies only on my shoulders”. She is upset that the family does nothing to acknowledge all the wrongs done against her and tries to tame her by constantly invoking honor in an Indian patriarchal system that is often associated with how women align themselves with the gender norms in this male-dominated society. Furious, she goes to the village of her former husband, Putti Lal, drags him out with her lover, Vikram Mallah, and beats him up brutally. Kapur stated to India Today that “Phoolan comes out of the ravines to beat him up, she doesn’t spare his wife, Vidya, who was cruel to her”. He says that he did not want to show his heroine beating up another woman because that would have detracted from the feminist message of his film. The premise of Kapur’s omission of Phoolan’s violence against Putti Lal’s later bride is flawed. Instead of trying to convey the “feminist message”, he reaffirms the stereotype around feminism that it is antimen. It is a weary misogynist trope that shows that women perpetrate violence because they are emotionally unstable and incompetent. Similarly, in the recreation of the Behmai rape incident in the film, Phoolan is shown disrobed and forced to walk naked to the well by Lalaram as the villagers watch her humiliation. Phoolan had strong objections to this scene. The question is, if the cinematic imagination is so limited that there was no other way to portray the incident without showing her naked when the real person being portrayed is alive. Or the cinematic imagination is using the same trope where sexualization of violence against women makes it more exciting, voyeuristic and important. This sexist distribution of violence repeats the stereotype that women are firstly sexual objects and then anything else, and it is that danger that will always keep them vulnerable. When Vikram Mallah is shot and injured in the film, he is portrayed as stoic, brave, in control of his emotions and senses asking Phoolan to grab her gun. Violence against him is not sexualized. He emerges as an unshaken hero. This kind of sexism in cinematic portrayal re-establishes the fact the patriarchal gendered norm that men cannot be vulnerable and unheroic.

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In Bandit Queen, even when Phoolan is the heroine, she is allowed only to be a victim, not a survivor. The message is that violence is necessary and logical for men but the violence will remain gendered and sexual for women. Phoolan was killed on July 25, 2001, by Sher Singh Rana who claimed to avenge the killing of 22 Thakurs, his fellow caste men, in the Behmai massacre. Rana escaped from Tihar jail in 2004 and was recaptured in 2006. He was granted bail in October 2016. Since then, he is not only rallying himself as a Thakur leader who claims to have got the remains of Thakur king Prithviraj Chauhan from Afghanistan but has also been instrumental in instigating violence against Dalits in West Uttar Pradesh, most recently in March 2017. Reports suggest that he has been mobilizing a “Rajput Regiment” with the active support from Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Hindu Yuva Vahini to orchestrate attacks on Dalits. Meanwhile, Phoolan’s mother Mula Devi and sister Munni Devi continue to live in poverty. Munni Devi works as a MNREGA laborer to make ends meet. Her mother neither receives pension nor government support to get access to Phoolan’s assets that were usurped by her last husband, Umed Singh, a real estate agent. The current position of Phoolan’s killer and Phoolan’s family is relevant to the discussion on the biopic film because the deliberate omissions of key chapters of her life in the film continue to define the realities and the fate of a Dalit assertive woman like Phoolan. The hierarchy and the core systemic inequalities of a patriarchal, feudal social order continue in her afterlife. Like all dacoits, Phoolan is known to be a baaghi, a rebel in the Chambal ravines. But her heroism is concentrated around gender through her portrayal in the film instead of a social unequal order. A police inspector is reported to have said to Mary Ann Weaver, “For every man this girl has killed, she has slept with two. Sometimes she sleeps with them first, before she bumps them off”. The film now exists as a folklore that actively instigates mythmaking around Dalit assertive women instead of delving deeper into strong roots of the oppressive caste system.

Works Cited Films Bandit Queen, director Shekhar Kapur, producer Bobby Bedi, 1994. Wounded: The Bandit Queen, director Krishna Mishra, producer Shri Hari Om Films, 2007.

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Books Devi, Phoolan, Cuny, Marie-Therese and Rambali, Paul. I Phoolan Devi: Autobiography of a Bandit Queen. (London: Little, Brown and Company, 1996). Irudayam, Aloysius, Mangubhai, Jayshree P, Lee, Joel G, ed. Dalit Women Speak Out: Caste, Class and Gender Violence in India (Delhi: Zubaan Books, 2011). Mazzerella, William. Censorium: Cinema and the Open Edge of Mass Publicity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013). Narayan, Badri. Fascinating Hindutva: Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilization (New Delhi: Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd., 2003).

Journal and Book Articles Agarwal, Bina. “Gender and Land Rights Revisited: Exploring New Prospects via the State, Family and Market”, Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 3, Nos 1 and 2 (January and April, 2003), 184–224. Doron, Assa. “Caste Away? Subaltern Engagement with the Modern Indian State”, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 44, No. 4 (July, 2010), 753–783. Fernandes, Leela. “Reading India’s Bandit Queen: A Trans/National Feminist Perspective on Discrepancies of Representation” in Wendy S.  Hesford and Wendy Kozol Ed., Haunting Violations: Feminist Criticism and the Crisis of the ‘Real’, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 47–75. Kosambi, Meera. “Bandit Queen through Indian eyes: the reconstructions and reincarnations of Phoolan Devi”, Hecate, Vol. 24, No 2 (November 1, 1998). PDF version accessed on November 22, 2018. Murty, Madhavi. “Reading the Perplexing Figure of the ‘Bandit Queen’: Interpellation, Resistance and Opacity.” Thirdspace: A Journal Of Feminist Theory & Culture, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2009), 1–26. Pai, Sudha. “Phoolan Devi and the Social Churning in UP”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 36, No. 32 (Aug 11–17, 2001), 3017–3018. Singh, Saran Pal and Shukla, Arvind. “Socio-Economic Outlook of Bundelkhand: Problems and Prospects”, The Indian Journal for Political Science, Vol. 71, No 3 (July-Sept, 2010), 947–967. Zelliot, Eleanor. “Dalit—New Cultural Context for an Old Marathi Word”, Contribution to Asian Studies, Vol 11, Language and Civilization Change in South Asia, ed. Charles Maloney (Brill: Leiden, 1978), 77–97.

Newspaper Articles/Reports/Interviews Devi, Phoolan and Rajiv Shukla. Rare Interview with Phoolan Devi (Bandit Queen) with Rajiv Shukla, pre-2000, “Rubaru”: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=RWcCEyUaXlM

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Dixit, Neha.  “Bundelkhand’s Dalit Women Rally Against Government Negligence”, The Wire  (Feb 15, 2017): https://thewire.in/politics/bundelkhands-dalit-women-rally-against-government-negligence Jain, Madhu. “The truth on trial: A Special Report”, India Today (Oct 15, 1994): https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/special-report/story/19941015-shekharkapur-bandit-queen-raises-moral-questions-on-­i ndividual-right-toprivacy-809819-1994-10-15 PTI. “Small is big in Uttar Pradesh where the ‘die’ is caste” (Jan 19, 2017): https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/small-isbig-in-uttar-pradesh-where-the-die-is-caste/articleshow/56663009.cms Roy, Arundhati. “The Great Indian Rape Trick”, Part1, Sunday (Aug 22, 1994): http://arundhati-roy.blogspot.com/2004/11/great-indian-rape-trick-i.html Sen, Mala. Right of reply: ‘Bandit Queen’ gives it to you straight, The Independent  (March 2, 1995):  https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/right-of-reply-bandit-queen-gives-it-to-you-straight-1609660.html Singh, N.K. “Former outlaw Phoolan Devi accuses her mother, brother of usurping her property”, India Today (June 15, 1988): https://www.indiatoday.in/ magazine/indiascope/story/19880615-former-outlaw-phoolan-devi-accusesher-mother-brother-of-usurping-her-property-797350-1988-06-15 Tanul Thakur, “Disgusting and revolting and obscene: ‘Bandit Queen’ and the censors”, Livemint (July 13, 2018):  https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/ VDNX1GQ7uY2b2v4HYcxRhK/Disgusting-and-revolting-and-obsceneBandit-Queen-and-t.html. Vishwa, Deepak. “Phoolan’s assassin on parole instigated Thakurs in Saharanpur”, National Herald (March 27, 2017):  https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/ politics/phoolans-assassin-on-parole-instigated-thakurs-in-saharanpur-shabbirpur-communal-riots. Weaver, Mary Ann. “India’s Bandit Queen” The Atlantic (Nov, 1996) https:// w w w. t h e a t l a n t i c . c o m / m a g a z i n e / a rc h i v e / 1 9 9 6 / 1 1 / i n d i a s - b a n d i t queen/304890/

Reports

and

Judgments

Bharucha, SP and B.N. Kirpal, Bobby Art International, Etc vs Om Pal Singh Hoon & Ors (May 1, 1996): 4 SCC 1: https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1400858/ Jain, V.  Phoolan Devi vs Shekhar Kapoor And Ors (Dec 1, 1994b): DLT 154: https://indiankanoon.org/doc/793946/. Johannes, Ara. 2009. “Dalit Women’s Access to Land in the context of Globalisation: A Literature Review”. Nirmala Niketan Research Unit. https:// arajohannes.wordpress.com/writing/research/dalit-womens-access-to-landresources-in-the-context-of-globalization-a-literature-review/

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Lokur, MB and D Gupta, Independent Thought vs Union of India, (11 October 2017): https://indiankanoon.org/doc/87705010/ Navsarjan Trust. Gender Violence and Access to Justice for Dalit Women: Final Report (Dec, 2011). Nani Devati: Navsarjan Trust. https://idsn.org/wp-content/uploads/user_folder/pdf/New_files/India/2012/Gender_violence_ and_access_to_justice_for_Dalit_women_2011_Navsarjan_Trust.pdf Unicef. “Child Marriage” (2018): http://unicef.in/Whatwedo/30/Child-Marriage

CHAPTER 14

The Female “Atankvadi”: Gender, Militancy and the Politics of Representation in the Late 1990s Isha Purkayastha

A young woman sits huddled in the back of a moving truck. Her face is largely in shadow, except when it is illuminated by shafts of light that filter through the slats at the back of the truck. The shot tightens gradually until she all but fills the frame. The light throws her face into sharp relief; she is grieving but contemplative. The scene shifts; a bruised, broken man—the young woman’s beloved—lies down on his bed in his prison cell, relief and yearning evident on his face. As the truck rattles along to its unknown destination, the camera revisits the young woman one last time. This is the concluding shot of the 1996 cult classic film, Maachis, where the audience sees a grieving Veeran preparing to die.1 She is the picture of quiet courage.

 Gulzar, Maachis (1996). Maachis won several awards in the following year: National Film Award for Best Actress (Tabu 1997); Filmfare Award for Best Male Debut (Chandrachur Singh 1997); National Film Award for Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment (Gulzar, RV Pandit 1997); Filmfare Award for Best Dialogue (Gulzar 1997); Filmfare Award for Best Story (Gulzar 1997); Filmfare RD Burman Award for New Music Talent (Vishal Bhardwaj 1997). 1

I. Purkayastha (*) Bangalore, India © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_14

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Maachis tells the story of Kirpal (Chandrachur Singh), Veeran (Tabu) and Jassi (Raj Zutshi), the sons and daughters of prosperous Sikh families in rural Punjab whose camaraderie and happiness are short-lived as in the tense aftermath of the anti-Sikh riots of 1984,2 the police unlawfully detain and torture Jassi. The constant threat of police brutality, custodial torture and the failure of the legal apparatus consolidate the young protagonists’—Kirpal and Jassi—resentment against the state. They join the Khalistani movement—an armed campaign for Sikh self-determination. As a consequence of their choice to pick up arms against the state, both Veeran and Kirpal meet tragic ends. In an interview, Gulzar—the writer-­ director of the film—describes Maachis as “a human love story, set in the Punjab of turmoil and militancy”.3 Violated and disillusioned by the very apparatus that was instituted to protect people and frustrated by the futility of legal recourse, an enraged Kirpal takes to militancy. He joins a group of Khalistani militants fighting the state. Initially, Veeran stays home and takes charge of her family’s farm. She looks after her brother, Jassi, who is recovering slowly from his ordeal with the police and helps her mother look after the house. With no real “man of the house”, Veeran shoulders a predominantly male responsibility: she takes it upon herself to make sure that the farm is looked after and her family is provided for. Her betrothed’s absence troubles her; her activity is interspersed with yearning for her beloved, Kirpal. However, when Jassi is driven to suicide after being incarcerated and tortured a second time, and her mother succumbs to heartbreak, Veeran must make a decision. Will she remain in her village to be harassed and threatened by the police or will she avenge her family? The injustice of her circumstances and the desire to protect herself from further violation drives Veeran to take up arms against the state. Like Kirpal, she joins the resistance movement. She is trained as a missile shooter before she is assigned to the unit of which Kirpal is a part. Her reunion with him is moving and poignant; they meet as lovers and soldiers.

2  After Indira Gandhi’s assassination on 31 October 1984, a series of programs were directed against Sikhs. In the next two decades, as many as nine different commissions and committees inquired into the organized killings; still the guilty were not nailed. See Uma Chakravarti, “Long Road to Nowhere: Justice Nanavati on 1984”, The Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 30, No. 35 (Aug–Sep 2, 2005), p 3790. 3  Interview with Gulzar, Rediff Online, (4 April 1997).

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A cinematic portrayal of rural Punjab, Maachis recounts the volatile, politically fraught 1980s and explores the circumstances which instigated young Sikhs to join the Khalistani movement. Within this, the portrayal of a woman revolutionary poses many urgent and pertinent questions regarding gender and militancy. What drives a woman like Veeran to pick up arms? Ideologically, she occupies a contentious space. When she picks up a gun, she transgresses the traditional masculine domain of warfare. Her decision to join the Khalistani movement makes her a terrorist in the eyes of the law. According to the film, which is a harsh indictment of police excesses and the apathy of the legal system, her circumstances justify her actions. Maachis’ message is however about the futility of violence, and Veeran is not allowed to live. Instead, both she and Kirpal are venerated as tragic heroes; examples of young men and women who were forced to resist state brutality and meet with the tragic consequences of their actions. The first section of my chapter contextualises the film in order to better understand Veeran’s reality, motivations and decision to join the movement. It also compares Maachis with other cinematic representations of the anti-Sikh riots and the Khalistani movement—such as Hawayein4 (2003), Amu5 (2006) and Sadda Haq6 (2013). In the next section, the focus is on Veeran’s portrayal, and the purpose is to examine her gendered role in the movement and analyse the nature of liberation that the movement offers from traditional gender expectations. The concluding section compares Veeran with Moina, a cinematic counterpart from Dil Se (1998) who also bears arms against the state.

Maachis, Hawayein, Amu and Sadda Haq: Khalistan, 1984, and their Representation in Cinema The circumstances of the emergence of the Khalistani movement, the encounters between the state and the Sikh community and the socio-­ political impact of the movement have seen representation in Bombay cinema.7 Ammotje Mann’s Hawayein is the story of Sarbjeet (Ammotje  Ammtoje Mann directed and produced by Nippy Dhanoa (2003).  Shonali Bose directed and produced by Bedbrata Pain (2005). 6  Mandeep Benipal directed and produced by Kulhinder Singh Sidhu, Dinesh Sood and Nidhi Sidhu (2013). 7  The 2015 Soha Ali Khan and Vir Das-starrer 31st October, directed by Shivaji Lotan Patil, follows the familiar pattern of a Sikh family’s attempt at escaping the wrath of Delhi’s rioters in the immediate aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination. Notably, the film opened to 4 5

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Maan), who joins the Khalistani movement when his family is massacred in the 1984 riots in Delhi, in the immediate aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination. Amu, directed by Shonali Bose, is a young woman’s journey to self-discovery. When Kajori Roy visits India for the first time as an adult after spending her life in America, she discovers that she is actually Amu, who lost her family in the 1984 riots as a little girl. The Punjabi film Sadda Haq follows a similar storyline. An Indian-origin Canadian Sikh woman, Gulsharan “Sharon”, visits India for the first time to gather material for her doctoral thesis. Sharon discovers that her own traumatic history, which she was hitherto unaware of, is deeply intertwined with her research. All four films engage with certain aspects of the history of the Khalistani movement: Maachis and Hawayein explore the themes of state atrocities and their effects on social and personal lives especially on the young, while Amu and Sadda Haq’s primary preoccupation is the impact of the riots on the Sikh community, narrativised as journeys of self-discovery. The four films are unambiguously critical of the state’s role in the riots; Hawayein and Amu recount the bloodbath in Delhi in graphic detail, and three of the four films (Maachis, Hawayein and Sadda Haq) attribute the radicalisation of their young protagonists to their desire to avenge themselves against the state. The riots of 1984 intrigued filmmakers because they marked an epoch in India’s social and political history. It brutalised and alienated the Sikh community and strengthened the desire for self-­ determination, giving the Khalistani movement fresh impetus. But the riots of 1984 had a long genesis, which began at least a decade earlier. The history of Punjab’s alienation can be traced back to the times of the Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, but it was in the 1970s, that, following the demand by the Shiromani Akali Dal for a special status for Sikhs and Punjab, known as the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, the battle for Sikh legitimacy began, initially over socio-political issues. However, with the introduction of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the religious militant leader, the Punjab crisis turned into a full-fledged militant revolt against the nation state. The demand was for a new Sikh homeland: Khalistan. In June 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the Indian Army launched “Operation Blue Star” on the Golden Temple in Amritsar in a bid to flush out the “terrorist” followers of Bhindranwale. The attack on the Harmandir indifferent reviews, with critics claiming the film had “nothing on offer”, See Shubhra Gupta’s review in, The Indian Express, (21 Oct., 2016).

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Sahib deeply wounded Sikh religious sentiments, and the Khalistani movement gained momentum especially after massive losses of civilian lives: encounter deaths, disappearances and custodial torture. Four months later, on 31 October 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards, triggering a genocide of the Sikh community. Over four days, between 31 October and 3 November, Sikhs in various parts of the country, particularly Delhi, were dragged out of their homes and brutally killed by vengeful mobs. The initial figure of 325 deaths in Delhi, as published by the Hindustan Times on 11 November 1984, was grossly incorrect as the accepted official figure, between 31 October 1984 and 7 November 1984, stands at 2733.8 Equally, while it is impossible to ascertain the country-wide figures, 586 people are said to have been killed in other cities and towns in the same period.9 Deaths apart, the scale of the pogrom included severe injuries to survivors including scalding, burning, looting and damaging of properties and establishments. The traumatic consequences of the pogroms have never been fully understood as these cannot be “recorded” easily. The “riots” were not spontaneous; they were well organised, a point made early in the well-­ known report, Who are the Guilty? the attacks on members of the Sikh Community in Delhi and its suburbs … were the outcome of a well organised plan marked by acts of both deliberate commissions and omissions by important politicians of the Congress (I) at the top and by authorities in the administration.10

Consequently, the road to justice has been rocky and unyielding as the investigative process for nailing of the guilty was never conducted seriously.11

 For the Hindustan Times figures, see Who are the Guilty?, p 1. For official figure of death, see 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots (2005) p 17. 9  Anti-Sikh Riots (2005), 1. 10  Who are the Guilty? (1984), 1. 11  In a report published by People’s Union for Democratic Rights, it is known that till “July 1992, a total of 578 cases were instituted”. However, most of the First Information Reports do not mention any names. “Only 14 cases resulted in the conviction of about 128 people”, See 1984 Carnage in Delhi, p 10. 8

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Testimonies of survivors suggest that in many cases, the police were complicit; they refused to intervene or control the situation. Worse, the Congress government at the Centre was equally responsible for not quelling the riots. The testimonies, below, confirm the horror of the riots: A truck load of policemen came on the scene, but they didn’t stop the crowd-they went away…they stormed the house and set the furniture ablaze … I saw my husband and son lying on the ground, being hit by crowbars… there were two or three policemen standing around. I asked the constable: “Can’t you do anything to help?” He told me, “You ladies can go but these two (my husband and my son) cannot be spared.” I asked, “Why? Do you have orders to do this?” I will never forget the wry smile on his face.12

The fact-finding report mentions what the activists found when they visited the sites: we found the survivors… old men, women and children… some of them with severe burns, huddling together in the open… we were greeted by a strong stench of burnt bodies which were still rotting inside some of the houses.13

Ideologically, all four films corroborate the observations made by fact-­ finding reports. Not surprisingly, therefore, they faced stiff resistance from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) and political parties. Hawayein is currently banned in Delhi and Punjab. The CBFC demanded six politically motivated cuts before granting Amu an A certification. In order to make the film eligible for television broadcast, the board asked producers to remove all verbal references to the riot. Finally, Amu was released directly to DVD with its plot and dialogues intact. Sadda Haq’s long struggle with the CBFC, which began in 2009, ended when the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal cleared it for release in 2013. However, the film is banned in Punjab, Chandigarh, Haryana, Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir. Despite its skirmishes with the CBFC, Maachis was released on 25 October 1996. This was the year the Aamir Khan and Karishma Kapoor starrer Raja Hindustani, a popular formulaic melodramatic romance  Chengappa, 2005.  Who are the Guilty?, (1984), 23.

12 13

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across class divisions, was the highest grossing film, and Maachis enjoyed only modest box office success. However, Maachis struck a chord with its audience, and, as Saibal Chatterjee noted in his review of the film in December 1996, “In every urban centre of Punjab where the film has been released, it’s been declared a runaway hit”.14 Chatterjee made an even more pertinent observation in noting that Maachis was the first film to be made about terrorism in Punjab and that it took Gulzar, himself a Sikh, to turn his “attention to those benighted years”. Twenty years later, in 2016, journalists recall how the film played its part in deciding the Punjab state elections in 1997. Chandigarh-based journalist Gajinder Kumar says: “Maachis … did spark off political debate on police excesses and circumstances surrounding the rise of Sikh militancy in Punjab”.15 Shortly after Maachis, the Parkash Singh Badal-led Shiromani Akali Dal won the election with an absolute majority, conclusively ousting the Congress in the state. While there need not be any direct correlation between cinema and politics, the performance of the Akali Dal in the Assembly elections does point to the fact that the voters identified with the socio-political problems depicted in the film. Why did Maachis reverberate with its audience? While there are and can be many views, the success of the film undeniably lies in its rootedness. The film places great emphasis on social and geographical location; it introduces Veeran, Kirpal and Jassi as members of affluent farming families in rural Punjab. The setting of the romance between Veeran and Kirpal, within social ties and rural prosperity, gives the film a nostalgic air of youthful innocence and happiness. Further, Maachis’ effectiveness lies in its ability to create relatable characters like Veeran, Kirpal and Jassi, young men and women who shared with the audience a sense of cultural location and youthful aspirations and desires. The narrative shifts between rural Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, with the former signifying home and hearth and the latter, the irrevocable loss of the former. The opening song in the film, “chhod aaye hum woh galiyaan” sung by the young men who have become “atankvads”, is an

 Saibal Chatterjee, Outlook (25 December 1996).  IANS, “Udta Punjab debate: How Gulzar’s ‘Maachis’ swayed voters in 1990s”, Hindustan Times (10 June 2016). 14 15

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articulation of this loss that holds the woman of/and the land in a metaphoric embrace: chhod aaye hum woh galiyaan… jahaan tere pairo ke kanwal gira karte the hanse to do gaalon men bhanwar padaa karte the tere kamar ke balpe, nadi mudaa karti thi hansi teri sun sunke fasal pakaa karti thi… We’ve left behind those streets… Where the lotuses of your feet used to fall When you laughed, the dimples in your cheek were like whirlpools The river used to trace its curves from your waist And the crops ripened at the sound of your laugh.16

This nostalgia of romance and happiness is brutally destroyed by the state, particularly the police. This too spoke directly to an empathetic audience: a generation of young men and women like Veeran and Kirpal, who lived through the restless and traumatic years of the 1980s. The brutal deaths of dear ones, the shaving of the long hair, which is a sacred symbol of Sikh men and the anger, shame and guilt of it, the knock at the door by the police and detainment at the police station in blatant transgression of proper legal procedure, the helplessness of ordinary citizens to reach and rescue family members thus detained, the rekindled memories of the brutalities of the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 and the anger and horror of it being revisited upon the Sikhs as a community in “one’s own nation” are all touched upon in the film through the major and minor characters. As a minor character comments when a bloodied and broken Jassi returns home after 15 days of unlawful incarceration: antankvadon kya kheton mein ugti hai? Ye dekha aapne, ye dekha? Aise paida hote hein atankvadi. Do you think terrorists grow in fields? Did you see what happened, did you? This is how terrorists are born.

Unlike Maachis, Hawayein, Amu and Sadda Haq did not have quite the same impact possibly as these films were released to an audience of a different generation—one that was separated in time from the events of  All subsequent translations are mine.

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1984 by nearly 20 years. Further, the protagonists in Sadda Haq and Amu were non-resident Indians, women who left the country when they were very young, and had only confused, suppressed memories of the genocide. Maachis’ appeal lay in the fact that the film offered a nuanced account of the process of radicalisation, with the genocide of 1984 in the hinterland of the narrative. Maachis narrates fictional lives caught in a real and identifiable historical moment and its adept use of Hindi film’s formulaic and familiar grammar of representation (stock characters and locales, song and dance, etc.) interspersed with documentary realism—news headlines, still photographs of the storming of the Golden Temple, Indira Gandhi’s assassination and mob violence against the Sikh community—helped connect with the audience in terms of its broad liberal understanding of this period, the state’s culpability as well as the self-destructive futility of violent methods. Maachis, unlike Hawayein or Amu whose narrative preoccupation was the genocide, focused on its protagonists’ journey to radicalisation after the riots and in the wake of mass anti-Sikh persecution. Young men and women did not pick up arms overnight, and the film pays careful attention to the chain of events in the aftermath of the genocide that catalysed Veeran and Kirpal’s resolve. It is interesting to reflect on why Maachis uses a female militant when it is aware that the taking up of arms against wrong is central to the discourse of masculinity; the difference between the “mard” (male) and the “na-mard” (emasculated) as the “Commander” of the group puts it. Why does Veeran need to bear the gun and enter this masculine world of warfare? Also, since the story of love and romance is so tightly knitted with the tragedy of political violence, Veeran’s role as a militant becomes a very critical one.

Gendered Inquilab (Revolution): Veeran, the Armed Woman Revolutionary Three friends gather in the courtyard of a large house. Two young men (Jassi and Kirpal) are engaged in an impromptu game of hockey, iconically associated with Punjab, while a young woman (Veeran) looks on indulgently. When Jassi’s mother gently rebukes them for playing with patthar ki gend (balls of stone), the game is abandoned for light-hearted banter. The moment is short-lived; Veeran draws their attention beyond the courtyard’s walls, towards a noise outside the frame. The camera pans out to reveal police vehicles in the distance.

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This scene in the beginning of the film, which sets in motion the events that lead to Kirpal and Veeran joining the Khalistani movement, is the last time the audience sees the three protagonists together, untouched by tragedy. Veeran, the young woman who points out police vehicles in the distance with foreboding in the beginning of Maachis, takes up arms against the state as the narrative of the film progresses even though for a large part of the film, she shows little inclination to do so. In fact, early on in the film, she snatches Kirpal’s rifle and throws it in the well and is slapped by Kirpal for her action. Veeran articulates the film’s liberal discomfort with armed revolt: that violence begets violence. Her ideological position vis-à-vis vengeance is made explicit when Kirpal returns for a brief rendezvous with her and Jassi and confesses that he has killed ACP Khurana. When he says: aag ke baavat jalte the mujhme I was consumed with fire

–by – way of an explanation, Veeran asks him, rhetorically: ab bujhgaye, kya? Has the fire gone out now?

After Jassi’s arrest in the beginning of the film, Kirpal joins the Khalistani movement to avenge the former’s unlawful incarceration and custodial torture. Veeran, on the other hand, takes charge of home and hearth and waits anxiously for her beloved—who left after an altercation between them—to return. When Jassi commits suicide after he is incarcerated a second time and their heartbroken mother succumbs to her grief, Veeran believes that she has no choice but to join the militants. Maachis may have foisted Veeran’s fate upon her, but it also imbues her with the strength to embrace it. The latter half of the film introduces us to the Veeran who has resolved to take up arms and has completed her training as a missile shooter. However, her journey to radicalisation is not depicted in the film. In her conversations with Kirpal, she explains her motivations and refers to her training and that is as much as the audience will be given by way of an explanation. On the other hand, Kirpal’s journey to militancy is well documented; for instance, the audience is privy to his first encounter with guns and bombs and his extended conversation with Sanatan, the leader-mentor of the militant group he is a part of,

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about militancy, freedom and ideology. Veeran’s radicalisation on the other hand relates primarily to her female existence in a patriarchal society. The film restricts it to her asking Kirpal: main nahi jaa sakti tere saath? Can I not go with you?

–and – telling him when they meet again in the militant camp: phir akeli kya karti? Jante ho na jo haalhota he auraton ka jab akeli ho to? What could I do alone? You know what happens to women when they are all alone?

Veeran, who has trained as a missile shooter, is assigned to the same militant camp as Kirpal and introduced as the “chatthaa admi”, the sixth man for the group. However, with Veeran’s arrival, labour divisions in the camp become gendered. Veeran, the missile shooter, takes over the cooking, cleaning and laundry—domestic duties that were earlier carried out by her male fellow “soldiers”. Moreover, Sanatan introduces her fellow soldiers to her as her brothers-in-law. The attempt is to recreate the familiar in fraught, tense circumstances: a family with a woman who presides over the domestic setup. Maachis’ gender politics notwithstanding, history suggests that once women like Veeran joined militant camps, they often contributed through domestic labour. Laurent Gayer (2012) documents the experiences of female members of the movement and, Harneet Kaur, an ex-Khalistani combatant, recalling her days in a militant camp says: “Sometimes, I saw the wives of some militants who were busy cooking for the group. So I lent them a hand”.17 Women like Harneet Kaur and Veeran were also exceptions rather than the rule: there was a conspicuous lack of women militants in the Khalistani movement. Laurent Gayer observes: Unlike other irregular armed groups of the region, such as the Sri Lankan LTTE or the Nepalese Maoists, Sikh militants never encouraged the recruitment of women in their ranks. On the contrary, they tried to discourage the enlistment of young women … With a few exceptions, most women who joined the insurgency did so only after having been married to militants.18  Gayer (2012: 14).  Ibid, 4.

17 18

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Despite Maachis’ decision to include a female militant, the film stops short of allowing Veeran to seek vengeance. Instead of introducing the audience to a missile-shooting Veeran, the narrative presents her as Kirpal’s beloved and an affectionate sister-figure to her militant brethren. Unlike her fellow militants Kirpal or Jaimal, who are granted the opportunity to confront those who have wronged them, vengeance is not an option available to Veeran. When she does finally pick up a gun towards the end of the ­narrative, she kills in self-defence. Anger and its articulation—important themes in Maachis—are exclusively masculine privileges. Maachis’ relationship with masculinity has been discussed by critics. For instance, Rakesh Gupta analyses three Bombay films which engage with the theme of militancy: Maachis, Drohkaal (1994) and Roja (1992).19 Likewise, Harleen Singh (2006) examines cinematic representations of Punjab in the 1980s and 1990s, through analyses of Maachis and Hawaein.20 Both assert that militancy is inherently masculine, which is historically undeniable. However, Gupta’s argument that as the narrative progresses Veeran’s “coy femininity” is transformed into “overtly expressed masculinity” is extremely problematic.21 For nowhere in the narrative are we introduced to a “coy”, “feminine” Veeran: instead, Maachis introduces an industrious, resourceful Veeran who shoulders a predominantly male responsibility, in the absence of an adequate “man of the house”. The onus of running the family’s farm falls on her; Jassi’s incarceration and torture render him broken spirited and incapable. To her brother’s surprise, she can drive a tractor. The nature of Veeran’s labour is androgynous: she simultaneously drives a tractor and yearns for her lover. Testimonies of women who were a part of the Khalistani movement suggest that it wasn’t unusual for women like Veeran to play an important part in looking after the family’s farm; her character seems to be modelled on real female combatants. Gayer cites an erstwhile Khalistani fighter who describes her active childhood which included farm work. In her autobiography, Pritinder Kaur (name changed) writes that: “From childhood, I took an interest in boys’ work, giving fodder to animals, starting up the engine of the tractor and climbing on top of things”.22 Similarly, nothing  Gupta, “Cinema and Terrorism in India: 1990s” (html version).  Singh (2006: 115–124). 21  Gupta, “Cinema and Terrorism in India”. 22  Gayer, 14. 19 20

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about Veeran the militant is “overtly masculine”; she is a missile shooter who makes rotis and hangs laundry out to dry. Gupta’s reading of Maachis essentialises gender binaries, concluding that femininity and masculinity are mutually exclusive. Veeran becomes difficult to locate within this static definition of gender. Harleen Singh argues that “it is through the character of Veeran that Gulzar alludes to the excessive masculinity of Punjabi culture”.23 But a critique of masculinity is hardly Maachis’ agenda. If it were, the film would have had to engage with the inherent masculinity of militancy. Maachis engages with the problem of young people taking up arms and uses the tragic deaths of both men and women to make a larger point about the corrosive, destructive nature of violence. Also, in making her argument, Singh forgets to take into account the “masculinity” of the state, of which Maachis is very critical. The film depicts the state’s law and order apparatuses as simultaneously cruel and inept. Maachis’ target for criticism, then, is not Punjabi masculinity, but state machinery. Ultimately, neither Gupta nor Singh’s arguments hold water. Gupta’s observations of Veeran’s supposed masculinity are further undercut by Maachis’ hesitation in portraying a vengeful female protagonist. Her male comrades are given the opportunity to exact vengeance on the people who either actively participated in or turned a blind eye to the violence that was being done to them. One of Veeran’s comrades, Jimmy, is killed in combat. He dies a martyr; his sacrifice ensures the death of a member of parliament who refused to protect the local Sikh community during the riots of 1984. Kirpal kills the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Khurana, who is one of the men responsible for Jassi’s incarceration and custodial torture. He is finally captured when he attempts to assassinate Inspector Vohra, Khurana’s aide. Unlike the men who have “reasons” and “causes”, Veeran’s situation is different. The first time she picks up a gun is when she is forced to shoot in self-defence. Sanatan, who suspects Veeran to be a police informer, asks her comrade, Wazira, to kill her. To survive, Veeran must kill Wazira, whom she has grown to regard as an older brother. Once she kills Wazira and escapes her makeshift prison, she finds that she is trapped between Sanatan on one side and the police on the other. Her next and final target is Sanatan as the only way she can evade capture by the police is by killing him. After a tense hide-and-seek sequence in the woods, Veeran kills Sanatan, her leader. In this scene,  Singh, 119.

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Veeran is depicted sympathetically, and the audience is invited to share her predicament. The camera follows her movements closely, documenting her fear, anticipation and eventual success. Logically, Wazira’s death should be regarded as an inevitable outcome of suspicion within the ranks. Equally, Sanatan, the ideologue and charismatic advocate for violent revolution, cannot be contained within Maachis’ liberal ideological framework; he must die. By forcing Veeran into situations in which she has no choice but to kill, Maachis finds a reason to damn her. The double threads in the narrative, the story of romance and militancy, are so strongly knitted that Veeran’s eventual death is passed off as an inevitable one within the tragic scheme of things. Kirpal and Veeran’s romance is played out in the film against the backdrop of snow-capped mountains, flowing streams and dark pine forests which comprise a very familiar terrain in Hindi films. This deployment of the formulaic visuals for romance helps lend poignancy to their doomed relationship: kisi ka kya bigara tha hamne? What harm did we do to anyone?

The idyllic moment is short-lived for they are married to their martyrdom: the consequence of their decision to embrace violence. Kirpal had once asked in anguish: kya hum apne gharon ko laut sakte hein? Can we return to our homes?

In the tragic climax of the film, Veeran offers Kirpal his final release: she visits her bruised and battered beloved in his prison cell to return to him the cyanide pill she had earlier taken from him in a gesture of love. Significantly, their romance—and the film, draws to a close with a kiss, not very commonly shown in Hindi films—facilitates death through the exchange of a cyanide pill. For Kirpal, death is the only escape from the horror of incarceration and torture. Veeran, on the other hand, has freed herself from the trappings of militancy and escaped detection by the police. Logically, Veeran has alternatives available to her; she can renounce her past and begin afresh. However, Maachis will not consider Veeran’s freedom; the narrative makes the option of a new, different life unavailable to her. Her death is made to appear inexorable by invoking romance, which is deeply intertwined with the narrative of militancy in the film. Veeran’s

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death is justified by suggesting that the two lovers, whose romance was brutally cut short while they were alive, find closure and fulfilment in death. Was Veeran’s death avoidable? She could have turned her back on violence, and she could have started a new life since the state was no longer looking for her. Maachis paralyses this possibility. The film punishes her because it cannot condone her decision to take to arms while refusing to give her another way out. It does her further disservice by making her kill members of her adoptive family. The fate of the woman who chose violence is sealed; Maachis will not let her survive.

Veeran and Her Sisters: Bombay Cinema’s “Bad” Women? Veeran finds her contemporary and counterpart in Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se (1998). Through its protagonist Meghna/Moina (Manisha Koirala), the film vocalises the anti-state argument, but like Maachis, it is ultimately a comment on the futility and irrevocability of violence. Dil Se is a romance set against the backdrop of violent clashes between repressive state forces and militant counter-forces. The film is a critical comment on the national army’s abuse of the power that was granted to it by the AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act).24 Meghna is both witness to and a survivor of rape, perpetrated by the armed forces who were instituted to keep the peace in India’s north-eastern states. Instead of succumbing to her victimhood, she turns against the state and vows to avenge the crimes against her and her people. Dil Se deliberately obscures Meghna’s origins, unlike in Maachis, where origins play a very important role in the narrative of the film. The audience is given to understand that Meghna is from Assam but that ultimately, where she is from is irrelevant.25 Through shifting locations, Dil Se seems to make a larger point about state excesses in a number of India’s border states. However, while Meghna’s rootlessness adds to her irresistible enigma, it distances her from the audience. The audience is expected to 24  The Armed Forces (Special) Powers Acts grants sweeping powers to the armed forces in designated “disturbed areas”. Enacted in 1958 as a temporary measure, the act was amended in 1972 and extended to all the seven states of the north-east. From 1990, it has been in force in Jammu and Kashmir. 25  Wikipedia suggests that Meghna belongs to the banned organization, United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA). However, Dil Se does not explicitly name the organisation to which she belongs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dil_Se

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view Meghna through the gaze of the male protagonist and lover; she is the mysterious, desirable beloved. And it is the apolitical male protagonist who must tutor her in the ways of love and peace. Meghna and Veeran share a number of similarities. They are both brutalised by apparatuses of the nation state and, in response, they arm themselves against it. The women occupy ideologically contentious spaces in their respective narratives: they both choose the path of violence. Neither film condones violence; Meghna and Veeran’s tragic deaths serve to drive the message home. Meghna joins a militant group fighting for liberation in the north-east. She is finally “conquered” by love: her lover and the film’s male protagonist, Amarkant Varma (Shah Rukh Khan), reiterates the liberal argument that Maachis ultimately makes and convinces her not to fight violence with violence. The bomb Meghna is wearing explodes, killing both Meghna and Amarkant. Dil Se, like Maachis, will not forgive Meghna’s transgression and justifies her death by invoking romance and celebrating Amarkant’s ultimate sacrifice. Are Veeran and Meghna “bad” women for the choices they have made? Bombay cinema, when it chooses “terrorist” themes, seems to struggle with this question. Both women transgress doubly: they encroach upon masculine domain by picking up arms and worse, they arm themselves against the state. However, the films are sympathetic to their plight; Veeran’s circumstances force her to choose armed revolt despite her views on violence, and Meghna’s trauma explains her desire for revenge. The films will not damn these women, but they cannot let their transgressions go unpunished. In order to resolve this conundrum, the narratives grant these women tragic, heroic deaths. Women like Veeran are not “bad”, but mainstream Bombay cinema, with its liberal sympathies, will hesitate to support their transgressions and cannot defend their freedoms.

Works Cited Films 31st October. director Shivaji Patil, producer Harry Sachdeva, 2015. Amu. director and producer Shonali Bose, 2005. Dil Se. director Mani Ratnam, producer Ram Gopal Varma, Shekhar Kapur, Mani Ratnam, Bharat Shah, 1998. Hawayein, director Ammtoje Mann, producer Nippy Dhanoa, 2003. Maachis. director Gulzar, producer R.V. Pandit, 1996. Sadda Haq, director Mandeep Benipal, producers Kuljinder Singh Sidhu, Dinesh Sood, Nidhi Sidhu, 2013.

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Journal Articles Gayer, Laurent. “Princesses” among the “Lions”: The Militant Careers of Sikh Female Fighters”, Sikh Formations, Vol. 8, No. 1 (2012), 1–19. Gupta, Rakesh. “Cinema and terrorism in India: 1990s”. “A political scientist’s look at some Indian cinema on terrorism” (n.d.). Online Texts. Academic Staff College, JNU: http://ascjnu.tripod.com/cinema.html. Singh, Harleen. “TUR(BANNED) MASCULINITIES: Terrorists, Sikhs, and trauma in Indian cinema”, Sikh Formations, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2006), 115–124.

Reports and Newspaper Articles Bhatnagar, Gaurav Vivek. “Victims of 1984 Sikh Killings Left Disappointed by Modi Government”. The Wire  (Nov 3, 2018):  https://thewire.in/ communalism/1984-sikh-killings-modi-government-hs-phoolka. Chatterjee, Saibal. “The Embers are Still Burning”. Outlook (Dec 25, 1996):  http://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/the-embers-are-stillburning/202724 Chengappa, Raj. “The Survivors Justice Denied”,  India Today  (Sept 12, 2005):  http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/1984-anti-sikh-riot-first-personaccounts-of-some-survivors-show-victims-are-losing-faith/1/192992.html. Dwivedi, Sudarshana. “Interview with Gulzar”, Rediff Online (April 4, 1997): http://www.rediff.com/entertai/apr/04gulz.html. Gupta, Shubhra. “31st October movie review: It has nothing we didn’t know”, The Indian Express, (Oct 21, 2016): http://indianexpress.com/article/entertainment/movie-review/31st-october-movie-review-soha-ali-khan-virdas-star-rating-3094584/ IANS. “Udta Punjab debate: how Gulzar’s ‘Maachis’ swayed voters in 1990s”. Hindustan Times (June 10, 2016):  http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-­ news/udta-punjab-debate-how-gulzar-s-Maachis-swayed-voters-in-1990s/ story-da5djZzPFGxStdLXdbFl0J.html Nanavati, G.T. Justice Nanavati Commission of Inquiry: 1984 Anti Sikh Riots, Vol. 1 (Feb 9, 2005): 1-186: https://mha.gov.in/sites/default/files/Nanavati-­I_ eng_0.pdf.  People’s Union for Democratic Rights and People’s Union for Civil Liberties. Who are the Guilty? (New Delhi: Gobindo Mukhoty and Rajni Kothari, 1984). People’s Union for Democratic Rights. 1984 Carnage in Delhi: A Report on the Aftermath (New Delhi: Classic Offset Press, 1992).  PTI. “Delhi Court Awards Death Penalty to Yashpal Singh in 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots Case”,  Tthe Wire  (Nov 20, 2018):  https://thewire.in/law/ delhi-court-awards-death-penalty-to-yashpal-singh-in-1984-anti-sikh-riots-case. TNS/Agencies. “1984 anti-Sikh riots: Delhi HC upholds conviction of 70 people”,  The Tribune (Nov 28, 2018):  https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/ nation/hc-upholds-conviction-of-70-in-1984-riots-case/690765.html.

CHAPTER 15

Honoured Mother and ‘Honour’ Killing: Ammaji in NH10 (2015) Nonica Datta

NH10 is a realistic film, to say the least.1 That’s why it affects you deeply. It concerns attacks on young women and men who marry according to their own choice and against the wishes of their family and community. It is about ‘honour killing’—a hideous terminology that seeks to legitimise homicide by family members—in which young lovers are murdered. Often, honour killing incidents are buried within the Jat clan networks of the family, community and village(s). They provide social sanction for these acts to the extent that this type of brutality is acceptable, justified and even celebrated. The charcha (discussion) around it generates hostility towards the victims. Perpetrators are never suspect. There is no shame. No remorse. To some extent, NH10 affirms this behaviour. 1  NH10 (2015) is directed by Navdeep Singh, produced by Anushka Sharma, Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane, Karnesh Sharma, Vikas Bahl and Sunil Lulla with Anushka Sharma, Neil Bhoopalam and Deepti Naval in lead roles.

This chapter is dedicated to my mother, Kamala Datta, who while battling through a major illness encouraged me to complete it. N. Datta (*) Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_15

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NH10 is a violent movie and I watched it with trepidation hearing how ‘unwatchable’ it was said to be. And yes, how true! Amid the gory display of violence is Ammaji’s entry in the film, albeit brief, disturbing, imposing and effective—the subject of this chapter. The chilling details of the film are a testimony to the stark truths of our society with respect to moral values and codes that are enforced through violence. The violence is palpable and grisly: bullying, lynching and torture are relentlessly captured in terrifying scenes. I was struck by the many anomalies the film exposes. One is an almost fixed split between urban and rural. NH10 contrasts modern city life with the medieval mindset of rural Haryana. But the primary focus of my chapter is the village sarpanch (head),2 Deepti Naval, as Ammaji. Clad in salwar-­kameez, speaking softly in Haryanvi, her entry in the film is short and that too at a later stage. Once we see her on screen we feel relieved, expecting justice from her. A woman village head is worthy of admiration and respect. But all hell breaks loose once we discover that this sarpanch is not a dispenser of justice. Rather, this villainous woman has abetted her own daughter’s murder. She abuses other women and personifies evil. Yet, she is certainly not the typical bad woman of Hindi cinema. She upholds the honour of family and clan.

The Story of NH10 Meera (Anushka Sharma) and Arjun (Neil Bhoopalam) are an upwardly mobile couple of post-liberalisation India. Meera is a professional, liberated woman, who smokes and is indulgent towards her doting husband. To celebrate her birthday, Arjun plans a weekend away from the city. Full of excitement, they hit the NH10 (National Highway No. 10), leading to the North West Frontier. During their journey in a swanky Scorpio SUV, they stop at a dhaba (roadside eatery) for lunch. In the following scenes, they witness a horrific honour killing. Arjun tries hard to wrest the young couple, Mukesh and Pinky, from the clutches of avenging clansmen, but to no avail. This sets off a sequence of nightmarish events. Mukesh and 2  Traditionally, the village sarpanch is the head of the Khap Panchayat (caste-based village council), which constitutes the core of the political, social and economic system and organisation of the Jats. However, a woman sarpanch testifies to the ways in which our Constitution has empowered women through statutory panchayats for village governance in post-independence India.

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Pinky are killed in a gruesome manner by Pinky’s brother Satbir, uncle and cousins, who seem to be from the Jat community. Meera and Arjun become the targets of Pinky’s vengeful kin group, which displays visceral hatred towards individuals who clash with their customary ethos and moral codes. When Arjun is brutally ambushed, Meera goes to a nearby village to seek protection and justice. She approaches the police, but the cops target her. She lands up at the tenement of a marginalised migrant labourer couple on the village outskirts who, although petrified, give her shelter. The wife tells her to approach the village sarpanch, which she does. And so emerges Ammaji, as sarpanch, who welcomes her and tends her wounds. But when she discovers that Meera had tried to rescue her (Ammaji’s) daughter and her lover-husband, she turns hostile. She calls her son Satbir and the gang of avenging clansmen and is ready to silence Meera for good. Encouraged by Ammaji, they launch violent attacks on Meera. However, clever Meera blackmails Ammaji with a plan to kill her grandson. Ammaji gives up and Meera escapes, only to find that Arjun is no more. Angry, devastated and shaken, she returns to the sarpanch’s house determined to kill the gang. She crushes two of the clansmen by running them over with the SUV and attacking the rest with an iron rod. Cigarette in mouth, in the last scene she watches Satbir, strikes him repeatedly and bludgeons him to death. Ammaji is left forlorn. With deep emotion, she tells Meera: beti thee voh hamari, jo karna thaa, so karna thaa She was our daughter, but what had to be done had to be done.

A wounded Meera repeats, ‘jo karna thaa, so karna thaa’, and is shown walking back slowly, probably to the city. The morning light spreads as night fades.

Juxtaposing the Film Version with the Legal Narrative The movie depicts a crime committed against young lovers to protect the clan and caste honour and identity. This dreadful practice is most prevalent in the state of Haryana and is a frequent occurrence in the Rohtak, Kaithal and Gurgaon belts. It is mainly associated with the agrarian Jat community and shaped by izzat (honour), biradari (community) and bhaichara (brotherhood) norms. The film is loosely based on the infamous

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­ anoj-­Babli honour killing case (the M&B case hereafter).3 Manoj, 23, M and Babli, 19, of Karoran village in Kaithal district, eloped and married in April 2007 against the wishes of their families.4 They both belonged to the Banwala got (clan).5 Members of Babli’s family abducted and murdered them as ordered by the khap panchayat (caste-based council) on June 15, 2007.6 Police complicity was revealed in a confidential report.7 The bodies of the couple were recovered from the Barwala branch canal in Hisar district on June 23, 2007 and cremated as ‘unidentified’.8 The entire village turned against Manoj’s family at the diktat of the khap panchayat which was against this sahgotra (within the same clan) marriage.10 In March 2010, six members of Babli’s family were declared guilty of murder by the Additional District and Session Judge, Vani Gopal Sharma, of the Karnal district court.9 The Judge placed the case in the ‘rarest of rare’ category, sentencing to death Babli’s brother, Suresh, uncles, Rajinder and Baru Ram and cousins, Gurdev and Satish.10 The Judge sentenced the seventh accused, Mandeep, the driver, to seven years’ jail for kidnapping and conspiracy. The leader of the Banwala khap, Ganga Raj, a local Congressman, was awarded a life sentence for conspiring to kill the couple ‘just because they had married against the wishes of elders, who had declared them “brother and sister”’.11 The khap panchayat protested against the sentence through a mahapanchayat, extended protection to Ganga Raj and even felicitated him for killing the couple who had ‘ruined the Jat honour’.12 The court verdict stated that ‘This court has gone through sleepless nights and tried to put itself in the shoes of the offenders and think as to what might have prompted them to take such a step. But nothing seemed to justify the act of committing such a heinous crime’.13 On the brother 3  Most write-ups on NH10 point to the similarities between the film and the real-life case. See, for example, Governance Now, March 27, 2018. 4  The Tribune, March 28, 2010. 5  The Tribune, March 28, 2010. 6  The Tribune, March 12, 2011. 7  Times of India, March 31, 2010. 8  The Tribune, July 3, 2010. 9  The Tribune, March 29, 2010. 10  The Tribune, March 12, 2011. 11  Times of India, 31 March, 2010. 12  India Today, March 26, 2010. 13  The Tribune, March 31, 2010.

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and sister bond, the court averred, ‘That accused Suresh, brother of Babli, who should have been protecting and sheltering the sister should commit such an act, is beyond comprehension’. In her 96-page long statement, Sharma called for a special legislation to curb honour killings: ‘the present case is a classic example and reflects the long-standing tradition of oppression against women. It has to be curbed by legislation categorising such honour killing as a separate offence, giving a clear message to the public’.14 The judgement sent a strong warning to Haryana that any murderers implicated in honour killings would face death sentences. Significantly, this was the first case in which the boy’s family, mainly represented by his mother, Chandrapati, had moved the court, after the khap panchayat had rejected the couple’s marriage in breach of gotra norms.15 Chandrapati had to struggle to get punishment for the accused amid tremendous hostility and ostracism. ‘I want all [the] killers to be hanged in public, so that nobody takes innocent lives in the future’, she declared, while being boycotted by the village.16 It is significant that Jagmati Sangwan, president of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) Haryana unit, offered her unstinting support in the battle for justice.17 Seema (Manoj’s sister), now a constable, welcomed the court verdict: ‘It was a first. Never before was such a judgment given in the case of an honour killing dictated by the khap’.18 Indeed, this was the first time that a Haryana district court had convicted and sentenced the killers for acting at the behest of the khap panchayat and death penalty was awarded in this particular case of ‘honour killing’.19 However, the Punjab and Haryana High Court later commuted the death sentence awarded to the four convicts to life imprisonment. Ganga Raj, the prime conspirator, and another convict, Satish, were acquitted.20 Manoj’s family, especially constable Seema, thereafter took the case to the Supreme Court and still await justice. After watching the movie, I once again studied the M&B case, which was described in various legal judgements and mainstream newspaper and magazine articles as well as in journalist Chander Suta Dogra’s authentic  Times of India, April 1, 2010.  The Hindu, March 30, 2010. 16  Times of India, 31 March, 2010. 17  Jagran, May 21, 2014. 18  Indian Express, January 21, 2018. 19  Times of India, March 31, 2010; Daily Bhaskar, November 25, 2014. 20  Smt. Chandrapati vs State of Haryana And Others on 27 May 2011 decided by Hon’ble Punjab-Haryana High Court. 14 15

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account.21 I noticed that NH10 drew on some of the violent acts in the M&B case. For example, according to the police report, Babli’s brother forced her to consume poison and watch her husband being strangled to death.22 The involvement of Babli’s kin group and the complicity of the police in the case are familiar scenes in the film. But, along with such obvious similarities, there are gaps between the film and the real-life case. These are not just arbitrary differences. They point to the ways in which patriarchal and community anxieties are expressed differently in the film and in the M&B case. It is on the cusp of the deviation between the two competing and overlapping versions that Ammaji’s role becomes crucial to help us foreground the question of women’s representation in negative roles in Hindi films. Her brief appearance in NH10 is the defining point at which the film diverges from the real-life case. In accounts of the M&B case, it is the patriarchal family and clansmen (the brother, uncles, cousins), encouraged by the khap panchayat, who enact the killing, and the appearance of Babli’s mother is negligible. We thus get to read fleetingly in the legal ‘archive’23 that Ompati, Babli’s mother, ‘enraged by the act of Manoj’ had lodged a complaint against him and his family members.24 She is shown defending her daughter and putting the blame solely on Manoj. Thereafter, she recedes into the background. When Babli elopes with Manoj, ‘there was never a word from Ompati. It was as if she had withdrawn into herself’.25 Ompati’s vulnerability is expressed in her silence. This is underscored in the judgement of Vani Gopal Sharma: I am unable to resist the temptation of mentioning that… the mother of the victim, Babli, has been completely forgotten. She must have suffered silently throughout the trial.26

 Dogra (2013).  Frontline, Vol., 27, Issue 09, April 24–May 07, 2010. For details of the M&B violence, see Murder Reference No. 2 of 2010 Criminal Appeal No. 479-DB of 2010 and Criminal Revision No. 2173 of 2010. Decided by the High Court of Punjab & Haryana at Chandigarh. 23  I am not referring to a homogeneous, fixed and material idea of the archive. I am basically engaging with legal evidence, located and accessed in different forms, to stitch together the incomplete narrative of the M&B case. The legal ‘archive’ at best remains fragmented. 24  Ompati registered FIR No. 24 on 26.4.2007. See Murder Reference No. 2 of 2010 Criminal Appeal No. 479-DB of 2010 and Criminal Revision No. 2173 of 2010. Decided by the High Court of Punjab & Haryana at Chandigarh. 25  Dogra p. 45. 26  Times of India, April 1, 2010. 21 22

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Significantly, like Chandrapati, the widowed mother of the murdered boy, Manoj, Ompati was a widow with four children. While Chandrapati was portrayed as a victim as well as a ‘crusader for justice’, mainly in the English media reports, Ompati was ignored during the entire trial. Suresh, Babli’s brother, in his ‘prayer for mercy’, pointed out that his mother was in poor health and that he was the only bread-winner in the family. In the Judge’s statement, Babli’s mother is presented as a victim and as a ‘silent spectator’. She is not a villain. She is certainly not the dominant, matriarchal force who calls the shots and sanctions the honour killing. The focus of NH10 is, however, different. Pinky’s mother, aka Ammaji, is essentially a perpetrator. This departure from the M&B case is not random. It, in fact, demonstrates how the villainous mother of the girl becomes an object of disgust and fear in NH10. The difference between the two versions helps us identify some of the gender stereotypes that shape the film’s narrative. I felt that the silenced mother of Babli and the villainous mother of Pinky are two conflicting images produced at the juxtaposition of the film story with the real-life event. This crucial variance reveals erasures and silences. We know that many critical voices are in play in the M&B case. But we don’t hear them in NH10. Of course, every film has the creative licence to reshape and depart from the original ‘text’. Yet, the point remains as to why this departure is at once premised on the figure of Ammaji. Why is Ompati missing in NH10? Why is she replaced with Ammaji? The film version certainly mutes the diverse voices found in the scattered legal ‘archive’.27 Can they be ruled out so easily? This brings me to the second point. In the M&B case, the culpability of the khap panchayat and the connivance of politicians are firmly established.28 However, in NH10, the khap panchayat’s diktat is conspicuously absent. The politicians’ validation of khap panchayats and honour killings is never exposed. It is in the gap between the film and M&B case that Ammaji becomes the mastermind of violence in NH10.

27  Often, the legal judgement and evidence are full of omissions, but, in this case, it is the film narrative of NH10 which contains multiple lacunae. 28  Times of India, March 31, 2010. The Times of India reported with reference to the M&B case: ‘Haryana politicians continue to turn a blind eye to khap violence because of what they perceive to be the social norm and community sanction’.

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Ammaji as Perpetrator Meera’s arrival at sarpanchji’s house signals a turning point in NH10. Ammaji’s discovery of Meera’s involvement provides a completely unexpected twist. Ammaji turns from a kind and caring maternal figure into an aggressor. She instigates, supervises and escalates the violence. Shouting ‘gaye chhay, paachhey aaye chaar’ (six had gone, but four returned), she slaps her son for failing to accomplish the assigned task. She watches with satisfaction Meera being brutally beaten and then personally launches a ferocious attack on her saying, ‘hamare private matter ka tamasha bana diya tune’ (you made a spectacle of our private matter). Ammaji is determined to get Meera killed. Her abusive behaviour towards her own daughter-in-law adds to her evilness. To some extent, NH10 provides contrasting images of women and creates a binary of the conservative rural and free urban. Women in the village setting are portrayed either as blatantly violent or meek. Meera appears as a saviour, but she is an outsider—an urban, sophisticated woman. Except for the labourer’s wife and Ammaji’s daughter-in-law, who towards the end displays some courage, there is no representation of village women who stand up for justice against such heinous crimes. Constitutional law and judicial procedures do not figure as critical interventions in the prevailing vigilante justice and lawlessness.29 Indeed, as the police are exposed for being complicit in the violence, Meera implements her own idea of justice by killing the male perpetrators. In the absence of judicial interventions, her actions are justified in the film. The combination of a village head and a mother in the persona of Ammaji highlights unresolved contradictions. As a woman sarpanch, Ammaji abuses her power. Her location needs to be understood in the light of vote-bank politics which create a matrix of networks wherein the khap panchayats play a predominant role in garnering votes and ensuring the political loyalties of prominent politicians. Indeed, honour killings are part of this nexus. Their sanctity within clan and caste affinities relies on political affirmation and has profound implications for the local and regional politics and caste identity of the Jats.30 The moral codes sanction29  In one dialogue, the police officer  tells Meera that ‘Gurgaon mein jahan akhri mall khatam hote he na, vahin apki democracy aur constitution khatam ho jati hai’ (In Gurgaon where the last malls end, your democracy and constitution cease to exist right there). 30  Nonica Datta (1999).

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ing violence to defend the honour of the family and community demonstrate the convergence of customary norms with political manoeuvring of khap panchayats. However, NH10 does not place Ammaji and her actions within this complex political and social landscape. Instead, Ammaji performs as an individual voluntarily acting in a cruel way. To not place Ammaji firmly within the web of clan and caste strictures and loyalties substantially reduces her role to that of an isolated woman intentionally carrying out evil acts. So, the movie unambiguously testifies to an individual female perpetrating and legitimising violence. This distances the film from other empirical accounts of honour killings in which women can be victims, spectators, bystanders, witnesses and survivors—often all in one. Women express themselves in heterogeneous ways in different situations.31 Sometimes, in cooperation with their family members, they seem to endorse or even mastermind their own daughters’ murders. They may also oppress those who resist or defy honour killings, community codes and patriarchal sexual norms. But they cannot be reduced to or contained within rigid categories of perpetrators and victims. In the M&B case, Babli’s mother put the onus on Manoj and tried to shield her own daughter. In contrast, in NH10, Ammaji exhibits a dark side through which she not only gets her daughter killed, but wants her son and the gang of clan members to silence Meera forever. The question, however, remains as to why Ammaji acquires such a key negative role? Why couldn’t Satbir and the kin group be featured as prime offenders in the movie? Is it because it was easier to present a woman, Ammaji, as the chief villain? My curiosity was deepened by the responses I got from the director of the film, Navdeep Singh and the actor, Deepti Naval.

Ammaji as Survivor-Victim: In the Imagination of Director and Actor In an interview with Pratim D. Gupta, the Director, Navdeep Singh, was asked, ‘Why did it have to be Satbir’s [Darshan Kumaar’s] mother and not Satbir’s father behind everything?’ Singh answered: We were clear that the sarpanch would be a woman (played by Deepti Naval). It adds a layer. It says things about the role of women in the uphold Nonica Datta (2012).

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ing and dissemination of patriarchy. The intention wasn’t to portray women as saints compared to the men. They also must negotiate the system and participate in it even if it means the oppression of other women. Historically, there have been some very powerful women within rigidly patriarchal social systems. I find such women fascinating. They are survivors too, in a sense.32

The interviewer posed another question: ‘There are many themes which emerge after watching NH10 and they all ring true in their own way. Feminism, patriarchy, gender divide, city vs. village, rich vs. poor…What for you was the overriding theme of the film?’ Navdeep Singh replied that it was the issue of honour killing that was fundamental to the story: Once we had hit on the honour killing idea, the rest automatically flowed from there and couldn’t be ignored – patriarchy, gender issues, caste… The primary thematic concern was gender… The primary theme itself was: Once you strip away the veneer of ‘civilisation’, what happens? Meera’s [Anushka Sharma’s] first impulse is to invoke authority figures – the police, the sarpanch. This is part of her conditioning as a member of a privileged, entitled class. Somebody from a different socio-economic milieu would know better from their daily experiences about the unreliability of authority figures.33

I was partly convinced by these explanations. However, Singh’s claims and the film’s representations do not match. For instance, the film hardly adds any layers to Ammaji’s character. Singh’s explanation of her as a survivor is not articulated in the movie. Secondly, if the focus of the film is on honour killing, then why not expose the larger structures (enmeshed in the masculinised clan, caste, bureaucratic and political matrix) that shape that violence? Thirdly, even if Ammaji had to be portrayed as an evil woman, then why give her such a miniscule role? Why not exhibit her evilness in a more pronounced manner throughout the film? I also interviewed the actor, Deepti Naval, who is known for her meaningful roles and memorable performances in Hindi films as well as her involvement in alternative cinema. I asked her straight away: ‘This is a very different kind of role that you are doing in this film?’ Ms. Naval responded candidly that when the co-producer of the film, Dipa De Motwane, approached her, she took it for granted that it would be a ‘nice role’:  Pratim D. Gupta, The Telegraph, March 29, 2015.  Ibid.

32 33

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But when I read the script, I was shocked to see that it is out and out a negative role. Something the audience didn’t expect me to do. And I called the co-producer back. I said to her how come you are offering me a villain’s role. She said her script is such that at the point when Anushka Sharma finally comes to the sarpanchji’s house, the audience should feel relief when they see Deepti Naval there. They should have a sense of reassurance: Yes, this girl is now safe. She would be rescued from the goondas because now Deepti is going to protect her. Till the next moment when she will turn around and whack her daughter-in-law and show the side of hers [Ammaji’s side] which people are not expecting because the role is being played by Deepti Naval.

Ms. Naval explained that it was a kind of a ‘casting coup to put me in that role and not somebody from whom harshness, wickedness or evilness is expected’. She had her own reasons to be persuaded by the script: So, theoretically I understood that, but it took me a few days… I stayed with the script. I said how am I going to do this? To demonstrate such venom from within and to portray it. Then I read and re-read. I found one thing in the last sentence that Ammaji utters when she confronts Anushka at the end after her sons are killed by her. Ammaji comes out of the house and kind of falls to the ground and says: ‘Beti thee voh hamari par, jo karna thaa, so karna thaa…’ In that one sentence I found her [Ammaji] to be a victim of the social system. She herself is also not a perpetrator of crime, but a victim of such thinking and that kind of conditioning that if my daughter dares to go against the community or the family, then wipe her out through honour killing. She has no right to live.

Ms. Naval told me that she was appalled at Ammaji’s ‘conviction’, but she ultimately went by that. She realised that she had to play wickedness with complete confidence that her actions were right. She saw Ammaji as a victim of the circumstances that many other women of that community had suffered, or would continue to suffer. That was how Deepti Naval could bring her own ‘conviction’ to the role: ‘That’s what finally made me say “yes” after days of pondering and conflict and being traumatised’. She added that she ‘underplayed’ Ammaji deliberately. She said she didn’t have to be ‘overtly villainous’ in her acting: ‘No woman in a negative role has been underplayed like that in Hindi cinema the way I decided. And I got my screen award for the best actress in a negative role of the year’.

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I asked Ms. Naval whether Ammaji’s role was already fleshed out in the script or whether she modified it? She averred that only in her interpretation did she add her own meaning and character to the role: The script didn’t say that Ammaji had to be undertoned or not be loud. That is my own interpretation of this negative role because I was not going to present her like a Hindi film villain. I was going to play her with as much conviction as all the other hundred roles that I have done earlier in films … This was a very small role.

‘Do you see Ammaji solely as a villain or do you see her as something more?’, I enquired. The actor replied at length: See, Ammaji is a product of that social milieu which I already spoke about. She herself is traumatised by the fact that it’s her daughter that she must do this to. But she had to do it because that’s how the system works. And I consider her as a victim of that same system which she is perpetrating. She is certainly enhancing her role; she is taking it forward. But I see her primarily as a victim. You know, because how sad it is for a mother to get her own daughter killed. How merciless, but how tormenting. There is a very small moment when she is standing near the wooden cupboard. This is the first shot of Ammaji, and she is looking at her daughter’s stickers on the cupboard. She just touches them and controls herself. That’s how subtly I had to play the role. I performed it as a character and not like the villain of the movie.

So, for Deepti Naval, Ammaji is a victim whom she didn’t portray as an outright villain, but a character marred by circumstances. Her interview certainly brought another perspective to the story that I hadn’t noticed earlier. I probed further: ‘When Meera resists, Ammaji instructs Satbir: ‘arre koi chup kara usne’ (just silence her), what does that moment c­ onvey? Is it just to literally silence Meera or is it a command to kill her?’ Naval responded: It is meant as a whole scene. Her instruction came from the same conviction that girls like this should not be spared. They are going against our culture. This is our pratha (custom). In our homes, our families, if any girl commits this kind of kand (a major social offence), she would be punished.

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And then she continued: Personally, as Deepti Naval, as an Indian woman, I feel so sorry for women like Ammaji. I feel these are miserable women who do not think on their own. They just blindly follow custom and tradition. Whether it is sati or whether it is honour killing, such women have a pathetic connection with both these practices… What is this conditioning? It is so sad that we still have this pratha of honour killing in India. How backward we are? Honour killing should be punished as rigorously as any other murder.

I couldn’t help asking about what I felt was Deepti Naval’s best moment in the film: ‘There is a very powerful scene when you are standing alone in silence and presented in a full frame’. She answered eloquently: I am glad you point that out because that’s a very dear moment for me as an actor. In that scene, I am to do nothing. I am to just stay with my conviction. And not be moved by all this crying and wailing …She [Meera] is banging on the door and trying desperately to come out, but I am holding on to my strength. I am determined to do what I have to do. Who’s this girl who is coming in the way? I will destroy her if need be. I decided to play this negative role without being stereotypical—without being villainous or distorting my face or going loud or becoming ugly. This is how I thought I will play Ammaji.

At this point, the actor revealed that playing Ammaji troubled her for a couple of days, but that she was able to overcome the negative feelings. I mentioned that Ammaji’s cruel treatment of her daughter-in-law does not fit into the narrative of honour killing. She agreed: No, it doesn’t. But it fits into a frame that girls cannot speak for themselves. They have to be totally subservient. That’s where the conviction comes from. How dare a woman do something on her own? Ammaji is a matriarch. She is the sarpanch of the village. But the point is that the way she has been subjugated at the hands of her mother-in-law, father-in-law and husband, likewise she wants to oppress her daughter-in-law. This goes back to the psyche of maine jhela, tum bhi jhelna (I suffered, so should you). The cycle continues…

Naval and I returned to the most telling phrase in the film: ‘Beti thee voh hamari, jo karna thaa, so karna thaa’. ‘Is there a tone of ambiguity there?’, I pointed out. The actor said: ‘No, she [Ammaji] tells Anushka that my daughter has crossed the lakshmanrekha (the line of societal propriety).

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You may consider it wrong. I had no other option but to kill her. I am sorry this is what I had to do. I’m majboor (constrained)’. I checked with Ms. Naval if she thought that Ammaji had any feelings. She replied, ‘In that last sentence, Ammaji revealed her pain and her tragedy’. ‘What if Ammaji had contradictions and doubts?’, I persisted. ‘Would Deepti Naval have been comfortable in such a role?’ She said she would have loved it, but in any case she felt that she had brought nuances to the role of sarpanchji in NH10: Some roles impact your mind. When I played a doormat in Ghar Ho To Aisa, I hated myself for saying yes to that role. I have always played women with silent strength, women who know who they are… In Ghar Ho To Aisa, when I had to play a bruised, battered, beaten daughter-in-law, I had suffered more than I had playing Ammaji. The girl I portrayed was probably fairly well-educated. But still to not take a stand, to not fight back, I mean that’s a miserable situation to be in. I hate such roles from the bottom of my heart.

I wrapped up the conversation by saying: ‘So Ammaji is seemingly a bad woman, she is a villain, but you are saying she is primarily a victim. Is that right?’ ‘Yes’, Deepti concluded.  Deepti Naval’s interview raised many questions. I was left wondering where the manifestation of Ammaji’s victimhood was.

Ammaji as Villain-Victim-Survivor? The problem of Ammaji in NH10 is that she reifies a single image of a villainous woman. Her vengeful and vindictive character is all too visible. Ammaji becomes a case of internalised misogyny, expressed through the villain-victim binary. Deepti Naval and Navdeep Singh, however, imagine her to be overcoming this split and seem to underscore her villain-victim-­ survivor identity. But I feel that this label does not hold. Moreover, two other opposing images prevail: be young, sexy, attractive, bold, fearless and modern as Meera or be bad, old, asexual, maternal, traditional and aggressive as Ammaji. If Meera’s battle is heroic, then Ammaji’s disposition is essentially negative. How does this work itself out? Well, in a linear way. The violent family gang is seen to be following Ammaji’s diktat and these men act as mere wimps in the latter part of the film. Ammaji takes over. She is neither torn nor tormented. Yet, she is not a typical dehati (rural) woman. She uses a cell phone and a hearing aid, and her language is occasionally

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interspersed with English. Both modern and traditional codes constitute her language of command as she exercises her toxic power as a village and family head. She does not change the patriarchal rules; instead, she works through these regressive structures to exert her own influence. For a woman to move from a narrowly domestic sphere to the status of sarpanch is no mean feat, but, unlike some outstanding women sarpanches in contemporary India, like Bahveri Devi, Fatima Bi and Chhavi Rajawat, Ammaji utilises her position to re-establish gender hierarchy and inequality and to incite and inflict private and public forms of violence. Lastly, the stereotyping of Ammaji in NH10 is linked to the critical question of women’s conflicted and disturbing relationship with violence in general and honour killing in particular.34 NH10 doesn’t seem to strike at these critical issues. Thus, in this dark film, Ammaji’s role sits at odds with the complexity with which Navdeep Singh and Deepti Naval describe her character. It is also at variance with the M&B case. Because of the lack of any paradoxes and ambivalences, Ammaji remains stuck in her role as a sarpanch outside the realm of urban modernity. Deepti Naval’s subtle performance does enhance Ammaji’s personality. However, in many real life situations, victim and victimiser may be the same person. They are not separate entities; nor are they opposites. But Ammaji belies that. Nowhere is she seen to be moving out of a victim-survivor mould and entering the villain’s carapace. So, we are left wondering why Ammaji couldn’t be kinder, more human and just. This is, however, neither to diminish the inconvenient role of Ammaji nor to undermine the outstanding performances by Deepti Naval and Anushka Sharma in NH10. On the contrary, Ammaji’s character reveals the predicament of portraying women in negative roles in Hindi films. Let me conclude that NH10 somewhat obliquely sheds new light on the darkness of honour killing. The younger generation of women—the labourer’s wife, the daughter-in-law and Meera—do, however, offer alternatives to Ammaji and her biradari.

34  Different forms of cultural and structural violence are often normalised, legitimised and accepted in society. See J. Galtung, ‘Cultural Violence’ (1990). Honour killings are by and large justified within certain Jat clans in north India. The legal language of honour killing, however, does not engage with the specific nature of this violence. For instance, the prosecution in the M&B case maintained that the couple had died due to ‘homicidal violence’ and left it there. Murder Reference No. 2 of 2010 Criminal Appeal No. 479-DB of 2010 and Criminal Revision No. 2173 of 2010. Decided by the High Court of Punjab & Haryana at Chandigarh.

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Works Cited Films Ghar Ho To Aisa, director Kalpataru, producer Firoz A. Nadiadwala. 1990. NH10,  director Navdeep Singh, producers Anushka Sharma, Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane, Vikas Bahl, Karnesh Sharma and Sunil Lulla, 2015.

Books Datta, Nonica. Forming an Identity: A Social History of the Jats (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999). ———. Violence, Martyrdom and Partition: A Daughter’s Testimony (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012). Dogra, Chander Suta. Manoj and Babli: A Hate Story (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2013).

Articles Galtung, J. “Cultural Violence”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 27, No. 3 (1990), 291–305. GN Bureau, “Honour killing cannot be allowed a moment of existence, declares SC”, Governance Now, (March 27, 2018). Gupta, Pratim D. “The Truth about NH10”, The Telegraph (March 29, 2015). Sharma, Ashwani. ‘Yaad Aaya Manoj Babli Hatyakand’, Jagran (May 21, 2014).

PART IV

The Advent of the New Woman

Nargis (Shri 420, 1955); Alia Bhatt (Highway, 2014) (Editors’ Screengrab and courtesy Window Seat Films)

CHAPTER 16

Of Pallus and Pants: Fabricating the New Woman of the New Nation in Andaz (1949), Mr. and Mrs. 55 (1955), Shri 420 (1955) Nupur Mittal

kusoor mera tha, aur uss society ka jisko maine apna liya tha… main tumse sirf yeh chaahati hoon, ki meri bachchi ko uss mahaul se bahut door rakhna. hamare deshke in phoolon ko, paradesi mitti aur aabo-hava kabhi raas nahin aati. The fault was mine, and of the social environment which I had adopted… I implore you to keep my daughter far away from the influence of that society. The flowers of our country cannot thrive in foreign soil and environment.

These are the parting words of Neena (Nargis) to her husband Rajan (Raj Kapoor) in Mehboob Khan’s 1949 film Andaz (Style), as she leaves to serve her sentence for the murder of her former friend and jilted lover Dilip (Dilip Kumar). The dialogue underlines the central theme of the film: the clash of Indian and Western values in modern Indian society mapped primarily in terms of cultural differences in the constructions of

N. Mittal (*) Shyama Prasad Mukherji College, Delhi University, Delhi, India © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_16

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femininity and gender relations. Neena is a young, educated, motherless heiress, who has been exposed to Western habits and lifestyle since childhood. Her mindless mimicry of the West is represented in the first half of the film, before her wedding, through her appearance. She dresses in bell-­ bottoms and blouses and wears her curly hair in a bob. She is introduced in the film, sitting with her legs wide apart—an image which recurs in several scenes to indicate a wanton deviant self—and pulling on a riding boot. She often ventures out unchaperoned and meets both Rajan and Dilip on her solitary forays. Once, while driving through the hills, her car breaks down. Rajan, out hunting and perched on a tree, teases her: aap ladki hain? main toh aapko ladka samajh raha tha! You are a girl? I thought you were a boy!

When she is unable to fix her car, he declares: aaj-kal ki ladkiyon ko gaadi banaani nahin aati, toh chalaati kyun hain? When girls these days don’t know how to repair cars, why do they drive them?

In a similar vein, Neena meets Dilip when she loses control over her agitated horse while riding, and he comes to her rescue. Thus, the cinematic narrative foregrounds the superficial, limited and potentially self-­ destructive nature of Western influence on the modern Indian woman who imitates the West in assuming self-sufficiency but is unable to protect herself from its inherent dangers. Women in patriarchal societies are central conduits of patriliny and its various claims to purity in terms of class, caste, region, religion and so on. The anxiety about the ‘modern woman’ is thus most hysterical in the realm of marriage and her assertion of romantic-erotic choice. One of the central concerns of Andaz is the appropriateness of friendship between women and men. Dilip falls in love with Neena who, unbeknownst to him, is betrothed to Rajan. Her encouragement of candour and intimacy mark her behaviour as wanton and his as tragic. Neena is devoted to Rajan but her fault is that it appears to others, including Dilip in the first half of the film and Rajan in the second half, that she is attracted to the former. Neena’s father repeatedly warns her to be mindful of society’s expectations of gender-appropriate behaviour, and wide-shots are often deployed in the scenes where Dilip and Neena interact to show the viewers the dis-

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approving expressions of people around them. But she dismisses his concerns as outmoded orthodoxy: Daddy, aap toh dedh-sau saal pehle ki baat kar rahen hain! Daddy, you are referring to hundred and fifty year old beliefs!

But his words come back to haunt her soon after his death and her wedding to Rajan, when Dilip confesses his love to her. A series of contrived events cause Rajan to grow suspicious of her equation with Dilip, straining their relationship. In this segment of the film, sequences depicting fallouts of Dilip’s misunderstanding are interspersed with shots of Neena’s father’s portrait and voiceovers of his warning words. Neena now wears sarees and bindis, and her sartorial transformation becomes symbolic of her moral evolution. She transforms into a strict, loving mother who repeatedly chides her husband for being too indulgent of their daughter’s whims. But the poetic justice of patriarchy sentences her to a life of imprisonment while her daughter is placed in the custody of her husband who is also ‘modern’ but a man. At the time of its release, two years after the decolonisation of India, Andaz was the top grossing Hindi film ever which is also a mark of the dominant ideology of the viewership. But there was also an emerging voice in the new nation that sought to break the politico-legal sanctity of the patriarchal mould. In mid-twentieth century, the contentious Hindu Code Bill was proposed, formulated, debated, revised, and eventually passed in the form of four acts—the Hindu Marriage Act (1955); the Hindu Succession Act (1956); the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act (1956) and the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act (1956).1 The Bill sought to organise, restructure and reform Hindu personal law pertaining to marriage, succession and guardianship. It polarised Indian society, and the reforms considered most controversial pertained to marriage. Briefly, the Bill recognised two kinds of marriages: the existing ‘sacramental marriage’ and the proposed arrangement of the ‘civil marriage’. Civil union was different from sacramental marriage as caste affiliation wasn’t relevant in determining its validity; it barred polygamy, and it could be dissolved.2 Demands to give women equal inheritance rights also left the nation divided. The Bill was assumed to be predicated on a radical positioning of  Hereafter referred to as ‘the Bill’.  In the speech that he delivered while introducing the ‘Hindu Code Bill’ in the Constituent Assembly in 1947, Dr B.R. Ambedkar defined civil and sacramental unions. 1 2

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women as autonomous, modern individuals who deserved political, ­economic and civic rights that were equal to those enjoyed by men.3 Resistance by conservative bourgeois forces, often with a feudal mindset in familial matters, to this restructuring becomes evident in the representations of single women—particularly the New Woman—that popular films of this period tried to normalise.4 The Hindu Code Bill and the raging debates around it were directly addressed and dramatised in Mr. and Mrs. 55 (1955), the tragic-romantic auteur Guru Dutt’s ‘hit’ romantic comedy. The poster of the film arrests the continuing binaries in contemporary societal conceptions about the status and role of women. It depicts two contrasting images of the protagonists—Preetam (Guru Dutt) and Anita (Madhubala). In a yellow panel, a fawning Preetam fastens a haughty Anita’s shoe buckle. His posture suggests a compromised masculinity from a patriarchal perspective. In sharp contrast, the other panel, which is green, depicts a demure, saree-­clad Anita who adoringly touches Preetam’s feet while he stands, left hand on the hip, looking directly at the viewer and exuding insouciance. In the background, a headshot of Anita, dreamily gazing into the distance, appears to ponder on the visions of two different kinds of conjugal relationships. Posters typically highlight those aspects of a film that could generate interest in the largest number of viewers. They incorporate images and symbols that are immediately recognisable by the targeted spectators and are not meant for sustained, focused engagement. In the 1950s, posters were particularly significant as they were the primary means of publicising films since audio-visual trailers could be screened only in theatres. Anita’s two distinct garbs in the poster described above, and the related figurations of conjugal relations, reflect the binary opposition that had emerged in cultural nationalist discourse in the twentieth century to map femininity: the pativrata—the quintessential spiritual and self-sacrificing Indian woman committed to her traditional domestic duties—and the urbane, Westernised, elite woman who wanted political and socio-economic equality between the sexes. Released at a time when the Bill had polarised Indian society, the poster expresses the widespread anxiety that the codifi3  There is a contemporary debate on the ‘radical’ nature of the Hindu Code Bill; the extent to which it represented the heterogeneous practices held under the rubric ‘Hindu’ and also the extent to which it was an advance for women’s rights. See Agnes (2011). 4  In the Indian context, the ‘New Woman’ is a term used to describe women, particularly those from urbanised, elite families, whose lifestyles changed as a result of social reforms and of the promotion of female education in the nineteenth century.

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cation and reform of Hindu personal law by the state would result in a redefinition of femininity which could disrupt existing patriarchal familial structures. ∗  ∗  ∗

In Mr. and Mrs. 55, Anita, a young heiress, enters into a contractual marriage with Preetam, a penniless, graduate cartoonist, in order to lay claim to her vast inheritance which she can avail of only if she marries before the deadline set by her father in his will. The plan is orchestrated by her aunt, Sita Devi (Lalita Pawar), a staunch advocate of the Bill. She intends to have the marriage dissolved once Anita comes into her inheritance. Predictably, by the end of the romantic comedy, her plans disintegrate as the couple fall in love. Sita Devi is introduced in the movie while delivering a lecture on the necessity of the misleadingly and reductively named ‘talaak kanoon’ (Divorce Bill). The wide shot which opens the sequence draws attention to the lofty size of the room which indicates wealth. Signs of privilege are strategically invoked in the film to highlight the gap between the lives and perspectives of upper-class women who support the Bill and the masses. Sita Devi informs her audience that she recently led a delegation to the parliament to lobby for the passing of the Bill, and passionately adds: aap log toh jaanti hi hain, ki yeh talaak bill…hamaare atma-sammaan ke liye kitna zaroori hai. Hamaara samaaj sirf mardon ka samaaj hai, jisme aurat ko pati ke charno ki daasi kehlakar bhi khush rehna sikhaaya jaata hain… mardon ne hum par bahut zulm kiye hain…. You all know how important the Divorce Bill∗ is for our self-respect. Ours is a male dominated society where women are taught to be content with their status as slaves of men…Men have always wronged us….5

Her attire—a pair of glasses and a saree with the pallu efficiently draped over one shoulder—was the popular stereotype of the upper-class female activist. While Sita Devi’s arguments are liberally peppered with terms and images drawn from the discourse of contemporary women’s rights activists, they are simplistic in nature in blaming gender inequality on direct,  All translations of the dialogues, which were originally in Hindi, are mine. English words in the original dialogues are marked with an asterisk ∗. 5

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deliberate male oppression rather than patriarchal culture and institutions. Those pushing for reform dwelled more on claiming equal status for women. Sucheta Kripalani, for instance, a legislator and noted leader of the women’s movement, stated in a Constituent Assembly debate in 1949: We are pledged to give women equal status in society…if men and women are to work equally, if they are to function as equal citizens of the State, if they are to fulfil their obligations towards the state, how can we have such discriminatory rules in the matter of property rights of women?6

Sita Devi, however, doesn’t elaborate on the enabling and empowering aspects of the Bill—indeed, she doesn’t really speak about any of its provisions. The audience access Sita Devi through the enactment of Lalita Pawar. A leading lady in several films in the 1930s and 1940s, Pawar switched to character roles after an injury on the set of the film Jung-E-Azaadi (1942) left her with a permanent squint in the left eye.7 Her new look imparted a distinctive character to her face which could be read as reflecting an angry or a crafty or even comical countenance, depending on the filmic context. She went on to play many roles of the strict and rigid matriarch, the scheming mother-in-law or the harsh  stepmother and occasionally, in movies like Raj Kapoor’s Shri 420 (1955), the comical and/or the endearing mother figure. In the lecture scene in Mr. and Mrs. 55, the many close-­ ups of Pawar’s face serve to draw attention to her forbidding visage and—coupled with the intensity of her condemnation of men—nudge the audience to view her character as a virago. Sita Devi’s address is interspersed with shots of women in the audience discussing beauty treatments. Their actions and expensive attire suggest that they are rich and leisured and have gathered together to have a jolly time. A circular table stands between Sita Devi and the camera frame. Placed on it, quite prominently, is a sleek black leather bag which suggests that the gathering includes wealthy and Westernised women who make frequent forays outside the hearth. The camera focuses on the diamond earrings of one and the lipstick-applying hand of another, who asks her neighbour to be quiet and listen. And thus the female activists are profiled 6 7

 Sinha (2012: 157).  Rajadhyaksha and Willemen (1998: 175).

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as frivolous by the time the camera returns its focus to Sita Devi who has been declaiming in the background: mardon ne hum par bahut zulm kiye hain…isi desh mein weh teen-teen chaar-­ chaar shadiyaan karte the. aurantein bechaari sab kuch bardaasht karti rahin.uss ghulaami ka assar, ab tak bhi… Men have long oppressed us. In this country, they used to marry three three-four-four times. And women would remain silent. The impact of that slavery, till date… (Emphasis mine)

One of the issues addressed in the clauses pertaining to marriage in the Bill was polygamy. By using the past tense to speak of polygamy, the film suggests that it isn’t a pressing concern in modern Indian society and therefore, implicitly, there is no need for legal redressal for the same. At this point, the camera shifts again to the beauty product enthusiasts in the audience who are still deeply involved in their earlier discussion. Thus, the audio-visual mode strengthens the damaging patriarchal stereotype of women as incapable of sustained political or intellectual engagement (Fig. 16.1). Stereotypical notions about the New Woman in general, and feminist activists in particular, were reinforced by multiple discourses in this period. Such homogenised representations ignored regional, class, caste and ideological variations among female activists.8 The political cartoons of the well-known K. Shankar Pillai, published in reputed national dailies in the 1940s and 1950, highlight these popularly held, sexist  assumptions.9 In a number of Shankar’s cartoons, female activists are depicted as wearing dark lip colour, high heels and sporting well-coiffed hair. They stand so erect that they are almost bent over backwards, betraying the cartoonist’s view that their confidence and assertiveness are unnatural. 8  In the 1940s, for instance, Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti (MARS) vigorously campaigned against rising food prices and promoted self-defence training among women. Their gatherings were attended by hundreds of women. The upper-middle class, educated Godavari Parulekar, worked extensively to emancipate Warli women in Maharashtra who were systemically oppressed along class, caste and gender lines. Forbes (2008: 210–211, 216). 9  See, for instance, Gairola (2014: 99–100).

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Fig. 16.1  Shankar’s cartoon, Reap the Whirlwind, 1948. (Courtesy, Children’s Book Trust)

They are usually pictured as shaking their fists in the air, indicating protest and political mobilisation. Typically, at least one woman in the crowd is shown as touching up her make-up, underlining their lack of commitment and feeling towards the causes they advocate. Their sartorial choices and use of consumer goods such as lipsticks and leather bags suggest that they are wealthy, whimsical and Westernised. It is implied that a wide gap exists between them and the rest of Indian women. Even legislators, like Baijnath Bajoria, described members of women’s organisations as ‘social butterflies’.10 Political cartoons are pithy statements on contemporary events which are immediately comprehendible since they draw on a pool of knowledge and symbols shared by their target readers. They highlight the political myths that mark the national imaginary. Preetam, the hero of Mr. and Mrs.  Sinha (2012: 59).

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55, is tellingly a cartoonist who frames and authoritatively comments on topical issues. He works for The Free Press Journal, a real-life ‘nationalist’ English language newspaper which had on its staff, cartoonist-turned-­ politician Bal Thackeray and the creator of the iconic ‘Common Man’ pocket cartoons, R.K. Laxman.11 Preetam’s vision and actions that deconstruct Sita Devi’s politics as limited, self-seeking and destructive in the film are thus authorised by his ideological positioning as a worthy commentator on society. ∗  ∗  ∗

Bhabhi, Preetam’s sister-in-law, presents a counterpoint to Sita Devi. She is never addressed by her name, and her primary identity in the film is derived from her marital status. Dressed in sarees and bindis, she speaks in a rural Hindi dialect which serves to signify her lack of education. She has three sons, and her first word in the film is ‘Babua’ (baby boy) which she uses to address Preetam, highlighting her role as a mother figure. In a pivotal scene set in the kitchen, she educates Anita about the appropriate role for women in society. A wide-eyed Anita observes: kitna kaam karti ho, bhabhi. ukta nahin jaati? How hard you work, bhabhi. Don’t you get tired?

The latter responds: apne hee ghar ka kaam hum naahi karein, to phir kaun karega? ghar ke kaam-­ kaaj mein hee toh grihasthi ka sukh hai. If I don’t mind my household chores, who will? Domestic happiness is the result of devotion to housework.

Functioning as a conduct book for the good Hindu woman (that glosses caste and class exigencies), Bhabhi explains to Anita that women must support their husbands in all their endeavours and take pride in managing them, the household and their children. When the latter asks her if her husband beats her, she responds:

 ‘About Us’ http://www.freepressjournal.in/about-us

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…pyaar bhi toh wahi karte hain. bhaat khaate samay, kabhi-kabhi daant tale kankad bhi aa jaata hai. usse log bhaat toh khaana nahin chhodhte. …He also loves me. While eating rice, we sometimes ingest pebbles. However, people don’t give up on consuming rice altogether.

The film thus glosses over domestic violence and forecloses—through the projection of Bhabhi’s happy and fulfilled wifehood—any exploration of marriage as a possible realm of inequality, oppression or negotiation that had been opened up by the debate surrounding the Hindu Code Bill. Systematically, the scene with Preetam’s sister-in-law counters all arguments that Sita Devi had posed in support of the Bill. Bhabhi refers to the heterosexual conjugal relationship as ‘janam-janam ka saath’ (a union spanning several lifetimes) and not a legal contract that can be terminated at will. The film thus resonates with a binary that was very popular in contemporary conservative discourse between legal reform activists and customary law apologists: the opposition between material and spiritual empowerment. This was not a recent schema; its genealogy could be traced back to the late colonial period. By the late nineteenth century, modern European political and economic institutions, rational, utilitarian ideas, infrastructure and scientific advancement had come to be identified as worthy of adoption and adaptation in colonised India. However, to imitate the West in all matters was not considered desirable within the nationalist discourse, dominated as it was by Hindu Brahmanical patriarchy, “what was necessary was to cultivate the material techniques of modern Western civilization while retaining and strengthening the distinctive spiritual essence of the national culture”.12 The difference between Western and Indian cultures, visualised in terms of a ‘materialism versus spiritualism’ binary, was conflated with another binary—‘public versus private/domestic’. It was believed that while men must adopt and adapt to Western mores of dress, speech and conduct to navigate political and socio-economic structures that were based on the blueprints of European institutions and ideas, it was vital to hold on to the spiritually enriching ‘Indian’ ethical and moral values in the private sphere. It fell to the lot of women to safeguard and sustain this Indian culture:  Chatterjee (1990: 233–253, 238).

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A woman was not seen, as yet, to be in possession of an individuated identity of self-separable from the family-kin-community nexus  – to which rights could adhere. Yet, an argument for an unabridgeable claim to her life was slowly emerging as a perceived necessity in the free-ranging, self-reflexive debates within the emergent public sphere.13

These binary oppositions, mobilised in the nineteenth-century colonial context of reform and the women’s question, were recycled in the context of the Hindu Code Bill of independent India. Lalchand Navalrai, a member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly, for instance, observed with respect to women’s organisations that were pushing for the Bill that “we are plunged into the ocean of Western ways and we should not allow ourselves to be drowned”.14 Interestingly, Anita’s nanny’s pet refrain all through the movie, in response to a whole gamut of situations connected to the ‘talaak kanoon’ in particular and women’s rights advocacy in general is: sab angrez ban gaye hain! Everyone has become British! ∗  ∗  ∗

In Mr. and Mrs. 55, the impact of the Bill is dramatised primarily through the manner in which its provisions restructure people’s understanding, expectations and experience of the institution of marriage. Anita, the New Woman, is represented as the immediate beneficiary of the code. The manner in which she is characterised, the way in which she responds to and is impacted by the potentially changed landscape of family law is vital to the film’s positioning of the Bill. Anita is presented at the beginning as a precocious, English-speaking twenty-year-old dressed in short ‘frocks’. In contemporary Indian society, frocks were worn primarily by pre-pubescent girls or stereotyped as an Anglo-Indian attire and thus of suspect Western influence. A ‘decent’ Hindu girl was expected to dress in a saree; and a homogenised draping of it, eliding regional variations, and worn with the adapted European ‘blouse’, represented the appropriate mix of tradition and modernity for  Sarkar (2000: 601–622, 601).  Forbes (2008: 59).

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Hindu women. The fact that Anita continues to wear frocks at twenty is an invitation to the audience to view her as immature and swayed by disruptive Western notions of femininity. She is spoilt and is fed and fussed over by her ‘nanny’. She is introduced in the movie at a tennis match, cheering on and chasing her tennis player boyfriend, Ramesh. Her desire for him is projected as being ill-advised. Soon enough, he leaves the country for a tournament, leaving her behind. Attracted by shallow ­ appearances, she is presented as being ill-prepared for matrimony. Anita, in a film that is a romantic comedy rather than a tragedy, is not without certain ‘redeeming’ qualities. When her aunt first tells her about her plan to arrange a faux marital union for her, she reacts with shock, exclaiming: How insulting!∗

And then, with a loud, indignant voice, she declares: main aise aadmi se kabhi byaah nahin karoongi, jo shaadi se pehle hee mujhe talaak dene ki soche! I will never marry such a man who, even before the wedding, thinks about divorcing me.

On being informed that her future husband will marry her for a monthly stipend, she responds: is mein toh aur bhi meri insult hai! This is even more insulting!

She dramatically gets up in a huff and turns away but when Sita Devi reminds her that she needs to get married in order to gain access to her inheritance, she responds, resignedly, ‘As you please’.∗ The Bill actually included a clause which declared that women’s right to inherit familial property would be absolute and would not depend on the size of the property or their marital status. The film’s wilful disregard for this ‘modern’ amendment marks its ideological position. The film, in fact, charts Anita’s evolution through her acceptance of the joys of housework, domesticity and devotion to the husband. This ideological shift—growth in the context of the politics of the film—is also visually represented through her sartorial style and body language as she is shown walking with a measured gait in her modest sarees and a bindi. In her final showdown with her aunt, Anita argues:

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Stage par khade hokar lecture dene ke bajaay, jin maamuli darje ke logon ko dekh kar aap naak-bhaun  sikoda  karti hain, unke gharon mein jaaiye aur dekhiye, ki hindustaani aurat, ghar basaake kitni sukhi ho sakti hai. Instead of standing on a stage and preaching, go visit the homes of those common people who you look down upon, and see how Indian women live in such contentment because of their devotion to their households.

Significantly, as she ‘matures’ into an ideal Indian woman, Anita becomes more articulate and also uses English words and phrases less frequently. She insists on the cultural superiority of the ‘Indian’ women by remarking that Western women, dissatisfied with a single partner, ‘chaar-chaar pati badaltin hain’ (change husbands repeatedly), and are incapable of creating and sustaining a spiritually nourishing domestic space. The statement echoes contemporary anxieties about the seemingly fragile nature of the civil marriage which could be dissolved through legal proceedings. In the climactic showdown, Sita Devi’s commitment to the cause is exposed as driven by personal vendetta rather than the desire to empower other women. The conversation is staged with Anita looking down on her aunt from the stairhead (literally and metaphorically), while Sita Devi looks up. In most scenes of the movie, Sita Devi had the loudest and most authoritative voice in any discussion. In this scene however, her voice is softer. Anita is louder and her volume here indicates that she is morally right. ∗  ∗  ∗

Significantly, it is the reformed Anita, and not Bhabhi, who is projected as the ideal woman of modern India. After all, Preetam gets attracted to an English-speaking, pedal-pusher and sleeveless blouse wearing Anita while Bhabhi symbolises Preetam’s past, his rural family home which he has left behind for a life in the city. Preetam is as ‘Westernised’ as Anita in the film and speaks English as comfortably as she does. He is introduced wearing an old, worn jacket, trousers, a tattered hat and black shoes. But Preetam’s character doesn’t need to evolve during the course of the narrative, unlike Anita. His interactions with and views about the female characters indicate how they must be read and judged, and are reinforced by the telos of the narrative. One of Preetam’s cartoons features in the opening credits of the film. It depicts a man and a woman, resembling the lead pair of the film

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and yoked like horses to a chariot, being driven by a bespectacled woman in a saree, a Sita Devi lookalike, who holds in front of her a scroll which immediately brings to mind a legal decree. The romantic plot hinges on Preetam replacing Sita Devi in the driver’s seat. Preetam, seemingly ­motivated by love, plays an instrumental role in Anita’s re-education, not the least by introducing her to his Bhabhi. In the closing sequence of scenes, as a reformed and repentant Anita watches Preetam’s plane to Delhi fly away, a quasi bhajan ‘Preetam aan milo’ (Return my love) plays in the background that metaphorically recalls Radha’s longing for Krishna—lover, God and teacher. Anita’s Preetam had of course, not left the city and the final shot dissolves with the laughter of the reconciled lovers. And it is the conviviality of romantic laughter that buries for the moment the veiled violence in traditional patriarchal conjugality. During their visit to his native village, Preetam had told his young nephews that Anita is a fairy who could unfurl her wings and fly away. Later, when he and Anita confess their love for one another, he amorously declares, referring to her in the third person: main uske paer bandh chukka hun. ab woh nahin udd sakti. I have tied up her wings. She can no longer fly. ∗  ∗  ∗

In the same year as Mr. and Mrs. 55, the audience of Hindi films is also introduced to Vidya (knowledge) in Raj Kapoor’s Shri 420 (1955), as yet another incarnation of the New Woman. Vidya (Nargis), a working woman from a petit-bourgeoisie family, marks a contrast with the sheltered and rich Anita. She is introduced walking with quick, firm strides into the busy marketplace, unchaperoned, and carrying books in her hands. Her outfit is austere; she wears a bindi, a white saree with a dark border and a long sleeved, dark blouse. She is on her way to pawn her only pair of bangles. She looks after an ailing father and runs a small school for slum children, which has fallen on bad times. The male protagonist Ranbir Raj (Raj Kapoor), an unemployed graduate in need of money, visits the same shop to pawn a medal he had won as a child for honesty. He ironically tells the shopkeeper: main imaan bechna chaahta hun. I wish to sell my integrity.

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Vidya, overhearing his statement, quietly mutters to herself: jab imaan bikgaya, toh zindagi mein raha hi kya? When integrity has been sold, then what is left to live for?

This scene sets the tone for the characterisation of Vidya as linked to the wisdom and integrity of Raj in the movie. Vidya’s negotiations with the public sphere as a working woman do not militate against normative gender hierarchies even though they mark a new landscape of the modern metropolis that needs to re-work traditional equations. She works and earns not in order to claim socio-economic parity with, or autonomy from, the men in her life but to run her household as her father is an invalid. Further, hers is a makeshift school, attended by children from her own basti, which she runs in a shared community space right outside her house. Working women are not a modern phenomenon in India. But publicly visible and overwhelmingly manual female work materially and ideologically signified class and caste hierarchies of social groups. There was, however, from the late colonial period, a growing community of educated women in India. The class and caste nexus with the gendered binary of public and private spaces thus required a careful restructuring, and women’s forays into the public sphere were justified as ‘their social obligations to the family and nation”.15 Vidya’s profession is that of a teacher—sanctioned as a worthy vocation for women as nurturers—who shapes slum children into able citizens. But when Raj asks Vidya if the two of them should get married, she responds uncertainly with ‘main kaise?’ (How can I?), implying that she cannot accept his proposal of her own volition. She is not a modern, atomist, autonomous subject; she is her father’s ward and in order to marry her, her suitor must negotiate with the father. Vidya does not grow in the film. She does not need to, since her role is largely symbolic and serves to measure the male protagonist’s bildungsroman. Shri 420 introduces one of the most iconic figures of Bombay films: the lovable, resourceful and educated tramp from ‘Rashtriya Orphanage’ who is symbolic of the picaresque modern Every (Indian) man. The film also features Maya (Nadira), who encourages Raj to become a con-artist. The word Maya, with Hindu and Buddhist overtones, popularly signifies the world of transient material objects and appearances which distract us  Ibid (2008): 90.

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from recognising and strengthening our undying atman (spirit). The familiar ‘spiritual versus material’ binary and the concomitant ‘Indian ­versus Western’ dichotomy are easily recognised in the characterisation of Vidya and Maya. Maya, dressed for the most part in Western evening wear, is sexually assertive—she dances and flirts with several men. Her heavy make-up and accessories signify excessive consumerism and false appearances. She is introduced—when Raj goes to deliver laundry to her place— wearing a revealing dress, with short coiffed hair and a cigarette in her hand. Her sense of superiority to Raj, based on higher socio-economic status, disrupts gender hierarchy. But Maya is also self-seeking unlike Vidya. Maya notices Raj’s dexterity with cards, hires him to swindle wealthy people at high society parties and abandons her alcoholic partner Johnny. The shot of Maya instructing Raj to get ready for the party is followed by a shot of Vidya waiting, at the doorway to her house, for him to come and ask her father for her hand in marriage. Maya’s agency is presented as obviously immoral. We are not made privy to the circumstances that made her what she is. And thus, a film that could have been representative of the modern feminine is largely reduced to the moral discourse of the good and bad woman. In the final fight sequence, Raj and Seth Dharmanand and his cohorts fight over a suitcase (supposedly) filled with money from their laundering scheme. Maya, with eyes widened with greed and her tongue grazing her lips, lunges for the bag and tries to escape alone. She is thwarted in her attempt by one of the men, and as they grapple for the money, her saree unravels. Female sexuality and agency are thus framed together as the aggressive realm of the depraved. Raj, on the other hand, is allowed to escape this frame for after his brief flirtation with Maya, he can return to the waiting Vidya. ∗  ∗  ∗

And yet something remains in these melodramatic formulations of modernity despite the apparently totalising narrative of patriarchal romance. Andaz records the modern woman’s assumption of male-female friendship to be possible outside romance and marriage; the subplot of Mr. and Mrs. 55 reveals the aggressive sexual attention, veiled as comic, that working women like Julie have to face in the office and twice in Shri 420, domestic economic compulsions are recognised as propelling Vidya’s foray into the urban wage market and she redefines traditional romance by proposing that the husband and the wife can share financial responsibili-

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ties. The complex negotiations of modernity and patriarchy in the young nation may thus be recuperated from the films despite the ideological ­closures and the dominant patriarchal perspectives. The films bear testimony to the New Woman’s desire to break away from the past—‘mudh mudh ke na dekh’ (don’t look back)— even though they are inevitably chastised.16 Fathers and potential husbands reform them, and there are no testimonials of the privations of the sanctioned feminine figure in the narratives. Neena, Anita and Vidya do not have mothers; the female chroniclers of the traditional past are safer dead in the films.

Works Cited Films Andaz. Directed by Mehboob Khan. Produced by Mehboob Khan. India: Mehboob Productions, 1949. DVD. Mr. and Mrs. 55. Directed by Mehboob Khan. Produced by Mehboob Khan. India: Ultra Distributors Ltd, 1955. DVD. Shri 420. Directed by Raj Kapoor. Produced by Raj Kapoor. India: R.K. Studios, 1955. DVD.

Books Agnes, Flavia. Law, Justice, and Gender, Vol. 1. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011). Forbes, Geraldine. Women in Modern India  (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Kasbekar, Asha. Pop Culture India!: Media, Arts, and Lifestyle  (Santa Barbara: ABC CLIO., 2006). Kaur, Raminder and Ajay Sinha, ed. Bollyworld: Popular Indian cinema through a Transnational lens (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005). Kaviraj, Sudipta. The Trajectories of the Indian State: Politics and Ideas (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2010). Khanduri, Ritu Gairola. Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History in the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2014). Kumar, Radha. The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India, 1800–1990  (New Delhi: Zubaan. 1993). 16  This song sung by Maya, who was later joined by Raj, went on to become an iconic hit. Music: Shankar-Jaikishan. Lyrics: Shailendra.

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Rajadhyaksha, Ashish and Paul Willemen. Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998). Sinha, Chitra. Debating Patriarchy: The Hindu Code Bill Controversy in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012). Varia, Kish. Bollywood: Gods, Glamour, and Gossip (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). Vasudevan, Ravi. Making Meaning in Indian Cinema (Oxford University Press: New Delhi, 2000). Virdi, Jyotika. The cinematic ImagiNation: Indian popular films as social history (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003).

Articles

in

Books

and

Journals

Ambedkar, B.R. ‘Hindu Code’. Speech. Vasant Moon ed. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches Vol. 14,  Part-1 (1947. New Delhi: Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, 2014), 12. Banningan, John A. “The Hindu Code Bill”. Far Eastern Survey. 21. 17 (1952), 173–176. Berry, Kim. “Lakshmi and the Scientific Housewife: A Transnational Account of Indian Women’s Development and Production of an Indian Modernity”. Economic and Political Weekly, 38. 11 (January, 2003), 1055–1068. Bose, Brinda. “Modernity, Globality, Sexuality, and the City: A Reading of Indian Cinema”. The Global South (2008), 2. 1: 35–58. Chatterjee, Partha. “Colonialism, Nationalism, and Colonialized Woman: The Contest in India”. American Ethnologist 16:4 (1989), 622–633. ——— 1990. “The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question”. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid ed. Recasting Women: Essay in Colonial History (Rutgers University Press New Jersey), 233–253. Datta, Sangeeta. “Globalisation and Representations of Women in Indian Cinema”. Social Scientist. 28. 3/4 (2000), 71–82. Deshpande, Anirudh. “Indian Cinema and the Bourgeois Nation State”. The Economic and Political Weekly. 42. 50 (2007), 95–101. Dwyer, Rachel. “Bollywood Bourgeois”. India International Centre Quarterly. 33. 3/4 (2006), 222–231. ———. “Fire and Rain, The Tramp and The Trickster: Romance and the Family in the Early Films of Raj Kapoor”, The South Asianist, Vol. 2, No. 3 (2013), 9–32. Freedman, Estelle B. “The New Woman: Changing Views of Women in the 1920s”. The Journal of American History. Vol. 61, No.2 (1974), 372–393. Gehlawat, Ajay. “Introduction: Reframing Bollywood” and “Chapter 1: Bollywood and its Implied Viewers”. Ajay Gehlawat ed. Reframing Bollywood: theories of popular Hindi Cinema (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2010), xi–xxiv; 1–29.

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MacPike, Loralee. “The New Woman, Childbearing, and the Reconstruction of Gender, 1880–1900”. NWSA Journal, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1989), 368–397.  Ramamurthy, Priti. “The Modern Girl in India in the Interwar Years: Interracial Intimacies, International Competition, and Historical Eclipsing”. Women’s Studies Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 1/2 (2006), 197–226.  Sarkar, Tanika. “A Pre-history of Rights: The Age of Consent Debate in Colonial Bengal”, Feminist Studies, Vol. 26, No. 3 (2000), 601–622.  Thomas, Rosie. “Sanctity and Scandal: The Mythologization of Mother India”. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, No. 11, No. 3 (1989), 11–30.  Virdi, Jyotika. “Mr. and Mrs. 55: Comedy of Gender, Law, and Nation”. Jump Cut 43 (2000), 75–85. 

Webpages Free Press Journal. “About Us”. freepressjournal. in http://www.freepressjournal.in/about-us (accessed May 15, 2017). Krishnan, Shekhar. “Shri 420: Nationalist Discourse & Film Narrative”. Shekhar Krishnan@bombayologist http://shekhar.cc/1998/12/11/shri420/ (accessed May 19, 2016).

CHAPTER 17

Consumer Pleasures and Hindi Cinema’s En-gendered Distribution of Moral Capital in Hum Aapke Hain Koun (1994) and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011) Megha Anwer

The figure of the consuming woman enables us to investigate Bombay cinema’s fissured relationship with globalization, and especially its anxiety around the ways in which consumer culture causes women to turn avaricious, mindless or quite simply “bad.” The anxiety, in fact, is twofold. On the one hand, the film industry reveals a preoccupation with what liberalization/commodity culture does to women themselves. But accompanying that is another anxiety: how “bad” women sabotage the true/real purpose of liberalization—to produce the ideal male consumer. I study two films that were released at the cusp of India’s neoliberal and globalizing economic reinvention: Sooraj Barjatya’s Hum Aapke Hain Koun…!? (HAHK) (1994) and Zoya Akhtar’s Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD) (2011), teasing out the implications of women’s morally dubious, mock-worthy participation in the cultures of consumption. The films, I argue, present the female consumer as whittled down remnants of the erstwhile filmic vamp and insist that such bad-women-consumers be

M. Anwer (*) Honors College, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_17

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tamed-through-punishment. Or, failing that, the women must be forsaken by men for prioritizing self-care and exercising a self-referential commodity consumption, outside/independent of their identity as wives and mothers. It is also clear that such all-consuming commodity fetishism is not in a man a comparable moral problem and is even a badge of success and manhood. The commodity-seduced (and deservedly punished) consumerist woman stands in sharp moral and ideological contraposition against the good female protagonist who willingly forgoes the enticements of “chocolate, lime-juice, ice-cream, toffeeiyaan” (HAHK) for the higher joys of a domestic economy based on enabling her male partner’s full-­ fledged, morally uninhibited access to consumerism.

Male Producers and Female Shoppers: The Gender Regime of Capitalist Consumption Even though women have been portrayed as modernity’s textbook compulsive shoppers (the sexist adage goes: men produce, women shop), in actuality, the market relies as much on male consumers as it does on women. Interestingly though, while men’s consumerism is lauded as an empowering act of choosing-a-self, women find themselves subjected to ridicule for exercising agency in the exact same way. A market-driven culture does indeed enjoin women to be self-directed in their consumerism, yet, somewhat disingenuously, the same culture also mocks and trivializes them for consumerist narcissism and vanity. Likewise, as Kenon Breazeale (2000) has shown, in an attempt to recruit male shoppers, and protect them for charges of effeminacy or worse—homosexuality—shopping in the early twentieth century had to be detached from its usual associations with women. There is, thus, a long history of women being absurdized as hopelessly bad shoppers.1 There is a paradoxical tendency at work in the discourse surrounding women and shopping. On the one hand, in the official (i.e., male) imaginary, the female shopper is the ur-consumer, the advertising industry’s ideal target. On the other hand, since so much of consumer culture depends on packaging erotic images of women, it becomes possible to bracket out women’s purchasing power and focus purely on their functions as consumer objects and facilitators of exchange. The truth, however, as Mary Ann Doane (1989) reminds us, is that women do very 1

 Breazeale (2000: 228).

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actively participate in the consumerist economy as more than mere objects of exchange.2 It is through this double inflection that this chapter investigates women characters in post-liberalization Hindi cinema who signify, battle against and even succumb to the intensely rending, anxiety-producing pressures surrounding female consumption. In addition, women in Hindi films are the focus of protective-moralizing concerns that originate from the immediate historical-geographic context of a simultaneously liberalized and traditional/neo-conservative India.

New India’s New Woman: Liberalization, Liberation and Contested Bodies In 1991, after four decades of Nehruvian socialism, India opened its borders to foreign investment. Liberalized India’s discursive reconstruction of the nation as “new India” and “India Shining” accompanied an acute experience of loss—loss of sovereignty, autonomy and national culture. A compensatory desire to fortify traditional identities manifested most urgently around questions of gender and sexuality and coalesced around the “new liberal Indian woman.” On the one hand, this “woman of substance,” as India’s highest-selling women’s magazine Femina termed her, was constructed as “self-assured, independent, rich, and fashionable…[a] mimetic trope of the nation in globalisation”.3 At the same time, fears over indiscriminately open economic and national borders got displaced onto the new woman’s body, being transcribed as moral anxiety about her sexual proclivities, her indiscretions, and the general paranoia regarding the specter of moral degeneracy. The new Indian woman is therefore closely policed for a deracinated subjectivity that forgets its primary location in the home and benign familial connections to husband and children. What makes the liberalized avatar of the Indian woman most threatening, of course, is her role as consumer. The moral panic directed at her consumerism reads the “woman of substance”, as a woman of substances— not substantive or uniquely wedded to values, but easily seduced by shiny 2  As Mary Ann Doane puts it, we tend “to envisage the woman’s relation to the commodity in terms of ‘being’ rather than ‘having’: she is the object of exchange rather than its subject.” See Doane (1989: 23). 3  See Reddy (2006: 64) and Oza (2006: 13).

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buyable objects, avaricious, superficial and not much better than her dissolute and promiscuous Western counterpart. The Hindi film culture industry, which has itself undergone drastic overhaul since the onset of economic liberalization, has treated the new woman and her consumption habits as its prized subjects of ­investigation/ representation. HAHK and ZNMD, each in its own way, articulate the ideological and thematic shifts that have dominated Hindi cinema’s representational priorities since liberalization. It is apparent that while the Barjatya films, notwithstanding their ultra-affluent universe consisting entirely of big-business families, continue to adhere to a predominantly traditional-familial moral economy, the cinematic corpus of Zoya Akhtar is dominated by upmarket characters that live out an upbeat ideal of comfort underwritten by corporatized incomes. These films further reveal that no matter which end of the liberalization spectrum one is considering, all exemplars seem to evince Hindi cinema’s deep and fundamental nervousness about women as consumers.

Dead Mothers and Childless Aunts: Spectacles of Female Consumption in Hum Aapke Hain Koun…! Released in 1994, HAHK’s utopic presentation of post-liberalization Indian life relies heavily on its gargantuan spectacles of consumption. The film’s plot is remarkably slim—Prem (Salman Khan) and Nisha (Madhuri Dixit) meet and fall in love during the (arranged-marriage) wedding celebrations of their respective siblings (Rajesh and Pooja); their romance is thrown into crisis when Pooja (Renuka Shahane) dies leaving behind a newborn. Unaware of Nisha and Prem’s romantic embroilment, the families propose that Nisha marry her brother-in-law Rajesh (Mohnish Bahl) and take over the motherly responsibilities of her nephew. In its magical universe, businessmen and professors alike live in mansions teeming with mammoth living rooms, serpentine staircases and king-size bedrooms with décor of a splendor that boggles the sights. These broad markers of unbridled consumption are all so smoothly and repetitively woven into the film’s texture and mise-en-scène that luxuriance becomes life’s normal constant and a naturalized backdrop to romance. In Sooraj Barjatya’s film, love does not rebel against the prohibiting pressures of society and family; instead it immerses itself with enthusiasm in the len-den (give and take) of transactionalized matrimony and revels in the elaborate sequences centered on high-ritual ceremonials of marriage and maternity—roka/

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engagement, mehendi/henna ceremony, sangeet/singing and dancing, shaadi/wedding, gode bharai/baby shower, antakshari/singing game night—all follow in an extraordinary ritual-celebratory outpouring where each sequence merges, effortlessly and without pause, into another…into the next…and next…ad aeternum. In fact, love’s fulfillment is continually deferred without any plot pretext for its delay whatsoever (until the end, when Pooja, Nisha’s older sister and Rajesh’s wife, dies), and the only thing that keeps the lovers apart is the arrival of yet another traditional ceremony. The film’s atmosphere in fact is so compulsively fixated on its sagas of unending pre-­ nuptial celebrations and so mired in spectacles of opulence and material consumption that even the fruition of love in a film about marriage seems secondary to the movie’s real objective—the visual glorification of tawdry excess itself. The confoundingly dense social interactions of the film are matched by the pervasiveness of objects that are slippery, exchangeable, always and irrepressibly on the move. They change hands, are swapped between families, turned into gifts between lovers, and sometimes are snatched away by cute canine maws. Chocolates, letters, flowers, roller skates, cricket balls, jewelry sets, laddoos, children’s toys and even the Bhagwad Gita are made part and parcel of a regime of consumption and gift exchanges that never slows down or halts. Two objects in particular dominate, respectively, the first and latter halves of the film—the groom’s shoes during the customary games played at weddings and the necklace that Pooja bequeaths to Nisha just before she tumbles down a staircase to her death. The valued (and costly) ornament is meant as a seal of familial approval, sanctifying her sister and brother-in-­ law’s relationship. What is worth noting is not merely how central these two articles of possession are to the plot, but also how deeply gendered is their function in the film’s regime of meaning. In this filmic universe, a woman’s stilettos, for example, could never occupy the same emblematic authority as eldest son Rajesh’s shoes do. When the bride’s sisters steal Rajesh’s shoes in the traditional joota-­ chupai ritual, they do so not only because matrimonial rituals are mediated by monetary exchanges, but also because a man’s footwear is a prized possession, signifying the footprint he leaves upon the world. Rajesh remains constantly away at work, on his globalization-era foreign business trips, even at the very moment when his wife, pregnant with his child, is confined and rooted to one spot: home. The business-family scion is a man on

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the move and one willing to walk over, with very little coaxing, from one marriage into the next. His shoes thus stand in the film as Rajesh’s symbolic passport to power and respect, to boundless consumption in and of the world, and to serialized access to beautiful women (sisters!) as wives. The contrast with the female destiny could not be starker. Once Pooja enters her marital home, she will never really leave it—her next significant journey will also be her last, for she has fulfilled her life’s purpose as the corporate family’s universally adored and accepted model bahu (daughter-­ in-­law). As such, the fact that she dies on the single occasion that she steps out of her marital home sums up the film’s politics with regard to women’s place in the world; they have none, except within the four walls of their domestic establishment. No wonder the object most closely associated with Pooja is a piece of jewelry: something that can be possessed, protected and passed down as heirloom—perhaps from one woman to another—but always as signage of her belonging to a man. Hence, when Pooja transfers the necklace from her own body onto Nisha’s, with it she also transmits to her sister the right to be possessed by a man. With this gesture of investiture, Pooja validates Nisha’s amorous desire for Prem but also simultaneously inducts her, through a gilded commodity-object, into the safe and sanctioned female cocoon of conjugality, family and property. Nisha, in comparison to her compliant sister, is a toofan (storm), who, clad in trendy jeans and colorful jacket, erupts upon the screen on speeding roller skates. Nisha’s youthful effervescence, her unabashed love for chocolate (full of oxytocin, the love hormone!), and her feminine naughtiness make her a glad sight for sore eyes. Her bedroom walls are swathed in gigantic photographic self-portraits in which she is seen gorging on ice-cream cones with the sexy innocence and appetitive gusto of a girl who is young enough to take childish pleasure in sweets/candy, but old enough and woman enough to pose coquettishly as she does so. It is not a coincidence that the moment which marks the beginning of Nisha’s transition from boisterous prankster and self-indulgent girl to Prem’s paramour and duty-conscious life partner is the joota-chupai game at her sister’s wedding. While playfully battling over Rajesh’s shoes, Nisha manages to get her hands on the shoes and speeds upstairs to escape Prem, who follows in hot pursuit. The two ultimately end up in Nisha’s bedroom where Prem makes a final lunge to grab the shoes; the two lose their balance and land on her bed—Nisha on her back, and Prem on top of her. The bed, of course, promptly collapses under their weight.

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It is impossible to miss the wall-sized poster that hangs above her bed. It features giant representations of all her favorite food items: cake slices, éclairs, lime sodas, sundaes, candy and cupcakes—a peculiarly sugary iconography of youthful female indulgence. The collapsed bed, then, not only connotes ignited erotic desire but also the need to find a new avenue for its fulfillment. Because Nisha’s bedroom is marked all too plainly with insignias of her strong, even consuming desires, and in as much as the appetitive female body is foregrounded in this imagery of nearly autoerotic self-absorption, this bed/room cannot rightfully function as a legitimate site for love’s consummation. For that she will have to relocate to Prem’s house—via marriage—where it is his consumption-cravings that shall rightfully assume primacy and may duly be satisfied. From this point on, Nisha will willingly relinquish her childish indulgences in favor of adult obligations. These can range from the banal and commonplace (staying up late to serve Prem a lavish thaali of food items she has prepared “specially” for him) to the outrightly bizarre: consenting to marriage with Rajesh because Prem has chosen to sacrifice personal love at the altar of family obligations! There is one little telephonic conversation vignette involving Nisha and Prem that speaks volumes about the swathing of romantic love in the comforting skein of filiality. One evening, Nisha calls Prem at his office. When the call ends, he notices his co-­ workers/employees looking expectantly at him, perhaps wondering who he was on the phone with. Before anyone can ask a direct question, Prem quips: “My mother had called”. What is incredible, despite the laughter that greets Prem’s little male-club joke, is how seriously (and without the slightest trace of irony) the film invites us to take Prem’s statement and to see in Nisha a logical substitute for the hero’s deceased mother. The film in fact is replete with references to Prem having missed out on maternal love in his childhood. This helps explain, for instance, his slightly absurd excitement levels over a bhabhi finally arriving in the family. For Prem, then, a mother substitute is needed, and virtually any proxy mom would do—from his bhabhi to his bhabhi’s sister. We know that Nisha is willing and able to bear the full burden of this onerous duty not only because she indulges Prem’s gastronomic longings, but also because she gladly comes forward to play substitute for another dead mother—her own sister. In agreeing to barter personal love for familial duty—and in thus giving her assent to being recruited into an economy that treats women interchangeably, transacts their wombs and maternal care with scant regard for their individual desires or

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preferences—Nisha proves once and for all her eminent qualifications within the order of things. To forget oneself, one’s individual preference, and readily step forward to play the replacement Laxmi of this household which has lost the original is beyond personal sacrifice. It is to be at one with the sanctity and meaning of a higher schema. Goddess Laxmi exists, after all, to facilitate other people’s prosperity. There is, nonetheless, one woman in the film’s female cast who puts up a fight of sorts, refusing staunchly to be cured of her self-serving consumerism. Prem and Rajesh’s Maami (mother’s brother’s wife), a woman named Bhagwanti, enact a mockery of her own appellation. Hers is a name that literally means “the wife,” but that’s about the most-wifely thing about Bhagwanti. (Bindu, the actor assigned the part of Bhagwanti, was a well-known filmy vamp of yesteryear, known for her deliberately lewd movements on the cabaret floor.) In fact, we can’t even be quite sure if Bhagwanti is really her name, or just an appellation coined by her husband with the faint hope that such a direct invocation of her relational status might compensate him a little for the insouciant irreverence with which she flouts the proper behaviors of a wife. It is no accident that this particular aunt is the one person in HAHK who comes closest in the film’s otherwise syrupy-sweet bubblegum world to a notion of villainy. Little touches in the aunt’s minor wickedness seem reminiscent of that long-standing stock figure of Hindi cinema, the nasty stepmother/malicious mother-in-law—the type of female-ogre that used traditionally to be played by actors like Lalita Pawar, Manorama or Aruna Irani. Notably though, Bindu’s quasi-comical rendition of the errant aunt in HAHK is never allowed to cross over into serious malevolence or effective evil. In fact, because she is the target of ridiculing misogynistic jibes in the film’s visual-verbal economy (not to mention at the hands of her own husband), she remains as no more than a persistent annoyance, someone that is principally a butt of jokes, and whose imagined threat is easily defused with dismissive mocking touches that help defang this would­be virago. All the same, her petty villainy is of some significance, for another reason. Bhagwanti belongs to an old generic figure in Bombay movie lore— the Westernized woman who is “bad” because she is out of touch with Indian cultural values and ideals of femininity. Bhagwanti’s trips to the salon, frequenting of “kitty parties,” her sleeveless blouses and coiffured short hair, her refusal to be called “maami” (i.e., to be de-sexed by her family-elder role) and, finally, the ease with which she interrupts/disrupts

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male conversations and activities, all help to identify her as Westernized—a term which in its connection with a woman functions as a cultural code word for an overtly vain, materialistic, appearance-driven flighty woman.4 The film spares no opportunity to drive home the cliché: when Rajesh goes abroad, she gives him a long list of nail polishes to bring back for her. Bhagwanti’s husband exemplifies the type of henpecked uxorious male of tradition who stays busy in trying to regain his tottering self-esteem by means of the usual male defenses in such cases: mean-spirited little closet-­ barbs calculated to offset the wife’s superior authority over him. Maamaji’s steady jobs in life include making apologetic amends for her thoughtless behavior; behind her back, he warns his friends to disregard her opinions because she is “blinded by the glitter of wealth”. For the gode bharai ceremony (baby shower), Bhagwanti arrives in outlandish gear: hot-pink sleeveless satin suit, sunglasses, huge beehive hairdo of curly locks. Her husband, who is at the door greeting guests, doesn’t recognize his own wife. He invites her in with folded hands, addressing her as a generic bhabhiji. When she makes herself known, he exclaims, “Oh, Bhagwanti, it’s you?!? You’re looking like pretty woman today [emphasis added]”. This reference to the 1990 film Pretty Woman (in which Julia Roberts plays a “loveable” sex worker) is curious, but surely no coincidence. Not only does mamaji use a Western celebrity allusion to describe his wife’s implied waywardness, he also suggests that her excessively made-up look identifies her as something of a sexual-moral other, even if comically so. Even more disconcertingly, Bhagwanti doesn’t seem to mind the left-handed compliment. Her response is to giggle, call her husband a “naughty boy”, pat his face, and proceed indoors: indicating that she is either tickled by the comparison to a Hollywood star or too dim-witted to get the insult and implied reprimand. Rustom Bharucha (1995) has written about the film’s fetishistic representation of food consumption, eating rituals and insatiable relishing of Indian delicacies.5 One person, however, is excluded from the film’s all-­ welcoming regime of dietetic hospitality: Bhagwanti. On one occasion, though Bhagwanti does get her chance to partake of a feast, when her 4  A kitty party refers to a social gathering of women in which each member contributes money to a central pool and lots are drawn to decide which member will get the entire sum. The regular meetings could involve going out for lunches to restaurants, potluck meals and bingo sessions. 5  Bharucha (1995: 802).

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niece Rita decides to cook Prem’s favorite halwa to please and impress him. The buffoonized vamp’s equally maladroit niece manages to confuse sugar with salt, thus producing a horror-in-the-mouth concoction and consummately failing a nubile Indian girl’s cardinal test in the culinary arena. Lalloo, the familialized domestic help, who has witnessed the disaster, cunningly invites Bhagwanti to be the first to taste the Indian dessert. Bhagwanti helps herself to a disgustingly large mouthful, and the in-house joke turns on the camera lens keeping a close watch over the Aunt’s grotesque facial contortions and her regurgitation of the clumsy niece’s sweet delicacy gone terribly sour (or salty). The misfit aunt’s gross consumerism and uncouth appetitive excesses are summed up in this simple, single encoded image of her gorging upon food too inedible to be respectably served to anyone else in this household (in her case, it becomes a deserved moral lesson). Bhagwanti’s eagerness to gorge upon food never meant for her in the first place and her lack of seemly restraint about swooping in and cleaning out the wooing pakwaan meant for a man must receive due punishment. Her chastisement doesn’t end there though. The tutelary humiliation to which the errant wife must be subjected takes on a fiercer, more unforgiving quality when, toward the end of the film, her husband delivers a resounding slap across Bhagwanti’s face for suggesting that Rajesh’s child be brought up by servants. This of course is the proverbial last straw. The open declaration of a crass non-maternal sentiment by his wife is more than mamaji can take. He duly loses his temper, humiliates her before all, and physically lays into her. Not resting there, he loudly decries and exposes her “barrenness”—a standard old trope and cultural insult used to shame women for their faulty, impregnable bodies. She gasps in horror, lets out a cry, and rushes off screen. Her husband, overwhelmed by the emotional exertions of his taxing moral duty, the flagellant’s fatigue, apologizes to everyone and also exits. We do not see either of them again, till the film’s very end, at Prem and Nisha’s marriage. Bhagwanti arrives on the scene, joining the celebrations; only this time she’s virtually unrecognizable. Her barrenness (the mark of female deviancy) gone, she is very obviously pregnant. Clad in a sober, self-effacing sari, she beams with radiant joy (no sign of the snarly smirk anymore). Bhagwanti’s hair is neatly knotted up in a bun and, as a visible token of the chastened and reformed Hindu wife, she wears a large vermillion bindi on her forehead, modestly covering her head with the sari’s pallu. Bhagwanti has become a bhagwanti in truth,

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and her husband, the restored pride of his spousal position and forthcoming paternity writ large in the broad grin upon his face, seems to stand taller than ever before. Yet, even though Bhagwanti does in the end live up to her name and morph into a pativrata-nari, a true wife and mother-to-be, the resource and resilience with which she through most of the film fends off the men who tease, deride and insult her (and it is telling that it is only the men who do this) has necessitated that patriarchy reveal its fangs before the final improvement may take place. The correction of Bhagwanti in fact is a moral fable inside which nestle a conservative male order’s ugly and violent strategies for keeping liberalization-affected consuming women in line. She is literally cured by the husband’s long overdue slap in the face. But long before the “big-guns” of domestic violence and (symbolic) marital rape are pulled out to tame and transform her, Bhagwanti’s bullheaded commitment to cosmetic self-care and the gratification of her body have already provoked the men to expose their misogyny, disguised as coded intra-cultural humor and passive-aggressive belittling. Perhaps, the film’s most important gender messages lie, then, not in its glowing portraits of nice girls and good wives, but in the object lesson made out of a Bhagwanti.

Aquatic Nymphs and Chudail (Witch) Girlfriends: Zindagi Naa Milegi Dobara and Women’s Role in Masculine Economies of Self-Care In Zoya Akhtar’s film, Arjun (Hrithik Roshan), Imran (Farhan Akhtar) and Kabir (Abhay Deol), the three protagonists of ZNMD, journey through the luxuriant and mesmeric Spanish landscape. They participate in carnivalesque festivities that allow them to break free of the trappings of conventional and corporate masculinity and encounter women who introduce them to romantic, sensual and even meditative delights. Hindi cinema has never before created characters that are so perfectly attuned to foreign locales and intercultural code switching, or so content with immersing themselves in new cultural-somatic experiences. In ZNMD, all three heroes explore the glibbest forms of leisure travel that provoke no adverse commentary, no apology, no guilt and no compensatory need to prove one’s allegiance to the Indian nation. On the contrary, Arjun, Imran and Kabir—the very names announce a non-parochial outlook—are citizens of the world, as comfortable in their parents’ upper middle class

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homes in Mumbai as they are in workplaces and spaces of consumption in London—or a no-hold holiday in Spain. In fact, through their Spain sabbatical, these men confront and overcome their personal-professional demons and inhibitions, cultivating in the process a new code of individuated-consumerism and self-care. As Jayashree Kamble (2015) has demonstrated, however, the travel-trope, which enables the emotional transformation of the protagonists, is far from innocuous. Kamble suggests that even though the film is shaped as an apparent critique of corporate, white-collar workaholism and joyless consumerism, what it really advertises is the virtues of entrenchment in just another trend of late capitalism—leisure travel.6 The film participates in a false binary between work and recreation, when in reality both feed (and are lifestyle offshoots of) global capital in our time. Even worse, the film is entirely blind to the privileges entailed in being able to indulge in this sort of recreational hiatus. The three heroes orchestrate the fantasy of discovering their authentic, freely expressive selves as they go deep-sea diving, bungee jumping and running with the bulls, without ever acknowledging that this sort of liberating journey of the self is possible only for the acolytes of corporate capitalism and sons of businessmen. What is just as troubling, and has escaped scholarly attention, is the subordinate dependent-enabler role to which women are consigned in the cinematic universe where men seek their authentic individuated selves through consumption. Split respectively into enablers and disrupters of men’s self-actualization, the women in ZNMD follow abysmally predictable trajectories. So, while the men hurtle from one act of restless consumption to the next, the women hover in the peripheries as little more than facilitators of male adventures—or as cantankerous impediments that must be sidelined/neutralized (and the trope returns) through male laughter and through women’s vilification or caricaturing as feminine annoyances. There is a clear division of labor in the film—the men are on holiday; the women perform all the labor of showing them a good time. In this regard, Laila’s function is the most explicit. She is a beautiful nymph; the ethereal mermaid who is always dressed in flowy-flowery dresses, except when she’s acting as the men’s deep-sea diving instructor. Her job ascribes her with a nurturing function, with care and compassion. Without shaming Arjun for his aquaphobia, she empowers him to face his fear and discover 6

 Kamble (2015: 3–6).

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underwater treasures. But simultaneously, she is the embodiment of mother nature herself: her temperament is as serene as the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, her life-knowledge and wisdom as deep as the ocean, her beauty as pristine and organic as the Spanish vistas. Laila ­introduces Arjun to a new way of approaching life—as an alternative to losing himself in the corporate rat race. Under her care, he is able to recover his old self, and Imran and Kabir thank Laila for giving them back the friend they knew from school. They even invite her to join them for the rest of their travels (come girl, join the boys). In fact, all three men are remarkably comfortable with her; she weathers Imran’s jocular flirtation with sparkling eyes, allows Kabir to scoop her up in a mock fight during the Tomatina festival, and even knows not to push her case too hard when they refuse to let her drive the hired convertible. Her femininity is so safely seductive that she is able to become one of the guys—without having to shed or forgo her erotic appeal. Her greatest virtue is that she lets the boys be boys, even as she teaches them how to be men. If Laila is a life-coach and diving instructor rolled into one, then Nuria, her friend who joins them before the Tomatina festival, becomes their unofficial tourist guide, giving the men first hand access to Spain’s intimate geography and its small-town carnivals. She is an asset not only because she’s the native insider but also because she is game for a casual hook-up with Imran and available for Imran’s post-coital confessions. If Laila says very little that isn’t a hippie-cliché, then metaphorically, Nuria says nothing at all. Given that she knows no English, and Imran doesn’t comprehend Spanish, the two can only converse tangentially. And yet, her figurative voicelessness is exactly what the men in the film generally, and Imran in particular, require—an empty sounding board onto which they can transfer their darkest secrets without being burdened with the responsibility of managing/responding to another human being’s emotional needs. Nuria, thus, fulfills a strange Oedipal fantasy: she’s like a mother-­ therapist who charges nothing to listen to the story of her son-patient’s travails, and in the bargain not only lends him a non-judgmental ear but also ego-assurance through sexual gratification. The film has an established pattern: all the women who do the physical labor of servicing the hyper-mobile men-on-vacation are also available for the emotional labor of entertaining men and facilitating the expansion of their horizons. Nonetheless, Natasha (Kalki Koechlin), Kabir’s girlfriend, does manage to present a distinct counterpoint to the “nice” women who enable men’s

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consumption and facilitate their inner growth. Her arrival in Spain abruptly halts all the fun. She is prickly, sports a prissy demeanor and has an uptight mode of interacting with the Spanish locals (as opposed to the breezy ease with which the others mingle). Her jealous resentment at the organic ­conviviality shared between Laila and the men makes her a classic instance of the sour puss. Very clearly, she is a misfit in this band of recently converted bohemians. Her stiff upper-class attire marks her as an outsider to the world of globetrotting new age consumers who make travel look easy and recreational—rather than grim business. In some ways, Natasha is erstwhile anal-retentive Arjun’s female counterpart. Like him, she micromanages, scheduling and pre-planning everything from her wedding and her post-nuptial life, down to what Kabir’s free time with his friends “ought to” entail. Natasha seems to follow the same practices of compulsive and over-managed commodity consumption that Arjun had taken part in, at the start of the film. Yet, while Arjun is redeemed and his authentic carefree self is recuperated with relative ease, Natasha stays beyond the pale of rescue. Ostensibly, bad male consumers can be taught what genuine, healthy consumption should look like; bad female consumers, on the other hand, are condemned to remain un-­ trainable. They can never acquire the lightness of humor or the ease of immersion that men apparently can. None of the men can dare refuse Natasha when she asks to drive the car (a marked contrast to what happens with Laila in a like situation). And, a woman who can’t be turned down is not someone who can assist or accelerate men’s consumption; instead, she threatens to usurp it. Within minutes of being at the wheel, Natasha causes a near crash—clearly, she can’t be trusted with boy-toys. As she drives, the audio on the car blares the song “I’m a rock chick in a hard rock world”; Natasha belts out an accompaniment to the number. What is jarring about the sequence is not so much her forced attempt to play cool or her unspoken insistence that the men fall in line and enjoy her company. It is how completely at odds with her reality and her persona the song is: she is anything but a rock chick, and her silver-spoon life is anything but hard. In effect, she is the only person in the movie singled out for judgment for her upper-class hauteur. The film’s contempt for Natasha’s brand of consumerism is condensed into one object: the 12,000-pound bag that Arjun carries from London for Kabir, who we surmise wants to give it to Natasha as a present. Imran’s mock-outrage at learning the price tag on the bag ballasts into a whole comic routine: he personifies the bag as a woman named Bag-wati, dresses

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“her” in a scarf and sunglasses, and turns her into his car-travel companion, always sitting in the passenger seat by his side, and sometimes even on his lap. It is exactly this lightness of being, this capacity to take all commodities with a pinch of salt even as one fetishizes them, that are, so the film suggests, the signs that bespeak the positive attitude of a good consumer. A woman can never be this: she is either too intense/too acquisitive in her consumer demands (as presumably Natasha has been in asking for this bag)—or else she is like a Laila, whose body reveals no consumption of her own, even as she gently directs the men toward the gratification of their neoliberal consumer yearnings. Yet, even though Natasha momentarily disrupts the men’s pleasure-­ seeking fantasy, she does nevertheless contribute to their emotional journey. First, by rallying against her, the three (male) friends band together in a united front and rebuild their emotional ties to one another. Second, her unpleasant attributes do the work of forcing Kabir to stand up for what he really wants. Ironically, then, even when women refuse to comply and service male egos, they’re still put to work as counterpoints against which men can organize their lives and consumption practices. Even a woman’s non-appeasing behavior is, in the end, a milestone in a man’s developmental trajectory. It too has its commodity uses and utility. Notwithstanding women’s role as instructors and enablers of men, the film’s final goal is to see men through to a place where they can act as free agents—free of women!—who can give unique expression to their selfhood through their autonomous choices in the consumer market. The women meanwhile continue to hover in the background, as stepping stones in men’s discovery of their personal desires. This is why the women slowly but surely fall by the wayside in the film, falling into fadeout mode. Natasha goes back to London (where, we can assume, she will keep busy with shopping, as Kabir recommends she do). Nuria bids a fond farewell to Imran when they leave for their bungee jumping adventure. And although Laila is invited back among the trio and joins them in their last destination in Spain, she doesn’t accompany them in the final test of their machismo (running with the bulls). This is because, the peccadilloes over, the male universe, in the final instance, stays as a self-enclosed, self-referential zone, trespassers not allowed. Here, one man’s adventure is another man’s learning curve, and while female instructors and disruptors may have a place in rounds one and two, the finishing line can only be reached by men who have learnt the art of consumption as, when all is said and done, no woman ever truly can. She just doesn’t have what “it” takes.

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Works Cited Films Hum Aapke Hain Koun, director Sooraj Barjatya, producer Rajshri Production, 1994. Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, director Zoya Akhtar, producer Eros International, 2011.

Books Oza, Rupal.  The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender, and the Paradoxes of Globalisation (New York and London: Routledge, 2006).

Journal Articles and Book Chapters Bharucha, Rustom. “Utopia in Bollywood: ‘Hum Aapke Hain Koun…!’.” Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 30, Issue Number 15 (1995), 801–804. Breazeale, Kenon, “In Spite of Women: Esquire Magazine and the Construction of the Male Consumer” in Jennifer Scanton ed., The Gender and Consumer Culture Reader (London and New  York: New  York University Press, 2000), 226–244. Doane, Mary Ann. “The Economy of Desire: The Commodity Form in/of the Cinema”.Quarterly Review of Film & Video no. 11 (1) (1989), 23–33. Kamble, Jayashree. “All Work or All Play? Consumption, Leisure, and Ethics under Globalisation in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.” South Asian Popular Culture no. 13 (1), (2015), 1–14. Reddy, Vanita. “The Nationalization of the Global Indian Woman: Geographies of Beauty in Femina.” South Asian Popular Culture no. 4 (1), (2006), 61–85.

CHAPTER 18

Twenty-First-Century Heroines: Modernity in Cocktail (2012), Queen (2014) and Highway (2014) Puja Sen

On 16 December 2012, 23-year-old Jyoti Singh boarded a bus with her friend at nine in the evening after watching the movie The Life of Pi in a mall in south Delhi. A regular thing to do for young women enjoying tenuous new freedoms and forms of leisure in the city; in this instance, it was to have a ghastly climax. The only other five passengers in the bus, along with the driver, beat Jyoti’s male companion unconscious and brutally gang-raped her, including with an iron rod. The girl died ten days later due to severe internal damage. The grizzly nature of the violence, coupled with the fact that the incident took place in a gentrified part of New Delhi, led to unprecedented mass anger. Over the next few days, both women and men took to the street in large numbers demanding justice for the victim. The incident sparked a transformative national conversation on sexual violence and women’s rights.1 1  As of July 2018, four of the six accused have been awarded capital punishment under the newly instituted Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013; one committed suicide in judicial custody and the sixth was a juvenile and sentenced to three years intern in a juvenile home.

P. Sen (*) New Delhi, India © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_18

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Jyoti was a physiotherapy intern. While her parents came from a village in the Ballia district of Uttar Pradesh, she lived and worked in the national capital.2 Her father had sold ancestral land in order to help her continue her education. To many, Jyoti symbolized a new breed of young modern women in India—despite her rural roots and class position, she was aspirational and staked a claim in a competitive urban environment. Significantly, Jyoti was given the name ‘Nirbhaya’, meaning fearless, both to protect her identity and accord her honour. The title found resonance with a strain within the larger protests that took place, one which emphasized ‘bekhauf azadi’, or fearless freedom, for women—‘their freedom of movement, their right to dress as they please, and their right to associate with persons of their choice’.3 Over the years, a wider shift has taken place in mainstream media on the question of sexual violence and women’s safety and where the dangers may lie. The binary of the safe home and the dangerous street has been increasingly questioned—the National Crimes Record Bureau data for 2015 noted that 95 per cent of sexual violence is perpetrated by persons known to the victim.4 The idea of distinct spheres, where the family home is a site of protection in contrast to the city as a space of potential sexual risk—where women may venture out at their own peril—is a useful ideological trick that maintains the patriarchal status quo. It constructs working-­class men as threatening and lays the onus on women to take precautions for their own safety rather than demand equal rights to the city for everybody. As Leonore Davidoff (1995) has argued, “the ragged frontiers between public and private must be recognized as a site where identity…is formed”.5 These dialectics inform shifting aesthetic codes within the Hindi film industry too. In the context of Hindi films, much has been written about The widespread protests led to a variety of responses, academically and culturally. In 2013, three cinemas released: Aaj ki Freedom, Damini: The Victim and Tara, the Journey of Love and Passion. Importantly, a remarkable culture of proscription has also arisen in the wake of the incident as Leslie Udwin’s documentary, India’s Daughter (2015), was not televised and Deepa Mehta’s Anatomy of Violence (2016) was not allowed to be screened in the theatres. 2  Details from https://indianexpress.com/article/india/nirbhaya-gangrape-case-2012-alook-at-what-all-has-happened-over-the-years-4641418/ 3  Singh, Winter 2012–Spring 2013: 259. 4  https://www.firstpost.com/india/ncrb-data-shows-95-rape-victims-in-india-known-tooffenders-3433136.html 5  Davidoff (1995: 258).

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the problem of an ‘aspired for Indian modernity’,6 where ‘the home as an ethical and visual postulate’ changes amidst ‘this kinetic, worldly traffic of goods, bodies and images’.7 This chapter explores with particular focus on three films—Cocktail (2012), Queen (2014) and Highway (2014)—the kind of female subjectivity that contemporary Hindi films produce by mapping modernity spatially—the nightclub, the Western metropolis and the road, respectively—in the context of gender. Further, it suggests, in the aftermath of the 2012 gang rape and murder, questions of freedom, choice and independence became strong representational codes in signifying the urban upper class woman negotiating family values have found greater focus. The women in these films are seen as demanding liberation from those patriarchal traditions that are deemed too stifling, and yet they continue to be embodied as the primary symbol of the nation’s cultural anxieties about sex and sexuality. Madhava Prasad in his seminal Ideology of the Hindi Film (1998) has argued that there is a “complex dialectic of autonomizing and heteronomizing tendencies within the field of mass culture where cinema is situated”.8 As production of mass culture is within the domain of human activity, it cannot, on the one hand, be understood as merely a passive aesthetic documentation of historical and social phenomenon or, on the other, be dismissed for bearing no relation to material reality. Rather, it is better understood as both deriving from and giving shape to a populist historical imagination. Popular Hindi films do not go out of their way to unbalance the expectations of its middle-class spectators, and this may be true for most mass entertainment industries across the world. Tomas Guiterrez Alea (1985), the Cuban filmmaker, writes: In capitalist society, the typical consumerist film spectacle is the light comedy or melodrama. It has invariably had ‘a happy end’. This has provided, and to a certain degree continues to provide, a rather efficient ideological weapon to promote and consolidate conformity among huge sectors of the public.9

But popular aesthetics, in order to remain popular, has had to reckon with shifts on the ground.  Basu (2010: 5).  Ibid. 8  Prasad (1998): 54. 9  Alea (1985): webpage. 6 7

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Modernity and Tradition When Veronica (Deepika Padukone) fully recognizes that her lover Gautam Kapoor (Saif Ali Khan) has chosen to be with her best friend Meera (Diana Penty) in Homi Adajania’s Cocktail (2012), she begins to unravel.10 This unravelling takes place at a London nightclub, where Veronica—in slow-motion takes, amidst strobe lighting, dancing bodies and loud music—begins to find herself disconnected from her environment. The flashing shots alternate between the isolated and desolate figure of Veronica in the nightclub and the scenes of her laughing and swaying with the crowd. The moment is significant. Veronica is established right from the outset as the ‘party girl’: modern, unanchored and carefree. Meera, more retiring, ‘traditional’ and domestic, is the type of woman, apparently, who makes the house a home and will have a corrective influence on all the fallen characters in the film. The nightclub is Veronica’s world, the space in which she is in her element and where she has generously led both Gautam and Meera as visitors to witness the delights of what is supposed to pass for unrestrained hedonism and feverish consumerism of the West. But now, wasted and miserable, she pleads with Gautam: I can’t be like this Gautam. The music, these lights! Save me from all this! Take me somewhere…with you. In your world. In the world of marriage, family, relationships!11

From this point on, the narrative thrust of the movie focuses on Veronica’s spiritual emptiness and Meera’s unremitting goodness. The main driver of the plot is Meera’s refusal to be with Gautam until Veronica gives them her full and free sanction. Meera’s self-sacrifice is so obstinately virtuous, it constructs Veronica, despite herself, as wayward and needy, and an obstruction to what Gautam now insists is true love. The nightclub in popular Indian cinema post-independence, as Ranjani Mazumdar (2007) has pointed out, was the deviant space of the other, a den of ‘vice’, or a terrain of unregulated sexuality whose centrepiece was often the figure of the westernized vamp.12 She has usually been pitted 10  Cocktail was produced under the banner Illuminati Films by Saif Ali Khan and Dinesh Vijan. 11  All unattributed translations are mine. 12  Mazumdar (2007: 86).

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against the heroine with ‘traditional’ Indian morals, the chaste Hindu wife-to-be, and the future bearer of (hopefully) sons of the nation. The figure of the vamp, Mazumdar argues, merges into the new heroines of Bombay films post-liberalization in the 1990s. However, does this mark a departure from the binary logic of tradition and modernity, so important to the postcolonial imaginary? Or are the old binaries reenergized, only with new limits? The unregulated excess of bars and nightclubs associated with Veronica seems particularly anachronistic, given the spate of movies since the early 2000s, which established a hip, rich and urban youth as belonging to these very spaces. Dil Chahta Hai (2001) may be seen as heralding in the representation of what Ritty A Lukose (2009) has called ‘liberalization’s children’, a consumer-driven youth marking out its generational difference from earlier notions of nationhood, family ideals and romance.13 The three protagonists in Dil Chahta Hai—Aakash Malhotra (Aamir Khan), Samir Mulchandani (Saif Ali Khan) and Siddharth Sinha (Akshaye Khanna)— sing, dance and inhabit the nightclub with confidence. This site is now established as a ‘party scene’ and has become a standard visualization of consumerist ‘sexy’ youth in popular movies in the past few years. It represents a cultural assertion of India’s entry in the global market place. They declare the kinds of hero they see themselves as: sapnon ka jo des hain, haan hum wahi hain pale thode se dil-phek hai, thode se hain manchale, jahan bhi gaye apna jadoo dikha te rahe mohabbat haseenon ko aksar sikha te rahein… Raised in that land of dreams We are a little flamboyant, a little playful, We spread our magic wherever we go Teaching love to beautiful women along the way…

The men, flirtatious and laid-back, are, in this new cultural dispensation, found casually shopping for their heroines. She must be sufficiently modern while still being marriage-worthy and is often allowed quirks and wit as long as the subject is love. Aakash and Samir play the version of what Rachel Dwyer (2014) has called the innocent man-boy, a long tradition of 13  Directed by Farhan Akhtar and produced by Ritesh Sidhwani and Pravin Talreja. Lukose (2009).

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heroes who are meant to exhibit a boyish charm.14 Samir, the romantic, used to giving his heart away a bit too easily, falls in love with exactly the girl his parents have arranged for him. Aakash, the Don Juan amongst them, in the meantime has to deflect the advances of a ‘loud’ woman with a peculiar way of calling his name, while pursuing another who is dutifully bound to a territorial alpha male in Sydney. The marked deviation in Dil Chahta Hai from the choices men make occurs when Sid, the sensitive one, falls in love with a divorced and alcoholic older woman. He is able to look beyond societal injunctions and see something redeemable in a woman who by traditional standards may be considered fallen. Predictably, the telos of Sid’s romance, unlike the other two, is not allowed the closure of marriage. Thus, ‘choice’ is extended to the hum hein naye/we are new heroes as long as they choose within the proper heteronormative dimensions of caste and class. In Cocktail, when Gautam’s mother unexpectedly shows up in London to assess her future daughter-in-law, Gautam in panic pretends that Meera is his partner instead of Veronica. Meera, we are told, is ‘marriage material’, and indeed, Gautam’s mother is thrilled by her, pleased that her son’s choice has surpassed her expectations. In the days that follow in which they playact being together, Gautam and Meera actually do fall in love, conveniently bringing together social sanction and individual choice. ‘Tradition’ and ‘modernity’ are thus successfully harnessed once more within the Bombay film, even as this takes place in London. But at this point, Veronica, on seeing Gautam’s mother interacting with Meera, has a change of heart about the institution of marriage and her own way of life altogether. Marrying Gautam, she sees, will bring her the extended social relations of family life. Now all her energies will be invested in becoming exactly like Meera. In a significant moment in Cocktail, Veronica brings Meera to a mirror and as they both stand looking at their reflection, there appears to be no striking difference despite Veronica’s assertion to the contrary. Indeed, Veronica has to articulate the unnameable quality in Meera that the spectator may not see: kapde toh phir bhi easy hain. Hair, chalo I’ll manage. But you know, tumhari wo andarwali cheez, that ada, that Indian thing? That’s the tough part.  Dwyer (2014).

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The clothes are easy. I can manage the hair. But that inner quality, that charm, that Indian thing? That’s the tough part.

The representation of Indian spirituality as redemptive, in contrast to Western materialism, is not new in the context of Hindi films. The Manoj Kumar directed Purab aur Paschim (1970) is its most iconic example with the title itself setting in motion the binary opposition between the east, Purab, and the west, Paschim.15 Like Cocktail, the narrative drive of Purab aur Paschim is also to reprimand the Westernized Indian woman and to teach her the superior moral and familial values of India for it is she who must carry—and visibly on her person—the tradition of India’s ‘glorious past’.16 And this is the supposed great inchoate difference between the two women in Cocktail too; Veronica is not sufficiently Indian. She seems a little too free with her body, is confident about her sexuality, she drinks and parties intemperately and does not pray. And for that, the sins of her ‘Westernization’, Veronica will lose the greatest cultural reward imagined for women in popular Bombay cinema: the man. At the time Gautam goes to tell Veronica that his heart now belongs to Meera, he finds her dressed in salwar kameez and wearing a bindi. She asks if she looks like she is ‘marriage material’ now or ‘the sweet Indian bride’ and declares that she would like to get ‘groomed in the Indian way’. But the neat moral fable of good and bad girls and poetic justice must not be compromised and thus feminine self-realization comes to Veronica a little too late. Cocktail, despite its contemporary chic veneer, serves as a cautionary tale. Veronica must bear the punishment for her individualism, as a woman like her—a modern girl of apparently independent means—cannot have any claims over the romantic ideal of constancy, marriage and family. Gautam, with his patriarchal prerogative, admonishes Veronica for acting like a ‘rural village girl who has been exploited’ when she demands more from their relationship. Meera, on the other hand, shows restraint, prays regularly, and to prove that her traditional upbringing has not been entirely prohibitive, allows herself to drink a little alcohol during a trip to Cape 15  Produced, directed and written (with Shashi Goswami) by Manoj Kumar, the film had him in the lead with Saira Banu and Ashok Kumar. It released in 1970 and serves as a template for later ‘patriotic’ films like Namastey London (2007) directed and produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah, starring Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif. 16  Said (1978: 56).

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Town. She dances in public on a beach, and Gautam falls in love with her while watching her dance. The song in the background to which Meera dances, tum hi ho bandhu/You are the friend, is a modern twist to a bhajan—a generic song that indicates devotion to a divine authority that amalgamates all social relationships (mother, father, lover, friend) within the eternal male deity of the Bhakti movement. Meera also bears the name of a leading figure of the Bhakti movement, a Rajput princess who gives up the security of life as a wife in a palace to become one of the most renowned poet-saints of the sixteenth century. The female devotional voice of Meera has acquired a polyphonic status in the collage of ‘Indian’ tradition: she represents enduring piety and suffering but also provides ‘an alternative paradigm of status and honour…a rejection of the primary status roles that have been cherished as the most appropriate roles for women, eg, a devoted wife and a loving mother’.17 The song, tum hi ho bandhu, associated with the historical Meera, was also popularized through an older film Main Chup Rahoongi (1962) that celebrates the ideal Indian woman as steadfast and self-sacrificing.18 It is this tradition of patriarchal conformity that Cocktail’s Meera reconfigures, as neither the film, nor the character, struggle against orthodoxy or question socially sanctioned boundaries. In Cocktail, Meera’s dancing amongst swaying bodies on the beach in Cape Town predictably does not produce the discordant note displayed by Veronica later in the nightclub. Moreover, Meera becomes the cultural ambassador for ‘Indianness’ as the ‘foreigners’ sway to her music as against Veronica’s acceptance of foreign beats. But this ‘Indianness’ is in consonance with the patriarchal norms of female existence without the subversive potential of the poet-saint Meera.

The Home and the World Two movies, Queen (2014) and Highway (2014), in the recent past stand out for their subversion of the marriage ideal and almost mark an epistemic break in their articulation of female subjectivity.19 But only almost.  Jain and Sharma (2002: 4647).  The film, directed by A. Bhimsingh and produced by A. Meiyappan, starred Hindi cinema’s most celebrated exponent of tragic femininity, Meena Kumari, as the silent, suffering and wronged Indian woman and hence the title that means, I shall remain silent. 19  Queen (2014) was directed by Vikas Bahl and produced by Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane and Madhu Mantena. Highway (2014) was written and directed by Imtiaz Ali and produced by Sajid Nadiadwala and Imtiaz Ali. 17 18

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Notwithstanding their formal difference—the first is a comedy, the second a tragic drama—both use techniques of exaggeration and fantasy to represent the ‘unfreedom’ of modern women, perhaps, more specifically, the urban Indian woman. In both these movies, the central protagonists are women on a journey towards self-discovery. This is already an improvement, as they are not entirely the manic pixie dream girls for brooding men suffering existential crises, nor helpless ingénues waiting for rescue. But they both are infantile, quirky and naïve—a necessary condition it seems to construct ‘likeable’ women. In both movies, the protagonists face life-altering circumstances, following which they cannot return to their old ways of life and assumptions. Queen begins with the hustle and bustle of wedding preparations. The elderly female family members of the bride-to-be, Rani, practice dance steps for the sangeet—a musical evening usually preceding the wedding ceremony—incidentally to a song from Cocktail, a hat-tip to how Hindi film songs and dances shape the cultural and social life around marriages and how the industry tends to be self-referential. There is a formal continuity in the characters of Meera (Cocktail) and Rani (Queen): both are virginal, obedient and ‘well-behaved’; both will find themselves reckoning with their core Indian values in foreign locations; and both are pitted against women identified as being on the opposite end of the spectrum: sexually assertive, fashionable and bold. Rani belongs to the petit bourgeoisie, from the decidedly more ‘unfashionable’ part of the New Delhi: Rajori. Her fiancé, Vijay (Rajkummar Rao), unceremoniously jilts her the day before her wedding, clearly because he finds that he has transcended their status within the aspirational middle classes, having now lived and travelled abroad and acquired some social and cultural capital. He is patronizing and nonchalant about calling off the wedding. Significantly he explains this change in English: My life has changed yaar, a lot of things have changed. For me, it’s all about travel, business, meetings. It’ll be tough on you.

Confused and processing the weight of this shock, she demands to know what could have changed if she is still the same. He replies, That’s what. tum waisi ki waisi ho, wahi toh! You have stayed the same. That’s just it!

For Vijay to repent and want to win her back, she will have to become ‘modern’ in exactly the right way.

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Rani decides to go on her honeymoon to Paris and Amsterdam all by herself. This bewilders her protective parents, but confronted with her heartbroken grief, they let her go. In Paris, the tall, long-legged and sexually confident half-French Vijaylaxmi (Lisa Haydon) takes Rani under her wing and will educate her in the preferred relation women should have to modernity. Rani’s biggest lesson will be to loosen up and to learn the ways of the ‘free’ West, where women are represented as independent and in full control of their lives. She stares in wide-eyed wonderment at the permissiveness they enjoy: ‘In India it is not allowed for women to burp’, she says, to which Vijaylaxmi replies ‘In Paris everything is allowed’. This binary construction of the empowered West versus the patriarchal Third World is more insidious than it lets on. It makes the ‘culture’ of Third World countries seem essentialist and ahistorical. It ignores those voices and actions that resist and contend with inequalities. What are the parameters that frame discussion on women’s liberation in films like Queen then? It seems to rely on just the right dosage of consumerism, the freedom to dress sexy and the ability to navigate a foreign city. Rani has to come to Paris to rehearse a counterpoint to those traditional Indian values that have become a little too oppressive in the global imaginary. Rani’s actions and behaviour are explained through the prism of a cultural socialization where to get a job she needs the approval of both her father and the fiancé, in which dancing is forbidden, wearing revealing clothes is indicative of loose morals, and burping isn’t allowed. This narrative of gendered oppression in the East and freedom in the West is as old as the imperial discourse of Orientalism; so how is this different?20 It is in the nightclub where Rani shows her first signs of shedding inhibitions, which marks a turning point in her character. There are flashbacks that give us instances of the aspirations she has had to repress back home— one of them involves dancing, that great signifier, it seems, of female freedom. In the flashback, Vijay reprimands her for dancing at a wedding they go to, so in the space of the Paris nightclub she dances fiercely as if to make a point. Later, drunk, she surmises about what all the restraint and obedience has been for. Finding an analogy with a Gupta uncle who died of cancer without ever having smoked or consumed alcohol, she comes to the realization that she needn’t have pinned everything on marriage as the final ideal.

 Said (1978).

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However, Rani is a non-threatening figure, naïve, with a vacant stare, and usually the butt of the joke. The laughter generated is at her provincialism and sexual prudishness in a world that has become more global and sexually free. In Amsterdam, she befriends three men in a hostel, a French man called Tim (Guithob Joseph), a Japanese called Taka (Jeffrey Ho) and a Russian called Aleksander (Mish Boyko). They are cardboard characters and the representation of their nationalities is stereotypical. In a sex shop, the three men present her with sex toys, and laugh hysterically at her naïveté, as she names them to be mundane daily objects such as belts and caps. Queen posits an implicit critique of both the protectionism of the family and the repressive tendencies of that nation; yet, it is a critique that implicates no one. Rani comes back to India a more confident version of herself. On the way back from the airport, she casually tells her mother that the kurta she is wearing was bought from Amsterdam but ‘it is “made in India”’. The pointed remark foregrounds India’s entry into the neoliberal order and its alignment with the global market economy even as it asserts national pride. It echoes the words of the pop anthem of the ‘90s by Alisha Chinai—the first Indi-pop album to be sold on a scale comparable to Hindi film music albums: dekhi hi saari duniya, Japan se leke Russia Australia se leke America Made in India, made in India ek dil chahiye that’s made in India. I have seen the whole world, from Japan to Russia From Australia to America Made in India, made in India I want a heart that’s made in India

Chinai’s lyrics in turn draws comparison with an iconic song from Raj Kapoor’s Shri 420 (1955) that idealizes “the nation’s imagined community as one that commands fierce love and loyalty”21 and “the centrifugal force of the Indian heart”.22 mera joota hai japani yeh patloon englishthani sarpe lal topi rusi phir bhi dil hei hindustani.  Virdi (2003: 94).  Beaster-Jones (2015: 73).

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My shoes are from Japan, these pants are from England My hat is from Russia but my heart is Indian.

The singer-protagonist is a young man of a newly independent India whose journey to Bombay/Mumbai is symbolic of the migration of the innocent young to the metropolis in search of a livelihood. The song of the 1990s is similar yet different. The voice is female and, unlike the callow young man of the 1950s, she has already travelled the world. Thus, it is with the confidence of experience, and consummate consumerism, that she declares, ‘I want’. But to accommodate the burgeoning confidence of the modern woman who desires ‘an Indian heart’, the ‘stable’ values of family, chastity, tradition and the motherland need to be recalibrated. Queen returns to her familiar middle-class familial terrain even though she rejects her now repentant fiancé. The thrill of this gesture overshadows the fact that the film also registers pointedly that she has retained her sexual innocence and virginity, that litmus test of difference between bad Western and good Indian girls. Thus, even as a large number of Hindi film romances play out in foreign locations, there is a constant preoccupation with signposting an Indianness and a national pride, presumably for its audience back home, as also for the diaspora. Cinematically, the Western city is simultaneously the space where the new woman’s freedom can be imagined—her freedom to choose her partners, to have premarital sex, be free floating and unconstrained by pressures of marriage—and also the space that propels our return to our valued roots. Rani’s national pride in the ‘Made in India’ label will not help lift the veil from the brute realities of the traditional home or the globalized market.

The Journey Highway begins with the wedding preparations of Veera Tripathi (Alia Bhatt), which is usually the ‘happy ending’ of most films. But Veera, the daughter of a well-connected tycoon in New Delhi, is suffocated by her house and she convinces her fiancé, Vinay (Arjun Malhotra), to take her out on a drive in the night on the eve of their wedding despite his reluctance. As they drive through the clean, well-lit and straight roads of the city, Vinay, charmless and curmudgeonly, wants to turn back, but Veera insists:

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pehle bright lights se toh nikalte hain, khulle mein jaate hain kahin. Highway chalein? Let’s escape the bright lights at least…let’s go out in the open. Should we go to the Highway?

The city is not the space of phantasmagoric delights and modernizing ideals in this movie but, as Vinay is at pains to tell her, a site for potential dangers. The road and highway in Indian films post-independence was a signifier of development and modernity and it has been argued that in the films of the 1950s and 1960s, they represented the ‘metonymic of the path to nationhood itself’.23 Indeed, the road was often depicted as the space in which differently constituted identities could bump into each other and bring about an intermingling of uncommon fates.24 Unlike in Queen and Highway, the seminal figure in these films is the male protagonist. The tragic or the triumphant male traveller of the modern road mutates in Highway into the metrosexual Vinay who baulks when Veera suggests they touch the highway and come back: bina security ke? Without security?

As it happens, they get caught in a heist gone wrong, and she is kidnapped by a gang of robbers led by Mahabir Bhati (Randeep Hooda), when they stop at a petrol station. Vinay looks on from inside the car, helpless and terrified, while she is pinned to its bonnet, shouting at him for help. His only response is to scream back: ‘I told you not to get out of the car! I told you not to get out of the car!’ In captivity—and this is the central symbolism of the film—Veera will paradoxically find her freedom. She experiences the countryside, or facets of the country that she has presumably thought little or cared about, with wonder. Instead of being punished for taking a risk in the night-time city, she is instead set on a path towards a deeper understanding of the self and the constraints of society. In a symbolic sense then, Highway appears to recast the patriarchal myth of disobedient women disciplined for crossing the liminal boundary of propriety—the proverbial lakshmanrekha as it  Sanjay Srivastava in Lal and Nandy (2007: 143).  It is to be noted that there were also seminal films like Do Bigha Zamin (1953) and Naya Daur (1957) that showed up the dark underbelly of the modern democratic nation, which used the road as a central trope as well. 23 24

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were, received through Sanskrit epics like the Ramayana and its countless retellings within the culture. The idea of a feisty young woman seeking to escape the constraints of an imminent marriage arranged by parents is again not a new one in Hindi cinema. Over many decades, female protagonists of Hindi cinema have been represented as resisting patriarchal expectations—usually an arranged marriage—and leaving the oppressive familial home in order to explore alternative possibilities.25 It is true that their search of autonomous fulfilment does not last very long. For soon enough, the joyous excitement of freedom is interrupted by the dangers that purportedly await adventurous women and force them to abandon their journeys. The line that divides bagaawat (rebellion) and bewaqufi (stupidity), as the free-spirited female protagonist of the film Kaarwaan (2018) points out, is a thin one. And where Hindi cinema is concerned, the bagaawat of young women mostly ends in situations that emphasize her foolish impetuosity and vulnerability. The exhilaration of being on the road, in buses, trucks and trains and in unfamiliar spaces is acknowledged but it is invariably short-lived. For the assertion of agency must end in rescue by the gallant hero, marriage and domesticity for the rebellious woman. Highway however is different in that Veera’s quest for freedom is neither undermined nor does it end in the inevitable return to the familial fold or the promise of marriage. Veera, reprimanded by her fiancé for simply stepping out of a car at a petrol station, metamorphoses into a free spirit post-abduction. This is depicted through a collage of images: she sticks her neck out of the truck, climbs trees by the highway, washes her hair from a roadside water hydrant and smokes atop a boulder. Indeed, the camera through both track and tight shots registers the abandoned physicality of the new Veera, signifying an almost quasi-spiritual freedom. Mahabir, from a poor socio-economic background—rough, withdrawn and angry—watches her transformation warily. Given the chance to escape her abduction, Veera keeps returning of her own free will and clings to Mahabir even when he wants to let her go. The tentative relationship that forms between the two, with Veera taking the lead in displaying intimacy, 25  See, for instance, Chori Chori (1956), Adalat (1958), Solva Saal (1958), Nau Do Gyarah (1957), Caravan (1971), Bombay to Goa (1972), Kati Patang (1971), Naya Din Nayi Raat (1974), Love Story (1981), Dil Hai Ki Maanta Nahin (1991), Hum Hain Rahi Pyaar Ke (1993), Aaina (1993), Jab We Met (2007), Ajab Prem Ki Gazab Kahani (2009), Three Idiots (2009), Tere Naal Pyaar Ho Gaya (2012), Chennai Express (2013), Happy Bhaag Jaayegi (2016), Badri Ki Dulhaniya (2017) and Shaadi Mein Zaroor Aana (2017).

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is seemingly born out of a mutual empathy, an acknowledged vulnerability they have both experienced across a class spectrum. Veera confesses to him that her uncle sexually abused her when she was young, and that her family instead of standing up for her, encouraged a silence around this. The threat of rape is present as much within the modern upper-class household as it is out on the street at night. What is remarkable about Highway is that perhaps for the first time in mainstream Hindi films the sexual abuse of a female child within a privileged upper middle-class home is represented.26 As they travel along the highway, Veera says: jahan se tum mujhe laaye ho, main wahan wapas nahin jaana chahti. Jahan bhi le jaarahe ho, wahan pahunchna nahin chahti. Par ye rasta, ye bahut achcha hai. Main chahti hoon ki ye rasta kabhi khatam na ho… The place you’ve got me from, I don’t want to go back there. The place you are taking me to, I don’t want to reach there. But this road…it’s very good. I want this road to never end…

And indeed, in the imagination of the film, the journey is as long as the relationship can survive. This is a crucial comment on contemporary culture and its aesthetic modes, since class was one barrier that Bombay’s melodramatic films were allowed to break, albeit with compromises, in its celebration of romance.27 Ironically, in the ‘modern’ imagination of post-­ liberalized India, both Veera and the film recognize romance across class barrier to be ad hoc and provisional, a too radical rejection of the social order. A dream-like wish fulfilment is however allowed in which Veera and Mahavir find a house in Kashmir to live in for some time. Veera recreates an idyll of domesticity—the house on the hill she always dreamed of as we learn in the opening moments of the movie—by locking Mahabir out while she cleans up and cooks. The home, despite the implicit rejection of her family, is her domain, bringing back the association of women with the 26  The exploration of this theme in Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding (2001), written by Sabrina Dhawan and produced by Mira Nair and Caroline Baron, though critically acclaimed is outside the paradigm of mainstream Hindi films. 27  To cite just a few examples: Neecha Nagar (1946), Awaara (1951), Patita (1953), Paigham (1959), Anari (1959), Asli Naqli (1962), Dil Tera Diwana (1962), Bluff Master (1963), Kashmir ki Kali (1964), Waqt (1965) and Naya Zamana (1971). There are also later examples like Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985), Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), Beta (1992), Raja Hindustani (1996) and Hum Aapke Dil Mein Rehte Hein (1999).

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household. Mahabir has an emotional outburst as he sees her taking care of the home: ye kabhi nahin ho sake…Bahut door nikal gaya hoon…main bhi tha laadla ma ka… his can never be mine; I have come so far away…I was once my mother’s adored son…

Thus, while Mahabir shows Veera the open world, it is Veera who shows him the possibility of a home. The gendered imagination of this spatial strategy is significantly traditional. But this is not to be. The next morning, Mahabir is shot by the army which has finally caught up on the trail. Veera is treated as sick and traumatized; she cannot explain the relationship or situation to her parents and state authorities. As she is taken back to Delhi, the house—the gilded staircase, the chandelier, the banal conversations about marriage and destination weddings, the shallow aspirations of her relatives—reproduces her sense of claustrophobia. In a barely controlled rage she confronts her uncle and her family and unravels the hypocrisies of their secrets and silence. The women have to hold her back as she lunges at her uncle, a symbolic visual framing in which the women are shown in one frame and the men in the other. The only way out for Veera now is in the complete repudiation of her family and the sterile values they stand for. She goes back to Kashmir, rejecting marriage, and starts a factory of predominantly women workers. By raising the spectre of dysfunctionality and abuse within the familial space, Highway, unlike many other films, legitimizes the female protagonist’s ultimate decision to distance herself from her familial home and search for alternative spaces, relationships and a vocation. Once the damaging repressions and subterfuges that underlie her privileged home are exposed, the possibility of Veera’s return to such a home is represented as being completely untenable. In contrast to Rani’s journey which (among other things) ends with the consolidation of her familial ties, Veera’s final enactment of agency is premised on a necessary disavowal of and freedom from such ties. And it is perhaps because Highway explores such possibilities and eschews conventional closures that it did not make a killing in the box office, unlike Queen which was released in the same year.

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Works Cited Films Anari, director Hrishikesh Mukherjee, producer L. Lachman, 1959. Asli Naqli, director Hrishikesh Mukherjee, producer L.  B Lachman and L.  B Thakur, 1962. Awaara, director Raj Kapoor, producer Raj Kapoor, 1951. Beta, director Indra Kumar, producer Indra Kumar and Ashok Thakeria, 1992. Bluff Master, director Manmohan Desai, producer Subash Desai, 1963. Cocktail, director Homi Adajania, producer Saif Ali Khan and Dinesh Vijan, 2012. Dil Chahata Hai, director Farhan Akhtar, producer Ritesh Sidhwani, 2001. Dil Tera Diwana, director B.R. Panthulu, producer B.R. Panthulu, 1962. Highway, director Imtiaz Ali, producer Sajid Nadiadwala, 2014. Hum Aapke Dil Mein Rehte Hein, director Satish Kaushik, producer D.  Rama Naidu, 1999. Kashmir ki Kali, director Shakti Samanta, producer Shakti Samanta, 1964. Maine Pyar Kiya, director Sooraj R. Barjatya, producer Tarachand Barjatya, 1989. Naya Zamana, director Pramod Chakravorty, producer Pramod Chakravorty, 1971. Neecha Nagar, director Chetan Anand, producer Rashid Anwar, 1946 Paigham, director S.S. Vasan, producer S.S. Vasan, 1959. Patita, director Amiya Chakrabarty, producer Amiya Chakrabarty, 1953. Queen, director Vikas Bahl, producer Anurag Kashyap, 2014. Raja Hindustani, director Dharmesh Darshan, producer Ali Morani, Karim Morani and Bunty Soorma, 1995. Ram Teri Ganga Maili, director Raj Kapoor, producer Raj Kapoor, 1985. Waqt, director Yash Chopra, producer B. R. Chopra, 1965.

Books Basu, Anustup. Bollywood in the Age of New Media: The Geo-televisual Aesthetic (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010). Beaster-Jones, Jayson. Bollywood Sounds: the Cosmopolitan Mediations of Hindi Film Songs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Davidoff, Leonore. Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class (New York: Routledge, 1995). Dwyer, Rachel. Picture Abhi Baaki Hai: Bollywood as a Guide to Modern India (Gurgaon/London: Hachette India Local, 2014). Kohn, Hans. Nationalism: its meaning and history (Florida: Robert E Krieger Publishing Company, 1965). Lukose, Ritty A. Liberalization’s Children: Gender, Youth and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009).

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Mazumdar, Ranjani. Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City (Minneapolis/ London: University of Minnesota Press, 2007). Mehta, Rini Bhattacharya and Rajeshwari V.  Pandharipande, Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora (London: Anthem Press, 2010). Prasad, Madhav. Ideology of the Hindi Film: A historical construction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Said, Edward. Orientalism (Pantheon Books: New York, 1978). Virdi, Jyotika. The Cinematic Imagination: Indian Popular Films as Social History (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2003).

Journal Articles

and

Book Chapters

Alea, Tomas Guiterrez, trans. Julia Lesage. The Viewer’s Dialectic, Part 2, Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, No. 30 (March 1985). Webpage. Jain, Pratibha and Sangeeta Sharma, “Honour, Gender and the Legend of Meera Bai”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 37, No. 46 (Nov. 16–22, 2002), 4646–4650. Srivastava, Sanjay, “The Voice of the Nation and the Five Year Plan Hero: Speculations on Gender, Space, and Popular Culture”, Lal, Vinay and Ashish Nandy, ed. Fingerprinting Popular Culture: The mythic and the iconic in Indian Cinema. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), 122–155.

CHAPTER 19

Curiosity, Consent and Desire in Masaan (2015), Pink (2016), Lipstick Under My Burkha (2016) and Veere Di Wedding (2018) Abhija Ghosh

Neeraj Ghaywan’s Masaan (2015) begins with typically overused filmic sounds of a woman moaning in pleasure. Unexpectedly, the opening scene leads to one of the main female protagonists, Devi, absorbed in a video clip, presumably a pornographic one, on her computer screen. Her phone rings and we follow her swift movements, out of her home into the busy streets to squalid restrooms where she changes into a saree and finally meets her lover, Piyush. As the young lovers covertly meet and check into a small hotel room, their nervous excitement of being away from the public gaze and anticipating their first sexual encounter is palpable. However, they are brutally disrupted by an aggressive police force, barging into the room and coercing confessions on a mobile phone camera. In the face of this sudden enforced scandal, as the police films them in their states of undress and threatens to reveal their identities, Devi initially attempts to counter the wrongful accusations, whereas Piyush offers to settle and then, riddled by shame, ends his life. Devi’s story quickly turns from that

A. Ghosh (*) School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_19

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of naïve sexual curiosity to one of scandal, shame and burden of her lover’s death, each brought upon by the repressive gaze and attacks of the police. Masaan stays quite firmly with its female protagonist, as she challenges the social aspersions cast upon her, revealing the deep entitlements of caste and power which continue to perpetuate codes of honour by controlling perceptions around the female body. The manufacturing of a scandal is one such crucial social mechanism that has also been an almost inalienable trope in popular cinema with respect to the representation of the “bad woman”. This chapter examines three other contemporary films of Hindi cinema, Pink (2016), Lipstick Under My Burkha (2016) and Veere Di Wedding (2018) which not only explore the many facets of the urban Indian woman projected in the cinematic figure of the “bad woman” but also bring to question the shame, slights and scandals which continue to frame them as such. Lipstick Under My Burkha presents the many layers of social roles and performance that women have to hide behind, especially when marginalized by religion, class and caste. Also set in the semi-urban alleys of a small town, identifiable as Bhopal, the women in the film aren’t so much restricted by the burkha as they are by their social and domestic power relations. The burkha, at once identifiable as the stereotyped mark of gendered conventions and traditions of a religious community, becomes a leitmotif in the film and draws women across religions under its metaphoric and material fold. On one hand, the film uses it, almost cheekily, as an incredible mode of social mobility, personal aspirations and reversal of the male gaze. The lipstick on the other hand remains a code for erotica and fantasy. For the women in Lipstick, their bodies are neither limited by their sexual lives nor can they be shamed for their desires. Instead, they are driven by many kinds of desires and aspire for many forms of freedom. In a shift from the realist scope of these two films, Pink and Veere Di Wedding present the urban woman perceived as the “bad woman” in two completely different genres, only to dismantle the social gaze and notions of respectability which construct it. Set in Delhi, both films represent the anxieties and social trials of present day independent urban women, which they continue to navigate as they occupy the same public and professional spaces as their male counterparts. Through a steady social and courtroom trial, Pink manages to raise extremely pertinent questions around consent, sexual harassment and the public life of women. In Veere, four female friends, unapologetically embrace their flaws and effortlessly occupy the mainstream template of the “buddy film”. Their affluence and class privi-

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lege make a lot of their choices possible. However, the shadow of gossip and scandal persists over them as they resist or even try to make sense of their domestic failures and familial positions. Exploring the spatial metaphor of modern India from the burning ghats of Benaras and suburban alleys of Bhopal to the posh localities of south Delhi, the four films interrogate the gendered intersection between modernity and patriarchy. While the nuances in the portrayals of these unabashed urban women forms the core of this chapter, it also reflects on what the form as well as public and critical reception of these films hold for the future of the cinematic figure of the bad woman. Since these films remove the figure of the bad woman from her archetypal characterizations of either the vamp or the dancing girl, therefore stirring debates on the persistent forms of representation of women in the public realm, including cinema and popular culture, certain pertinent questions remain. Does the bad woman in her present contemporary avataras continue to counter feudal patriarchal characterizations? Can these reinventions of the westernized Indian woman resist becoming yet another type for new genres? Can the questions raised by these characters, and the challenge embodied in these films, lead to radical change in representation?

Countering the Threat of Scandal: Masaan Pathak: ladko ki tarah chooth diye tumko ki aage badho- padho kya galti kiye the joh itna bada kaand kar baith gayi tum? Devi: koi kaand nahin kiya humne. Pathak: kaand nahin toh kya hai yeh? baap mar marke paisa juta raha hai… ghat par, mohallemein koi pooch nale ki Devi aaj kal dikhayi nahin deti, issi darr se mara ja raha hai baap, yeh kya hai? Devi: yeh aapka darr hai! (Masaan 2015) Pathak: I’ve always been liberal with you. I raised you like a boy. Encouraged you to study. What did I do to deserve this scandal? Devi: I haven’t created any scandal. Pathak: Then what is this? I’m scampering for money! What is this? On the ghat, in the streets, I’m constantly afraid someone will ask about you. What is this? Devi: That’s your fear.

In a heated exchange between Devi and her father, Vidyadhar Pathak, she squarely refutes his fears around the news of her dalliance spreading in

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public. Throughout the film, Devi remains acutely conscious of the violent moral policing that she is subjected to and which transforms her sexual curiosity and desire into salacious media content. Inspector Mishra, who had filmed her on his phone at the hotel, uses the video to extort money from the father and daughter. Although Devi tries to put up a resilient front to each of Mishra’s insinuations, when he mocks her name while filming her or questions her intentions and character for her “jigyasa”/ curiosity, the policeman wields a compounded force of “upper” caste entitlement and extra-judicial power through the threat of a mediatized scandal. Menacingly playing the video in front of the father and daughter, he reminds them of the sensitive and fragile category of a woman’s honour. Even if they manage to negotiate their way out of a legal procedures and court battles, making these images public is a much bigger threat. Pathak is driven to desperation trying to gather the money for Mishra and avoid such a scandal, but Devi finds out in other ways that she has already been cast in sleaze and disrepute. She begins to receive lewd soliciting calls from her workplace, the same coaching centre where she had met Piyush. When she confronts one of the employees for calling her shameless by asserting that there were two people involved in the act/incident and that it was a consensual act, she is accusingly reminded that the man is dead. Set against the expectations of Benaras’ timeless evocation of death and life, “Masaan”, the colloquial word for crematorium, is an appropriate metaphor for contextualizing the destruction and redemption of gendered aspirations and hopes. Devi is a remarkable screen character because she demonstrates immense resolve in the face of coercion and threat without losing her self-confidence in her professional and personal worth. She is shattered by the death of her lover in front of her eyes, almost rendered numb by the coercive turn of events, however never apologetic for her longing, curiosity and desire. Even when she is pushed to the realms of scandal and shame, she is resistant to accept such a societal stigma. Masaan is a film that combines its realist framework with an evocatively poetic worldview. The film while being acutely aware of the real conditions and deep structures of caste practices and prejudices within the North Indian small-town space, also manages to create interesting narrative contrasts for its main characters. Devi’s story runs parallel to another young couple’s plot, an inter-caste college romance. Deepak, a young boy from the Dom community of the burning ghats of Benaras, falls in love and courts an “upper” caste Hindu girl, Shalu Gupta. Their love flourishes through friendly encounters,

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phone and social media conversations, alongside her love for poetry and music. However, a love over which caste barriers cast their shadow is yet again brutally cut short by death. Because of the nature of Deepak’s loss, his angst finds articulation through the poetry and songs of the film, while Devi’s loss remains characterized only by the hypocrisy of shame and sleaze and finally, the burden of guilt. In three different situations, Devi is slapped for her transgression—first, during the police raid, second, by her father and third, by Piyush’s father whom she decides to meet for the sake of her own closure. The realist mode of the film doesn’t dramatize these scenes, and instead presents these instances as entirely bereft of emotion, with Devi’s resolute face in the centre of the frame. Significantly, the songs in the film’s universe cannot adequately subjectivize her loss, pain or shock. However, the film is acutely aware of what she has lost and it is not written by the codes of honour or shame. Devi is determined to move out of her social situation and she stubbornly charts her own professional path. But it is the burden of guilt, of the death of a lover, which weighs on her emotionally, taking away any possibility of imagining romance or rekindling her desires. She is not a victim of her fate or her choice, but a subject of an orchestrated scandal perpetrated by the patriarchal social order which is morally policed by men in uniform. Nonetheless, Masaan ends with the sharing of drinking water between Devi and Deepak, a gesture that holds a hope for inter-caste heterosexual relations in modern India.

Erotica and Scandal: Lipstick Under My Burkha Alankrita Shrivastava’s Lipstick Under My Burkha made headlines for the Central Board of Film Certification’s (CBFC) refusal to certify it ahead of its theatrical release, on grounds of being “lady oriented, their fantasy above life”,1 “contagious sexual scenes”2 and “bit sensitive touch about one particular section of society”.3 After the film was reviewed and cleared, the key promotional strategy for the film was to superimpose the image of a lipstick over a woman’s middle finger with her fist partially closed on its posters and social media celebrity campaigns. While this was meant to be 1  See CBFC letter addressed to Prakash Jha Productions refusing to certify the film for theatrical release in India. 2  Ibid. 3  Ibid. Also see review of the film in The Guardian, July 23, 2017.

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a symbolic giving the finger to the moralistic and regressive attitude of the CBFC, such a world of brazen display of expletive gestures or countenance or even postures is not quite the realm in which the four female protagonists of the film operate. The narrative universe of Lipstick is determined by two registers of imagination: first, its realistic framework of the alleys and streets of small-­ town Bhopal, organized by strongly conservative patriarchal order and second, the erotic and aspirational fantasies of its women as a much-needed escape from such reality. We are taken into the film through the tales of Rosie’s dreams of lust and longing that couldn’t be contained within her body, read out by Usha, one of the four female protagonists of the film. Usha’s voice is juxtaposed to the scenes of a burkha clad woman making her way through high-end cosmetic stores, stealthily lifting a lipstick and making her exit. This woman is soon revealed to be a young college student, Rehana, auditioning for the music band, this time devoid of the burkha. Usha and Rehana represent women from two ends of the social spectrum with respect to age and desire. Usha is a middle aged owner of a sweet shop as well as the old family building, Hawai Mahal, where several tenants live. She performs the respectable and domineering role of the widowed, strong-willed matriarch, Buaji, by the day and is drawn into the erotic fantasies of “Lipstick Waale Sapne”/Lipstick Dreams through the fictional character, Rosie, by night. Similarly, Rehana also occupies a double life within the walls of Hawai Mahal. As the daughter of burkha maker and tailor, Rehana ostensibly follows her parents’ demands for cutting and sewing but actually, she harbours a desire to be a singing star like Miley Cyrus. Once away from her parents’ gaze, the covers on her walls come off, revealing posters of popular stars and icons. The other two female characters are Shirin and Leela: the former is a housewife, stifled by a sexually demanding husband, and her escape lies in her secret life as a successful saleswoman, away from her husband’s purview while the latter runs a local beauty parlour, finds herself caught between choosing a respectable arranged marriage or eloping with her local photographer lover to start afresh in a new place. In the narrative economy of the film, the burkha is not simply an enforced religious garment or accessory or a piece of conservative clothing which restricts women to their domestic roles. Instead the burkha acts as a sartorial cover, facilitating these women to escape the demands and drudgery of their domestic lives and slide into other social roles. While the burkha makes way for their independent other lives—their professional

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selves, whether it is Shirin’s exceptional success as a saleswoman of ­consumer products or Rehana’s self-fashioning inspired by Western pop culture—­it is the lipstick that acquires the forbidden charge of erotica. In the image of the lipstick, as symbol of rebellion, as a colour code for female desire and as lifestyle product, various strains of personal freedoms, sexual transgressions and social aspirations of these women uniquely converge. Further, Lipstick as a film recognizes the difficult and exploitative terrain of sexual economy and prejudice that even desirous women need to confront. Shirin struggles to get her sexually dominating husband to use any form of contraception, yet she longs for his love and attention, until she finds out about his extra-marital affair. Leela longs to escape the alleys of Bhopal, not only for a better life but also for better entrepreneurial opportunities. She also boldly pursues her sexual desires with the man of her choice, despite her marriage being arranged elsewhere. In a reversal of Devi’s situation from Masaan, Leela holds up her mobile phone to record her sexual encounter with her lover, Arhad, who is also her wedding photographer, as a bait to hold him to his word and make him elope with her. She is conscious of the social repercussions of such a mobile phone video, the MMS as scandal, but tactfully uses it to threaten the man instead and negotiate her freedom. It is only when her relationship with Arhad begins to strain, especially after he categorically shames her for coming to his place at night to sleep with him, that she is reluctantly drawn towards the possibility of accepting her arranged marriage to another man. Manoj visibly smitten by Leela offers her with the domestic alternative of a respectable home; however, that possibility is soon thwarted as he finds her MMS on her phone. Leela unapologetically questions him about looking into her phone without asking and violating her privacy, and characteristically, he has no other response than to shame her. Lipstick reveals that any form of female transgression or desire outside of the social and moral codes of the prevalent patriarchal structure is incomprehensible to the male gaze and collective hegemonic sentiment. Usha’s voiceover narrating the details of Rosie’s sexual fantasies from the start of the film, are soon channelized to awaken her dormant desires for a young, handsome and muscular swimming instructor. Gradually, Usha begins to entertain the thoughts of stolen moments with this instructor. Her swimming lessons don’t satiate her curiosity and urges, so she begins to call him at night, hiding behind the fictional persona of Rosie, articulating Rosie’s sexual fantasies, reversing the cinematic gaze from the female body to that of the male body. Taking on the aural and imaginative p ­ ersona

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of Rosie, discovering her own body and pleasures, her apprehensions about her own age and body are temporarily masked. It is only when these desires are visibilized, when her books are discovered, and she is outed by the man she longed for, that scandal gains a social force. Usha is vilified and shamed for reading erotica and indulging in covertly seducing a younger man. Her life turns into a public spectacle in the same courtyard from where she ran her household business for decades. This man she had begun to so strongly desire as Rosie, chides and unmasks her fantasies in front of her family. Usha is humiliated, her hidden books torn and her belongings thrown onto the streets. Within the realistic narrative space of Lipstick, there is little scope for hope once all four women find their wings clipped for their respective transgressions. However, in the final scene of the film, the four women, Shirin, Rehana, Leela and Usha, sitting around in the burkha shop with Buaji’s tattered belongings begin to put together the torn pieces of Lipstick Dreams—this small space acquires a secluded but magical quality. They read aloud Rosie’s tales again, Usha sees it in new light and Rehana wonders if these dreams are to blame for their present predicament. In this little circle of female solidarity, there’s hope and they can’t stop dreaming because without these fantasies and desires, there is little they have to live by. Cinematic realism tends to work by subverting mainstream genre expectations and spatial constructions to produce pared down narratives, spaces and performances which then attempt to reveal certain realities without overtly stating them. As opposed to the popular film form which incorporates dramatization, spectacle, star value and modes of public address, Masaan and Lipstick Under My Burkha present their small-town spaces of Benares and Bhopal, through an almost ethnographic precision, relying heavily on constructing an authentic mise-en-scène. Emerging as a semi-urban space, marked by the presence of conservative, as well as modern worldviews, the circulation of new and old media works and objects, and inhabited by everyday people, the small town has been inscribed as a cinematic space where several caste, class and social issues and aspirations collectively play out. In doing so, these films are able to cinematically employ the trope of the scandal, without relying on the conventional melodramatic mode to construct their female characters. Most significantly, these films are able to steer clear from the conventional narrative space reserved for women of Hindi  cinema, either the victim or the avenging woman.

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Traditionally, Hindi cinema has negotiated female desire through the opposing figures of the heroine and vamp, clearly distinguished by their narrative spaces. The heroine usually representative of ideal feminine sexuality, desirable but domestic, became the subject of the romantic song whereas the vamp, seductive and profane, performed her sexuality through the nightclub or cabaret dance song.4 This dichotomy of space began to shift during the 1990s when the heroine took on the performative space of dance as well as the sartorial signs of the westernized vamp as a mode to freely articulate her romantic and sexual desires. Against the complex public sphere of changing rape and sexual harassment laws, censorship debates, rising right-wing ideologies, the era of economic globalization made the modern dancing woman a new template for imagining and articulating female desire. From the 1990s to 2018, it has been a complicated image/ template which continues to represent female desire, which simultaneously symbolizes freedom and mobility, while it also approximates the male gaze on the female body by accentuating its sexual and erotic charge. In Lipstick, Rehana dances within the confines of her room, dreams of living like a pop star, and her moment of escape from the repressive atmosphere at home is when she dances and drinks at a college party away from the admonishing gaze of her family. Similarly, in Veere Di Wedding, the image of four dancing girls (and at least two of its promotional songs) speaks not just of female friendships but also gestures at the politics of representation within popular genres of film and music video. This very image of the modern, independent woman, who also dances and drinks for her own pleasure, is brought under legal and social scrutiny in Pink, which probes social morality that still reads women’s right to choose as scandalous. In Hindi cinema, scandal has been a popular melodramatic event, often employed for exploring social and moral codes around women, consequently also demarcating narrative spaces and constructing specific types for representing women. Debashree Mukherjee (2013) observing the historical relationship of the trope of scandal and film writing (both textual and extra-textual practices such as film and fan magazines) in Hindi cinema, suggests that “[s]candal is a significant form of framing modern life. As a set of discursive formations manufactured and circulated in the public 4  See Mazumdar (2007) for a discussion on the blurring distinctions between the conventional dichotomies of the heroine and the vamp from 1990s onwards, into the cinematic figures of the desiring as well as avenging women.

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sphere, scandals reveal important clues to dominant attitudes towards social boundaries”.5 Mukherjee argues that the publicness of a scandal needs to be understood as both “oral discursivity” and the “mediatized image”.6 While Bombay cinema’s melodramatic conventions and resolutions of narrative scandals have continued to engage and intervene in discursive contexts of social and religious moralities which frame questions of women and modernity, the mediatized scandal has been a deeply contentious space, a patriarchal representational regime from which the popular culture industry has often benefitted. Therefore, for films like Masaan and Lipstick, the realist form not only becomes a critical choice, but also an important method to de-stigmatize the mediatized image which makes women’s public and private lives scandalous. Although the scandal continues to be a framing device for female sexuality and desire, the subversion lies in characters like Devi and Leela, taking control of their lives, refusing to cower down, despite the threat of mediatized scandal, almost taking charge of their own public image. Alternatively, in contemporary Hindi cinema, the mediatized image, of the independent, bold, desirous and “scandalous” woman, has gained an attractive position as a promotional trope in mainstream film and media content. Such a definitive type has emerged as a template of multiple desires, converging the sexual, erotic and consumerist fantasies of the globalized modern as the films discussed here demonstrate. It could be argued then that today the mediatized image of the “bad woman” appropriated in popular forms continues to carry an affective charge, if not a moral or melodramatic one. The relevant question here is whether this mediatized projection is able challenge deep structures of representation and in what ways? Or does it only re-inscribe the cinematic and social codes and boundaries of the new bad woman?

Consent, Class and Posturing in Pink and Veere Di Wedding Pink, directed by Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, makes a case for challenging the onus of scandal and shame that is borne primarily by women, especially while battling cases of sexual harassment, assault and even rape. Minal, Falak and Andrea, three young, urban, working women, living independently in 5 6

 See Mukherjee (2013: 10).  Ibid, 11.

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Delhi become the subjects of intense social and legal scrutiny and subsequent harassment once they decide to report a case of sexual assault, accusing three young men with powerful political connections. Minal, Falak and Andrea begin to face different forms of harassment from threatening phone calls to the police who refuses to register a complaint citing aspersions on Minal for drinking along with men, and finally Minal being assaulted and arrested for hitting back at her perpetrator with a glass bottle. The film uses the court room to stage more aggressive patterns of character assassinations and misrepresentations of women in public life as a build up to the question of consent. The courtroom in Pink is an important performative space where both the social and legal trials of the three women take place as their personal lives, professional choices and sexual histories are pried open and scrutinized to distinguish between respectable girls and them. Even their lawyer indulges in the similar scrutiny, albeit only to establish that consent is the most literal interpretation of the word “no”, just that, no. However, in doing so several stereotypical notions of the good woman versus the bad woman are invoked. Consequently, this is a trial for the three women for denying men, that too powerful and entitled men, the right to their bodies. It is a courtroom full of men, representing different registers of judgement, prejudice and pragmatism. These young, urban, middle class women find themselves accused of soliciting, their public selves constantly alluded to that of a sex worker, and in a moment of desperation Falak bursts out from the stand that even a sex worker holds the right to say no, as her legitimate right. Despite, repeatedly articulating their “no”, expressing their discomfort and displeasure at being touched, this is a social trial that still needs the rhetorical flourish of their male lawyer, Deepak Sehgal, to question and subvert each moral judgement thrown at them. While it breaks moral categories around public lives of women, the film also resorts to legitimizing the courtroom drama, a popular cinematic space as well as a mode of public address through the voice of the male star especially when it seeks to dismantle the narrative of scandal which ostracizes women.7 Veere Di Wedding takes on the persistent trope of the westernized Indian woman, perpetually positioned on the edge of social permissiveness and prejudice, and always close to courting scandal like the character of Sakshi Soni whose brazen public persona and social excesses is the ­constant stuff of gossip. Her posturing and rebellion mask a doubly vilified woman 7

 See Mishra (2019)

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who is also shamed and blackmailed by her own husband for taking charge of her own libido—a secret that she takes time to reveal to her friends and parents. Veere portrays different variants of this type in a female buddy film. The characters are defined by their affluence and extremely privileged class positions which makes their desires and pleasures also steeped in facets of upscale consumerism and the spectacular Hindu weddings. Yet through their witty retorts, sexual banter and lifestyle choices and personal confusions, the four women emerge as misfits rejecting the demands of conventional familial structures. Though riddled by caricatures and stereotypes, perhaps owing to the buddy-comedy film form, the film textually builds a critique of the image of ideal (sanskaari) family, its aura of respectability, while embracing the dysfunctional ones. In reimagining female friendships through the prism of “bros” or “veeres”, the film’s challenging of gender politics, though limited to reversals of certain images and defiant postures, remains more extra-cinematic than textual. It has been able to push the boundaries  for women actors, producers and other female film professionals in  helming a mainstream entertainer and  countering gendered perceptions around the public and professional roles of women within the film industry. Veere’s publicity campaign, press events and interviews with the cast and crew have also heavily contributed to the discourse questioning the gender politics behind genres. In conclusion, it is important to note that there is a steady rise in films and online content about female friendships and social aspirations, which also gesture at the institution of the formulaic. Consequently, the image of young, urban, Indian woman, with particular sartorial signs of modern western clothing, who freely and fearlessly occupies both professional and domestic spaces alongside neon lit streets and nightclubs, embodying a certain mobility has also found widespread mediatized circulation. While popular genres and consumer industries tend to capitalize more on the posturing of such a desirous and desirable woman through social media hashtags and viral content culture, there is a new discursive sphere around women’s bodies and choices which is emergent. The shadow of the scandal might be used as tool for slandering actresses and their choices on social media but its moral scope is continually diminished by feminist voices across those same media platforms. The subversive and unabashed women in these films, resisting stereo types in their respective narrative economies have given us some new radical cinematic images of everyday women. Masaan, Lipstick, Pink and Veere—the titles of the films signifying the burning ghat, the cosmetic artifice, the stereotyped feminine colour, the masculine reference of brothers—are all metaphorically evocative in the

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context of the social formation of gender. But the films also marry the metaphors to socially specific spaces of conservative Benares and Bhopal and the politically powerful city of aspirations, Delhi. Each depicts the churning within—the conflicting claims of the promises of modernity and the strictures of patriarchy. Modernity in these films is never simplistically celebrated as it brings its own perils and stereotypes. But what is refreshing about these films is that they manage to transcend the inevitable closure of heterosexual romance and marriage in their acknowledgement of other social spaces and relationships of solidarity across class, caste and religion and in particular supportive sisterhood. And it is this promise of beginning that cracks the binaries of the Madonna and the whore and releases the bad.

Works Cited Films Lipstick Under My Burkha. Director Alankrita Shrivastva. Producers Prakash Jha Productions, JB Angels. 2016. Masaan. Director Neeraj Ghaywan. Producers Drishyam Films, Phantom Films, Macassar Productions, Sikhya Entertainment, Pathé, Arte France Cinema. 2015. Pink. Director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury. Producers Rashmi Sharma Telefilms, Shoojit Sircar, Ronnie Lahiri, Sheel Kumar, 2016. Veere Di Wedding. Director Shashanka Ghosh. Producers Rhea Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Ekta Kapoor, Nikhil Dwivedi, 2018.

Books Mazumdar, Ranjani. Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007).

Articles and Reports Central Board of Certification (CBFC) Letter Refusing Certification for Lipstick Under My Burkha https://twitter.com/LipstickMovie/status/834675386986483714 as accessed on 25 February, 2019. Mishra, Tatsita, “A Feminist Reading of Pink”, Feminism in India, (September 20, 2019) https://feminisminindia.com/2016/09/20/feminist-film-reviewpink/ as accessed on 25 February, 2019. Mukherjee, Debashree, “Notes on the Scandal: Writing Women’s Film History against an Absent Archive”, Bioscope, Vol. 4, Issue 1 (Jul 11, 2013), 9–30. Safi, Michael, “Lipstick Under My Burkha’s Release Hailed as Victory for Indian Women”, The Guardian, (July 23, 2017) https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2017/jul/23/lipstick-uner-my-burkha-release-hailed-as-victory-forindian-women as accessed on 25 February, 2019.

PART V

The Screening of the Actress

Smita Patil (Bhumika, 1977); Alia Bhatt (Dear Zindagi, 2016) (Editors’ Screengrab and courtesy Window Seat Films)

CHAPTER 20

“naye naam nit naye roop dhar” (Don New Names and New Forms Daily): The Figure of the Actress in Popular Hindi Cinema Shikha Kothiyal

The persona of the ‘filmwali’ has been dominantly fashioned in the public imagination—‘through on-screen portrayals, extra-cinematic networks of gossip and speculation, print interviews, biographies, court cases, and hagiographies’—as a morally dubious figure, embodying deep-seated patriarchal anxieties about female sexuality and the expression of artistic agency.1 Though the explicit link between performance and prostitution has gradually eroded over the years, the figure of the actress continues to occupy an ambivalent space in the cultural landscape of post-colonial India. In this chapter, I will examine the cinematic representations of the stage performer/film actress in a selection of popular Hindi films—Amiya Chakrabarty and Nitin Bose’s Kathputli (‘The Puppet’, 1957), Guru Amiya Chakrabarty and Nitin Bose, Kathputli (1957). Lata Mangeshkar; ‘Bol Ri Kathputli’; Music by Shankar Jaikishan. All English translations are the author’s. 1

 Mukherjee (2011: 56).

S. Kothiyal (*) Miranda House, Delhi University, Delhi, India © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_20

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Dutt’s Kaagaz Ke Phool (‘Paper Flowers’, 1959), Basu Bhattacharya’s Teesri Kasam (‘The Third Vow’, 1966), Subodh Mukherjee’s Abhinetri (‘The Actress’, 1970), Shyam Benegal’s Bhumika (‘The Role’, 1977), Milan Luthria’s The Dirty Picture (2011) and Madhur Bhandarkar’s Heroine (2012)—in order to explore how the ideological contradictions inherent in the identity of an actress are delineated and tenuously resolved in these narratives. I argue that the film industry’s exploration of the lives of its actresses reveals a consciousness divided between desire and anxiety, objectification and ostracization.2 Even as the production and consumption of an eroticized visual image of femininity has become central to the entertainment economy of a growing commodity culture, the expression of agency and advancement of professional careers by women threatens to destabilize patriarchal notions of ‘acceptable’ femininity. While the small sample space does not allow for an extensive commentary on generic shifts and continuities, this paper traces the dominant cinematic tropes employed in the discursive construction of the actress within differing socio-­ economic contexts, and changing structural dynamics of the film industry, as well as analyses the creative possibilities opened up by the act of performance, which enable the female performer to potentially subvert conventional gender roles and expectations. Madhur Bhandarkar’s recent film, Heroine (2012), traces the turbulent life of a formerly successful film actress, Mahi Arora (Kareena Kapoor), struggling to hold her own in the glamorous but morally vacuous world of ‘show business’. The film opens with the protagonist— dishevelled, lost and close to breaking down—being kicked to the curb from a moving car, thus, foregrounding the physical and emotional vulnerability of the female film star that will play out in the course of the narrative. From the outset, however, the character of Mahi is fixed, through explicit verbal and visual cues, as being ‘unpredictable’ and ‘impulsive’, and the audience is invited to view the figure of the female film star through the constricting gaze of sensationalist journalists. The film attempts to locate the root of her insecurities in her ‘broken family’ and ‘disturbed childhood’ such that her frustration with the power dynamics of an exploitative film industry then becomes depoliticized and 2  The narratives of actresses that have emerged in the recent #MeToo movement in India, beginning with Tanushree Datta’s allegations of sexual assault against Nana Patekar, offer a glimpse into these networks of gendered inequities and entrenched power that have long shaped women’s experiences in the Hindi film industry.

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individualized as emotionally excessive angst arising from a pathological ‘bipolar personality’ which can only be pitied.3 Mahi’s personal relationships with men dictate her professional status in a deeply gendered and hierarchical industry where women are absent from most positions of power. Shown as being prone to alcoholism and increasingly dependent on prescription drugs, she tries to reclaim her past success through all the means at her disposal—hiring a manipulative publicist to build a new public image, sabotaging her female rival’s career and leaking an old sex tape to garner media attention. Predictably, she continues to spiral downwards and the film ends with Mahi renouncing her identity and starting afresh in a foreign country, implying the symbolic death of the troubled film star. As in much of commercial Hindi cinema, the representation of female identity in Heroine is closely linked to limiting constructions of female sexuality. While the protagonist, as well as other actresses portrayed in the movie, appear as sexually empowered figures, an implicit binary is set up between public fame and personal fulfilment, such that the female artist finds herself constantly being pulled between the demands of onscreen desirability and social respectability. In a telling scene in the movie, when Mahi and her co-actor visit a brothel to research their roles as sex workers in a low-budget, offbeat film, they are consciously marked as separate and superior, through their uncharacteristically modest demeanour and dressing style, from the raucous group of ‘disreputable’ and outcaste women they wish to represent onscreen. When the actresses are lightly chided for taking over the roles of prostitutes and thus depriving them of their means of livelihood, the film offers a stray glimpse into the world of these ‘other’ public women excluded from the social and economic privilege of belonging to an organized entertainment industry. The close association between the body of the actress and the body of the quintessential public woman—the ‘prostitute’—has been a long-­ standing one in the dominant ideological perception of female performers. In late nineteenth and early twentieth century India, women from upper-caste, ‘respectable’ families who defied convention to choose a life of performance faced the threat of ostracization by their communities. A deep-seated patriarchal and class/caste-based anxiety about women’s mobility and sexuality ensured that women associated with the singing  The narrative consistently privileges such seemingly objective, detached observations by media persons and male actors in order to construct the ‘true’ persona of the emotionally unstable female star. 3

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and dancing trades were stigmatized as they came from what were designated as ‘disrespectable households, usually those of women abandoned by husbands or lovers, or widows without any source of support’.4 The woman performer posed a unique challenge to the gendered dichotomy of public and private spaces which structured the social world, and had to be excluded from the definition of the ideal national subject because of her participation, for the most part, in a ‘non-conjugal sexuality… [which] frustrated [the nationalist] construction of the morally “pure” Indian woman, the good wife, as the custodian and sign of a modern India’.5 However, as the Hindi film industry began to flourish in the 1920s and expanded its reach beyond cities to regional centres and villages, the enormous potential of cinematic art to shape national attitudes and identities became increasingly clear. With audiences cutting across gender, class, caste and religious divides, Hindi films emerged as a potent site for the construction and consumption of an idealized, modern ‘Indian’ subject. This political project of nurturing anticolonial cultural nationalism necessitated a reconfiguration of acting as respectable work. By the mid-1930s, English-speaking, highly educated Brahmin women such as Durga Khote and Devika Rani had begun to mark their presence in Hindi films, thus changing the perception that only ‘dancing girls’ or outcaste women from lower socio-economic backgrounds pursued acting as a profession. Despite the increasing cultural legitimacy accorded to the field of films, there remained a concomitant anxiety surrounding the figure of the female performer as an autonomous, skilled professional who could potentially transgress spatial and sexual barriers. As Khote once remarked, ‘in those days women from good families and films did not go together’.6 It has been well documented how many filmmakers themselves forbade their daughters or daughters-in-law to pursue acting as a profession. When Karisma Kapoor, a part of one of the oldest acting dynasties in the industry, made her debut as an actress as late as 1991, she faced much backlash from the Indian film press and unlike the launch of ‘star sons’, her debut film was not produced by her family.7 Mrinal Pande identifies these conflicting attitudes towards the female performer within (Brahmanical) patriarchal culture as the constitutive irony of the performing arts from Parsi theatre to early Hindi films: ‘A caste of  Bhattacharya (1998: 11).  Peterson and Soneji (ed) (2008: 17). 6  Khote (2006: 33). 7  Ganti (2012: 128). 4 5

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“shameless women” was necessary so that “honest women” could be treated with the most chivalrous respect; both upon the stage and within the society’.8 Interestingly, unlike the Hindustani Parsi theatre and the western stage which initially relied on the practice of female impersonation, in the ‘Indian’ theatrical tradition, female roles were enacted by women from the outset. However, according to the principles laid out in the earliest Sanskrit treatise on dramaturgy, the Natyashastra, the protagonist of the nataka is definitionally the upper-caste/class male hero.9 The nati (actress) dominantly speaks in Prakrit, considered to be an inferior register, and is rarely associated with the development of the vira rasa (heroic sentiment) in the play. When analysing the representation of the actress in Hindi cinema, it becomes imperative to bear in mind not only the influence of alternative folk/vernacular performative traditions such as the nautanki and jatra, but also the ideological underpinnings of Sastraik theatricality wherein the actress-figure is codified in terms of class, caste and gender hierarchies. * * * On the one hand, the perpetuation of a hegemonic ideal of passive womanhood was largely achieved through the actress’s enactment of character types such as the mother and the chaste maiden on screen, while on the other hand, her very identity as a professional woman, who made a career out of her public ‘performance’ of femininity for the entertainment of predominantly male audiences, made her a morally suspect figure. In their representation of actresses, popular Hindi films have persistently engaged with this prevalent discourse of respectability within which the lives of female performers have been conventionally embroiled, producing a self-­ reflexive commentary on the workings of the industry. While Heroine is one such recent attempt at exploring gender relations within the increasingly corporatized structure of the Hindi film industry in the twenty-first century, earlier films such as Bhumika (1977) and Abhinetri (1970) have dealt with similar ambiguities regarding the profession and identity of the actress at differing moments in India’s cultural history. Shyam Benegal’s much acclaimed film Bhumika (‘The Role’), loosely based on the autobiography of the yesteryear Marathi and Hindi film actress, Hansa Wadkar, is a subtle exploration of the social and familial tensions which marked the difficult life of the artist during the 1940s. 8 9

 Pande (2006: 1649).  Ghosh (1967: 354).

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While looking at the relationship between gender and artistic freedom, the film also deals with the history of popular entertainment in modern India as it ‘works through images, replay of scenes, posters of film titles and relationships as worked out through the negotiations between artists, directors and the networking of artists’.10 The protagonist, Usha (Smita Patil), is a successful film star who is the sole breadwinner of her family but also wishes for the simple comforts of domesticity which are forcibly denied by her physically and psychologically abusive husband, Keshav (Amol Palekar). The film follows a non-linear narrative and, through flashbacks, we learn of Usha’s lineage as one associated with the creative arts of music and dance and thus situated outside the realm of middle-class respectability. In her autobiography Sangtye Aika (‘You Ask, I Tell’), Wadkar gives a more detailed account of her family background and relates that her great grandmother was a courtesan, and her mother a devadasi belonging to the kalavantin clan—women who are dedicated to the temple. While Usha’s grandmother wants her to learn classical music, her mother, who has given up on her profession in exchange for ‘respectability’ through marriage to a Brahmin man, wants Usha to follow the same path to domesticity. The performing woman in Bhumika represents a profession and identity that was indelibly associated with a feudal order, but was ‘delegitimized, marginalized, even excised from the self-definitions and constitutive narratives of the new Indian nation’.11 Usha/Hansa’s individual struggle for a stable and dignified life can be seen as representative of the experiences of many skilled female performers who moved from a courtesan background to the world of cinematic performance during the 1930s–1940s and were subjected to both (male) desire and censure. Usha’s two major relationships with the men in her life are characterized by power and exploitation: her husband Keshav is entirely dependent on her earnings and presumes complete ownership over her body, while the feudal landlord Kale (Amrish Puri) who takes on Usha as a surrogate wife denies her the slightest expression of autonomy under the guise of providing her domestic security. The conflict between Usha’s unfulfilled desire for a conventional domesticity and her sincere commitment to artistic freedom appears inevitable in a social order where the lives of performing women, despite their relative autonomy, are deeply embedded within structures and relationships arising from patriarchal ideologies. As Wadkar herself poignantly writes,  Jain (2013: 16).  Needham (2013: 48).

10 11

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‘Domestic bickering, worry for my child, the loathsome ways of the film world, all pushed me to drown myself in the bottle. My mind was always in turmoil’.12 Ultimately rejecting the illusory quest for domestic bliss within conjugality, Usha returns to the hotel room where she had first met Kale and seems to come to terms with the necessity of learning to live alone and eschewing constricting relationships with men. Subodh Mukherjee’s Abhinetri (‘The Actress’) is set in a later moment in the ‘classicization’ of performing arts and depicts the stage performer as she attempts to settle into a life of domesticity and middle-class propriety, but must do so at the cost of her professional aspirations. The film is decidedly urban in its tone and setting and dramatizes the fundamental pull between traditional ‘Indianness’ and westernised modernity that has been central to the question of national self-definition in mainstream Hindi cinema. Anjana (Hema Malini) is a popular and talented professional dancer who falls in love with the socially inept scientist, Shekhar (Shashi Kapoor), after a chance encounter. Once she is married to Shekhar, she chooses to retire from the stage and play the role of the docile ‘housewife’ who depends entirely on her husband for financial and emotional sustenance. Anjana’s situation reflects how, for most performing women, the relinquishing of professional status was the precondition to gaining financial and social security through marriage. However, Shekhar’s increasing absence from home due to his work at the laboratory and her subsequent loneliness, as well as her regard for her dance teacher’s wishes, cause Anjana to return to her career as a dancer. While her performance wins her adulation from her (male) spectators, Shekhar lashes out at what he perceives as a low form of entertainment and is deeply troubled by her visual availability to men other than him. Anjana is forced to choose between her professional and domestic life, and in a subversive move, decides to move out of her marital home and pursue her vocation. The film’s ending, ­however, glosses over the central issue of Anjana’s identity as a performer by depicting a romantic reconciliation between the couple. Despite its conservative closure, Abhinetri raises pertinent questions about the unequal distribution of power within a marriage. As Hema Malini remarked in an interview, ‘Though I was too young to comprehend the complexities of marriage, I understood that the premise of the disagreement was unfair. Why must a woman have to give up her passion after marriage when the same is never asked of a man?’13 In a significant  Wadkar (2013: 45).  See Somaaya et al. (2012: 96).

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moment in the film that pre-empts the argument between the couple, an ardent admirer of the dancer refers to her husband as ‘Mr. Anjana’, and Shekhar is troubled by this reversal of gender norms. When her husband resents her return to the stage, Anjana holds her ground and challenges his attempts to curb her professional freedom. Warned by a friend against appearing too headstrong and unwomanly, Anjana counters: saare ghamand ka theka mardon ne le rakha hai? Is pride only the prerogative of men?

The characters in the film voice many of the dominant patriarchal attitudes towards women performers that arose from and contributed to the project of constructing an ideal of middle-class morality. Anjana is frequently objectified by her male spectators, one of whom brazenly declares her to be ‘public property’. A binary and hierarchical opposition is also set up between the domain of masculinity, reason and science, on the one hand, and femininity, emotion and art, on the other hand. Shekhar’s boss echoes conventional misogynist discourse when he says: agar biwi ghar mein khoobsurat ho toh aadmi koi kaam nahin kar sakta With a beautiful wife at home, the man is incapable of doing anything.

Moreover, Shekhar perceives his wife’s career as a threat to traditional ‘Indian’ values and attributes her lack of modesty to the corrupting influence of the decadent West: tum logon ko vilaayat mein jaake rehna chahiye. yahaan ki tehzeeb, yahaan ki sabhyata tum logon ko raas nahin aayegi… ghar ke rasoi aangan mein tumhara dum ghut jayega. You people should live in Europe. These values and culture are not suited for you… You will feel suffocated in the kitchen and household.

Anjana’s subjectivity, then, is shaped and constricted by a range of hegemonic, ‘common-sensical’ ideas regarding feminine sexuality, conduct and appearance. Within a social structure premised on an unequal, rigid separation between the masculine/public and the feminine/domestic realms, the problematic of the performing and married woman can only be resolved by suppressing one aspect of her identity. * * *

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For many women from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds, the screen opened up new possibilities of creative self-expression and mobility, and of playing with the fluidity of identities, thus helping them transcend, if contingently, a heavily circumscribed life. Actresses, in fact, were one of the first groups of professional/working women to acquire considerable financial independence and enjoy a degree of mobility in the public sphere that was inaccessible to women in other socially sanctioned occupations. An overwhelming majority of women who entered cinema in the 1920s, such as Miss Mushtari, Goharbai Karnataki and Amirbai Karnataki, came from performative traditions of the kotha and found in films the possibility of financial security and social recognition. Public performance became a means of self-sustenance, or of contributing to the family income. According to filmindia, Shobhana Samarth’s approximate total income in 1942 was Rs. 36,000 while Sardar Akhtar and Naseem Banu earned about Rs. 30,000 each. Even for women from privileged backgrounds, cinema offered a new means of participation in social, economic and public life. In an interview with All India Radio, Durga Khote commented, ‘[E]very role I played had a higher purpose in it and I liked every one of them for one reason or the other’.14 Cinema allowed women from different class/caste positions to access the public sphere in radically new ways, albeit contained within larger networks of production, distribution and consumption. The film industry’s self-representation of the lives of its actresses offers us a glimpse into the various possibilities that draw women to the world of films—whether it is the need for financial autonomy, the aspiration for professional success, or the desire to assert one’s identity as a skilled artist—as well as the ways in which these possibilities are conditioned by patriarchal ideologies and practices. The economic infrastructure of the film business is inextricably linked with the ideological function of films as influential cultural artefacts. Thus, when examining the mediating images and narratives of films revolving around the figure of the actress, it is pertinent to take into account the reception of these films at the box office in order to better understand the relationship between the characterization of the actress-figure on screen and the larger social consensus on questions of female agency and sexuality. Basu Bhattacharya’s Teesri Kasam (‘The Third Vow’, 1966), which proved to be a commercial failure, sensitively portrays the duality inherent in the position of the female performer—revered and desired as an epitome 14  For figures regarding actresses’ income, see Judas (1942:10). For Khote’s quote, see Abbas (1940: 39).

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of feminine beauty but also chastised for embracing a public life—through the character of Hirabai (Waheeda Rehman), a dancer in a nautanki (theatre) company. Hiraman (Raj Kapoor), an innocent cart-­driver who transports Hirabai to the village fair, is struck by her ethereal charm and presumes she is a ‘kunwari’ (unmarried and virginal). Warned against succumbing to the vice of theatre-watching by his family, Hiraman remains unaware of the realities of the life of a female nautanki star until he watches her perform with her troupe on stage. In the minds of her male audience, Hirabai’s identity as a public performer is synonymous with that of a ‘randi’ (prostitute). Early on in their meeting, when Hiraman inquires about her family, Hirabai wistful reply highlights the alienation of the female performer from all networks of communal support: jiski saari duniya hoti hai uska koi nahin hota The one who belongs to the entire world has no one to call her own.

Hirabai’s romantic aspirations remain unfulfilled at the end of the film, and she chooses to part ways with Hiraman and move on to the next village fair. Her visibility in the public realm marks her as a fallen woman and to allow her the conventional ‘happy ending’ reserved for chaste maidens from socially privileged families would threaten the essential distinction between ‘good’ women and ‘bad’. Set against the distinctively rural backdrop of northwest India, the film offers grim insights into the lives of female performers in the popular folk dramatic tradition of the nautanki. Hirabai’s status as an outsider in respectable society, in terms of her profession, caste and class location, renders her an easy target of a sexual assault by the wealthy zamindar when she refuses his offer to buy her services. Caught between the roles of being Hiraman’s ‘devi’ or the zamindar’s ‘bazaaru aurat’, Hirabai is denied the language to articulate her identity outside this rigid dichotomy. Interestingly, however, it is in the realm of theatre—performing a range of different roles and travelling across the country—that she finds the possibility of financial sustenance as well as of creatively exploring her innermost desires, free from social constraints. She succinctly describes her love for her craft as an addiction when Hiraman wonders what drives her to perform on stage: jaise tumhe bailgaadi chalaane ka nasha hai, waise mujhe Laila aur Gulbadan banane ka nasha hai Just as you are addicted to driving your bullock-cart, I am addicted to playing Laila and Gulbadan.

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In the final sequence of the film, Hirabai moves on to another village fair to play the role of Laila and fulfil her desire for romantic relationships through performance, even as these possibilities remain elusive for women in her social position. The familial drama, Kathputli (‘The Puppet’),15 offers a more conservative resolution to the tensions it traces in the conjugal relationship between a talented performer and a former street-puppet artiste recovering from an accident who feels slighted by his wife’s professional success. The seeming incompatibility between the ‘natural’ fate of a woman as wife and mother and her career as a stage performer becomes a source of inner turmoil for the heroine, Pushpa (Vyjayanthimala), who had turned to theatre only as a temporary escape from a life of financial hardships. Despite her absolute commitment to familial duties, Pushpa’s work under the mentorship of a troubled but affluent theatre producer becomes a source of insecurity for her husband and he forcibly separates mother and child as a punitive measure. Pushpa’s sister protests against the accusations made by Shivraj when she retorts: mard jo kuch sochte hain woh sahi hai aur aurat jo kuch kare woh galat hai Whatever the man thinks is right and whatever the woman does is wrong.

The tensions which run throughout the movie are dramatically highlighted in the confrontation between Pushpa and Shivraj where she asks for forgiveness, even as she holds him accountable for his dereliction of domestic responsibilities, but is only met with stony silence. In the closing scene, Pushpa and Shivraj are reunited after she collapses on stage at the end of her final dance performance, thus, restoring the promise of domestic felicity. The emphasis of the film remains on Pushpa’s identity as a ‘maasoom aurat’ (innocent, pure woman) thus evoking a positive, sympathetic response from the audience. The subversive elements of her professional aspirations are ultimately subsumed under passive constructions of the ideal wife and mother. One of the most recent examples of cinematic representations that display a fair degree of self-reflexive engagement with ideas of femininity and performance, and proved to be a huge commercial success, is Milan Luthria’s The Dirty Picture (2011). Loosely based on the life of Silk Smitha (Vijayalakshmi Vadlapati), a successful ‘vamp’ figure of South Indian cinema in the 1980s, the movie follows the spectacular rise and fall of the protago Amiya Chakrabarty and Nitin Bose, Kathputli (1957).

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nist Reshma, aka Silk (Vidya Balan) as she navigates her way in an industry which profits from the commodification of women’s bodies even as it chastises them for being ‘vulgar’ and ‘dirty’. As a lone woman from a ‘smalltown’ struggling to get a break in the industry, Reshma internalizes the values of the patriarchal culture within which she functions and turns them to her advantage in order to land her first role as a dancer in a highly sexualized song sequence. Silk’s unabashed and overt expression of her sexuality enables her to secure her place in an industry where women have little to no decision-making power and she grows into an overnight sensation. Despite her growing stardom, Silk is publicly confronted with her status as an outsider when she is mocked as a ‘dirty little secret’ at an awards ceremony. In her acceptance speech, she attacks the hypocrisy of an industry which exploits its female performers as ‘boarding passes’ to launch films which cater to the voyeuristic fantasies of a male audience but simultaneously relegates these women to the margins of respectable society. While the questions posed by Silk are forceful, the dominant tone of this pre-intermission climax scene—framed by the voices of the leading male star, Suryakant, and the film journalist, Nayla—is an ominous one, anticipating the downfall of the hubristic ‘vamp’ in the second half of the film. As the narrative progresses, Silk finds herself increasingly isolated as she is rejected by her family, lovers and film directors looking for ‘fresh’ e­ntertainment. Ultimately unable to cope with mounting financial, social and moral pressures, she ends her life. Considered in terms of the logic of a patriarchal order, Silk’s tragic demise appears to be ‘natural’ retribution for the deviant woman who transgresses sexual mores in pursuit of individual pleasure. The donning of a red wedding sari traditionally associated with Hindu women represents Silk’s desperate attempt, in her last moments, to enter into the sanctified world of heterosexual conjugality that was denied to her during her life. The film refuses to fully ‘uphold the values of the… middle classes, exposing rather the secret desires (and ensuing hypocrisies) of this group’.16 The death of the sexually transgressive woman, then, can alternatively be seen as the logical consequence of a structurally unequal society founded on a coercive regulation of female sexuality which displaces its own moral conflicts on to the body of the actress it both desires and repudiates. The cinematic techniques employed in The Dirty Picture consciously reinforce the sense of the actress’s body as an object of the director’s and audience’s gaze, and play upon socially established structures of desire, fantasy and anxiety. While Silk’s body-image on display is commodified and functions  Dwyer in Brown and Vidal (ed), (2013: 80).

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as an erotic object, it is interesting to note that Vidya Balan’s performance itself has been lauded for being a type of ‘self-aware embrace of fetishization’ which ‘transforms the fetishized image’s content and meaning’.17 In refusing to conform to the hegemonic ideal of ‘size zero’ body type and reconstructing the stereotypical role of the ‘vamp’, Balan has managed to counter some of the dominant moral assumptions about actresses in the Hindi film industry. On closer examination, however, it becomes evident that the film maintains a studied silence on the gender-caste nexus which historically framed the ‘vamp’ persona of Silk Smitha. Due to her subaltern caste origins and modest family background, Vijayalakshmi was denied entry into conventional mainstream cinema (reserved for chaste, upper-caste women) and typecast as a ‘sex siren’ embodying a certain primitive sexuality. In an interview with Filmfare magazine in 1984, she relates, ‘I wanted to become a character actress like Savithri, Sujta and Saritha. But in my second film “Vandichakram”, I was put in a glamour role… It led to more and more glamour roles. I cannot afford to displease my producers and directors so I continue to accept them’.18 At the level of visual aesthetics, the film ‘whitewashes’ the caste question by depicting Vidya Balan as becoming progressively fairer, thus, subtly distancing her from the ideological threat posed by dark skin and its connotations of caste impurity. Actresses’ reception as socially respectable figures is inextricably linked to caste and class status, though these aspects are often invisibilized in the dominant discourse surrounding women in films. In uncritically celebrating a leading, upper-caste actress’s ‘boldness’ in taking on the ‘uninhibited’ sexuality of the South Indian vamp, one is in the danger of unconsciously reproducing the oppressive binary between the upper caste, virtuous, heroine self and the ‘deviant’ vamphood of the dalit ‘Other’ woman.19 As noted earlier, it is interesting to analyse how the range of fictional resolutions offered to the ideological complexities explored in the course of these narratives can be related to differing audience responses. In Teesri Kasam, Hirabai’s decision to continue working as a performer, despite the odds, proved to be a dissatisfactory closure for the contemporary audience and the movie was a ‘flop’ despite garnering critical acclaim for its performances. Kathputli, on the other hand, which ends with the conventional reunion of an estranged couple, received a positive response. Tellingly, the film which leads to the literal and symbolic  Govindan and Dutta in Kavoori and A. Punathambekar (ed), (2008: 194).  “Silk Smitha’s Bold Interview,” Filmfare, December 2, (2013: n.p.) 19  Rowena (2012: 2). 17 18

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death of the ‘vamp’—The Dirty Picture—proved to be a massive hit and had the fifth biggest opening in 2011. Some other films that engage with the complex identity of the female performer and have emerged as huge commercial successes, even gaining near cult status, such as Ram Gopal Varma’s Rangeela (1995), Yash Chopra’s Dil Toh Pagal Hai (1997) and Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om (2007), all end with a return to light-hearted, escapist values through the tropes of romantic love, marriage and motherhood and contain the threat represented by the female performer’s professional aspirations and her participation in public life. A general correlation can thus be drawn between the final rehabilitation of the actress within the domain of domesticity and a favourable audience response. The long-drawn-out absence of women from creative and financial decision-making positions in the industry has meant that the scripting of actresses’ images in films, as well as their resistance to these images, has largely been ‘tamed’ by elite, masculine forces. In a film such as Guru Dutt’s Kaagaz Ke Phool (‘Paper Flowers’, 1959), which traces the fall from grace of a film director working in the increasingly commercialized studio system of the 1930s, the difference in social attitudes to male and female artists becomes apparent. Dutt plays the role of the idealistic film-­ maker, Suresh Sinha, who falls in love with the young actress, Shanti, during the making of his adaptation of Devdas. Shanti’s rise to success parallels the decline of Suresh and has negative implications for their personal relationship as well. Even as she gains considerable financial autonomy through her craft, Shanti’s professional choices are heavily circumscribed within a male-dominated industry where she is mentored by the benign but authoritative figure of Suresh. One notices a significant contrast in the representation of professional success and failure in films such as Kaagaz Ke Phool, on the one hand, and The Dirty Picture and Heroine, on the other. The demise of the lonely male artist caught in a cruel, commercialized world is portrayed in a sympathetic, almost maudlin, light and attributed a tragic dignity that is conspicuously absent in the case of characters such as Mahi Arora or Silk Smitha. The emphasis in Kaagaz Ke Phool remains on the troubled artist’s interiority and the creative limitations he faces in an unjust studio system that does not provide him enough space for his art. In The Dirty Picture and Heroine, however, the experiences of both the female protagonists are mediated through voiceovers (the gossip-mongering media in the case of Mahi, and the antagonistic male director in the case of Silk), and their professional/creative aspirations

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are construed as being necessarily debilitating for personal, ‘feminine’ fulfilment. The actress is seen as being essentially susceptible to the glamour and illusions of stardom, unlike the stoic, well-adjusted male star who is judged purely on the basis of his creative talent, and for whom commercial success remains ancillary to his commitment to a true artistic vision. Thus, while male artists and their failures are romanticized, women artists are treated as outcasts and chastised for their professional ambitions. * * * The audio-visual ‘text’, however, is not simply a mimetic reflection of existing social structures and realities, but also a discursive site where new sociocultural identities are contested. Thus, one finds in many of these films, moments of rupture in the dominant thrust of the narrative where women’s private fears and aspirations are articulated and possibilities of female solidarity are evoked. In Abhinetri and Om Shanti Om, for instance, the stereotype of the self-effacing mother is invested with a certain nuance when the characters played by both Nirupa Roy and Kirron Kher, speak wistfully, if briefly, of their dreams of performing before an audience which were thwarted by the exigencies of motherhood. The popular assumption of performance as a frivolous pastime for women, rather than a physically demanding profession involving skill and labour, is subtly punctured in films such as Bhumika, where Usha displays a clear-sighted awareness of her husband’s financial dependence on her earnings as an actress, and in Teesri Kasam, where Hirabai’s itinerant occupation allows her to travel and explore the performative aspect of different feminine ‘types’. The creative and financial attractions of an independent career as an actress have historically allowed women from different socio-economic backgrounds, from Devika Rani to Rehana Sultan and Kangana Ranaut, to transgress repressive social mores and work towards the creation of egalitarian professional as well as personal spaces. The increasing cultural influence of actresses and the social acceptance of their professional aspirations has been the product of a protracted struggle in a dominantly masculine working environment; however, this ‘respectability’ has largely been achieved at the cost of crucial caste, class, religious and regional exclusions. The contemporary Hindi film industry, operating on a business model and shaped by a culture of consumption, obscures many of its own fundamental structural inequalities through the liberal humanist construction of the figure of the independent and empowered ‘modern woman’. In capitalist

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society, the formulation of actresses as ‘empowered consumers’ of a range of commodities tends to ‘confuse self-­interest with individuality and elevates consumption as a strategy for healing the dissatisfactions that might alternatively be understood in terms of social ills and discontents’.20 Thus, even as actresses have managed to successfully subvert and even celebrate the discourse of moral corruption that informed the lives of earlier female performers, they are today faced with the challenge of resisting more insidious strategies of containment that operate through the illusion of ‘free choice’ and emphatic individualism.

Works Cited Films Abhinetri, director Subodh Mukherjee, producer Subodh Mukherjee, 1970. Bhumika, director Shyam Benegal, producer Lalit M.  Bijlani and Freni Variava, 1977. Dil Toh Pagal Hai, director Yash Chopra, producer Yash Chopra and Aditya Chopra, 1997. Heroine, director Madhur Bhandarkar, producers Ronnie Screwvala, Madhur Bhandarkar, Siddharth Kapur, 2012. Kaagaz Ke Phool, director and producer Guru Dutt, 1959. Kathputli, director Amiya Chakrabarty and Nitin Bose, producer Ajit Chakraborty and Amiya Chakrabarty, 1957. Om Shanti Om, director Farah Khan, producer Red Chilies Entertainment, Eros Pictures, 2007. Rangeela, director Ram Gopal Varma, producer Jhamu Sughand and Ram Gopal Varma, 1995. Teesri Kasam, director Basu Bhattacharya, producer Shailendra, 1966. The Dirty Picture, director Milan Luthria, producers Ekta Kapoor and Shobha Kapoor, 2011.

Books Bhattacharya, Rimli. My Story and My Life as an Actress, by Binodini Dasi (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998). Ganti, Tejaswini. Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (New York: Duke University Press, 2012).

 Tasker and Negra (2007: 2).

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Ghosh, Manmohan ed. Natyasastra ascribed to Bharatmuni (Calcutta: Granthalaya Private Limited, 1967). Khote, Durga. I, Durga Khote: An Autobiography. trans., Shanta Gokhale (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006). Needham, Anuradha Dingwaney. New Indian Cinema in Post-Independence India (Oxon: Routledge, 2013). Peterson, Indira and Devesh Soneji, eds. Performing Pasts: Reinventing the Arts in Modern South India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008). Somaaya, Bhawana, Jigna Kothari and Supriya Madangarli. Mother Maiden Mistress: Women in Hindi Cinema, 1950–2010 (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2012). Tasker, Yvonne and Diane Negra, eds. Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture (London: Duke University Press, 2007). Wadkar, Hansa. You Ask, I Tell: An Autobiography, translated and edited by Jasbir Jain and Shobhha Shinde (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2013).

Articles

and

Book Chapters

Abbas, K. Ahmad. “Indian Films & Stars on the Air” in Baburao Patel ed., filmindia, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Feb 1940), 39. https://archive.org/stream/ filmindia194006unse#page/n103/mode/2up Dwyer, Rachel. “The Biopic of the New Middle Classes in Contemporary Hindi Cinema” in T. Brown and B. Vidal ed., The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture (New York: Routledge, 2013), 68–83. Govindan, P. P. and B. Dutta. “‘From Villain to Traditional Housewife!’ The Politics of Globalization and Women’s Sexuality in the ‘New’ Indian Media” in A. Kavoori and A. Punathambekar ed., Global Bollywood (New York: NYU Press, 2008), 180–202. Judas. “Bombay Calling” in Baburao Patel ed., filmindia, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Jan 1942), 9–11. https://archive.org/details/filmindia194208unse/page/n19. Mukherjee, Debashree. “Letter from an Unknown Woman: The Film Actress in Late Colonial Bombay”. Marg, Vol. 62 No. 4 (2011), 54–65. https://www.thefreelibrary.com/etter+from+an+unknown+woman%3A+the+film+actress+in+late+col onial...-a0261871977 Pande, Mrinal. “‘Moving beyond Themselves’: Women in Hindustani Parsi Theatre and Early Hindi Films.” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 41, No. 17 (April 29, 2006), 1646–1653. Rowena, Jenny. “The ‘Dirt’ in The Dirty Picture: Caste, Gender and Silk Smitha”. Round Table India (Oct 8, 2012). http://roundtableindia.co.in/index. php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5822:the-dirt-in-the-dirty-picturecaste-gender-and-silk-smitha-part-2 Smitha, Silk. “Silk Smitha’s Bold Interview”, 1984, Filmfare (Dec 2, 2013). http://www.filmfare.com/features/silk-smithas-bold-interview-4813-1.html

Swara Bhaskar (Anaarkali of Aarah, 2017). (Courtsey Promodome Pictures)

CHAPTER 21

Playing Anaarkali (2017): Gender, Morality and Erotica An Interview with Swara Bhasker

An outsider to the Hindi Film Industry, Swara Bhasker has in a short period acquired an impressive, award-winning and diverse body of work, which includes commercial hits and content-driven independent projects. Her filmography includes blockbusters like Prem Ratan Dhan Paayo (2015), Tanu weds Manu Series (2011, 2015) and Raanjhanaa (2013). However, Swara has also given importance to independent and content-­ oriented films like X: Past is Present (2015), Listen Amaya (2013), The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project (2010) and Madholal Keep Walking (2010). In Nil Battey Sannata (2016), she essayed the role of a mother to a teenage girl and won the best actress award in Fuzhou, China, at the Silk Road International Film Festival as well as the Screen Jury Award for the Best Actress. Anaarkali of Aarah (2017) where she portrays the role of a feisty orchestra party singer from the volatile town of Aarah in Bihar received rave reviews, and Swara’s performance was hailed as giving Hindi cinema a new fierce, flawed and unapologetic heroine. In Veere di Wedding (2018)—Hindi cinema’s first girl-gang film that became a box office super hit—Swara’s enactment of female sexuality has aroused consternation among some sections and received critical acclaim. Swara has anchored the Swara Bhasker (*) Mumbai, India © The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9_21

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TV mini-series Samvidhaan: The Making of the Indian Constitution (2014), directed by the legendary director Shyam Benegal. One of the film industry’s outspoken voices, especially on current affairs and political issues, Swara’s social media accounts have been the subject of constant controversy and media attention. Her open letters to both JNU sedition accused student Umar Khalid and Padmaavat director Sanjay Leela Bhansali became viral sensations and sparked wide debate. Her campaign for selected progressive and secular candidates across opposition party lines in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections also generated interest in the media. Swara did her Bachelors in English Literature from Miranda House, Delhi University followed by a Masters in Sociology from the School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Swara describes herself as a “by-default occasional activist and sometime writer.”  She has now launched her own production house ‘Kahaaniwaaley’ and has added screenwriting and production to her oeuvre. Below is the interview that Swara gave to the editors of the book.  1. Actresses as ‘public’ women were traditionally seen as ‘bad’ despite being viewed with desire. Do you think that contemporary society— because of education, erosions of patriarchies to some extent, economic attractions and enormous glamour—views the actress in a way that is radically different from the past? Swara: I think that obviously acting for girls—as a career choice is now far more acceptable than it has ever been—in India and the world, and that is clear from the diversity of backgrounds that we see in all the actresses working in the industry currently. My own parents are professionals—one an academic, the other from the Navy and there are numerous examples like me. But that said, I think the older prejudices and stereotypes about actresses come to the fore in moments of crisis, or rather ‘controversy’. Take any actress embroiled in any controversy or even news and have a look at the comments section on Youtube videos reporting that controversy or at the Twitter and Facebook pages of the said actress—and literally 90% of the comments are about how the actress is a prostitute or a lying whore or untrustworthy and without integrity. All the criticism will inevitably emerge from the assumption that because she is an actress, she must be without principles, without integrity and in fact to some degree, a prostitute. The other time of course when one comes across such a mindset is on the odd occasion when we interact with a particularly entitled and shameless man with money and power. The person could be a politician, a business man or even a producer or people from our fraternity who assume that because we are actresses and can be

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‘hired’ for an event appearance or need to be cast in roles, anything can be said to us, any proposition can be made…because, well… we are actresses after all! I’ve come across such interactions time and again—though now with the #MeToo revelations it seems like all working women face this scenario. I remember a particular interaction with a local politician, during the shoot of Anaarkali of Aarah who told me that I was ‘looking like a prostitute’. It was an interesting ‘meta’ moment because in the film we were shooting, the protagonist Anaarkali’s whole conflict hinges on the fact that she is considered a whore by the whole world and thus not just unworthy of respectful treatment, but disqualified from protesting against molestation and barred even from the expectation of justice. I also see no dichotomy between desiring a female cine star as a glamorous performer on the silver screen and deriding her as a real person. The mentality is textbook patriarchal thought in operation—desire and revulsion going hand in hand and the playing out of the whore part of the mother-whore dichotomy: the uncontrollable whore to be desired but derided and shunned and the mother to be revered and controlled. So, to sum up I don’t think contemporary society views the actress in ways that are radically different from the past. I just feel the biases are better concealed. What is different though is that now the actresses are a lot more vocal about their rights; we are not so easily shamed anymore and we fight back the shaming. And it is true that we receive more support from liberal, educated and progressive women and men. . To what extent has your background made you less vulnerable from 2 being exploited in the film industry? Swara: I think primarily because of the fact that I come from a family that is liberal minded, progressive, educated—and from a liberal arts education with a bent towards critical thinking and rational enquiry—a lot of the power dynamics that operate when newcomers are exploited in the industry (sexually or otherwise) were quite apparent to me. As a student who was taught by a staunchly feminist set of teachers and as a feminist myself, I had already learnt to problematize and critique the notion of shame, honour and virtue that often drive female (and male) victims of exploitation into silence. Since my parents were supportive of me—both emotionally and

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financially—I didn’t have any economic pressure on me during my ‘struggling days’ and since I was a postgraduate with degrees in Literature and Sociology, I was confident that if the ‘Bollywood dream’ didn’t work out for me—I could look for alternate employment. A combination of all these aspects of my background gave me the confidence to say ‘No’ to any work (or any other proposition) that I didn’t want to do. I remember a particular time when I had some 4000 Rupees in my bank account and I refused a TV job that would guarantee me a minimum of 1.5–2 Lakh Rupees a month, simply because I knew I could call my parents and borrow money when I needed. I really do believe that my education, my awareness of the world outside the industry and the knowledge that I was ‘employ-able’ outside the film industry gave me, and continues to give me a very large part of my sense of confidence and protected me from being vulnerable. . ‘Anaarkali of Aarah’ concludes with your character’s retribution and 3 eventual triumph against her oppressors. How do you think it compares with its predecessors, Anarkali (1953) and Mughal-e-Azam (1960)? Swara: I haven’t seen the 1953 version of Anaarkali, but I think even in the historical legend of Anaarkali, as well as in K. Asif’s 1960 version, Mughal-e-Azam, Anaarkali was always a rebel. In fact I think Mughal-E-Azam gave Anaarkali some very revolutionary dialogues and songs for the time such as ‘pardaa nahi jab koi khudaa se, bandon se pardaa karnaa kya? jab pyaar kiya toh darnaa kya?’ (If nothing is veiled from God, then why veil it from humans? If you love then why be scared?). Anaarkali is a figure who continues to defy the highest authority of the land, and the might of the State, to stand by her right to love to the point where she has to be physically effaced, crushed and obliterated. I always saw the ending of the film (and the legend) as contextual. What other realistic ending could one expect (sans divine intervention) in the sixteenth century? For me, the character of Anaarkali Aarahwaali (the protagonist in Anaarkali of Aarah) is a twenty-first-century avatara of the sixteenth-­ century Anaarkali. The authority of the villain in this story is not all encompassing. This Anaarkali lives in a democratic country with a Rule of Law as per a Constitution and an Indian Penal Code (IPC)— theoretically. The concept of honour no longer applies in the same

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way to this Anaarkali. This Anaarkali has access to a discourse of rights, self-respect and personal sovereignty and equality before the Law. And on the basis of these—in an instinctive manner—she is able to script her own triumph and retribution when that Rule of Law and IPC of her democratic country fail her. But to me, in their own ways, both Anaarkalis are revolutionary figures of protest and triumph in their respective contexts. The Anaarkali of 1960 is defeated and the Anaarkali of 2017 is defiant, and both are a testimony to how the mentality of their male writer-­ directors and those societies at large have changed over the years. In 1960 and the late 1950s perhaps society at large only imagined tragic endings for its ‘fallen public women with golden hearts’. In 2017, society at large is able to conceive of an independent foul-­ mouthed, less-than-respectable woman earning a living and having an identity on somewhat her own terms. She doesn’t have to be obliterated by being buried into a wall alive. An alternative imagining for her life is possible. I also think that the 2017 Anaarkali was also shaped (at the screenplay writing stage) a lot more by the politics and beliefs of the actress who played her; I don’t know and cannot comment on how actively Madhubala ji was involved in the writing of her character in Mughal-e-Azam. . In ‘Anaarkali’ you enact two kinds of ‘bad’ women: the self-assured 4 persona on stage who sings bawdy, innuendo-filled songs and dances suggestively and the kalakaar/artist off stage who is a single woman struggling to lead her life on her own terms. Did these two Anaars require different kinds of preparation? Swara: Well quite honestly I didn’t think of it like that at all. As performers (albeit I’m a screen performer) I feel we all (men and women) live dual lives: the public one, constantly in public gaze— often projecting the aspirations of our audiences—or at least playing up to them and the private one. I prepped very consciously for playing Anaarkali on stage, and building her interiority. I travelled to Aarah in Bihar twice. I made contact with a nautch troupe there— Munni Orchestra Party. I did extensive interviews with Munniji and her girls. I asked them to sing songs for me. I recorded their vocabulary. I then went to Mathura (Kosi Kalaan) and watched some of these shows—interestingly, that’s how I realized that these girls sing and dance together. I took costume references from these performers. I shopped for Anaarkali’s wardrobe and accessories (including

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the underwear that is seen in the film) from the same shops that Munniji shopped from and within her budget. But almost without my realizing, there was a huge merging of Anaarkali and my own emotionality. That happens often when an actor gets involved in the character she plays, but for me it really reached a point of obsession, I began to feel that no one knew Anaarkali like I did, and felt that my vision of the character was the truest. It’s almost like I became possessive about Anaarkali—I used to get into lengthy arguments with Avinash (Director) and Sandeep (Producer) about how the scene should progress—keeping Anaarkali’s character in mind. I think I became quite a pest. And I must say here that kudos to the both of them, for allowing me to take that kind of ownership of Anaarkali right from the writing stage. It’s not common in the industry and I will always be grateful to Avinash (Das) especially for that. For sharing his Anaarkali of Aarah with me so much that she became mine. The thing is that despite Anaarkali and my different contexts—as female performers in predominantly male controlled industries; as performers experienced with live audiences; and as single working women also living away from families—there were many ways in which Anaarkali and my experiences intersected. I heard the script and almost instinctively just knew this woman inside out. So playing Anaarkali was a strange experience of pretty self-­ conscious preparation when it came to language, body language, accent, physicality, costuming, dancing and learning to smoke the beedi (I actually carried packs of 502 pataakaa beedi around for weeks and learnt to smoke them as part of my workshops).1 But becoming Anaarkali also had this unselfconscious aspect which I didn’t realise till many months after the shoot. . Sexuality had been a defining characteristic of the ‘bad’ woman. 5 Today’s feminism in the film industry, in ‘Veere Di Wedding’ (2018) for example, is tantalizing yet problematic. Your views? Swara: I quite frankly didn’t find anything problematic about Veere’s so-called feminism. First of all, Veere Di Wedding never claimed to be a feminist or non-feminist film. It’s quite simply a film 1  A beedi is a thin cigarette, filled with tobacco flake wrapped in a leaf and tied with a string. Beedi-smoking tends to be associated with the poor, since the tobacco-filled leaves are inexpensive compared to regular cigarettes.

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about four friends, who are struggling with ‘adulting’, with love, with commitment, with marriage and with the experience of being adults who must claim responsibility for their decisions. They also happen to be girls; girls from rich South Delhi families with a fair degree of freedom and access to cosmopolitan urban Indian life of the upper classes. And they live their lives as such. For me, in the context of commercial mainstream Bollywood, what is quite special about Veere Di Wedding is that in more than a century old existence of Hindi Cinema, it was the first mainstream commercial to feature four female protagonists and no one is in love with the same man. In fact, the conflict in the film doesn’t revolve around girls fighting over the same Hero. Heck, there is no real Hero (in the traditional sense) in the film! Also, for me Veere…pushed the boundaries of mainstream commercial Bollywood by showing its heroines cussing, talking about sex, drinking and smoking in a matter-of-fact manner. To me, this was not stereotyping as some commentators interpreted. It’s just a depiction of a certain urban reality. I’m a single working woman from a reasonably well off family brought up in Delhi and the fact is that I drink and I now smoke (occasionally) and talk about sex freely and I curse like a sailor. The fact also is that Hindi cinema has for years placed the burden of vice-less behaviour and virtuous character solely on its heroines, while the heroes have since the 1950s, had the freedom to be flawed in myriad ways. Veere… has given this freedom to be confused, conflicted, commitment-phobic and potty mouthed to its heroines in a film where they are not ‘fallen women’ or ‘bad women’ or drug addicts and alcoholics—they are just regular women. And all this to me makes Veere Di Wedding, in the context of mainstream Bollywood, a liberating film for women characters. And that the film made double digit crores (10 crores) on its opening Friday and a 100 crores plus net Worldwide collections means a glass ceiling was broken for women in the film industry. It also busted the myth that women-centric films do not give openings and cannot make the 100-crore club. . You have political views and have often been one of the first, of a very 6 few, to articulate those views which would be seen as anti-establishment and certainly anti-majoritarian religious, caste and gendered practices. Have you in the process become the bad girl of the Hindi film industry? Has it affected you professionally and personally?

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Swara: Hahahaha!!!! Well that’s a question for the industry to answer. I think more than my political views and my unabashed expression of the same for the industry, it was really my open letter to Sanjay Leela Bhansali Sir that was the real shocker.2 The fact that a young and somewhat new actress wrote an open letter challenging contemporary Bollywood’s most iconic director was seen by some as too cheeky and by others as ill-timed (because the film had gone through a lot of attack by casteist goons namely the Karni Sena).3 But equally many people from the industry privately told me that they liked my letter and agreed with me. The team of the film was very gracious and simply said they agreed to disagree with me. I do have to say that a large part of the open letter controversy came from the fact that the publishing website chose to headline the letter as ‘At the end of your magnum opus...I felt reduced to a vagina’. So the only thing that people remembered, many of whom had not read the letter, was the word ‘vagina’. Of course the fact that using the word created such a fracas, a woman merely naming a part of her body offended so many, speaks multitude for the state of our public consciousness vis-a-vis female bodies and women’s narratives.  I think however that the open letter coupled with my Kathua4 placard 2  Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat (2018) ostensibly inspired by Jayasi’s Sufi poem re-presents the story of a Rajput queen’s beauty arousing the desire of Sultan Alaudin Khilji who laid siege on her husband’s kingdom. Spectacularly mounted, the film thickened the stereotype of the marauding Muslim invader and the glory of the Upper-caste Hindu wife who voluntarily dies on a pyre rather than have her honour sullied. This practice of Sati/Jauhar, once propagated by Brahmanical patriarchy, as also abetting it, is a crime under the Indian Penal Code. Bhansali’s glorification of Sati was sharply criticised and Swara’s was a foremost voice from within the industry that argued, ‘Practices like Sati, Jauhar, FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), Honour Killings should not be glorified because they don’t merely deny women equality, they deny women their personhood. They deny women humanity. They deny women the right to life. And that is wrong’. https://thewire.in/film/end-magnum-opus-i-felt-reduced-vagina. 3  The Karni Sena, a Rajput caste organization possibly formed in 2006 in Rajasthan, led a campaign of violence and destruction, alleging that Padmaavat (2018), tarnished the reputation of Rajputs and maligned a thirteenth century Rajput queen, whose existence outside of a tragic ballad by a Sufi poet has been disputed by historians. The Sena’s protests began even before the shooting of the film had ended and despite several reassurances from the makers of the film, it kept issuing incendiary statements including death threats against the actors of the film and even attacked Bhansali on the sets of the film. The film, when released, went on to become one of the biggest hits of 2018. 4  The Kathua case refers to the abduction, gang-rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl, Asifa Bano, who belonged to the nomadic Bakharwal community, near Kathua (Jammu and Kashmir) in January 2018. Since the involved accused were policemen in collusion with powerful Hindu locals who wanted to teach the Bakharwals a lesson over land acquisition,

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campaign, the resultant backlash in the form of the trending hashtags #BoycottAmazon and #BoycottVeereDiWedding, plus reports of my campaigning for the Lok Sabha 2019 elections in the national press—all this got is what has sealed by fate as a jhandewaali in Bollywood. And to some extent the image has some truth. It is true that well-wishers in the industry have called me and said I’m developing the image of being a trouble maker with a ‘nuisance’ value but professionally no one has refused me work stating this as the reason. All in all, everyone in the industry, including the biggest stars, have all always been very friendly to me. Sonam Kapoor is a close friend and Karan Johar launched the poster of Anaarkali of Aarah (on Twitter) after just one request. Shahrukh Sir and Salman Sir have always been indulgent and friendly and so has everyone else; Sooraj Barjatya, Ektaa Kapoor and Aanand Rai have all been supportive and I really have no complaints. I know that in the current climate there is a collateral that I will have to bear if I want to be vocal about my views, and I’ve decided that I will bear that brunt. Sometimes, it’s disheartening when despite a success like Veere Di Wedding I don’t get as many mainstream offers as my ‘safer’ contemporary actresses, but I don’t blame producers. If you have many crores on the line, you are going to be risk averse, you are going to be nervous that a Swara Bhasker may attract haters and someone will start a boycott campaign against your film. I mean I lost four brands and a few events soon after my campaigning for Kanhaiya (CPI) because (and this is what we were told) they wanted a  ‘nonpolitical’ celebrity. While I appreciate the concerns that brands have, I do want to remind these people that Veere was a smashing success despite all the boycott campaigns and I got so much love and praise for my work. The problem is that in today’s time we are creating a society where we want to punish people for having a voice, especially a critical voice. I tell myself, that in life we make choices and we pay for those choices, so it’s fine, I’m reconciled to potentially not receiving all those mainstream Bollywood offers. I’m creating my own offers for myself by turning screenwriter and producer. . Your favourite ‘bad’ woman of Hindi films? 7 Swara: In fiction, Anaarkali of Aarah without a doubt. the case became a communal one which also sparked a national debate on the rights of the girl children belonging to tribal minorities of the region. Several actors, including Bhasker, participated in a hashtag #Kathua campaign, demanding justice for Asifa in April 2018.

Index1

A Aarti, 54 Achhut Kanya, 30, 31, 37 Actress, 9, 18, 45n1, 54, 67, 88, 109, 170, 187, 213, 269, 342, 347–362, 365–367, 369, 372, 373 Adalat, 115, 203 Akhir Kyon, 69 Akhtar, Farhan, 307, 317n13 Alvi, Abrar, 60 Ambedkar, B.R., 31, 279n2 Ameeta, 135 Amrapali, 93–109, 125 Amu, 243–249 Anaarkali of Aarah, 365, 367, 370, 373 Anand, Dev, 7n25, 8n27, 64 Anarkali, 116, 368–369 Andarmahal, 49, 53 Andaz, 277–293 Angry Young Man, 67, 203–205, 208, 218, 219 Ankush, 69

Anti-Sikh riots, 242, 243, 249 Apsaras, 13, 95–97, 100, 105 Aranyer Din Ratri, 143 Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 255, 255n24 Astitva, 69 Atankvadi, 241–256 Azmi, Shabana, 54, 68 B Babri Masjid, 156, 160 Bachchan, Amitabh, 67, 203, 204, 210, 218 Bagbaan, 69 Bahl, Mohnish, 300 Bandini, 18, 126, 187–199 Bandit Queen, 223–237 Bar dancer, 151 Barjatya, Sooraj, 297, 300, 373 Basu Bhattacharya, 348, 355 Basu, Bipasha, 88

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2019 S. Sengupta et al. (eds.), ‘Bad’ Women of Bombay Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26788-9

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376 

INDEX

Bedi, Bobby, 232–235 Benaras, 333, 334 Benegal, Shyam, 7n23, 11, 11n35, 13, 13n47, 68, 172n9, 348, 351, 366 Beshya/baiji, 48, 49, 55, 56 Bhaduri, Jaya, 209, 218 Bhagwad Gita, 301 Bhakti, 95, 98, 99, 101, 191n11, 195, 195n18, 196 Bhakti movement, 320 Bhandarkar, Madhur, 11n35, 15, 348 Bhansali, Sanjay Leela, 94, 366, 372, 372n2, 372n3 Bhardwaj, Rekha, 80 Bhardwaj, Vishal, 13, 74, 74n1, 85n33, 241n1 Bhatiyali, 198, 198n29 Bhindranwale, Jarnail Singh, 244 Bhonsle, Asha, 3n11, 104n36, 143 Bhopal, 332, 333, 336–338, 343 Bhumika, 68, 348, 351, 352, 361 Bhushan, Bharat, 64 Bindu, 65, 70, 144, 304 Bose, Modhu, 94, 98, 102 Bose, Sadhona, 98, 99, 101, 101n27, 102 Brahman, 84–86 Brahmanical-patriarchy (hypen), 46, 59, 75, 78, 79, 86, 88, 94, 97, 286, 350, 372n2 Brahmo Samaj, 59, 59n26 Buddy film, 332, 342 Burkha, 331–343 C Calcutta, 46–48, 48n8, 157, 190n9 Camd, 30 Caste, 6, 31, 33, 34, 36, 48, 49, 49n9, 52, 52n17, 53, 57, 59, 69, 74, 75, 77, 84–86, 85n33, 94, 95, 97, 98, 100, 105, 109n46, 124, 170, 190n9, 208, 226–231, 234,

237, 261, 266–268, 278, 279, 283, 283n8, 285, 291, 318, 332, 334, 335, 338, 343, 350, 351, 355, 356, 359, 361, 372n3 Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), 224, 246, 335, 335n1, 336 Chak De! India, 70 Chameli, 179–181 Chastity, 82, 86, 97, 105, 216, 324, 358 Chhote Nawab, 132–135, 138, 139, 141, 143 Chhoti Bahu, 45–47, 49–51, 53–58, 57n25, 61 Chitralekha, 50n13, 93–109, 125 Chopra, Prem, 139 Chowdhury, Aniruddha Roy, 340 Christie, Agatha (And Then There Were None), 141 Chupke Chupke, 68 Classical past, 93–109 Club dancer, 135, 140 Cocktail, 313–328 Colonization, 12, 84 Company, 17, 151, 156–159 Consumer/Consumerism, 6, 18, 284, 292, 297–311, 316, 322, 324, 337, 342 Courtesan, 18, 28, 42, 48, 50, 96, 97, 104, 105, 108, 109, 113–128, 141, 167, 168n2, 169, 352 D Dalit, 11, 74, 84–86, 228–231, 228n13, 234, 237, 359 Dancing girl, 18, 49, 131–145, 333, 339, 350 Decolonisation, 12, 279 De-criminalization of sex work, 181 Deewar, 67, 155, 155n26, 203, 209–212, 216 Delhi High Court, 224, 225, 235

 INDEX 

Deol, Abhay, 307 Devadasi, 98, 352 Dev D, 69, 179, 180n39, 181 Devgn, Ajay, 75 Devi, Phoolan, 223–237, 233n21 Dil Chahta Hai, 317, 318 Dil Dhadakne Do, 10n33 Dillagi, 37, 39 Dil Se, 16, 16n57, 243, 255, 255n25, 256 Dixit, Madhuri, 300 Do Aankhen Barah Haath (DABH), 189–193, 189n6 Don, 151, 152, 155, 155n26, 157, 159 Doppelganger, 134, 140–143 Dr. Vidya, 50n13, 132–134, 136, 138, 141, 143 Dutt, Geeta, 4n15, 55, 56 Dutt, Guru, 46, 47, 51, 53–55, 59–61, 280, 348, 360 E Epistolary novels, 30 Erotic, 40, 41, 51, 55, 77, 82, 98–100, 105, 107, 155, 197, 214, 298, 303, 309, 336, 339, 340, 359 Existential Feminism, 175 F Female avenger, 142, 208, 213, 215, 218, 219 Femininity, 2, 10, 11, 17, 94, 102, 104, 133, 134, 136–138, 140, 142, 189n5, 193, 208, 214, 218, 252, 253, 278, 280, 281, 288, 304, 309, 320n18, 348, 351, 354, 357 Film Certificate Appellate Tribunal (FCAT), 224, 246 Filmfare, 64, 359

377

Filmfare Award, 45n1, 54, 187, 187n1, 241n1 Fire, 28, 69 Foucault, Michel, 189n7, 190, 194n16 G Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, 31 Gangajal, 69 Gangster, 151, 156–159 Gangster film, 150, 151, 158, 160 Ganika, 96, 97, 102, 106 Gender, 6, 11, 14, 16, 17, 28–30, 36, 37, 57, 59, 60, 74, 75, 80, 85–88, 95, 97, 98, 105, 156, 179, 195n17, 208, 210, 213, 226–231, 236, 237, 241–256, 265, 268, 273, 278, 281, 283n8, 291, 292, 298–299, 307, 315, 342, 343, 348, 350–352, 354, 365–373 Ghalib, Mirza, 27, 42 Ghare-Baire, 53 Ghar Ho To Aisa, 272 Ghayavan, Neeraj, 331 Ghazal, 35, 36, 114 Globalization, 6, 12, 297, 299, 339 Godmother, 16, 69 Golmaal, 68 Guddi, 8n28, 68 Gulzar, 7n23, 9n30, 11n35, 15, 16, 68, 170n5, 241n1, 242, 242n3, 247, 247n15, 253 Gumnaam, 132–134, 138, 140, 141, 142n13, 143 Gun moll, 149–151, 156, 157, 162, 164 H Hattangadi, Rohini, 68 Haveli, 46–49, 47n4, 51, 52 Hawayein, 243–249 Heer, 28, 37, 39

378 

INDEX

Heer-Raanjha, 37–39 Helen, 131n1, 132, 133n4, 134–136, 138, 143–145, 145n16, 155, 213 Highway, 313–328 Hindu, 6, 14, 45, 46, 49, 51, 55, 59–61, 59n28, 59n29, 77, 88, 104, 113n1, 114–118, 114n3, 118n5, 120, 121, 123, 124, 126–128, 137, 161, 172, 216, 217, 226, 227, 237, 279, 280n3, 281, 285–288, 291, 306, 317, 334, 342, 358, 372n2, 372n4 Hindu Code Bill, 279, 279n2, 280, 280n3, 287 Honour killing, 47, 87, 259–273, 372n2 Hum Aapke Hain Koun, 297–311 Hum Dil de Chuke Sanam, 144 I Industry, 54, 66, 69, 142, 144, 156, 160, 177, 181 Insaaf ka Tarazu, 69, 219 Intaqam, 69, 131n1, 133, 134, 142, 143, 204, 211–213, 215 Islamisation, 152, 159–162 Item songs, 157 J Jameela, N., 174, 174n18, 176, 176n25, 181 Jarasandha, Tamashi, 188, 188n2 K Kanjar, 83, 84 Kapoor, Ekta, 69, 373 Kapoor, Kareena, 78, 157, 179, 348 Kapoor, Raj, 7n26, 55n24, 64, 277, 282, 290, 323, 356

Kapoor, Shammi, 67, 140, 144 Kapoor, Shashi, 353 Kapur, Shekhar, 223, 229, 232–235 Khalistani, 242–245, 250–252 Khan, Mehboob, 8n27, 277 Khan, Salman, 300, 373 Khap panchayat, 260n2, 262–267 Khote, Durga, 109n47, 350, 355 Koechlin, Kalki, 179, 180, 309 Kotha, 114, 115, 118–121, 124, 135, 355 Krishna, 42, 99, 100, 117, 125, 126, 128, 191n11, 195–197, 231, 290 Kumar, Ashok, 104, 106, 188, 211, 319n15 Kumar, Dilip, 34n16, 36, 64, 277 Kumar, Manoj, 136, 141, 319 Kumar, Raj, 213 Kumari, Meena, 54, 68, 94, 102, 104–106, 167, 168, 320n18 Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, 69 L Lady Macbeth, 152, 162, 162n39, 163 Lakshmanrekha, 66, 271, 325 Lal Patthar, 204, 213–215 Laxman, R.K., 285 Liberalization, 297, 299–300 Lipstick under my Burkha, 331–343 London, 308, 310, 311, 316, 318 Luthria, Milan, 8n27, 348, 357 M Maachis, 16, 16n57, 241–256, 241n1 Madhubala, 34, 34n16, 280, 369 Mahabharata, 13, 118, 137 Mahadalit, 227 Main Zinda Hoon, 11, 68 Malini, Hema, 213, 213n10, 214, 216, 218, 353

 INDEX 

Mallah, 226–231 Mandi, 115, 172, 172n9 Mangeshkar, Lata, 1n1, 3n10, 3n12, 3n13, 4n14, 4n16, 4n17, 5n19, 34, 34n16, 103n33, 103n34, 104n37, 107n41, 131n1, 142, 212n9 Manoj-Babli honour killing case, 262 Manoranjan, 167, 168, 168n1 Manusmriti, 14n51, 79, 104n38 Maqbool, 151, 152, 156, 157, 159–163 Masaan, 331–343 Masculinity, 56, 75, 135, 136, 175, 179, 249, 252, 253, 280, 307, 354 Mausam, 3, 170 Meerabai, 196 Mein Chup Rahoongi, 54 Melodrama, 12, 31, 40, 195n17, 197, 315 Mere Apne, 68, 106 Middle class, 11, 57, 98, 235, 307, 321, 324, 327, 341, 352–354, 358 Militancy, 17n58, 241–256 Mise-en-scene, 28, 30, 41, 48, 133n3, 135, 149, 192, 300, 338 Mitra, Bimal, 45, 45n1, 47, 47n4, 51, 52, 60 Modi, Sohrab, 42 Mohabbatein, 144 Mother, 12, 57, 64, 65, 67–69, 81–84, 87, 88, 106, 108, 117, 118, 120, 121, 125, 141, 168–170, 172, 173, 188, 192, 193, 210, 211, 216, 228, 237, 242, 249, 250, 259–273, 279, 282, 285, 303, 309, 318, 320, 323, 351, 352, 357, 361, 365, 367 Mother-in-law, 7, 9, 10, 18, 63–70, 117, 119, 123, 271, 282, 304 Mr. and Mrs. 55, 277–293 Mughal-e-Azam, 4, 368–369 Mukherji, Hrishikesh, 68

379

N Nadira, 291 Naram Garam, 68 Nargis, 277, 290 Nation/nationalism, 3, 6, 12, 16, 18, 29, 106–108, 134, 190, 209, 217, 244, 248, 256, 277–293, 299, 307, 315, 317, 323, 325n24, 350, 352 National award, 187, 189n6, 190, 223 National Crimes Record Bureau, 314 Natyashastra, 96–98, 351 Naushad, 38 Nautanki, 351, 356 Nautch, 48, 98, 132, 369 Naval,Deepti, 68, 259n1, 260, 267–273 Nehruvian socialism, 12, 299 New Woman, 5, 18, 57, 194, 194n15, 217, 277–293, 299, 300, 324 NH10, 259–273 Nightclub, 315–317, 320, 322, 339, 342 Nimmi, 152, 156, 159–164 Nirbhaya, 235, 314 Nishant, 11, 68 Noir aesthetic, 157 O Omkara, 73–88 Operation Blue Star, 244 Othello, 74, 78, 80, 82, 87, 88 P Padmaavat, 366, 372n2, 372n3 Pakeezah, 114, 114n3, 167–170, 168n2 Palekar, Amol, 352 Parekh, Asha, 140, 143 Parsi theatre, 1, 28n2, 350, 351 Pathak, Dina, 68 Patil, Smita, 68, 352

380 

INDEX

Pawar, Lalita, 9, 65, 69, 70, 281, 282, 304 Performance, 34, 36, 95, 98, 100, 102, 106, 107, 114, 117, 123, 131–145, 159, 247, 268, 273, 332, 338, 347–349, 351–353, 355, 357, 359, 361, 365 Permanent Settlement, 48 Piku, 69, 70 Pillai, K. Shankar (Shankar), 283 Pink, 331–343 Prakash, Om, 65, 215 Prison drama, 189, 189n6, 190 Prostitution, 30, 84, 124, 169, 170, 172, 173n14, 175, 177, 178, 180, 347 Psychotherapy, 168 Purdah, 48, 51, 53n19, 58, 60 Puri, Amrish, 69, 352 Q Queen, 10, 313–328 R Radha, 99–102, 118, 128, 195–197, 195n18, 290 Rafi, Mohammed, 38, 104n36 Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, 77 Raid and rescue, 174, 178 Rajnartaki, 93–109 Rakhee, 67, 213, 214 Rani, Devika, 32, 350, 361 Ray, Satyajit, 53, 143 Rehman, Waheeda, 155, 155n24, 210, 211, 356 Renuka Shahane, 300 Romance, 3, 8, 11, 12, 28, 30, 31, 35–37, 42, 50, 60, 75, 150n13, 158, 163, 246–249, 254–256, 292, 300, 317, 318, 324, 327, 334, 335, 343

Romantic comedy, 68, 280, 281, 288 Romantic melodrama, 197, 246 Roshan, Hrithik, 307 Roy, Arundhati, 233, 234 Roy, Bimal, 13, 187, 195n17 S Sadda Haq, 243–249 Sadhana, 142 Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam, 18, 45–61, 106, 122 Salim-Javed, 203, 218 Sanskritization, 93–109, 137 Sapno ka Saudagar, 218 Sarbjeet, 243 Saroja, 156–159, 164 Sati-Lakshmi, 46, 47, 49, 55, 57 Scandal, 191, 331–342 Scheduled Caste (SC), 84, 227 Seeta aur Geeta, 218 Sen, Mala, 223, 226, 234 Sexuality, 4, 7, 17, 30, 43, 45, 52, 54–56, 77, 78, 82, 86, 96, 137, 145, 145n16, 164, 228, 292, 299, 315, 316, 319, 339, 340, 347, 349, 350, 354, 355, 358, 359, 365, 370–371 Sex workers, 18, 48, 48n8, 114, 115, 121, 167–181, 305, 341, 349 Shantaram, V., 9, 189, 190 Sharma, Anushka, 259n1, 260, 268, 269, 273 Sharma, Konkona Sen, 88 Shashikala, 65 Sholay, 189n6, 203 Shool, 132 Shringara rasa, 50 Simran, 70, 151n21, 156–159, 164 Sindoor, 46, 51 Singh, Navdeep, 259n1, 267, 268, 272, 273 Sita, 87n36, 138, 173

 INDEX 

Smitha, Silk, 357, 359, 360 Somaaya, Bhawana, 156 Spain, 308–311 Special Marriage Act, 59 Sringara rasa, 103 Stri-darpan, 29 Subah, 11, 68, 189n6 Subjectivity, 2, 18, 30, 60, 134, 164, 189n5, 197, 299, 315, 320, 354 Subodh Mukherjee, 348, 353 Sunehra Sansar, 204, 215–218 Supreme Court, 174, 175, 224, 235, 263

381

V Vaastav, 169 Vaishnava padabali, 191, 191n11 Vamp, 7, 7n26, 54, 66, 151, 157, 164, 208, 212, 213, 216, 218, 297, 304, 306, 316, 317, 333, 339, 339n4, 357–360 Veere Di Wedding, 331–343, 365, 370–371, 373 Veshya Anyay Mukabla Parishad (VAMP), 176, 178 Vidya Balan, 358, 359 Vyjayanthimala, 136, 138, 144, 357

T Tabu, 159, 164, 241n1, 242 Talat Mehmood, 34n16, 35–36 Tarana, 30, 37 Tawaif, 113–117, 119, 121–125, 141, 167, 168 Teesri Manzil, 133, 133n5, 134, 140, 143 Tragedy, 42, 64, 157, 249, 250, 272, 288 Transgender, 177–180, 179n37 Trishul, 203, 209, 210, 216 Tuntun, 65

W Wadkar, Hansa, 351, 352 Walker, Johnny, 65 West/Western/Westernized, 2, 5, 7, 67, 68, 80, 81, 93, 99, 132, 133, 135, 137, 138, 194n15, 212, 277, 278, 280, 282, 284, 286–289, 292, 300, 304, 305, 315, 316, 319, 322, 324, 333, 337, 339, 341, 342, 351, 353, 354 Widow Remarriage Act, 52, 59n29 Witch, 49, 78, 95, 100, 162–164, 307–311 Wounded: The Bandit Queen, 231, 232

U Umrao Jaan, 11n35, 114, 114n3, 169 Underworld, 151, 152, 156–162, 169 Uttar Pradesh (UP), 74, 80, 84–86, 214n13, 226, 227, 230, 231, 314

Z Zanjeer, 67, 203, 209, 210, 216, 218, 219 Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, 297–311 Zoya Akhtar, 10n33, 297, 300, 307