The pronounced contribution of Muslims to the Indian film industry is well known, but the pioneering role of Muslim women such as Fatma Begum, India’s first female filmmaker, does not get the attention it deserves
Suraiya Jamal Sheikh was India’s first female superstar.
In the early years of the Indian film industry, acting was still looked down upon at the turn of the 20th century. Performing arts were particularly seen as unsuitable professions for respectable women, forcing men to play female roles in films. Over two decades after male actor Anna Salunke played the female lead Rani Taramati’s character in India’s first feature film Raja Harishchandra (1913), Fatma Begum swam against the tide. Begum broke new ground by founding the production company Fatima Films in 1936.
Begum, who also acted and wrote scripts, earned the distinction of being India’s first female director-producer. She would go on to influence storytelling as one of the trailblazing personalities of Indian cinema by including women’s experiences in it besides opening doors for other women filmmakers.
Born in 1892, Begum was trained as a young woman in Urdu theatre. She began her acting career at 30 with Ardeshir Irani’s silent film Veer Abhimanyu (1922). Begum later featured in films such as Gul-e-Bakavali. She became the first Indian woman director when she made a big-budget production Bulbul-e-Paristan on a queen bringing order through magic. Begum used innovative trick photography to create special effects in the film based on the Persian fable Bulbul-e-Paristan, enhancing its popularity and inspiring more fantasy films.
Women played leading roles in Begum’s films such as Heer Ranjha and Chandravali (1928), Naseeb ni Devi, and Shakuntala (1929). Begum also launched her daughters Zubeida, who featured in India’s first talking film Alam Ara in 1931, and Sultana and Shehzadi as actors. Her profile on the website of the Golden Globe Awards notes her film career displayed her many talents — acting, screenwriting, directing, and producing. It regrets her trailblazing career was dampened as none of her films remain available for viewing as film preservation was not considered important during her 15-year career.
While the pronounced contribution of Muslims to the Indian film industry is well known, the pioneering role of Muslim women such as Fatma Begum does not get the attention it deserves. Muslim women have continued making their mark in the Bombay film industry or Bollywood following in Begum’s footsteps.
Noor Jehan, Jehanara Kaijan, and Jiloobai emerged among leading female actors from the 1920s to the 1940s apart from Zubeida, Sultana, and Shahzadi. Suraiya, Shakila, Madhubala, Meena Kumari, and Nimmi gained prominence through the 1960s. Music composers Bilboo and Jaddanbai Hussain, and singers Gauhar Jan and Malka Jan were among other pioneering Muslim women who made their make in the industry in its early days.
Suraiya Jamal Sheikh was India’s first female superstar, whose role in Mirza Ghalib (1954) got her the National Film Award. Once South Asia’s highest-paid female actor, she began her career at nine as a child artist in Jaddanbai’s Madame Fashion (1936). Mumtaz Jehan Begum Dehlavi, better known as Madhubala who drew parallels with Marilyn Monroe, enjoyed as much stardom and adulation.
Muslim contribution to the film industry has been much more than acting, direction, scriptwriting, dialogues, lyrics, etc. The industry’s metaphors are deeply influenced by the culture associated with Muslims. The Hindi film, as academic Mukul Kesavan pointed out in a March 2006 piece for business daily Mint, ‘is actually the Urdu film’. He cited popular film titles and added the vast majority of them are drawn on the Persian lexicon that distinguishes Urdu from its Sanskritized cousin, Hindi:
The lyrics and dialogue of “Hindi” movies are even more dependent on Urdu’s Persianate idiom. This is partly because that idiom is better equipped to supply sonorous words for inflated emotions than Hindi is
Academic Mukul Kesavan
The fair Muslim representation in Bollywood unlike the overall exclusion has done little to prevent the degeneration of the negative portrayal of Muslims into outright demonization and dehumanization. The tectonic shift in Indian polity and society with the rise of Hindu nationalism, which is deeply antipathic towards Muslims, has had a profound impact on Bollywood. Movies have increasingly complemented the dominant political narrative of the need for a strong nationalist government to put Muslims in their place.
The movie Animal (2023) remains a case in point even as much of the debate about the film revolved around toxic masculinity. The film revolves around the transformation of Ranvijay Singh (Ranbir Kapoor) from a family man into an animal when he discovers the villain Abrar Haque (Bobby Deol) and his two brothers plotted the murder of his father and their uncle Balbeer Singh for his wealth.
Haque curiously appears on screen to the beats of Persian music in celebration of his third marriage. Despite being part of the same family, Deol’s character is named Abrar Haque. The three villainous brothers are portrayed as Muslim converts. In a piece in Bangladesh’s The Daily Star, University of Alberta PhD scholar Nazmul Arefin wondered whether it is because showing ‘converted Muslims as graphically evil is considered okay’. He wondered whether the choice was made because the converted Muslim could be shown to have two or three wives sitting on the wings while he got married yet again, dancing to a Farsi tune:
Was it done to show how common it is for Muslims to have non-consensual intercourse with their new wives, in a scene that is shown immediately after a violent murder? Ranvijay’s wife can slap him at any point, and she can decide not to have intercourse with him if she doesn’t want to. But the wives of Abrar are Muslim and Muslim women supposedly have no such thing as agency. It doesn’t matter where or when, they are seemingly ready to respond to the call of their husband or even that of their husband’s brothers
Nazmul Arefin, University of Alberta
Animal aligns with the dominant political ideology and its portrayal of Muslims as a perennial problem. Indian cinema has long normalized anti-Muslim sentiments. The exceptionalism of ‘Muslim barbarism’, as Arefin points out, has coincided with the rise of Hindu nationalism. In Adipurush (2023), even Ravan, the antagonist in the Hindu epic Ramayana, was shown like Muslims are portrayed in Bollywood films with a long beard and kohl eyes as part of what Arefin rightly calls a cultural project of Muslim monsterisation.
