The Hindi-Urdu film industry, right through its transition from Bombay to Mumbai, has had an interesting relationship with what one may call the Muslim dilemma in post-independence India. The splendour of Mughal-e-Azam, the “lakhnavi nazakat” of Chaudhvin Ka Chand and Bahu Begum or the romanticised “tawaif” of Pakeezah or Umrao Jaan have as much been an eminent part of Bollywood’s (how can one avoid using that word?!) dream spinning industry as the formulaic masala spicing up movies served by the Manmohan Desais, Prakash Mehras and David Dhawans. Muslim ‘characters’ have most of the time conformed to stereotypes (for instance the underworld goonda or the qawwali singer) rather than be vibrant individuals. Ever so often, the film makers have pandered to a section of the majority community by casting aspersions on the loyalties of the Indian Muslim. Instances abound where the Pakistani Muslim characters –aided and abetted by their ‘brethren’ this side of the border- were used to create high drama of intrigue and betrayal, as in Sarfarosh. Of late, though, not all that suddenly either, the Mumbai filmmaker has shown willingness to experiment –sometimes boldly and at others hesitatingly- with themes, characters and approach. The biggest breakthroughs have come in recent months, when, rather belatedly, a clutch of films addressing the sensitive questions of the Muslim’s connection with terrorism, or the not-so-subtle discrimination that the community suffers, have provided thematic content to some bold ventures.

Subhash Ghai’s Black & White is a film totally out-of-sync with the kind of cinema he is associated with – conceived on a grand scale, featuring big stars, looking to set the box office till ringing for long, sustained periods. It is not that he succeeded each time, but there was no mistaking his avowed objective. For Ghai to suddenly come up with Black & White and that too not accompanied with the usual promotional hype, is big break from the past. The film revolves around the arrival in India, in Old Delhi, of an Afghan Jehadi. A Hindu professor of Urdu literature (Anil Kapoor, playing a role so different from his crude comedy act in the immediately preceding release Welcome), at Delhi’s Zakir Hussain College (incidentally the college where Professor Gilani –suspected to be the mastermind behind the Parliament House bombing- also teaches) and an idealistic Muslim Urdu poet (played by the theatre veteran Habib Tanvir) are two of the prominent people that Numair Qazi (debutant Anurag Sinha, in a searing, intense performance) welcome into their homes. Numair is a terrorist who comes into India from Afghanistan with the mission to carry out a bomb attack at Delhi’s Red Fort on Independence Day. The mission fails but not without leaving deep scars on the hearts and minds of the trusting Hindu and Muslim hosts. The drama that unfolds has several layers. Anyone who has a Muslim name, and suddenly appearing on the scene, is a suspect immediately. Worse still, if he sports a beard, then he must also “look like a terrorist”! The deep-rooted prejudice comes out in the open. For most part the film is ‘located’ in old Delhi, particularly in Chandni Chowk, an area with a long secular culture. That culture is eroded, the film avers. Underlining the narrative is the tragedy of secular devaluation, religious profiling and consequent disenchantment that is germinating in young Muslim minds.

Shaurya and, more recently, Aamir have been criticised for plagiarising A Few Good Men and Phone Booth or Cellular, respectively. It is not my purpose here to fight for or against the pilfering of ideas by film makers. What is important is the fact that the two Mumbai films are so very topical, so very closely Indian that one would like to say that adaptation of universal themes and ideas should not be so looked down upon. (After all, Vishal Bharadwaj’s recent films Maqbool and Omkara also did not have ‘original’ stories, and they were praised for some great adaptation.) Both Shaurya and Aamir are brilliant in the context of how Hindi films now look at India’s Muslim –not necessarily communal- scene.

Shaurya is set in the backdrop of armed forces. The story is about two friends in the Army who face each other in a Military Court, acting as counsels for prosecution (Jaaved Jafri) and defence (Rahul Bose) in a case against a Muslim officer Capt Jaaved Khan (Deepak Dobriyal) accused of killing his own superior officer during a combing operation to nail down a terrorist in Kashmir. The defence lawyer chances upon evidence that inspires him to defend the accused while the prosecution, and obliquely the judges, tend to treat the case as open and shut. Through dogged pursuit, the defence is able to prove, extracting admission by a brigadier (Kay Kay Menon), to the effect that Capt Jaaved Khan was charged more because he was a Muslim rather than a cruel killer. Kill he did, not because he was saving a Muslim terrorist, but because the Hindu officer heading the operation was ruthlessly violating human rights. For both, the dead officer and the brigadier whose patronage he enjoyed, elimination of Muslims was an avowed objective for they were, through their own warped logic, convinced that Muslims do not have India’s national interests at their heart and that they were a community breeding and harbouring terrorists.
Shaurya raises disturbing questions but provides no answers, perhaps aiming only to curdle conscience of the viewers. Is the Indian Army indulging in blatant violation of human rights, in Kashmir, thanks to the venom that resides in the minds of communalised officers? Is a Muslim –in the Army or wherever else in the establishment- always under scrutiny and likely to be a suspect at the feeblest of suggestions?

Aamir has come as great surprise, not just because it introduces a new director or a debutant actor playing the title role, but because it does not fight shy of talking about the definite existence of a segment within the Muslim population that is creating terror at the behest of and with help from fundamentalist forces. It is a story of an educated Muslim (Rajeev Khandelwal) on a visit home from England, caught in a vicious vortex. Even before he clears the immigration and customs desks at Mumbai airport, he gets a foretaste of things to come. His baggage is scrutinised again and again and again, presumably because his “name is Aamir and not Amar”. Out of the airport, Aamir plunges headlong into a nightmarish maze with no escape routes, that leads him on to acting as a conduit of an explosive device which he, willy nilly, plants in a crowded bus in downtown Mumbai. Repeatedly, he argues with his tormentors to say that he did not believe Muslims were a discriminated lot in India or that killing innocent people was a way out at all. He is the young educated Muslim who has benefited from a fair, modern education system. So far removed he is from the uneducated, misled population that is hypnotised by the lunatic fringe within the Muslim community. In other words, to borrow from another movie lately seen: Every terrorist caught may be a Muslim, but not every Muslim is a terrorist. The hero’s final act of blowing himself up rather than the overflowing bus, is also an act signifying vindication of the Muslim community. It is a powerful plea to look at Muslims through a different set of eyes.

Dharam is a film quite different from any other film discussed above in as much as it does not have any major characters who may be Muslims or that it does not deal with the dilemma of the Muslim mind. And, yet, it is a film that is connected with the over-arching question of the communal imbroglio that India is perpetually placed in, given the persistent undercurrent of Hindu-Muslim lack of harmony. The film’s central character (Pankaj Kapoor) – a devout, learned Hindu, brahmin priest – is widely respected in his city Varanasi. He leads a pious life, devoting all his time and energy in the service of his religion. In comes a little child, an abandoned infant, into this brahmin household to disrupt the rhythm of the small family of three. Efforts to locate the parents of the child do not succeed even as he becomes a darling of the priest’s wife and daughter. The nagging question for the Brahmin is about the faith or caste the child may belong to. He does not even want to touch the child. Fate has other designs though: the priest himself grows fond of the bright child whom he tutors in religious texts and rituals. The child becomes an integral part of the family, but then arrives his Muslim mother to claim him. The priest is devastated, realising that he had brought up a Muslim child in his own house. He goes through a long and trying penance and tries to recover from the shock. However, communal riots break out in the city, triggering a fresh round of trauma for the priest and his family. The Muslim woman comes to the Brahmin family’s door, pleading that they save the child from the rioters by giving him shelter. The priest does not relent. Soon though, in a turn of events, he goes into the Muslim quarters of the city and saves not just the child but also shames the Hindu extremists into putting a stop to the carnage.
Dharam’s strengths lie in not running down one religion to the detriment of another, but in its stark presentation of how the communal extremist’s mind works. How are the rabble rousers able to mislead mobs and how insanity engulfs even the educated? In the context of Dharam, these are questions that Hindu fundamentalists must ask themselves.

These films have come riding on a decade and half long efforts of documentarists and feature film makers. Anand Patwardhan’s Ram Ke Naam
and Rakesh Sharma’s Final Solution dealt with the communal question most tellingly, scaring the powers that be to withhold their censor certificates as long as they could, but they were released and celebrated all right. Similar was the fate of Anurag Kashyap’s effort Black Friday – again a film that won kudos in the ‘right’ circles. But none of these efforts were commercially successful. However, films dealing with the same theme in an entirely jingoistic manner – Sarfarosh and Gadar- became hits. These were films that cemented the age old Hollywood-Bollywood formula of “us” being all virtuous and “they” being so villainous. These were films that reinforced the stereotype cultivated in the Indian mind, about people across the border being backward, uneducated (or, at best, Madarsa-educated), women in Burqas and men in skull caps, all hatching conspiracies to decimate India. While Sarfarosh and Gadar may have gone overboard in their nationalist fervour, the films now coming out of the Mumbai factory are bound to bring in welcome change. Subtle references to bearing the Muslim cross (as in Chak De India where Kabir Khan stood banished from the national team because he allegedly sided with Pakistan in an India-Pakistan hockey match) or refreshing portrayals in films such as Khuda Kay Liye are bound to change the fallacious perceptions that prevail at the moment. It is in the latter, a Pakistani film, that the world at large is told by a Muslim cleric played by an Indian actor: Every terrorist caught may be a Muslim, but not every Muslim is a terrorist.

Are we witness to a new jihad with its epicentre in Mumbai?