How and why Bollywood keeps stereotyping Indian Muslim women

The first ever Laila Majnu was produced in 1922 by J.J. Madan, a top-notch producer. Madan however could not know how his production, about the tragic romantic story of the seventh-century poet Qays ibn al Mulawwah, later known as Majnun, and his lover Layla, would affect the portrayal of Muslim women onscreen for decades to come.

In film, Muslim women take many shapes – as fairytale character; the one who's larger-than-life and unattainable; someone who is weak, dependent and without agency; a lovelorn heroine; a princess; a "tawaif" (an entertainer highly skilled in music, dance and poetry who catered to nobility during the Mughal era), and nowadays, an untrustworthy spy.

In reality, Muslim women are much more complicated.

They were also much better represented in the early years of the film industry. India’s first female filmmaker was a mover and shaker named Fatma Begum. She founded the first woman-owned film business established in 1926, Fatma Films.

From the 1920s to the 1940s, Muslim actresses included Zubeida, Sultana, Shahzadi, Noor Jehan, Jehanara Kaijan and Jiloobai. And through the 1960s there were Suraiya, Shakila, Madhubala, Meena Kumari and Nimmi. The industry also included early music composers Bilboo and Jaddan Bai, and singers Gauhar Jan and Malka Jan.

The list is long, yet Bollywood’s depiction of onscreen Muslim women today remains peppered with stereotypes.

How did a problematic narrative of Muslim women emerge? In short: colonialism. In "Gender, Islam, and 19th-Century Brava: A Brief Note," scholar Deeqa Mohamed blamed "European chauvinism and orientalist literature" for the stereotypes.

"The presumption was that Islam fundamentally constricted women’s status and identity in a way that Western women did not experience. While in the West, women could criticise, challenge, and redefine their culture, (but) women in the 'Islamic world' had to part with their culture and beliefs when pursuing self-determination," Mohamed said.

This colonisers’ mindset was central to the development of the onscreen narrative of Muslim women. But it was the result of "many profound cultural misunderstandings," wrote Veena Oldenburg, a seminal scholar on courtesans in her "Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of Lucknow (1990)."

Oldenburg further mentioned how the courtesans were put "in an extremely dubious and vulnerable position under the British, being addressed as 'singing and dancing girls.'"

When the very same "singing and dancing girls" (pejorative naming in local language nachneganewali) turned up in scripts, they became "the dominant image of the Muslim woman in Hindi cinema," said Rachel Dwyer, an Indian culture and cinema professor at the University of London.

She came up with a list of 10 commonly seen Muslim characters in Bollywood, including gangsters, sidekicks and terrorists.

From the 1920s to the 1960s, more historical films such as "Taj Mahal," "Anarkali" and "Mirza Ghalib" were produced. Notably, none were directed or written by a woman.

However, their leads were often Muslim actresses, like legendary Suraiya Jamal Sheikh, who played Chaudavin in one of her career bests "Mirza Ghalib" (a 1954 biographical film on the famous 19th-century Indian poet).

The role would earn Suraiya a National Film Award for her performance as Ghalib’s lover. After watching the film, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru lauded Suraiya, saying "Tumne Mirza Ghalib kii ruuh ko zindaa kar diyaa" (You have brought the soul of Mirza Ghalib back to life).

Deconstructing Nehru’s compliment to the actress, one would notice the premier's informed understanding of history. By acknowledging Chaudavin as a real-life character of the 19th century and Suraiya’s acting skills, Nehru as the political head of the country recognised an era when tawaifs were powerful.

Nehru was also supportive of the growing film industry and had called on younger people to join it.

In real life, Suraiya stood in huge contrast to her onscreen personality of tawaif, a role she played more than once. She was India’s first female superstar, a mega- celebrity, and an all-time highest paid South Asian actress who had debuted as a nine-year-old child artist in Jaddan Bai’s "Madame Fashion" (1936).

But the average film-going Indian male was disinterested in any historical reality (unlike the country’s leader Nehru or the learned strata).

These fans were more inclined to watch historical dramas to tickle their subconscious chauvinism and their masculine desire to be entertained by a woman, more so when it came to a courtesan, but all in the garb of watching historical romance.

Thus there was a market demand for historical romance resulting in repeated productions of "Taj Mahal" and the doomed love story of Prince Salim (later Emperor Jahangir) and courtesan Anarkali.

Although Anarkali’s existence in history is hotly contested, she emerged central to a performative narrative, symbolic to Muslim women’s story in multi-format storytelling.

Between 1931 and 1960, three productions were launched with Anarkali at its heart. They include a play titled "Taj" (1922), by Pakistani playwright Imtiaz Ali Taj and Indian films "Anarkali" (1953) directed by Nandlal Jaswant Lal (based on the play) and the brilliant "Mughal-e-Azam" (1960) by K. Asif.

No film centring a courtesan has been so popular and loved in Bollywood than "Mughal-e-Azam," which enjoys this status even today, even though "Umrao Jaan" (1981) may arguably come second.

In retrospect, its popularity owed much to the onscreen chemistry of the leading superstars Dilip Kumar (born Yusuf Khan) as Prince Salim; and Madhubala (born Mumtaz Jehan Begum Dehlavi) as Anarkali, as well as their offscreen personas and huge fan followings.

It isn’t an exaggeration that there is only one Madhubala in Hindi cinema’s history. Her phenomenal beauty, charming, vivacious personality and fastidious commitment to her craft in addition to her private life (she rarely gave interviews, she had a relationship with Dilip Kumar and she died at 36 years old) drove comparisons to Marilyn Monroe.

Such was her enigma that James Burke of Life Magazine travelled to Bombay in 1951 to film her for a cover story. At the height of her career, Madhubala was wealthy and owned a fleet of cars including a Town & Country, a car owned by only one other person in India at the time – the Maharaja of Gwalior.

The career success enjoyed by Suraiya and Madhubala should have been enough to nullify the false presumption that Muslim women in India were mostly weak and dominated by men.

"Mughal-e-Azam's" Anarkali sets off the making of the archetypal tawaif, liminal between powerful men. The discourse would continue in Muzaffar Ali’s "Umrao Jaan" (1981).

This film by Muzaffar Ali is based on the life of Umrao Jaan Ada, a famous poet and courtesan who was active during the latter half of the 19th century.

The movie is crafted sensitively, strung through the realism of the times. It picks adequately on the patriarchal biases of the social order, with Ali describing Umrao Jaan as a self-respecting, independent courtesan whose life is marred by manipulative male partners.

Decades later, in his debut film "Gaman" ("The Departure," 1978) Muzaffar Ali along with writer Hriday Lani bring to life Ghulam (male protagonist) and his wife Khairun, a couple whose relationship stands on an equal note.

Khairun plays a rare Muslim female character: intelligent, brave and minimal, far from the stereotypical tawaif or Mughal princess. Notably, "Gaman" is a post-Emergency film, released shortly after a two-year period of state crisis from 1975-77. It consequently contains a great deal of cinematic realism.

While "Umrao Jaan" and "Gaman" depicted Muslim women with nuance, Bollywood soon saw the release of "Muqqadar ka Sikandar" ("Conqueror of Destiny") in 1978.

It became one of the top mainstream hits of the decade, and brought back the archetypal film tawaif like never before. Zohra Bibi (a tawaif played by actress Rekha) is Sikandar’s (protagonist played by Amitabh Bachchan) object of lust, but not important enough for "love or marriage," unlike the depiction of earlier courtesans from "Mughal-e-Azam," "Mamta" or "Pakeezah" (1971).

Zohra’s love remains unrequited, leading to her suicide. Such characterisation is in keeping with the market demands of the time, which catered to an audience that happily consumed cinema for entertainment only, to help them evade harsh realities (rising joblessness and poverty) while inside a theatre.

But fast forward to the 2000s, and there's a different discourse in the making.

The festering animosity between India and Pakistan, which began with Partition in 1947 and grew worse after four damaging wars, the last in 1999, helped foster a new trend of jingoistic cinema. In these movies, Muslim women served as both victims and patriotic props.

These tropes were on full display in smash hit "Gadar Ek Prem Katha" ("Rebellion: A Love Story," 2001). In the film, Sakina is a Muslim girl saved by Tara Singh, a Sikh man, during Partition riots in 1947 (Singh pretends to marry her by smearing vermillion on her hair parting, a Hindu ritual).

Later Sakina learns that her parents are alive and her father is the mayor of Lahore. A lot happens, with Sakina finally choosing her "happy Indian" life and deciding to escape from her "own people" in Pakistan, who were opposed to her marriage with an Indian (Sikh).

For most of the film, Sakina is a damsel in distress, repeatedly saved by Singh; once from Hindu rioters and later from her parents (who are portrayed as bad, intolerant Muslims). "Gadar 2" was released in 2023 and was a major blockbuster (apt for the current climate in which India and Pakistan are at permanent loggerheads).

From 2001 to 2024, Muslim women onscreen in Bollywood have indeed transformed. They are neither tawaifs nor lovelorn heroines, but contemporary, educated and intelligent women.

They often choose to work as spies for their respective countries, both India and Pakistan, like Zoya in "Ek Tha Tiger" ("Once There was a Tiger," 2012, now a franchise; Sehmat in "Raazi" ("The Agreement," 2018); Dr. Rubina Mohsin aka Rubai in "Pathaan," 2023 (an all-time highest grossing film). On occasion, they also spy on behalf of individuals, as Zoya did in "Animal."

However, most espionage films are largely male-driven shows, linked to the male honour that is metaphoric to the nation. Women are second in line after the action.

They are overly sexualised as Dr. Rubina aka Rubai is portrayed in "Pathaan." It would be interesting to see female spies characterised beyond their sexualised identity, away from the misplaced notion of "girl power" or "femme fatale" and instead as "professionals" in espionage, whose lives are not caught between the male spy representing the "nation" and the "enemy."

Then again, there have been some exemptions with scripts that are pluralistic, cognisant of women’s independent identity, and not ultra nationalistic. For example, in "Once There was a Tiger," Tiger (Salman Khan) and Zoya (Katrina Kaif) work for rival countries India and Pakistan, only to escape their respective states to embark on an elusive journey. Zoya for the most part is an independent young woman who knows what she is up to and plays equal to her love interest Tiger, who also becomes her colleague in the sequel.

But Zoya is an exception, as is Khairun or Aaliya Hussain (an acrobat and owner of a big circus company in "Dhoom 3" (2013) who are in charge of their lives, who need men but as equals only.

Regrettably they are few and far apart and likely to be forgotten as Muslim women onscreen continue to remain the "other" in current times.

They are discriminated against easily like Zoya in "Animal" – from entry to romance to the fall – to being banished from the male protagonist’s life. Such onscreen treatment finds its inspiration in real life. For example, research has found that for every 1,000 employed women in India, only 101 are Muslim women, due to hiring bias.

The on- and off-screen perceptions of these women then seem dangerously close to each other.