Accidentally or avowedly, Sultan has scored a brownie point in the representation of Muslims in the realm of popular cinema which exercises an incalculable influence on the public mind.
Its lead characters — Sultan Ali Khan and Aarfa Khan — don’t flaunt their religion as a badge. And are treated as characters who have assimilated into the mainstream of everyday life. No riots, no signs of prejudice, no totems which accompany practically every film populated by Muslim characters.
Now these may be negative virtues, but truly let’s count our blessings at a time when world cinema at large has been presenting Muslims either as terrorists or as victims of suspicion and hatred following the tragic 9/11 devastation of 2001. Be it in Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies or the TV series Homeland, the invariably bearded, bonfire-eyed terrorists, Muslims have been branded as viciously violent jihadists. If there are any exceptions to this rule, they are barely conspicuous by their presence.
But for a couple of scenes located in a dargah, Sultan could well have been yet another take on Bajrangi Bhaijaan, showing Muslims to be tandoori chicken gourmands and to be shunned if they have rented a home in the neighbourhood. Sub-textually, by avoiding clichés the whopper hit of the year, written and directed by Ali Abbas Zafar, has paved the way for portraying Muslims with an imperatively required inclusiveness.
Whether you have a taste for Bollywood’s hyper-exaggerated cinema calculated for mass appeal and whether you like or loathe the foot-in-the-mouth specialist Salman Khan, are beside the point. Speaking entirely for myself, it was a relief to evidence a film where the heroic as well as the adversaries don’t become material for faux secularism or strive, hope against hope, to prove their nationalist credentials.
Muslims in the movies, like it or not, surface centre-screen only once-in-a-crescent moon. The Bollywood trade soothsayers believe that they’re to be evaded if a film is to connect with a pan-Asian audience. In fact, there wouldn’t have been a Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge if its director Aditya Chopra had stuck to his initial resolve — of making his debut with a story about a young couple who meet in the midst of the Mumbai communal riots of 1993-94.
Neither would there have been a Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... in the way it finally emerged on the screen, if Karan Johar had stuck to the idea of making the character of Kajol a Muslim girl from the Chandni Chowk mohalla of Purani Dilli.
Evidently, both Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar lost nerve before the films commenced shooting. Chopra discarded his original script while Johar incorporated changes. The Chandni Chowk girl stayed on in the plot but she became the daughter of a pundit halwai.
All commercial prospects considered, can the Mumbai-ishtyle filmmakers be blamed for excluding Muslims as the lead protagonists It would seem if the hero or the heroine is a Muslim, then contentious issues have to be grappled with. And how many of the now generation’s filmmakers even know about the cataclysmic details of the subcontinent’s Partition or are interested in doing something embracive through the medium of cinema
Over a quarter of a century after the Babri Masjid demolition, has any filmmaker had the nerve to tackle the subject in some detail More to the point, would frank speak be permitted by the infamously draconian censor board eager to muzzle any sliver of pertinent political comment
Indeed, only the rare film that has featured central Muslim protagonists like the beleaguered couple, Manisha Koirala and Arvind Swamy, in Mani Ratnam’s Bombay. Reservation ahead: although Ratnam’s forayed into an area where cameras fear to tread, the film was marked by too many balancing acts, almost as if Ratnam was scared of alienating either section of his audience.
Incidentally, the Muslim audience is rated as the most fervent and passionate of filmgoers. Lose them and you lose a major slice of the ticket vote bank. Indeed, it was because of the anxiety to please this demographic that films would once upon a time insist on adding a sympathetic Chacha Rahim caricature or a supporting actor who sacrifices his life for a Hindu friend at the end.
Far too frequently there has been something downright crude and patchy in the representation of Muslims. For instance, there was neither head nor tale to the Salman Khan caper Tumko Na Bhool Paayenge, in which the hero, a Muslim goes amnesiac, is adopted by a Hindu family, retrieves his memory and fetches up at the Haji Ali Dargah.
If any point was being conveyed, it was entirely lost on the audience, which nixed the film at the ticket windows. Sohail Khan’s Maine Dil Tujhko Diya set up Sanjay Dutt as a Muslim don with a heart of gold. Dutt repeated the act as Iqbal Danger in Annarth. All quite easily forgotten.
Steadily, the underworld become the hang-out of Muslims. Take Sarfarosh, an otherwise sensible film. The bad guy, Naseeruddin Shah, was a ghazal singer from Pakistan.
Curiously or maybe understandably Ram Gopal Varma didn’t want to alienate the Muslim constituency. Although his main protagonists in Company were clearly modelled on Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Rajan, the characters played by Ajay Devgn and Vivek Oberoi weren’t given Islamic trappings or names. Clever, very clever.
The bottomline is that characters must emerge from the plot, cast, creed and religion no bar. Auspiciously in Sultan it does, the way it once did in its goofy, delightful way in Amar Akbar Anthony. The element of religious divisiveness was downplayed, too, in Chak De! India.
It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white, Hindu, Muslim or Christian. As long as filmmakers believe in a story, as long as there’s this conviction that the story must be told, then they’re on the right track.
Or else filmmakers might as well play the stock market, the roulette and the horse races. Whatever, as long as it’s not cinema.
Khalid Mohamed is a journalist, film critic and film director
