The magic of nawabs, begums & courtesans

Slowly but surely, they’ve become extinct. The genre had a quaint name: Muslim socials. And they would unspool stories about Nizams and nawabs, bahus and begums, crackling with Urdu dialogue, advancing the importance of piety, poetic discourses, and occasionally even critiqued social malaises like bigamy and the Islamic talaaq system.

Scores of sensitively written, directed and acted films have been, alas, deleted from the memory files. A fistful of opulently mounted sagas continue to be deservedly apotheosised though: most classically of them all, Pakeezah (1972), which enshrined the courtesan with a heart of pure platinum in public memory. It was a strangely cloaked world in which women surrendered their hearts but not their izzat (read chastity). Sexuality was, at most, suggestive.
Result: utterly incredible but supremely romantic odes to women who sang and danced for their avaricious guardians, usually a madame who chewed paan, treating the courtesan worse than her spitoon. Of course, the tawaif wasn’t confined to the Muslim socials, also showing up once in a while in Sadhna (1958) and Khilona (1970) as nautch girls — a lingering British term — hired to impersonate goody-two-shoes potential housewives.
Largely, the courtesan was essentially the pivot of Muslim socials, a role in which the perennially oppressed Meena Kumari (Gazal ’64, Benazir ’74, Pakeezah) and then the sultry Rekha (Muqaddar ka Sikandar ’78, Umrao Jaan ’81) were stereotyped. Depicted as victims of birth and circumstances, they were either rescued from the kothas or were trapped within its walls for ever. Dressed in shimmering Anarkali costumes (the most legendary courtesan of them all), decked up in mega-carats of diamond jewellery, the courtesan would cast a wistful look at a caged parrot.
But all Muslim socials were not about symbology, grand music scores, ghungroo-resounding dances and mysterious chastity belts. At least one of these “socials”, which oozed with a bygone era’s tehzeeb and grace, has been barely chronicled. Of the two, it is surprisingly that H.S. Rawail’s Mere Mehboob (1963) has fallen by the wayside. A re-dekko confirms that it established fashion trends and exuded charm, what with a university student falling in love on colliding into a girl in a burqa — much like the love spark on seeing a woman’s feet in Pakeezah.
Expectedly, the “fallen woman” or the courtesan does figure even in this social drama of Lucknowi manners. The vanilla white hero of Mere Mehboob discovers that he has been living off his sister’s tainted earnings, which may jeopardise his love story but then he must have the guts to accept the facts. Here was a pungently ironic comment, asserting that it’s a woman who is more sinned against than sinning.
The Naseem-Ashok Kumar film Najma (1943) was a seminal Muslim social. Chandni Chowk (1954) didn’t click but it is worth a rewind for its strong plea for secularism. Barsaat Ki Raat (1960) with a superb ghazal and qawwali-crammed music score presented Madhubala as an aristocratic family’s daughter in love with a down-at-heel poet. Social disparities often played the villain then. Or misunderstandings between friends. Example: Chaudhvin Ka Chand (1960). In Mere Huzoor (1968), a favourite among the female audiences, the courtesan reappeared, in the rare part of a homebreaker.
The fact that the socials featured Muslim characters wasn’t a box-office risk as it is today. The surprise hit, Mere Gharib Nawaaz (1973), may have been shabbily made but drew “house full” crowds for its music score, tight storyline and a focus on Muslim culture. The purdah system was constantly harped upon. It was left to B.R. Chopra’s Nikaah (1982) and Sagar Sarhadi’s Bazaar (1982) to take a progressive stance. Indeed, Bazaar showed its Muslim characters to be like any other modern urban family, partying with a well-stocked bar quite visible amidst the set decor.
M.S. Sathyu’s masterpiece Garam Hawa (1973), too, was quantum leaps forward in its portrayal of a lower middle-class family’s struggle to adapt to the upheaval created by the Partition. Saeed Akhtar Mirza’s Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro (1989) and Naseem (1995) served as close-ups of the community’s status in a fast-altering cityscape.
After Fiza (2000) and Zubeida (2003), my attempt to present an upscale Muslim family as “normal” as any other, didn’t exactly thrill the distributors. Why can’t the eponymous Tehzeeb (2003), her husband Salim and mother Rukhsana be given names from other faiths? By narrowing down to a Muslim theme a sizeable section of the ticket-buyers would be lost, it was argued. That is the attitude, currently, of Bollywood’s market leaders. For sure, Muslim characters have frequently popped up as terrorists (awfully presented, as in Kurbaan, 2009), and it is only a top production house which can pull off a My Name is Khan (2010).
Meanwhile, the Muslim socials — of nawabs, begums and courtesans — have been buried, without so much as half a lament. Like it or not, a remake of Mere Mehboob, today, would be more aggressively titled as Kya Super Hot Hain Hum.

The writer is a journalist, film critic and film director