Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Download MP3
This week Mumbai is marking the first anniversary of coordinated terrorist attacks on the Indian city. On Thursday, a few big-name movie stars will join an inter-faith ceremony commemorating the dead. Mumbai dominated by Bollywood, and there are many Muslims both behind and in front of the camera. But the film industry rarely depicts their lives – or anything to do with real life, for that matter. In the third and final part of her series on India’s Muslim minority, Miranda Kennedy reports from Bollywood.
- ‘India’s Muslim community’ series page
- BBC coverage of the Mumbai attacks
- Muslim star Emraan Hashmi (pictured) claims housing bias
Miranda Kennedy’s stories from India were funded by a grant from the International Reporting Project.
Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.
MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston. India is marking the one-year anniversary of the Mumbai terrorist attacks. An Islamic militant group based in Pakistan is believed to have planned and executed the attacks. That’s raised religious tensions in India. Tomorrow, an interfaith ceremony is planned in Mumbai to memorialize the 166 people killed a year ago. The ceremony will include Bollywood movie stars. There are many Muslims working in Bollywood, but India’s film industry rarely depicts the lives of Muslims, as Miranda Kennedy reports from Mumbai.
MIRANDA KENNEDY: A decade ago, director Mahesh Bhatt broke the unspoken and inflexible rules of Bollywood with this film, “Zakhm.” The movie’s very first scene is of Hindu-Muslim riots on the streets of Mumbai, a no-no in an industry in which successful films ignore ugly reality in favor of romantic plot lines. And the love story here is between a Hindu man and a Muslim woman, which also breaks a taboo. Bhatt says he made the movie as a way to come to terms with his own experience as the product of a secretive inter-religious relationship.
MAHESH BHATT: Portions of my childhood are there: why my mother was not allowed the status of a wife, how she was a closet Muslim, how she hid her faith and prayed behind closed doors, how she gave us Hindu names and sent us to Christian schools. According to her instinct, her motherly instinct, that don’t let them tell the world that their mother is a Muslim.
KENNEDY: A generation ago, it was completely unacceptable for a Muslim to marry a Hindu in most sections of society. It may be a little easier in today’s India, but it’s still not considered okay in the movies. Mahesh Bhatt couldn’t get any big-time backing for his film, and it didn’t do well at the box office. Indu Mirani covers Bollywood for the Mumbai Mirror.
INDU MIRANI: Films here are largely about entertainment. “I’d much rather go and see a song and dance routine.” That’s the way people think here. “Take me into another world, make me happy.”
KENNEDY: Mahesh Bhatt says the big studios steer clear of films that examine religious tensions, because such films can easily lead to protests or riots, shut down movie theatres, and cause millions of dollars of losses.
BHATT: It’s a very important thing to understand this: I can’t make an entire film which talks about the Muslims being discriminated. You can’t make a film on Malcolm X. Not ready yet.
KENNEDY: While many top Bollywood stars are Muslim and keep their names, they still can’t make movies about their own religious identity. And if commercial Bollywood films do feature Muslim characters, they tend to be stereotypes. That’s according to Kabir Khan, a director with one of Bollywood’s biggest studios.
KABIR KHAN: They’re either die hard nationalists and patriotics and will give up life for the country, or they’re these sort of monsters who come in from this terrorist factory, and nothing is in the middle.
KENNEDY: Khan tried to move away from Muslim stereotyping in this film, called “New York,” that he directed earlier this year. It cost around $5 million dollars, which makes it a big release by Bollywood standards, and it’s about an issue usually only addressed in small-budget art films and documentaries.
[Film clip plays]
KENNEDY: The main character is a Muslim. He’s profiled, detained, and tortured in custody, and then eventually turns to terrorism out of a desire for revenge. Pretty political for Bollywood. But then, it’s not a film about India. It’s about post-9/11 America. Film critic Indu Mirani says that neutralizes its impact in India and makes it acceptable for Bollywood.
MIRANI: When you make a film that is about the Muslim identity in America, you’re not really setting yourself up to get into trouble, because that is not something that most of us have faced. But if you talk of Hindu-Muslim riots, that is subject that really very, very few people would touch, because that would be a film that is too close to heart.
KENNEDY: Still, the film “New York” was a lot more political than Bollywood is used to. When it drew big crowds, it was a surprise for everyone, including Khan, its director.
KHAN: I do believe that in the next three, four, five years, we are going to see big budget films which would look at Indian politics. All studios are trying to push boundaries a bit because they realize that the taste of the Indian audience is definitely changing.
KENNEDY: Most Bollywood insiders agree that Indian tastes are shifting ever so slightly away from the age-old formula of boy meets girl, sings her six songs, and marries her at the end. There’s no sign of big budget films about Indian politics on the horizon yet. But Bollywood audiences are already anticipating a second film about Muslims being mistreated in America after 9/11. The next one, called “My Name is Khan,” features Shah Rukh Khan, the biggest superstar of Indian cinema.
ANNOUNCER: Shah Rukh Khan has suffered deep humiliation at the hands of agents at a United States airport. In fact…
KENNEDY: This isn’t a movie clip. It’s real-life news coverage of an event which strangely mirrors the upcoming film. Earlier this summer, Shah Rukh Khan was detained for a couple hours at Newark airport as he came into the US. The Indian media responded with outrage. But some suggested the incident might not be so bad. It was free advertising for Shah Rukh Khan’s film, which, in spite of its unsexy subject matter, is expected to be a blockbuster when it comes out early next year. For the World, this is Miranda Kennedy, Mumbai.
WERMAN: Miranda’s reports from Mumbai were funded by the International Reporting Project. Her three-part series is available at The World dot org.
Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.
Muslims are treated better in India than they are in many “Muslim countries.” India’s muslims have ‘extra’ legal rights not provided to other citizens. What is being presented here is patently false. Leave it to public media to spread lies.
Hello,
I am a avid listener of NPR and World in particular. I was disappointed and taken aback by the use of certian terminlogy and words in context of this article. I am not sure when 1 in 6 people as Muslims and / or 160 million population – which is similar to the population of Entire nation of Pakistan has been considered as “extremely small minority”
Secondly even though there are incidents of violence between Hindu and Muslim communities, the reporter did not venture to investigate that religious minorities are given special reservations in education, jobs and are hence are a integral part of Indian communal thread. Lack of willingness or inherent poverty because of the background cannot be attributed as the widespread reason for the poor state of one community or the other. If the reporter were to compare the number of poor, illiterate people in other religious communities including the majority Hindu community, they would vastly outnumber the previous number. The reporter should be “extremely” careful when using words like “extreme” in comparing living and social conditions of different communities. Everyone can do a google search and find more information, but we come to listen to NPR for a thorough, objective reporting and unbiased investigation
Much is being said about the disparity in the economic status of Muslims and Hindus in India. But the truth is that there is not much difference between the economic status of Muslims in India and Pakistan itself. Please have a look at my analysis – http://inertcatalyst.blogspot.com/2009/11/are-muslims-better-off-in-india-or.html
Why to compare economic status of Indian muslims and pakistani muslim. Is it because you think that Indian muslims are not Indian they are pakistanis? This is how discrimination starts against Indian Muslims.
If any body interested to know about pathetic condition of Indian muslims read the Sacher Committee report. This committee was appointed by Goverment of India to find the social economic and education condition of Indian muslims and reported was submitted to the goverment 2006.
follow the following to read the report and to know the truth.
http://minorityaffairs.gov.in/newsite/sachar/sachar_comm.pdf