Truth is stranger than 70 mm fiction. A bunch of 20-somethings in cargos and sweats emerged from the sea, strode into the sanctum sanctorum of India’s elite and proceeded to gun it down with AK-47s. Just like that. Boom.
Far more surreal was a statistic I stumbled upon in news weekly Outlook in the immediate aftermath of the November terror strikes. When asked, ‘Is it fair to equate terrorism with Muslims?’ a staggering 51 per cent replied in the affirmative. I can’t vouch for the veracity of this opinion poll. To me the mere thought that anyone could endorse this view is more terrifying than the chilling nonchalance with which Ajmal Amir Kasab and his cohorts hoodwinked Mumbai’s security and intelligence to unleash their blood lust on 26/11. It’s definitely more bizarre than the singing, dancing suicide bomber I’m used to seeing in our potboilers.
The ‘peace’ vigil that followed in the wake of the strikes resounded with the violence of anti-Pakistan rhetoric. ‘Gali gali mein shor hai. Pakistan chor hai.’ The finger pointing, as always, threatened to extend to Indian Muslims who feel frustrated at being viewed with suspicion because of their faith each time there’s a terror attack. Actor Saif Ali Khan expressed the fear in his poignant response to the attacks, ‘I think there’s no voice of liberal Islam anywhere to be heard today.... We have either the fundamentalist forces or someone blowing up the place.... I’m so worried that the whole religion will be judged.… I want to urge us to fight the right enemy.’
As the war cries against Pakistan become more strident, I wonder to what extent Bollywood’s framing of films involving Muslims has reinforced stereotypes about the community in India and in Pakistan. In a land where cinema is the opium of the masses, can films play a role in sensitising people about key distinctions between moderates and hardliners, ‘state’ and ‘non-state’ actors, civil society and politicians? Can a medium whose primary aim is to entertain also enlighten?

Terror as entertainment is nothing new. Virtually every terrorist attack in the last decade has inspired a celluloid counterpart. This past year has been a terror special: Mission Istanbul, Contract, Mumbai Meri Jaan, Aamir, Hijack, Black & White, Dhokha, A Wednesday, Shoot On Sight. Despite the public outcry over Ram Gopal Varma’s ‘terror tour’ of the Taj right after Operation Black Tornado, it’s only a matter of time before the carnage of 26/11 and the sensational revelations of Ajmal Amir Kasab find their way into a blockbuster showing at a cinema hall nearby. As filmmaker Tanuja Chandra says, “Nothing is more fascinating or stunning than real life.”
But real life isn’t just about fanatics. While every possible angle on terrorists has been exhausted, cinema that zooms in on Muslim liberals is rare. Why does Bollywood?continue to ignore?this segment? Is it because filmmakers who dare to challenge the fanatic ideologies and agendas pursued in the name of religion live in fear of being ostracised or coerced? Or is it because such films don’t go ka-ching at the box office? Kabir Khan, director of Kabul Express, is quick to remind me that it’s not just films but the media at large that tends to give the lunatic and fanatical elements more space than the liberal ones. “A mad man wanting to blow himself up makes for better headlines than a rational person speaking the voice of sanity.”
The most honest and incisive film to be made on Islam in recent times, Khuda Kay Liye came out of Pakistan. The modern classic marks a landmark because it makes clear the distinction between the liberal interpretations and practices of faiths and those that twist religion to breed propaganda. Harsh Mander, convener of Aman Biradari, brilliantly noted in his essay that the film draws its power because of the universal truths it captures. “The endorsements of retributive violence against the ‘other’ peoples echoes Bush’s doctrine of collateral damage…. The cruel torture of a Muslim man under detention after 9/11 in Chicago resonates...with...the torture and illegal detention of Muslim youth in Gujarat after 2002.... It is not the truth of Islam, of the ‘other’ out there that the film recreates; it is the picture of all of us, if we have the courage and compassion to see and hear it.”

The liberal Muslim is not altogether absent from Indian cinema. Following Shah Rukh Khan’s superb portrayal of a Muslim hockey coach accused of match fixing in Chak De! India, Raj Kumar Gupta’s Aamir centres around a modern Muslim doctor blackmailed into planting a bomb inside a commuter bus by a fundamentalist who holds his family hostage. Though his captor tries to brainwash him to join their jihad by giving him a firstwhand dose of the squalor and abject poverty in which many Muslims live in India, Aamir humbugs the persecution theory. ‘No one ever stopped me from progressing.... I paved a way for myself because I had the will to do so and so have thousands of others.... Man creates his own destiny.’ Powerful words. Like KKL, Aamir is significant because it drives home a vital point: the moderate, peace loving Muslim is as much a victim of terror as someone from a ‘majority’ community.
Naseeruddin Shah who played a Quran expert in Khuda Kay Liye once again represented the liberal face of Islam in Jagmohan Mundhra’s Shoot On Sight. Based on the London train bombings of 2005, the film features him as Tariq Ali, a cop in London who’s picked up by Scotland Yard to investigate the controversial killing of a suspected terrorist by a cop even as he witnesses his own Muslim community being discriminated against in the UK. “Is it a crime to be a Muslim?’ asked the film’s tagline.
Recently, Neeraj Pandey’s stunningly taut thriller A Wednesday made the audience gasp with the revelation that the terrorist who is holding the cops ransom is actually a common man angered at being constantly victimised by both terrorists and the police. His identity is never revealed. “The one who suffers the most is always the common man. The man on the road, bus, train. The Joe. His religion doesn’t matter,” says Pandey. Mumbai Meri Jaan frontlined the trauma of the common man who survives the blasts. From a person who is scared of travelling in the local train to a person who looks at every Muslim face with suspicion, the film offered real and relatable characters.
Portrayals of real people in real situations has produced some superlative cinema. While the complexities of terrorism need to be depicted on celluloid, with the 150 million Muslims in India, depicting them in normal roles more often and regularly is just a s necessary. Reacting to the war lust at the Gateway after the November attacks, industrialist Anand G Mahindra, asked in a newspaper column, ‘How can this country prosper if the target of prejudice is 150 million citizens who are made to feel they are not part of the mainstream?’ Films can be a powerful step towards this.

Sadly, movies centering on Muslims in India have been too few and far between. Those wherein the Muslim-ness of the hero or heroine is merely incidental to the story line are even more rare. Religion is almost always pivotal to the story line of such films, be it a tale of love between a Muslim and a Hindu (Gadar, Bombay, Veer Zaara) or a terror flick (Mission Kashmir, Fiza, Fanaa). Both categories often depict Muslims within the backdrop of violence. Films like Zubeidaa, Saawariya, Zor and Iqbal have been significant exceptions. May their tribe flourish.
Pakistani filmmaker Mehreen Jabbar, who gave us Ramchand Pakistani, believes the stereotypical and one-dimensional portrayal of Muslim characters are common to the all the main hubs of the film world – Hollywood, Bollywood as well as Lollywood. “More films should be made showing the normal everyday Muslim who is really in essence no different than a normal everyday Hindu, Christian, Jew or Buddhist.” Films from the Muslim world don’t get much play beyond their own countries or festivals, she rues. “I’m sure there are some compelling and interesting films made with progressive characters in the Arab world, for example.” I’m reminded of Tareque Masud’s Cannes award winner The Clay Bird, Nadine Labaki’s Caramel and Udayan Prasad’s My Son the Fanatic.
“In movies it’s very important to see beyond facile classification despite the pressure to make characters more identifiable,” says Chandra, who achieves this in her own film Hope and a Little Sugar, set against the backdrop of 9/11. The central character, a young Muslim living in New York, is a regular jeans and T-shirt kind of guy, curious and easily falling in love with a Sikh woman despite carrying dark memories of the 1992 Mumbai riots in his heart.
In his post-26/11 Op-Ed in The New York Times, writer Amitav Ghosh observed, “If there is any one lesson to be learnt from the wave of terrorist attacks that has convulsed the globe, it is this: Defeat or victory is not determined by the success of the strike itself; it is determined by the response.” Nothing would have pleased the terrorists more than communal violence after the attacks. At a time like this, the voice of liberal Muslims has come like a soothing balm upon the scarred consciousness of the nation.
Muslim icons, including the Bollywood Khans vociferously condemned the strikes. Salman urged people not to mix terror and religion. “They (the terrorists) are Muslims but they don’t understand Islam,” said Shah Rukh, emphasising the need for the youth to get the right interpretation of the Quran. Nationwide protests on Eid saw many Muslims sport black bands. Prominent mosques pledged to stand united against terrorists. The Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid called the terrorists’ jihad “a crime against all people”. M F Husain painted the Rape of India’.

Aamir’s director Raj Kumar Gupta draws comfort from that the entire country is standing together and fighting the demon of terrorism regardless of religion. “That itself is a statement and a clear demarcation of liberals and fundamentalists, sanity and insanity.” The voice of reason also needs to be heard on 70 mm more often. With radical elements trying to gain the upper hand across the world, movies that focus on liberals and empower them on screen could offer a compelling counter narrative. Films like KKL and Aamir have begun the process. The challenge now is to step up the momentum.
Most filmmakers agree that at its best, cinema is both brave and entertaining. “Fiction has to be careful not to sound like a docu though; Movie making is a business and if people don’t enter cinema halls, it’s not going to help the cause or the filmmaker,” Chandra cautions. As Neeraj Pandey says, the audience doesn’t usually come to the theatre to get educated but they do want to see your point of view as a storyteller. If the viewer is sucked into the fictional world, whatever is communicated through it is also conveyed to him or her.
Screenwriter Prashant Pandey of Sarkar Raj and Contract fame agrees that as long as moderate Muslims are shown as isolated, vulnerable and powerless on screen, it would be naive to believe they can be fitting role models. “We need to rise above our smug, self-satisfied ways of approaching stories and characters. I’d like to present strong female characters, progressive Muslim characters and any such representations abused into stinking stereotypes. Let’s give filmmakers enough power to bring changes in the story line of films.” Chandra believes a large influx of Muslim writers and directors will result in more nuanced and varied portrayals of Muslims on celluloid. Kabir Khan, who admits that “many of our films are made in La La Land without any political context,” is happy that filmmakers are adding more layers of research to their creativity.
So will our fiction help make our truth less strange? I hope so.

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