Muslim Culture in Indian Cinema
Contents: 1. Introduction/Jasbir Jain. 2. Ammi/Saeed Akhtar MIrza. 3. Language culture Bombay cinema: reflections on Cinematic representations of Muslims/Anisur Rahman. 4. Qawwali: a mode of representation of Muslim culture in Bollywood/Rashmi Attri. 5. Performance politics and piety of Sufi Music/Madhuri Chatterjee. 6. The star, the role and the spectator: Shahrukh Khan's recalcitrant Muslim identity/Gita Viswanath. 7. Absent fathers abandoned sons in the divided family: Hindu Muslim relations in Hindi Films/Santosh Gupta. 8. Art and power dynamics: Mirza Ghalib and Shatranj ke Khiladi/Jasbir Jain. 9. Muslims and the freedom struggle: mobility in captivity in Junoon and Pinjar/Charu Mathur. 10. Celebrating the courtesan in Hindi films: Umrao Jaan and Pakeezah/Bandana Chakrabarty. 11. Women at crossroads: Bazaar and Nikaah/S. Asha. 12. Personal narratives: socio historical reflections in Zubeidaa and Mammo/Mini Nanda. 13. Hybridity and the filmic text: re visiting Chaudhvin ka Chand/Ameena Kazi Ansari. 14. The question of legacy in Muhafiz/Urmil Talwar. 15. Conflicting claims on culture: train to Pakistan/Indubala Singh. 16. Music as form of cultural representation: with special reference to Sardari Begum/Divya Walia. 17. Perspectives on language culture and identity: a study of Umrao Jaan/Samina Khan. Index.
Cinema is a fairly accurate reflector of the political trends and of presence in public spaces that affect personal lives. It captures the changing graph of social space as well as that of individual anxiety.
Muslim Culture in Indian Cinema brings together in depth explorations of the various facets of Muslim life and culture as they are woven into collective histories. The volume takes into its range more than sixty years of cinematic presentation moves into past histories through films like Mughal e Azam and Shatranj ke Khiladi analyses personal relationships and seeks to deconstruct and consider larger issues such as language music and poetry.
The excerpts from Saeed Mirza's Ammi touch upon several sensitive and significant issues while Anisur Rahman presents a perceptive overview of the intricacies of cultural representation. Qawallis sufi philosophy language partition divided families courtesans and Muslim personal law are some of the issues that are explored through cinematic representations nudging our memories as a reminder of our collective heritage. Together the essays open out multifarious dimensions for further exploration both for the expert and the novice. (jacket)
