Songs, Movies and Minorities: Hindi Film Song Sequences and the Representation of Indian Cultural Minorities

Partition's Legacy, India, and Pakistan: The Sacred and the Secular












 

Reading

  1. Srijana Mitra Das, "Partition and Punjabiyat in Bombay cinema: the cinematic perspectives of Yash Chopra and others," in Contemporary South Asia (2006). (online)
  2. Hussein Rashid, Qawwali and the Art of Devotional Singing (online)
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In Yash Chopra's 2004 film Veer-Zaara, a young Pakistani Muslim woman falls in love with an Indian man, and a series of extraordinary circumstances separates them for decades before they reunite some years later. The film is set in Punjab, a frequent setting for many Hindi popular films, but this film makes a point of depicting Punjab on both sides of the border in India and Pakistan as a result of Partition in 1947.

The spaces of India and Pakistan, however much the film tries to unite them in the idea of a single Punjab before Partition, remain distinct in the film, and the musical sequences are one way in which those distinctions are marked. In the film, the cultural space of Pakistan is quite memorably associated with the Muslim Sufi devotional genre of Qawwali, and the cultural space of India is more associated with secular folk traditions and dances associated with Punjab.

In the film, after the lovers meet in India, in the song "Aisa Des Hai Mera" ("This Is My Country"), Veer shows Zaara all of the different traditions associated with "his land" in Punjabi India, most of which are outlined in Srijana Mitra Das's article. Zaara replies by saying that she has this all in "her land," too—the conceit being, of course, that they are both from Punjab, something that they don't necessarily seem to recognize themselves.
Later Veer brings Zaara to meet his aunt and uncle on their family farm in Indian Punjab. They tell her that she has arrived just in time for the festival of Lohri ("Lodi"), a secular festival associated with the passing of the winter solstice. At the festival, she witnesses men and women in dialogue with one another as they dance in the vigorous styles associated with bhangra and giddha, dances originating in traditional Punjabi harvest festivals.




The Sufi devotional genre of Qawwali is associated with the most climactic scenes in Zaara's country of Pakistan. Here we witness Veer, who has already been told to stay away from Zaara, showing up unexpectedly at her engagement at a shrine in Lahore. He has shown up despite his knowledge that his going over the border will effectively end his career as an Indian Air Force pilot. We can identify the genre in this song sequence as Qawwali through a number of different distinctive visual and aural markers, as well as through the nature of the lyrics. The Qawwali is usually performed by a small group of male singers with a lead singer who often leads them in call-and-response. As Hussein Rashid writes,

These singers are supported by musicians playing percussion instruments, the dholak or tabla, and [the harmonium]... In addition to the formal instrumentation, hand-clapping serves to emphasize the rhythmic structure and engage the audience... The material is not static and is focused on bringing the listeners into communion with the Divine. In traditional settings, the concert will start with slower songs, with the tempo getting increasingly more rapid as the concert goes on, and then slowing down again. If the audience responds well to a particular section of the piece, it will be repeated until the audience grows tired of it.


Indeed, the emotional tenor rises to the climax in each of these clips. Sufi lyrics often refer to madness and intoxication to describe heightened states of religious consciousness as devotees commune with the divine. True devotees break social strictures to pursue their devotion. Here, as in many popular Hindi films, the heavenly love for God in the literal lyrics is superimposed with visual and narrative depiction of the earthly love between a romantic couple. The Qawwali singers are performing on screen as part of the engagement and wedding functions, but in a sense, they also narrate and predict what is happening between Veer and Zaara, and others' reactions to them. In the second part of the song, we see the aftermath of events unfolding in the first song—with Veer being thrown into a Pakistani prison by Zaara's fiancé, and Zaara apparently being married to her fiancé instead of the man she loves—Veer.

Writing Response Assignment

Read Das's and Hussein's discussions and watch each video all the way through at least once before considering the following question in an essay 350-500 words long. How do the song sequences convey Zaara's status as a Muslim girl in Hindu-majority India, and Veer's status as a Hindu/Sikh man in Muslim-majority Pakistan? To what extent are they welcomed, and to what extent are they familiar with what they see, based on their shared identities as Punjabis?

 

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