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• 1 2018-05-31T16:55:30-07:00 Nostalgia for the Muslim Past, Part 1 40 plain 2019-08-02T11:44:34-07:00

  
  Reading

  • Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen, “The Muslim Courtesan Film,” in Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema, (New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2009).
     
  
  In his book, The Venture of Islam (1974), Marshall Hodgson uses the term "Islamicate" to describe the distinction between the representation of Muslim people's culture and Islam itself:

  [T]he society and culture called 'Islamic' in the second sense are not necessarily 'Islamic' in the first. Not only have the groups of people involved in the two cases not always been co-extensive (the culture has not simply been a 'Muslim culture', a culture of Muslims)—much of what even Muslims have done as  part of the 'Islamic' civilization can only be characterised as 'un-Islamic' in the first, the religious sense of the word.

  As an example, Mukul Kesavan notes how Muslim mausoleums such as the Taj Mahal, which most people associate with Indian Muslims, actually violate the Islamic stricture that "no durable memorials should be raised above grades." He goes on to note the seeming contradiction between so-called "Hindi films" and the Urdu language often associated with the Islamicate:

  [U]sing Hodgson's term: while the house of Hindi cinema has many mansions, its architecture is inspired by Islamicate form. The most obvious example of these Islamicate forms is Urdu. It is ironical but true that Hindi cinema is the last stronghold of Urdu in independent India, its last haven in a sea of linguistic bigotry. It is appropriate that this be so because the Hindi film has been fashioned out of the rhetorical and demotic resources of Urdu.

  Indian director Muzzafar Ali based his 1981 period film Umrao Jaan upon the life of a famed nineteenth century courtesan in Lucknow, as described in the early twentieth-century novel Umrao Jaan Adda. The film stars the actress Rekha in one of her most famous roles, which sought to recreate the subtlety and sophistication of the nineteenth-century culture of the courtesans patronized by Lucknow's nawabs (nabobs). In their discussion of Umrao Jaan, Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen remark on the special role of architecture depicted in this film and its capacity to convey a sense of the Islamicate:

  The space of the mehfil [courtly entertainment poetry or concert of North Indian classical music and dance, performed for a small audience in an intimate setting] where the mujra [courtesan's dance performance] takes place is central to the genre of the Courtesan film. It is at once an architectural environment, a social space and a performance space in which the spectacle of song and dance and the cinematic rendition of that spectacle cohere, and in which the entertainment offered to the spectator within the film interacts in complex ways with the entertainment of the film... [T]he archetypal performance space that is central to the Courtesan film... consists of a rectangular space surrounded by curved or slightly pointed multifoil arches that are distinctively Islamic in origin... The archways create a theatrical backdrop framing the dancer within them, often affording a proscenium-style frame through which the filmmaker can represent the space of the dancer and the performance within.

  Bhaskar and Allen describe the glamour of the historically-imagined world of the nineteenth-century Lucknawi courtesans—marble columns, intricately woven Persian carpets, fountains, reflecting pools, sculpted trees, stone latticework, Mughal-style formal gardens. As you watch the following song sequence, "In Aankhon ki Masti Ke," sung by Asha Bhosle, note how the space of the kotha [the courtesans' abode] is depicted as distinctly Islamic and/or Islamicate according to the description above.
  

  Writing Assignment

  In the song sequence "In Aankhon Ki Masti Ke," the character Umrao Jaan's movement and gestures establish her power within this space. In 350-500 words, describe how Umrao Jaan's movement and gestures in this space help establish her authority among the others in that space and over the space itself—despite her being a woman, and a woman on the margins of society—and how the camera's focus on particular gestures, expressions, reactions, and interactions involving the dancer and her audience emphasize our sense of that power.