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How Hindi Cinema Has Portrayed Muslims: Ira Bhaskar on Stereotypes and Shared Culture

Ira Bhaskar’s reading of Hindi cinema traces changing Muslim portrayals—from the “good Muslim” to criminal and terrorist figures—and highlights films that challenge prejudice and reflect shared cultural histories.
Opened Runtime4 min Written byDocumentaryTube Team
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In a 2021 interview, film scholar Ira Bhaskar described a shift in Hindi cinema from avoiding Hindu-Muslim conflict and depicting “good Muslims” toward more explicit portrayals of Muslims as criminals, gangsters, or terrorists. She also argued that some recent historical films cast Muslim rulers as outsiders while glorifying Hindu and Rajput rulers. These are Bhaskar’s critical readings of particular eras and films—not a statistical survey or a claim that every Hindi film follows the same pattern.

How Bhaskar describes the shift in Muslim representation

Bhaskar, a professor of Cinema Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, recalls an earlier tendency she calls “secular discretion”: films generally avoided showing Hindu-Muslim conflict and often represented Muslims as “good Muslims.” In her account, that discretion began to break in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with more visible Muslim criminals and gangsters, followed later by terrorist characters. She discusses Sarfarosh and Zakhm in tracing the change and the pressure communal identity places on characters.

This is a qualitative interpretation offered in a 2021 interview, not a count of films or an uncontested history of the industry. Bhaskar also distinguishes stories about cross-border terrorism from films concerned with communalization within India. She discusses New York, Kurbaan, and My Name Is Khan as responses to the aftermath of September 11, 2001, and to Islamophobia; those examples do not by themselves establish a single industry-wide trend.

What the Muslim Social leaves out—and what New Wave films show

The “Muslim Social” is a film-industry category associated with Muslim aristocratic life and culture. Bhaskar contrasts those films with New Wave work that turns attention toward ordinary Muslims’ everyday lives and constraints. Her examples show why representation cannot be reduced to a single image of either prejudice or inclusion.

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Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro (1989)

Bhaskar describes this Indian New Wave film as a portrayal of the violence and prejudice ordinary Muslims face. She compares its line “Apna bhi time aayenga re” with the later “Apna Time Aayega” in Gully Boy, using the difference in the characters’ prospects to ask whose story of Muslim success reaches the screen.

Gully Boy (2019)

Bhaskar likes the film, but contrasts Murad’s success with Salim’s constrained prospects in Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro. In her class discussion, that contrast raises a question about whether the exceptional success story is mistaken for the more typical experience. It is her interpretive comparison, not a claim that either film represents every Muslim character or audience.

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Mulk (2018)

Bhaskar identifies Mulk as a pluralist exception: a Hindu woman married into a Muslim family is accepted as integral to the household. She reads the film as an effort to reclaim a plural idea of India.

Zakhm (1998) and Filmistaan (2012)

Bhaskar describes Zakhm as arriving at a secular resolution while dramatizing anger and hostility toward Muslims in middle-class social life. Revisiting it later, she connected that hysteria to public discourse and politics. She praises Nitin Kakkar’s Filmistaan for using comedy to address India, Pakistan, shared cultures, and struggle.

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Historical films as allegory, not documentary record

Bhaskar argues that some historical films made since 2017 demonize Muslim rulers while glorifying Hindu and Rajput kings. She interprets those portrayals as resonating with contemporary majoritarian politics. Her claim is a reading of the films and their political allegory, not a finding that every historical drama does this or that a period film provides a reliable record of the past.

As Bhaskar puts it, “The historical is not a realist genre, it’s an allegorical genre.” She cites Padmaavat while discussing portrayals of figures as criminals, terrorists, barbarians, or marauders; that observation should not be taken to mean that every Muslim character in the film has the same portrayal.

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Islamicate culture is not the same as Islamic religion

Bhaskar’s argument also addresses what gets treated as foreign. She points to Urdu and Hindustani, ghazal and qawwali, dress, jewellery, architecture, and performance as Islamicate forms embedded in everyday culture. “Islamicate” refers to cultural forms associated with Islam, not simply to Islamic religious practice. The history of these forms in South Asia is interwoven with local cultures.

The publisher description of Bombay Cinema’s Islamicate Histories, edited by Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen, traces traditions that include Urdu Parsi theatre, Lucknow courtesan cultures, North Indian literary and musical performance, miniature painting, and Perso-Arabic storytelling. Bhaskar’s point is that these influences are constitutive of Bombay and Hindi cinema and cannot be cleanly separated from shared North Indian culture. She concludes: “We cannot allow ourselves to forget what constitutes us.”

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Further reading

For a fuller account of these intertwined cultural histories, see Bombay Cinema’s Islamicate Histories, edited by Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen. University of Chicago Press describes it as a 440-page collection of essays on the histories, genres, and cultural forms that shaped Bombay cinema; Intellect Books’ description includes subjects such as the Muslim Social, ghazal, and qawwali. The press listing gives a 2021 copyright, while its author page dates the title to May 2022.

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