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Set in Calcutta in the immediate aftermath of the Partition, Ritwik
Ghatak's Nagarik (released in 1977 after Ghatak's death in 1976)
chronicles the struggles of a refugee family from East Bengal as
they desperately strive to survive in a metropolis which is unable
to address the necessities of thousands of people pouring in from
across the border. The protagonist, Ramu, like hundreds of other
young men, struggles to find that elusive job; unemployment,
starvation, incessant dislocation, and the yearning for stability
and a home mark the lives of the refugee families in this film.
Ghatak was to return to the theme in three other films that have
been known as the Partition Trilogy-Meghe Dhaka Tara, Komal
Gandhar, and Subarnarekha. With this translation of the screenplay
of Nagarik, it will be clear that Ghatak's Partition films, those
that deal directly with the lives of refugees in Calcutta, form a
quartet and not a trilogy. Nagarik also represents an enticing
historiographical idea, the 'what if' of Indian film history:
perhaps if it had been released in 1952 when it was made, and
before Pather Panchali, the accounts of Indian art cinema that have
privileged the Ray film would have been different, and Ghatak may
have been accepted as an important Indian auteur in his lifetime.
Bombay Cinema's Islamicate Histories comprises fourteen essays on
the history and influence of cultural Islam on Bombay cinema. These
essays are written by major scholars of both South Asian cultural
history and Indian cinema working across several continents.
Following Marshal Hodgson, the term ‘Islamicate’ is used to
describe Muslim cultures in order to distinguish the cultural forms
associated with Islam from the religion itself. Such a distinction
is especially important to observe in South Asia where, over a
thousand-year history, Muslim cultures have commingled with other
local religious and cultural traditions to form a rich vein of
syncretic aesthetic expression. This volume argues that the
influence of Muslim cultures on Bombay cinema can only be grasped
against the backdrop of this long history, an argument that informs
the shape of the whole. The book is divided into two sections. The
first, ‘Islamicate Histories’, charts the historical roots of
South Asian Muslim cultures and the precursors of Bombay cinema’s
Islamicate idioms in the Urdu Parsi Theatre, the Courtesan cultures
of Lucknow, the traditions of miniature painting, poetry, song and
their performance, and the various modes of story-telling that
derive from Perso-Arabic traditions. The second section,
‘Cinematic Forms’, discusses the way in which these Islamicate
histories are partially constitutive of the traditions of
representation, performance and story-telling that give Bombay
cinema its distinctive character, traditions that have continued
into Bollywood. It explores ‘Islamicate’ genres like the
‘Oriental’ film and the ‘Muslim Social’, as well as forms
of poetry and performance like the ‘ghazal’ and ‘the
qawwali’. Bombay Cinema’s Islamicate Histories is published at
a time of acute crisis in the perception and understanding of
Islam, where Islamophobia stereotypes Muslims as incipient fifth
column and Hindu fundamentalism is ascendant. It demonstrates that
Muslim and Hindu cultures in India are inextricably entwined and
shows how the syncretic idioms of Islamicate cultural history
inform the very identity of Bombay cinema, even as that cinema has
also instrumentalized Islamicate idioms to stereotype and even
demonise the Muslim, especially in contemporary Bollywood. This
book argues that many of the idioms of Bombay cinema that we love
are derived from the historical influence of Muslim cultures as
they interacted with other traditions in the Indian subcontinent.
It traces the emergence of cultures of poetry, dance, song,
performance and story-telling out of the thousand-year history of
Islam on Indian soil, and describes the ways in which they underlie
and inform the expressive forms of Bombay cinema. It is timely to
be reminded of the contribution of Muslim cultures to the
distinctive and widely recognized popular cinema of India at a
historical moment when the cultural influence of Islam on India is
being denied by forces which seek to turn the country away
from cultural pluralism towards Hindu fundamentalism. Bombay
Cinema’s Islamicate Histories features contributions by major
scholars of both South Asian cultural history and Indian cinema
working across several continents. The audience for this book will
be primarily graduate and advanced undergraduate students of film
studies. The writing is accessible and lively and individual
chapters will be suitable for classroom use. It will be of value in
disciplines outside film studies, where the Islamicate tradition in
general and its impact on film in particular is taught. It will
find an audience in disciplines such as history, cultural studies,
women's studies, visual studies and South Asian area studies. It
will also be of interest to anyone who wants to know how cinema
negotiates the parameters of Muslim identity in response to
historical and contemporary events in India.Â
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