The Journey From Garam Hava To Mulk

A second look at the handful of brave Hindi films that dealt with distrust and alienation in the Muslim community with sincerity and understanding.

- Maithili Rao

The final image from M.S.Sathyu’s poignant 1973 masterpiece, Garam Hava, is Salim Mirza (Balraj Sahni at his sensitive best) following his younger son Sikander (Farooque Sheikh’s debut), to join the march led by leftists, fighting for the rights of the unemployed and minorities. It is an image that clutches at fragile hope after the family has been traumatised by the pain of Partition: many of the joint family living in an ancestral haveli in Agra have left for the new promised land for Muslims, Mirza’s shoe factory has been closed, suspicion of Muslims has poisoned the air. Mirza is heartbroken after his darling daughter’s suicide when two suitors betray her after promising to come back from Pakistan to marry. Utterly bereft of all options, Mirza gets off the tonga to join the protest, putting his faith in the land of his birth. The film is set in 1948, after Gandhiji’s assassination. Scripted by KaifiAzmi and Shama Zaidi from an Ismat Chughtai story, Garam Hava is as relevant today as it was then.

From that blood-stained dawn of Independence to the present highly polarized society, things have only worsened. The new toxin is the all-pervasive Islamophobia thriving like weed in the fertile soil of hypernationalism, always on the hunt for the hated other. The basic problems of mistrust and alienation remain the same. Only circumstances have changed to exacerbate the division even more. That is perhaps one of the reasons why filmmakers have not dared to touch the subject — hence the roll call of brave exceptions: Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro and Naseem, both written and directed by Saeed Mirza; Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday, Nandita Das’ Firaaq, Amit Rai’s Road to Sangam, Hansal Mehta’s Shahid, Rahul Dholakia’s Raees and now Anubhav Sinha’s Mulk. Habib Faisal’s