Chapter 9 - Mammo and Projections of the Muslim Woman: Indian Parallel Cinema, Partition and Belonging

Summary

INTRODUCTION

I was absolutely shattered. I never believed that we Indians were capable of something like that. These things have happened before in History. Temples have been destroyed, so have mosques at other times. But for a mosque to be destroyed as a clearly well-thought out political action – something like that had never happened.

Shyam Benegal

Shyam Benegal’s outrage at the act of mindless vandalism directed by Hindu kar sevaks against the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya bears witness to a trauma that had long-term repercussions for Muslims in India. The first of three collaborations with journalist-turned-scriptwriter/director Khalid Mohamed, director Shyam Benegal’s 1994 film Mammo was the first in a series of interventionist films, four in total, which addressed the plight and contemporary experiences of Muslim women in India. Although the film is set ‘on the outskirts of Mumbai in the 1970s’, at the time of the film’s release in 1994, the political landscape was changing quite dramatically. Events including L. K. Advani’s Ram Rath Yatra in 1990, the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the pre-mediated Bombay riots in 1992 and the following retaliatory bombings of Bombay in 1993 created a disturbing climate marking Muslims as anomalous. Abdul Shaban writes, ‘the dominant instrument of alienating Muslims from mainstream Indian society and the majority community is through construction of the identity of the “other”’. The othering of the Muslim is made altogether detrimental when considering that ‘Muslims are a socio-economically marginalised community’ in India today experiencing high levels of poverty and unemployment comparable to the systemic social exclusion faced by Dalits.

In this respect, it is imperative to recognise Mammo as a deeply personal riposte from Benegal against the persecution and marginalisation of Muslims living in India at a time of great social and political upheaval. However, Sangeeta Datta notes that ‘Benegal turns away from the immediate history of violence to a tragic fate of an old woman trying to return to her land. At the same time, writer Shoma Chatterji argues that Benegal’s decision to make Mammo was borne out of mob law violence he witnessed first-hand such as a ‘Muslim bakery being set on fire by an angry mob’.