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Tawaifs and Islamicate Culture: Reading Bollywood's Muslim Women

Tawaifs and Islamicate Culture: Reading Bollywood's Muslim Women

Nadira Khatun
Copyright: © 2020 |Pages: 9
ISBN13: 9781799835110|ISBN10: 1799835111|EISBN13: 9781799835134
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-3511-0.ch008
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MLA

Khatun, Nadira. "Tawaifs and Islamicate Culture: Reading Bollywood's Muslim Women." Handbook of Research on Social and Cultural Dynamics in Indian Cinema, edited by Santosh Kumar Biswal, et al., IGI Global, 2020, pp. 93-101. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-3511-0.ch008

APA

Khatun, N. (2020). Tawaifs and Islamicate Culture: Reading Bollywood's Muslim Women. In S. Biswal, K. Kusuma, & S. Mohanty (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Social and Cultural Dynamics in Indian Cinema (pp. 93-101). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-3511-0.ch008

Chicago

Khatun, Nadira. "Tawaifs and Islamicate Culture: Reading Bollywood's Muslim Women." In Handbook of Research on Social and Cultural Dynamics in Indian Cinema, edited by Santosh Kumar Biswal, Krishna Sankar Kusuma, and Sulagna Mohanty, 93-101. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-3511-0.ch008

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Abstract

This chapter focuses primarily on the relationship between Islamicate culture and Muslim women in Indian Hindi cinema. This chapter goes beyond the simple deconstruction of gender stereotyping in Hindi cinema. Here, the researcher argues that the Muslim courtesan films convey the concept of seduction as a form of art through visual aesthetic. Focusing on the Muslim courtesan genre, this study locates a multi-layered status of Muslim women and traces how that creates an imaginary notion of Muslim women. Looking at the representational pattern, the study also will explore three specific arguments. Firstly, Muslim courtesan films are an art of seduction. Secondly, to make the representation seductive, they are positioned in a particular mise-en-scene. Lastly, the chapter points out how the makers of these films tried to fit the courtesan characters into the normative majoritarian gender discourse in which women are represented as subservient by ignoring the liberated identity of tawaifs.

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