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Tawaifs and Islamicate Culture: Reading Bollywood's Muslim Women
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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