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    Mother Maiden Mistress: Women In Hindi Cinema,1950-2010
    Mother Maiden Mistress: Women In Hindi Cinema,1950-2010
    Mother Maiden Mistress: Women In Hindi Cinema,1950-2010
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    Mother Maiden Mistress: Women In Hindi Cinema,1950-2010

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    'Extraordinary ... details what makes women characters iconic in Hindi cinema and analyses them in relation to their directors and more importantly to the society at that point of time' -Rani Mukerji It's been a long hundred years since Dadasaheb Phalke had to settle for a man to play the heroine in India's first feature film, Raja Harishchandra (1913) - and women in Hindi cinema have come a long way since then. Mother Maiden Mistress documents that journey: from a time in which cinema was considered a profession beneath the dignity of 'respectable' women to an era when women actors are icons and idols. Bhawana Somaaya, Jigna Kothari and Supriya Madangarli sift through six decades of history, bringing to life the women that peopled cinema and the popular imagination, and shaped fashion and culture. Contemporary readers will also find here a nuanced historical perspective - of the social milieu of the time, of the nation and of Hindi cinema itself. Also riveting are the first-person narratives of a leading actress from each decade - Waheeda Rehman, Asha Parekh, Hema Malini, Shabana Azmi, Madhuri Dixit and Rani Mukerji - all close-up examinations of how some of the iconic characters of Hindi cinema came to be. At once a guide, an archive and a cracking good read, the book records and reviews the woman in Hindi cinema - the mythical, the Sati-Savitri, the rebel, the avant-garde and the contemporary. In a journey through six decades of cinema, seemingly, the more things have changed, the more they have remained the same.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateApr 17, 2012
    ISBN9789350294857
    Mother Maiden Mistress: Women In Hindi Cinema,1950-2010

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      1

      THE FIFTIES: HOPE AND DESPAIR

      Aconsumptive young girl writes a bittersweet play on the harsh realities of her life. The script falls into the hands of an idealist, a music composer, and he thinks it perfect for staging. His producer disagrees, for he is sure that the audience will reject it. The audience wants entertainment, not reality. The composer disregards the warning. The play is greeted with thunderous applause, leaving the producer stunned. The plot of the film Hum Log (1951), directed by Zia Sarhadi, was prophetic about the fate of the film itself – despite a cast of near-unknowns, and a story of a family struggling to survive in deprivation and despair in the city, the film was a runaway success.

      The film was set in the young republic of India where four years earlier the sun had finally set for the British Empire. In its first general elections, the country voted in Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as its first prime minister. The first Five Year Plan was announced. The nation was exhilarated but apprehensive – there were challenges to overcome. The British had left behind an inimical legacy – a country divided along class, caste and religious lines, and living in desperate poverty. The wounds of Partition were still raw. Feudalism held the villages in its grip while capitalists had made the cities their strongholds. The emerging socialistic policies of the new government only added to the confusion. In the period of uncertainty and hope that was the fifties, the young nation was trying to discard its colonial past and to tentatively build its identity.

      It was during this decade that Hindi cinema established itself as a pan-Indian phenomenon, setting up a national presence as it firmly entrenched itself in the nation’s imagination. At the same time, it created its own imagined India in its films, an India whose epicentre was Bombay, where all the action takes place, with spaces outside intruding as side characters or subplots.

      By 1956, Indian cinema – older than the nation – had already turned twenty-five, and to commemorate the occasion, the Silver Jubilee of the Indian Talkie 1931–56, celebrations were held in Bombay. The government had begun taking an interest in the industry earlier in the decade with the Central Board of Film Censors being instituted in 1951. The same year saw the establishment of the Film Federation of India (FFI) with veteran film-maker Chandulal Shah as its first president. The National Film Awards were instituted and the first awards conferred in 1954.

      Indian films were beginning to make an impact globally. While Satyajit Ray unfurled the art-house banner and more or less introduced and defined India and its cinema to the critical world, directors like Bimal Roy, Raj Kapoor and Mehboob Khan ensured that commercial cinema made waves internationally. In 1953, Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen won an award at Cannes. In 1955, Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali won the Cannes Award for ‘the best human document’, along with several other foreign and national awards. In 1956, R.K. Films’ Jagte Raho won the Grand Prix at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. In 1957, Mehboob Khan’s Mother India was nominated for an Oscar in the best foreign-language film category. A festival of Indian films was held in the Soviet Union in 1954 where Awara began the long-standing love affair between Raj Kapoor and Russia.

      In turn, Indian film-makers who were familiar with American/Hollywood film-makers were now exposed to their contemporaries from Russia, Britain and Italy. In 1951, Russian film-makers Vselevod Pudovkin and actor Nikolai Cherkasov met with Indian film-makers in various Indian cities. With shows in Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, the first International Film Festival of India, held in 1952, featured films not only from Hollywood but from countries like Czechoslovakia, Japan, Turkey and Italy as well. The neo-realist cinema from Italy, specifically Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thieves (1948), has often been credited with sowing the seeds of realistic cinema, or what would come to be called art or parallel cinema in the next decade, in India. The films left a lasting impression on young Hindi film-makers.

      By the fifties, with the studio system of the previous decades crumbling, Bombay had established itself as the centre of Hindi film production in India, as competitors Pune and Calcutta faded. Auteurrun banners were taking over and talent from across the country began to flood the city. The Anand brothers launched Navketan with Afsar in 1949; Raj Kapoor’s R.K. Films got underway in 1949 with Barsaat; fresh from Calcutta, Bimal Roy kicked off Bimal Roy Productions with Do Bigha Zameen in 1952–53. It was also the time when production houses and directors from the south began to make forays into Hindi cinema.

      The establishment of Bombay as the centre of film production, the creation of plots and heroes that the nation soon adopted as iconic, the pan-India popularity of Hindi film music, and the formalizing of structures and the conventionalizing of cinematic practices of the 1930s and 1940s made the 1950s the golden age of Hindi cinema. The preceding decades – the thirties and forties – had seen the marked influence of the theatre (drama) format on the narrative structure of Hindi cinema. Consider the narrative of a typical Hindi film even today. The pacing of the plot, the twists and turns, the ornate background score crescendos that signify a turning point in the story, the duration of the film (typically two and a half to three hours), the intermission – all these are in the form of a natak, a drama. So is the use of song and dance as a device to further the plot or enhancing the content with bhava or rasa.

      The fifties saw the tradition continue, but cinematic practices and script treatment began to shed some of their theatrical roots. The story and its development seemed to be fluid, either adhering to or combining indigenous melodrama with European influences of realism, neo-realism and poetic realism. Take, for example, Hum Log, the runaway hit of 1951, where the setting, the costumes and the lighting set the narrative in a stark, realistic space, but the text maintained the format of a ‘sentimental melodramatic romance’.¹ The connection to reality was maintained but projected using the medium of a melodramatic and romanticized narrative.

      This wasn’t quite a new phenomenon. The bricks on the lane were set by directors associated with the big names in the industry too: Bombay Talkies – Franz Osten (Kangan, 1939); Prabhat Talkies – V. Shantaram (Amar Jyoti, 1936); New Theatres – P.C. Barua (Devdas, 1935) and Nitin Bose (President, 1937); Ranjit Movietone – Chandulal Shah (Gunsundari, 1934); and Filmistan – Gyan Mukherjee (Kismet, 1943).

      In the fifties, this resulted in the creation of iconic motifs which were played out in the physical, intellectual and moral characterization of the protagonists and the supporting roles. Many of these roles were born out of the changes taking place in the social, cultural and economic structure of the country. Many of these iconic images continue to echo in present times: Raj Kapoor’s naïve tramp, Mehboob Khan’s Mother India, Guru Dutt’s and Bimal Roy’s angst-ridden Hamlet-like heroes.

      The city as the protagonist gained prominence in this decade. The setting up of ‘cities’ by the English and the continuance of these centres due to industrialization had created an urban space in Hindi films. In the 1930s and ’40s, urban spaces were largely used in cautionary tales against ‘modernity’ and ‘upper-class values’. There were films that did look at the urban poor, but it was in the fifties that this subject created a genre rich with strong protagonists.

      Zia Sarhadi’s Hum Log and Footpath (1953) were significant in their realistic script and treatment of the urban poor and urban spaces. As portrayed in Hum Log, the city of Bombay was characteristically divided along the lines of occupation: there were the capitalists (the industrialists) and the working class. A third class was making its way into the mixture: the middle class composed of the English-educated youth who served as clerks and held mid-level positions in factories and government offices.

      Though a thriving industrial city, Bombay was struggling with the increasing influx of immigrants: Partition survivors, migrants from dying villages and youth seeking employment. Poverty and unemployment brought with them the usual vices. The streets of Bombay, its poor, its homeless, the crime and the corruption, the optimism and ambition of its people were often used as the context in which the protagonists played out their stories. Directors like Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt and the Anand brothers of Navketan Films created the Outsider – the predecessor to the ‘vigilante’ Angry Young Man. These heroes, the urban have-nots, were often morally grey characters, inhabiting the fringes of respectable society.

      As in Awara (1951) and Shree 420 (1955), Raj Kapoor’s protagonists are childlike, and innocent in their love and greed, but ultimately resist temptation and find redemption in their women. Chetan Anand’s heroes for Navketan are losers whose lives are transformed by circumstances not of their own making, such as in Afsar (1949) or Funtoosh (1956), which was inspired by Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe (1941).

      The city also created a new genre in Hindi films – that of the film noir – which brought with it the criminal underworld and its lingo: the don, the don’s den, the gangster’s moll and her night-club cabaret. This is the world that many of the protagonists of Guru Dutt’s earlier films inhabited – Baazi (Navketan Films, 1951, directed by Guru Dutt), Aar Paar (1954), House No. 44 (1955), and Raj Khosla’s CID (1952) for Guru Dutt Films. Crime and redemption, the corruption of the individual’s soul and his emancipation, with the city as backdrop, formed the theme of such films as Guru Dutt’s Baazi (1951) and Jaal (1951), Zia Sarhadi’s Footpath (1953), and V. Shantaram’s Do Ankhen Barah Haath (1957) and Shakti Samanta’s Insaan Jaag Utha (1959) where the scene of action was the village.

      The decay and decadence of the modern capitalist city is shown in Guru Dutt’s later works in the decade. The films were as much a critique of the increasingly consumerist culture in the city as they were a depiction of the artist caught in the conflict between art and societal norms. In Pyaasa (1957) the poet–hero seeks release from the corruption and artifice in society and, writing bitterly about the underbelly of the city – the flesh trade, the sex workers, says:

      Zaraa is mulk ke rahabaron ko bulaao

      ye kuuche ye galiyaan ye manzar dikhaao

      jinhen naaz hai hind par unko laao

      jinhe naaz hai hind par vo kahaan hain

      In Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) the artist–hero is exiled from his art and from society for his failure to be a success. The harshness of the colonial legacy of poverty, and the reality of corruption and exploitation by feudal and capitalist forces, is also seen in Phir Subah Hogi (1958) which portrayed the reality in which independent India found itself.

      Jitne bhi building hai, sethon ne cheen li hai

      Hai footpath Bambai ka, aashiyana hamara …

      Taalim hai adhuri, milti nahi mazoori

      Maalum kya kisiko, dard-e-nihaan hamara …

      Bombay also gave Hindi films another popular protagonist: the mill worker, often in conflict with the rich and corrupt mill owner. The worker, though as oppressed as the Outsider, is a do-gooder. Nehru’s socialistic fervour, which pervaded the nation’s economic and political policies, could be seen in films like S.S. Vassan’s Paigham (1959), in which the capitalist mill owner eventually repents and unites with the working class to create a better world. In romanticized representations of the social divisions, for example in films such as Shree 420, the urban poor are impoverished but principled, live with honour, love without prejudice or agenda, and are pure at heart, while the bad guys are often rich, pot-bellied, westernized, and all-evil.

      The plight of the migrant is portrayed in Bimal Roy’s films, whose low-key drama and skilful cinematography laid the foundations for what came to be called middle-of-the-road cinema, which was furthered by a generation of his assistants like Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Basu Bhattacharya, Gulzar, and others. The powerful and haunting rickshaw race in Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen (1953) – where the clearly upper-class youth exhort the rickshaw pullers to race and compete with each other – highlights the class attitude that reduces the rickshaw–wallahs to beings that are less than human. His Naukari (1954) shows the travails of an educated, unemployed youth.

      The village/rural spaces represented in the films of the fifties map the changes being brought about in the country post-Independence. The rise of capitalism in the form of industrial zones in the villages, the continuing stronghold of feudal practices, and the Nehruvian ideal of democratic socialism struggling to bring about reconciliation between the two can be seen in the contrasting images of the Indian village represented in Mehboob Khan’s Mother India (1957), Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen (1953) and B.R. Chopra’s Naya Daur (1957).

      Mehboob Khan’s poetic realism is evident in Mother India which sees India move from an exploitative feudal system to the age of independence and freedom, with the construction of an irrigation canal in the village symbolizing progress and the beginning of a new era, not just for Radha, the protagonist, but the entire nation. Films of the latter half of the fifties (Insaan Jaag Utha, 1959) and further into the sixties (Aadmi Aur Insaan, 1969) embraced Nehru‘s secular temples – the mega dams – and these became and remained for a long time the popular symbol of development.

      In contrast is Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen – made nearly four years earlier and showing a marked influence of neo-realistic cinema – where the feudal system leads to the farmer mortgaging his land in the village to the moneylender and leaving to earn his fortune in the city. When the repressive capitalist crushes the farmer, he returns to the village only to find his land lost to the industrialist. Independence here has merely replaced one form of exploitation with another.

      In the midst of these two stands B.R. Chopra’s melodramatic romance Naya Daur where the villagers face the prospect of their livelihood being snatched away by ‘modernization’. The timber factory owned by a benevolent feudal figure is sought to be mechanized by the tending-towards-capitalism son. The hero challenges the son to a battle – a race of man against machines – and wins. The film echoes Nehruvian optimism and brand of socialism where a capitalist economy could coexist with a feudal society to create a utopian community.

      The changes in societal structure, particularly in the urban spaces – rise of the nuclear family and an increasingly ‘Anglicized’ lifestyle – challenged the traditional class and social relations, and the gender dynamics of Indian society. The resultant insecurities were reflected in the highly popular family socials of the era which clung to the familiar ‘cultural values’ of the nation. The family unit remained sacrosanct even in so-called realistic films. Many of these films (very often remakes of Tamil or Telugu films) were from the stables of film directors from the south, including M.V. Raman and L.V. Prasad.

      Romantic comedies have their own place in every cinematic decade and the fifties were no exception, embracing films like Nasir Husain’s Dil Deke Dekho (1959), Subodh Mukherjee’s Paying Guest (1957) and Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anari (1959), as well as romantic suspense movies such as Shakti Samanta’s Inspector (1956) and Howrah Bridge (1958). Fantasies and quasi-historical, folklore-based plots were immensely successful and gave Hindi cinema some of its greatest musical scores such as Baiju Bawra (1952), Basant Bahar (1956), Anarkali (1953), Yahudi (1958), Udan Khatola (1955) and Azaad (1955). The success of these genres was primarily due to the music and lyrics of the films.

      The songs were penned by eminent poets of the time; their words and phrases and descriptions of love, desire and the beloved, remain the benchmark even today. There were also sharp, agonized political outpourings such as the ones in Pyaasa and Phir Subah Hogi, both written by Sahir Ludhianvi, eminent poet–lyricist and a member of IPTA, whose repertoire included ‘Aurat ne janam diya mardon ko’ (Sadhna) and ‘Tu Hindu banega na Musalman banega’ (Dhool Ka Phool, 1959). Shailendra, another IPTA member, penned compositions like ‘Awara hoon‘(Awara), ‘Mera joota jai Japani’ (Shree 420) and ‘Yeh mera deewanapan hai‘ (Yahudi); Majrooh Sultanpuri, member of the PWA, wrote ‘Aye dil hai mushkil jeena yahaan’ (CID, 1956), ‘Maana janaab ne pukaara nahin’ (Paying Guest, 1957) and ‘Hai apna dil toh awara’ (Solva Saal, 1958) while Hasrat Jaipuri came up with ‘Bhay bhajana vandana sun’ and ‘Duniya na bhaye’ in Baiju Bawra (1956), and ‘Aye mere dil kahin aur chal’ (Daag, 1952).

      The music directors of the age had a repertoire that ranged from Indian classical to Western classical and pop music, creating a very indigenous canvas of melody and rhythm that continues to thrive even today. Prominent music directors included Naushad (Jadoo, Baiju Bawra, Mother India), Shankar-Jaikishen (Awara, Shree 420, Basant Bahar, Kathputli), S.D. Burman (Baazi, Devdas, Pyaasa, Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi), O.P. Nayyar (Aar Paar, Naya Daur, Tumsa Nahin Dekha), Madan Mohan (Gateway of India, Dekh Kabira Roya, Adalat), and Khayyam (Footpath, Phir Subah Hogi).

      It was in the 1950s that the dialectic of mass entertainment versus class entertainment developed. ‘Modern’ films that sought to portray contemporary social issues were targeted at elite audiences, while those having elements of stunt, mythology and folklore apparently served as fodder for the masses. The film industry noted that ‘stunt, mythological and costume films would attract a working-class audience’ and that the ‘plebeian spectators would delight in spectacle and emotion, uncluttered by ideas and social content’.² The comment reflects the views held by exhibitors and influenced the Hindi film narrative in the decades to come. It was also held as the raison d’être for the musicals, masala and formula films that dominated the industry for the next fifty years.

      MANU’S WOMEN

      Na stri swatantryam arhati³

      – Manu Samhita

      India was exploring its identity after 200 years of British rule, and cinema was still largely exposed to an urban audience, for most of whom freedom was still a new concept. Though commercial cinema was being defined by its indigenous brand of melodramatic realism, the realistic fervour stopped short of the woman protagonist. In fact the film industry seemed to shift towards tradition.

      Across genres, the common denominator for the lead female characters was that they served as the conscience of the hero. The woman resolved moral dilemmas as the voice of the mother, beloved or wife, and more often than not remained untarnished by the negative influences surrounding her. Clearly, her soul was more important than her body; however, if this pure soul belonged to a tarnished body it was unacceptable both to the hero and to the audience.

      The ideal woman was the wife – someone who kept the family together. She would grow to be the Mother India who would usher in a new, better future while upholding moral codes and tradition. This was reinforced by the family socials. Films were enamoured of the virtuous wife/bahu. The accomplishments of this paragon were many. She woke up at the crack of dawn to sing bhajans; she was exceedingly beautiful and sensuous, as well as maternal; she sewed missing buttons, dressed in saris and wore the band of flowers that her husband brought for her on his way back from work. In spite of this, most of the drama arose from her victimization.

      This ideal found its antithesis in the educated wife/fiancée. In 1955, Guru Dutt’s Mr. & Mrs. 55 portrayed the educated heroine as a man-hating ‘upper-class’ woman who preferred ‘freedom’ to domestic bliss. Despite the influence of radical and progressive elements – the PWA and the IPTA – ‘modern’ nuclear families and ‘educated’ wives were viewed with hostility and suspicion by popular Hindi cinema. The educated ‘modern’ woman was a disruptive force who went against the traditional gender dynamics and was usually responsible for the creation of a nuclear family. She, however, by the end of the film, was either dumped (if she was a fiancée) or repentant (if she was the wife). The ‘modern’ woman, who at times was the other woman in the story, was placed on an even lower rung than the women of ‘questionable’ virtue. This vamp-like character – such as Rajni (Vijaylaxmi) in Bawre Nain (1950) or Shobha (Shyama) in Chhoti Bahen (1959) – exists till date and is sister to the villainous women portrayed in soap operas.

      The rather vehement subscription to ‘Indian’ values also resulted in ‘No sex, please, we are Indians’ being adopted as the theme song, a cause taken up by the newly established censor board. The passionate kissing scenes of the early silent films became history, and the new guidelines condemned explicit scenes. Directors came up with new codes to express sexual tension. The male gaze existed but it was more often a mental voyeurism. The lovemaking and rape scenes were underplayed, and were far from sensational (as they were to become in later decades).

      The leading lady – for that matter, even the vamp – never displayed her cleavage, and the courtesan, whether doing a mujra or a dramatic scene with the hero, was always covered from head to toe. Facial expression, dialogues and lyrics served as tools of seduction. Songs became a repository for sexual metaphors. Playback singers, through their well-modulated voices, indicated a level of intimacy between the protagonists and articulated yearning which visuals could not do. Such liberties were only allowed in the songs because virtuous women as a rule did not express their longing to the heroes. And songs with their inherent ‘escapism’ and ‘unreality’ allowed the leeway for such transgressions.

      The film noir, a staple fare of the decade, established the gangster’s moll or the vamp as an iconic supporting character. She represents seduction and temptation to the hero. Though she is morally ambiguous, given the dominant value system of the decade she often falls in love with the hero and ends up sacrificing her life for him. She was often given key dramatic scenes, and at times her character seemed to be better sketched than the heroine’s in what can be seen as a subtle subversion of the very values that the films propagated. The lead heroines in film noir were educated, often employed, and therefore progressive and evolved even if they appeared outwardly submissive. They were, however, relegated to being the romantic interest of the hero, and were rarely action figures, Nisha Das (Geeta Bali) in Baaz (1953) being an exception.

      In the auteur-dominated fifties, the moral, intellectual and physical characterization of heroines was representative of the auteur’s ideology and sympathies.

      Bimal Roy’s heroines were usually demure, self-righteous and stoic. Their attraction lay in their simplicity. They were usually representative of the class struggle he depicted, but remained firmly within the threshold of the domestic hearth, such as the farmer-turned-rickshawpuller’s wife (perhaps the realist’s answer to Mother India) who follows her husband to the city in Do Bigha Zameen; the Harijan girl in Sujata (1959) reared by an upper-caste family who is made vulnerable by both her caste and her gender; and the heroine in Naukari who is equally a victim of class-inflicted deprivations as she is the idealistic partner in whose company the hero nurses the audacity of hope. The space for these women is reserved beside their men.

      Interspersed with these films are Roy’s Sarat Chandra films. Though romances, these stories also look at Indian society critically. The villains of the piece are men whose rigid caste and class distinctions separate the lovers. Parineeta’s (1953) Lalita is steadfast in her suffering while Biraj Bahu’s (1954) protagonist questions family and societal cynicism towards a working wife, in this case making and selling dolls to support her penniless husband and in-laws. In Madhumati (1958), Roy’s heroine seeks her own vengeance rather than depend on the hero.

      Women in Raj Kapoor’s films of this decade are what ‘good girls’ are supposedly made of: sugar and spice. They are the saviours, and promise a better future for the hero and a happy ending. Awara’s (1951) Rita and Shree 420’s (1955) Vidya are women who fight for the hero’s salvation and help the ‘lost’ protagonist find his way home. At the same time, their sexuality is accentuated by various devices in dialogue, cinematography and songs – be it the violent foreplay between ‘westernized’ Rita and home-grown Raju in Awara or the drenched Vidya in Shree 420 whose soft steps towards her hero, under the umbrella, are a metaphor for desire.

      Guru Dutt began the decade with film noir and ended with dark, poetic canvases. With Geeta Bali playing a pirate queen in Baaz, he created one of the first of the few action heroines that the industry was to see. Unlike the mindless sexual object that the gangster’s moll was transformed into in later Hindi films, Dutt’s film noir made popular the moll as an intelligent woman who lived her life according to her own moral code. The only exception in this noir phase was Mr. & Mrs. 55 which is surprising for its conventional treatment of women, and the Indian versus Western ‘values’ theme.

      In Dutt’s later films of the decade, women lose their individual identities and exist only as devices of deliverance or despair for the heroes. His films became increasingly melancholic, and much as the hero desired them, women were the cause of his despair. Pyaasa (1957) is the story of a heartbroken poet loved by two women – Meena (Mala Sinha), guilty of choosing security over love, and Gulabo (Waheeda Rehman), a prostitute who dares to cross societal boundaries in her devotion. In Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959), the hero is in love with a young actress he grooms but cannot marry because he is already married. They split; the actress becomes a major star while he disappears into anonymity, eventually dying in a film studio.

      Mehboob Khan had three films in the fifties, all belonging to different genres. Aan (1952) was a swashbuckling period film; Amar (1954) was a story of moral degradation among ‘modern’ youth; and Mother India a remake of his earlier Aurat – the story of young India as seen through the eyes of a mother. Each film had a different kind of heroine but the underlying message remained the same: the upholding of ‘Indian values’ as against the decadent, bourgeois norms of the capitalist West.

      In Aan, the westernized dominant woman turns into a submissive Indian one. However, she submits only to her man and dares to fight for what she thinks is right, showing her moral courage and fibre. This underlying strength of the Indian woman, sustained by one of the critical components of the Indian ‘value’ system – that of sacrifice – is also exhibited by the protagonists in Amar and Mother India. In Amar she sacrifices her love to uphold the dignity of her man, while in Mother India she sacrifices her son at the altar of truth and to protect the honour of the ‘Indian Woman’. A point to be noted here is that in both the latter films, the male characters are depicted as morally inferior to women.

      Marrying the traditional approach with modern, liberal thoughts, B.R. Chopra’s films were a reflection of the chaotic intellect of the fifties. Ek Hi Raasta (1956) depicted the social discrimination faced by a widow, while Sadhna (1958) was a blunt indictment of the courtesan culture.

      L.V. Prasad’s films were intricate family dramas that explored the dynamics and sub-currents of familial relationships. In Sharda (1957) the hero’s beloved ends up marrying his father instead. The film then exhorts the son and the audience to look upon her as a mother. Prasad’s Chhoti Bahen (1959) was a typical family/social tear-jerker with the ‘modern’ woman as the main villain. For a change it is the sister who is the martyr and the hero’s wife the oppressor.

      Be it Gauri (Nutan) in Seema (1955) or Pushpa (Vyjayanthimala) in Kathputli (1957), Amiya Chakrabarty’s women were never quite content with their fate. Seema is the coming-of-age story of Gauri from a difficult, rebellious girl to a grounded, secure woman, while Kathputli has the heroine choosing love over fame and wealth and still being viewed with suspicion. In Kidar Sharma’s Jogan (1950), the sadhvi is caught between spiritualism and desire. He was to repeat this motif of women caught in a moral dilemma in his later films. Kamal Amrohi’s women are caught in the prison of their social status. If his Daera (1953) had his heroine seeking to step out of the boundaries of marriage, his later offering, Pakeezah (1972), which was over a decade in the making, had the courtesan desiring the sanctity of matrimonial domesticity.

      The socio-political and economic changes in the country and the auteur’s ideology created new content and characters in the Hindi cinema of the fifties. Despite the modern setting, the inspiration for the female protagonists can be traced to iconic women in Indian mythology and literature. However, notwithstanding the regressive nature of the characters, one cannot deny the space and substance accorded to the women protagonists in the decade, which turned them into iconic figures who cast their shadows on the following decades.

      THE PROTAGONISTS

      There is a line – delivered with varying degrees of emotion: critically, placidly, with a tinge of derision or with a sense of fatalism – oft cited by those engaged in the grit,

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