By Maya Palit
Last week, the singer and actor Janelle Monáe said something that, coming from her fabulous self, was a bit of a stinker. “Until every man is fighting for our rights, we should consider stopping having sex.” Fans and critics jumped to point out the host of problems with her sex strike idea – a similar theme was the crux of a Lysistrata-inspired 2015 film, Spike Lee’s almost unwatchable Chi-Raq – the most glaring one being expecting women to be more than game to sacrifice their sexuality for a larger cause.
The convenience with which you can offer up women’s bodies as points of resistance, without thinking twice about how such a resistance may work, is exactly the kind of shortsightedness that is so off-putting about Srijit Mukherjee’s new film Begum Jaan. A remake of his Partition period film Rajkahini (2015), it was highly anticipated for its portrayal of women sex workers at a brothel in Punjab which is owned by the eponymous Begum Jaan – a ruthless madam with a heart of gold played by Vidya Balan. Everything is running smoothly at the kotha in 1947 until representatives from the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League inform Begum that she and her girls have a month to hot-foot it out of her home, since Radcliffe’s Line of Control to divide India from Pakistan will pass through it. The women instead decide to fight to the death.
But before you even get to how Mukherjee ruins the plot’s potential by trying to do too much and ending up only skimming the surface of Partition upheavals, you have to rewind to the beginning of the movie.
It begins in the present day, with an interpretation of the December 16 gang-rape incident. Two men on a bus attack a woman. She runs for it, shielding herself from her assaulters by hiding behind an old woman who then strips slowly, to the incredulity and revulsion of the assaulters. Horrified, they flee the scene. Even if you try to ignore the massive tri-colour blowing in the background (it looks triumphant, I’m really not sure why), the scene doesn’t make sense because it relies on the grossly flawed premise that an old woman’s nudity is a terrifying deterrent for anyone intent on assault or rape.
Towards the end of the film, there’s a repetition of this incident, set in the past. A child called Laadli (Gracy Goswami), who grows up into the old woman of the present day scene (she’s wearing the same ribbons in her hair in case you miss all the other symbolism), tries to protect her mother from rape by undressing stoically. The policeman who seemed so keen on rape is horrified, humiliated and feels so repentant that he becomes a farmer. (Don’t go looking for logic, there isn’t any.) When the film ends circling back to the old-woman-as-saviour scene, you have to pause and wonder what Mukherjee was thinking.
If this is a deliberate allusion to Manto’s short story Khol Do – where a young girl’s spontaneous reaction upon seeing men is to undress because of the traumatic rapes she has witnessed – it is misplaced because it isn’t set within the context of mass violence women faced during Partition (which of course included ‘protective’ violence from men in their own families, who feared they would be abducted, sexually abused or worse). If it is a meditation on how stripping can be a powerful and accessible form of protest, as it was in the protests against AFSPA in Manipur, then why is Mukherjee so preoccupied with dividing women into the sexually desirable (the sex workers) and the undesirable (Laadli as a young girl and an old woman)?
Maybe Mukherjee hasn’t registered that the frequency of violence against both very young and very old women in India now, and also in the late 1940s, indicates that a universe of reasons, including caste and communal dynamics, are motivations for sexual assault. Or maybe those nuances just weren’t amenable for his storyline, which implies that only women of a certain age are sought after by men for sex and violence.
Balan and her crew of women certainly have lots of presence. There are lots of fun and caustic period jokes too, told by a wry-faced Balan who never stops pulling on the hookah. And although the depiction of the women in the kotha borrows freely from Shyam Benegal’s Mandi (1983), it never ventures into the pure-hearted stereotype that Kareena Kapoor plays in Chameli (2003). (Whereas in Mandi Shabana Azmi plays a brothel owner – also facing eviction – who is a formidable force to be reckoned with, Chameli rehashes the Pretty Woman dynamic where a lonely man stumbles across a sex worker who is a ray of sunshine.) It’s unlikely that Balan would have played a tepid role anyway, given her no-holds-barred admission of the fact that she adored her character’s fierce, disagreeable ‘lone soldier’ stance.
But even as the women in the brothel have an amusing range of personality traits, Laadli as both child and adult is solely meant to ooze nobility – for her willingness to give up her body to save another woman (the tri-colour congratulates her too, but this is a film that takes its overt symbolism very seriously. At one point, only half of people’s faces are shown on screen to connote the raw deal Partition is giving them).
The harping on sacrificial women doesn’t end with Laadli. There is also an amma in the brothel (Ila Arun) whose only job is to compulsively narrate the stories of braveheart legendary women of the past, including Krishna’s bhakt Meera and Laxmibai. Her hoarse recounting of Rani Padmini’s jauhar is the backdrop to a fire consuming all the women in Begum’s brothel, whose decision to self-immolate derails the plans of their lascivious would-be murderers.
If this grating symbolism tells you one thing, it is that Begum Jaan isn’t so much a testament to headstrong women fighting their ground as it is a thoroughly misguided insinuation that certain kinds of sacrifice are more powerful and honourable than others. And that the alternative – of being raped and surviving rape – is worse than death.
Co-published with Firstpost.
April 15, 2017 at 2:26 pm
I have not seen Begum Jaan but I have seen Rajkahini, the original Bengali film. I am not aware of the old woman stripping sequence as there was another similar sequence in the beginning with a traumatized young, adult female, based on Manto’s ‘Khol Do’. However, the last sequence with the child does not signify that at all! The child, although curious enough to ask a number of questions, may look naive but as she takes the first step to protect her mother, it goes to signify that all this while she understood her mother’s profession and what men want from her. She takes the step ahead sacrificing herself for the protection of her mother, knowing fully well the intentions of the policeman. She offers her own body instead, solely because of the love for her mother. Why is that feeling not normal? Laadli, is an interesting case study, as she is a young female growing away from the typical patriarchal society and its norms, solely in custody of a group of ostracized women. Her curiosity and her questions mark the nature of a growing child, her bold act in the end goes to show her sensitivity and awareness of situation, juxtaposition of which is wonderful, in my opinion. Also, while the policeman cringes at the sight of the child, the Nawab (in Rajkahini) openly admits that he wants every girl who enters the brothel, first for himself, whether it is an adult or a child. So, is it not incidental, according to variations of characters? (Again, although I have not seen Begumjaan, I am talking only about Rajkahini keeping in mind the fact that they’re both directed by the same person)
When Chandra Shekhar Azaad shot himself because he would rather die with his own bullet than the enemy’s, would that be frowned upon as well? These woman could not leave themselves at the stake of their enemies at any expense. They were less in numbers, their house was on fire, what else better could they do for their salvation, for their freedom, which was put at stake, again, for freedom of two nations? I think the climax of sacrificing themselves to the fire was symbolically and practically a bold and vibrant decision. I think there could be gross misreadings of the narratives by the author, here.
April 16, 2017 at 8:09 pm
Thanks for your synopsis of the movie. My partner and I saw it yesterday and dareisay feel there are more layers of the onion you need to peel to what I feel is the jist of the movie.
I felt the movie was powerful and enthralling. No male protagonists and rather a female cast weaving a story while telling their own. Strong PEOPLE not wanting to leave their home is a basic right in wars, natural disasters etc. So this was about women in a brothel…so bloody what? The sentiments are the same. Human emotions are one. If one is looking for a strange feminist message in this movie, dont. It’s more superficial than that. Look at the dialogues, banter, and feistiness of these PEOPLE. It’s a common message portrayed through a different medium of people