India in Africa, Africa in India: Indian Ocean Cosmopolitanisms

11. African Indians in Bollywood: Kamal Amrohi’s Razia Sultan

273 11 African Indians in Bollywood Kamal Amrohi’s Razia Sultan Jaspal Singh Contradicting historical evidence, colonial and post-colonial texts often (mis)represent the past by configuring it through contemporary hybridized and fractured eyes, resulting in a skewed viewpoint that not only dilutes our perception of the present but, perhaps more importantly, mitigates our understanding of the past, which may lead to a dangerously totalizing Eurocentric and Westernized world-view. This essay examines Kamal Amrohi ’s Razia Sultan and his depiction of India’s pre-colonial blacks only in modern, racialized terms, resulting in (mis)representation of the Africans in modern India. Therefore, Amrohi’s attempt compromises the motion picture’s value as an empowering tool for inferiorized, racialized, and gendered Africans in India and those who wish to understand their rich history and continued struggles in a post-colonial world. In fact, it was an important but failed attempt to inform on and clarify a significant period in India’s (pre-colonial) history. How this happened is a remarkable story in the development of a colonialist world view requiring an understanding of the historical events which preceded them. Why is it that in spite of anticolonial and nationalist struggles to free Indians from the shackles of 274 colonialist mentality, it is virtually impossible to escape the binarist logic and ideology imposed by European colonialism? My reading tries to reinstate the marginalized and feminized Africans as well as Indian womanhood into India’s history by correcting (mis)interpretations of both the historical Jalal-ud-din Yakut, an African slave who achieved a high status in the Delhi Sultanate in thirteenth-century India, and Razia Sultan, the Indian Empress of Turkish origin, who ruled Delhi and in whose court Yakut gained further eminence; it also, however, tries to uncovers the internalization of European colonialist biases in Amrohi’s depiction of pre-modern subjects, leading, in part to the negation of the powerful presence of Africans in India, but more importantly perhaps, this essay attempts to uncover the insidious nature of Eurocentricism and its extensive influences in silencing or repressing powerful histories. Despite attempts to portray a strong pre-modern African warrior and a powerful Indian Empress of Delhi, Razia Sultan (1983) remains a commercial and artistic failure, due, in part, to the use of highbrow Urdu in its dialogue and to the excruciatingly slow narrative structure. For my purposes , however, its more significant failure as a post-colonial text must be attributed to the director’s portrayals of African and Indian protagonists as modern caricatures, thereby eliding parallel universalism and competing cosmopolitanisms and unwittingly and tragically becoming complicit with a dominating world-view. In the title roles are Hema Malini as the Indian empress of Turkish origin and Dharmendra as the Abyssinian slave/warrior, Yakut. Amrohi’s depiction of Razia Sultan’s love for her black slave and their eventual marriage yielded mixed reviews among Indian audiences. Some reviewers call it the most underrated film of its time, while others praise Amrohi’s attempt at putting Razia back into popular culture, as most Indians seem to have forgotten the first and only empress of Delhi. The synopsis provided on Indiaplaza.com for this movie is typical of its flavor when it was first released: Razia Sultan, a celluloid marvel, depicts the pulsating tale of stormy love, unflinching loyalty and sacrifice unfolded from the leaves of History. It is the story of the tempestuous love between a bewitching beauty, Razia, the Queen Empress of India and a lowly Abyssinian slave, Yaqub. Razia staked and lost everything—her honor, kingdom and life—for her love but she did not allow the powerful proud Turks, affronted by her love of a slave, to trample and break her sacrament of love for a slave. She laid down her life to keep the flames of her love ablaze and high and became immortalized in the hearts of her subjects as a symbol of the highest, the noblest and the most sacred love. With the passage of time, however, she was branded a vain sinful lover and it was not until the 20th century that a creative and sensitive artist Kamal Amrohi got her to the silver screen with all her glory and honor and restored her Jaspal Singh African Indians in Bollywood 275 rightful place in History in the form of his most loving creation—RAZIA SULTAN—an unforgettable and memorable marvel and...