Thread by @sohinichat

The heroic Muslim in Hindi film is almost always Pathan-like, at times fused with the Arab: fair, loyal, shalwar-clad,
Why don't we see the lungi-clad Bengali Muslim or south Indian Muslim? In the season of #Pathaan, my essay on Amitabh's Saudagar +
moneycontrol.com/news/trends/en…

where you see a rural community of Bengali Muslims. Amitabh is a palm sap tapper, Nutan a jaggery-maker . The film details rural Bengali life, how hard they toil. What could be a more authentic claim to citizenship than this? That they live and work just like us +

I am aware that Pathaan does not identify SRK as Muslim, that he doesn't know if he is Muslim. But the film plays on the image of the Pathaan: honourable, loyal, fair, rugged.
In an essay for Outlook magazine, SRK had described his idea of being Muslim: "I am a Khan ++

The name itself conjures multiple images in my mind: a strapping man riding a horse, his reckless hair flowing from beneath a turban tied firm around his head. His ruggedly handsome face marked by weathered lines and a distinctly large nose."
Barring a horse, his Pathaan look +

is very similar to this. In the song Zaalima in Raees, the image of the Pathan and the Arab are fused. He has also appeared as an Afghani Pathan character in Kamal Haasan's Hey Ram (picture in first tweet)
It's not just him though: the majority of Hindi films see the Muslim as +

a figure from the north west frontier of India--Afghani, Pakistani, Iranian, central Asian, middle-eastern.
What about Mehmood + Mukri? They are figures of fun, right? They are not cast as heroic. The shorter darker lungi-clad Muslim is not seen as the real thing in Hindi film +

The erasure of the Bengali Muslim on screen also takes the form of the erasure of the Partition of Bengal on the Hindi film canvas. If you notice, every popular, well-remembered Hindi film about the Partition is about Punjab: Garm Hawa, Ek Chadar Maili Si, Pinjar, Gadar, Manto +

As if Bengal and Assam and the Northeast was not severed into two. As if when they cut us, we did not bleed as Shylock might have said

NB: I enjoyed SRK in Pathaan. I may amount to being a killjoy but noting erasures in popular narratives is generally seen as killjoy activity+

I'd argue though that there is no contradition between enjoying something, even loving it, and applying a critical lens.

Before I end, my essay on the stereotype of the Pathan-Arab north Indian Muslim in Hindi film:

moneycontrol.com/news/trends/en…