NOTES

PREFACE

1.     1.  A useful overview of the economic and political history of Pakistan is Talbot, Pakistan, especially chs. 4–7 on the 1947–71 period.

2.     2.  Vasudevan, The Melodramatic Public; Vasudevan, “Film Genres, the Muslim Social, and Discourses of Identity c. 1935–1945.”

3.     3.  Aarti Wani’s account of the importance of the trope of romantic love in midcentury golden-era Bombay cinema, which was amplified by the lyrics of its celebrated songs, Wani, Fantasy of Modernity; Manishita Dass’s book tracing the formation of a cinematic public sphere between 1920 and 1940 that cut across social and genre hierarchies and did not comfortably inhabit national space, Dass, Outside the Lettered City; and Debashree Mukherjee’s study of colonial-era Bombay cinema that focuses on industrial and labor practices, D. Mukherjee, Bombay Hustle. Noteworthy as well are Madhuja Mukherjee’s essay on cinema in Calcutta that include discussions of Hindi productions during the thirties in which many personnel originally from Lahore were involved, M. Mukherjee, “Arriving at Bombay”; and Rosie Thomas’s work that emphasizes the ascendance of the melodramatic social film as the highest genre in Bombay cinema from the 1940s onward, even as other genres such as the Oriental fantasy film, and themes based on Hindu and Islamicate oral and folk legends, continued to be popular, Thomas, Bombay before Bollywood.

4.     4.  The writings of Neepa Majumdar and Moinak Biswas that track the consequences of the encounter of neorealism in South Asian cinema during the fifties have informed this study, especially my reading of a neorealist film from Lahore set in East Bengal (ch. 1). N. Majumdar, “Importing Neorealism, Exporting Cinema”; Biswas, “In the Mirror of an Alternative Globalism.”

5.     5.  Rajadhyaksha, Indian Cinema, 122. For example, see the special issue of Film History on “South by South/West by West,” edited by Kaveh Askari and Samhita Sunya, Film History 32, no. 3 (2020); Rajagopalan, Indian Films in Soviet Cinemas; Larkin, Signal and Noise; Fair, Reel Pleasures; Vasudevan, “Film Genres, the Muslim Social, and Discourses of Identity c. 1935–1945,” 31; Hoek, “Cross-Wing Filmmaking.”

6.     6.  Rajadhyaksha, “The Lahore Effect.”

7.     7.  The use of “Bombay” and not “Mumbai” to designate the city’s cinema production before Indian economic liberalization of the nineties is an accepted convention in the study of Indian cinema. For example, see M. Sen, Haunting Bollywood, 16.

8.     8.  Critical studies of the development of Pakistani cinema are relatively few. For instance, Mushtaq Gazdar’s Pakistan Cinema, 1947–1997 is an informative survey of the first fifty years but does not discuss films in depth, while Alamgir Kabir’s The Cinema in Pakistan, published in 1969, provides a significant contemporary critical account from an avant-gardist and realist perspective. Apart from these, there is not a single monograph in English devoted to Pakistani cinema. Anthologies include Zamindar and Ali, eds., Love, War & Other Longings; and Khan and Ahmad, eds., Cinema and Society. Chowdhury and De, eds., South Asian Filmscapes has several essays on Pakistani cinema, as do special issues of Screen 57, no. 4 (December 2016); BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies 5, no. 2 (July 1, 2014); and BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies 10, no. 2 (December 1, 2019).

9.     9.  For example, on the subject of film music and song, there are several book-length studies and research essays on Bombay, whereas for Pakistani cinema there is not yet a single scholarly essay on the subject. Morcom, Hindi Film Songs and the Cinema; Beaster-Jones, Bollywood Sounds; Booth, Behind the Curtain. Essays include Booth, “A Moment of Historical Conjuncture in Mumbai”; and Shope, “Latin American Music in Moving Pictures and Jazzy Cabarets in Mumbai, 1930s to 1950s.”

10.   10.  Very few articles critically engage with the 1947–80 period. Those on Urdu cinema include K. Ali, “Cinema and Karachi in the 1960s”; K. Ali, “On Female Friendships & Anger”; K. Ali, “Female Friendship and Forbidden Desire”; Dadi, “Registering Crisis”; Dadi, “Lineages of Pakistan’s ‘Urdu’ Cinema”; Hoek, “Cross-Wing Filmmaking”; Siddique, “Meena Shorey”; Siddique, “ ‘Someone to Check Her a Bit’ ”; N. Rehman, “Pakistan, History, and Sleep.” On film music and poetry, see Afzal-Khan, Siren Song; Chaudhari, Jahan-i fan; Gorija, Malikah-yi Tarannum Nur Jahan fan ke aʼine men; Kanpuri, Dabistan-i film ke nagmahnigar; Kanpuri, Gaye ja git milan ke; A. Parvez, Melody Makers of the Subcontinent. Nate Rabe has published several articles in his blog Lolly Pops and in Scroll.in on film music from Pakistani cinema, including on films or filmmakers discussed in this book. Anthologies and essays by industry observers in Urdu include Gorija, Lakshmi Chowk; Kanpuri, Kahan tak suno ge; Kanpuri, Mujhe sab hai yad zara zara; Kanpuri, Pari chehre; Kanpuri, Yeh baten teri yeh fasane tere; Kanpuri, Zikr e fankar chale; Sajjad, Filmon ki dunya ke ek sau gyara sal;. A compendium of one hundred important films from 1947 to 2000 with useful summaries is Gorija, Pakistan ki 100 shahkar filmen; Kanpuri, Yadgar filmen is another compendium with over two hundred films summarized but is less informative and less reliable than Gorija’s summaries.

11.   11.  An important study is by Wani, Fantasy of Modernity. The paucity of work on this topic is partly because most scholars working on Bombay cinema lack the ability to read the Urdu script or fully explore the symbolic and metaphorical universe of the midcentury Hindi film from Bombay, which draws heavily from Urdu’s cultural and rhetorical tropes.

12.   12.  The Urdu films from Karachi and Dhaka are an important subject for further research, which this study is unable to address. Karachi and Dhaka filmmaking did not start until the midfifties, and they consequently did not develop a dense, decades-long exchange with Bombay from the 1920s onwards, unlike Lahore. They share many characteristics of the Lahore film, however, although they also depart from the latter in several important aspects that require further analysis. The formal and thematic concerns of the Urdu films from Dhaka in particular remain less studied. On the Karachi film, see K. Ali, “Cinema and Karachi in the 1960s.” On the Dhaka Urdu film, see Hoek, “Cross-Wing Filmmaking.” On vernacular language films from West Pakistan made during 1947–80, which this study also does not address, see, for example, Kirk, “This Is London, Not Pakistan!”; Levesque and Bui, “Umar Marvi and the Representation of Sindh”; Sevea, “ ‘Kharaak kita oi!’ ”; Siddique, “Rustic Releases.” And because the focus of this study is the films of the fifties and sixties, I have not traced Lahore’s earlier exchanges with Calcutta, which was a significant production node where many film personnel from Lahore worked during the 1920s and 1930s. But this is not the case from the forties onward, as unsettled conditions in Calcutta led to the exodus of many personnel to Bombay and Lahore. M. Mukherjee, “Arriving at Bombay,” 111. Calcutta and Bengal were also significant sites for Urdu literary production during the first half of the twentieth century. See, for example, the books by Shanti Ranjan Bhattacharya on the subject available in digital form at Rekhta, “All Writings of Shanti Ranjan Bhattacharya,” Rekhta, accessed June 26, 2021, www.rekhta.org/authors/shanti-ranjan-bhattacharya/all; Amstutz, “Finding a Home for Urdu.”

13.   13.  Recognition of agency via cinematic representation of characters, or lack thereof, is one mode of analysis, but other approaches include an evaluation of the considerable affective charge of this cinema. This was well understood and capitalized on by the industry itself, by its categorization of many social films as “family” or “household” films (the Urdu term in the industry for this genre is gharelū), and was intended to especially appeal to women audiences.

For existing work on cinema and gender, see K. Ali, “Female Friendship and Forbidden Desire”; N. Rehman, “Pakistan, History, and Sleep”; Siddique, “Meena Shorey”; Siddique, “ ‘Someone to Check Her a Bit.’ ”

1.   14.  For example, we have no evidence that Jago Hua Savera was shown in India in 1959 or soon after, even though many personnel from India were involved in its making.

2.   15.  Dass, Outside the Lettered City, 32–34, 105, 186–92.

3.   16.  On this concept, see Rajadhyaksha, “The Lahore Effect,” 324–25.

INTRODUCTION

1.     1.  Lahiri, “An Idiom for India”; Lunn, “The Eloquent Language.”

2.     2.  I. Ahmed, “The Lahore Film Industry,” 60; Shifai, “San’at-e filmsazi men Sarhad ka hissa.”

3.     3.  Rajadhyaksha, “The Lahore Effect,” 334–39. Also see Debashree Mukherjee’s account of the role speculative capital from various sources played in the Bombay film industry. D. Mukherjee, Bombay Hustle, 45–97.

4.     4.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 6, 29; Shuja, Lahore ka Chelsea; Rajadhyaksha, Indian Cinema, 84.

5.     5.  I. Ahmed, “The Lahore Film Industry,” 59.

6.     6.  For a listing that provides details as well as publicity images, see Rahi, Punjab ki filmi tarikh.

7.     7.  I. Ahmed, “The Lahore Film Industry,” 59.

8.     8.  Many film industry personnel had faced an increasingly communalized environment in India. The case of Manto is well known in this regard. Another example is W. Z. Ahmed, who had directed a film on the Bhakti poet Meera titled Meera Bai (1947), which came under attack in Filmindia magazine on communal grounds. Rachel Dwyer notes, “Baburao Patel’s Filmindia was known for its eccentricity but the review of this film, ‘Muslim “Meerabai” grossly slanders Hinduism!’ attacks the film on the basis of its misrepresentation of Hindu marriage but largely because its director was a Muslim who migrated to Pakistan.” Filmindia, September 1947, 53–57, cited in Dwyer, Filming the Gods, 175, note 58.

9.     9.  Siddique, “Rustic Releases.”

10.   10.  On the early years, see Gorija, Lakshmi Chowk, 19–50.

11.   11.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 36.

12.   12.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 28.

13.   13.  “Prominent amongst the first batch of migrants were producers and directors like Nazir, Daud Chand, Zahoor Raja, Shaukat Hussain Rizvi, W. Z. Ahmed, Sibtain Fazli, Munshi Dil, Luqman, and Attaullah Shah Hashmi. Stars from the silver screen included Noor Jehan, Swaranlata, Shamim Bano, Khurshid, Ragni, Charlie, Himaliyawala, M. Ismail, Shahnawaz, Ajmal, Ghulam Mohammad, Santosh Kumar, and Nasir Khan. Music composers of the calibre of Ghulam Haider, Feroz Nizami, Rashid Attre and Khurshid Anwar; writers and lyricists of the likes of Saadat Hasan Manto, Nazir Ajmeri, Tanvir Naqvi, and Arsh Lakhnavi; and a number of better known technicians including Bhayaji A. Hameed, Pyare Khan, Murtaza Jilani, A. Z. Baig and C. G. C. Mandody opted for Pakistan.” Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 24.

14.   14.  W. Z. Ahmed’s full name is Wahiduddin Ziauddin Ahmed. As Gazdar notes, “Except for Sardari Lal, the custodian of Pancholi Studios, there was hardly anyone left to initiate a film project. The onus of reinvigorating the film movement fell on the shoulders of those who came from across the border. W. Z. Ahmed, Nazir, Sibtain Fazli, and Shaukat Hussain [Rizvi].” Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 25.

15.   15.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 24.

16.   16.  Gul, “A Short History of Pakistani Films.”

17.   17.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 38, 41–42.

18.   18.  Roohi was banned from being shown and has not been available to view. For an account, see Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 72–73; Gorija, Pakistan ki 100 shahkar filmen, 26–28; Sajjad, Filmon ki dunya ke ek sau gyara sal, 129–37; Z. Shahid, “Early Corruption in Pakistan Film Industry.”

19.   19.  “Pakistani Film History from 1954,” Pakistan Film Magazine, accessed July 18, 2020, https://pakmag.net/film/history.php?gid=1954%20reg=1954; “Pakistani Film History from 1956,” Pakistan Film Magazine, accessed July 18, 2020, https://pakmag.net/film/history.php?gid=1956%20reg=1956; Ishtiaq Ahmed mentions a total of thirty-one releases for 1956. “The Lahore Film Industry,” 65. Also see Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 52.

20.   20.  On the Jaal agitation, see Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 49–50.

21.   21.  For an official chronology of events in 1954 and 1955 published in a film report in 1957, see Anwar, Film Industry in West Pakistan, 221. The issue of Indian film imports is discussed on pp. 73–78.

22.   22.  “Film Industry’s Protest at Dacca, Lahore, Karachi against Recertification of Indian Films”; Haroon, “Editorial: After the ‘Injunction,’ ” 5.

23.   23.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 54.

24.   24.  S. Ahmed, “W. Z. Ahmed Passes Away”; Siddique, “Archive Filmaria,” 204.

25.   25.  Usman, “Portrait of a Film-Maker.”

26.   26.  For an assessment from 1957, see J. Khan, “The Film Industry in West Pakistan.”

27.   27.  I. Ahmed, “The Lahore Film Industry,” 65. In industry terminology, a silver jubilee means a film that has had a continuous run in the same city for twenty-five weeks.

28.   28.  “Pakistani Film History from 1969,” Pakistan Film Magazine, accessed July 30, 2020, https://pakmag.net/film/history.php?gid=1969%20reg=1969. Also see the annual assessments published in Eastern Film. Nasarullah, “The Year 1964”; Nasarullah, “The Year 1965”; Nasarullah, “The Year 1966”; Nasarullah, “The Year 1967.”

29.   29.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 49, 66–68. Eastern Film, a monthly film magazine in English with good production values, was launched in 1959.

30.   30.  Gorija, Pakistan ki 100 shahkar filmen, 127. On the film Aag (1967), Gazdar remarks that audiences had difficulty following one of the characters, who was portrayed with the use of flashbacks, notating the limitations of cinematic language and its public legibility. Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 142. Other late-sixties films that Gorija remarks on as being fast-paced include Mera Ghar Mere Jannat (My home is my heaven, 1968); Behan Bhai (Brother and sister, 1968); Aashiq (Lover, 1968); and Buzdil (The coward, 1969). Gorija, Pakistan ki 100 shahkar filmen, 151, 157, 160, 166.

31.   31.  Kanpuri, Yadgar filmen, 191. On Nagin, see Sajjad, “Lollywood ki sanpon kay mauzu par banai gai film Nagin 1959.”

32.   32.  Gazdar notes that “whenever a Peoples Party government is in office, film censorship laws are relaxed. This happened between 1971–1977.” Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 217.

33.   33.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 239.

34.   34.  For a brief overview, see Mumtaz, “The Best of Times, the Worst of Times.”

35.   35.  Gopalan, Cinema of Interruptions.

36.   36.  Bhaskar, “Expressionist Aurality.”

37.   37.  For an account of early theater in Urdu, see Suvorova, Early Urdu Theatre. The work includes an expansive bibliography of writings in Urdu on the subject.

38.   38.  Hansen, “Languages on Stage.”

39.   39.  Hansen, “Languages on Stage,” 396; Hansen, “The Indar Sabha Phenomenon.” Also see Hansen, “Heteroglossia in Amanat’s Indar Sabha”; Taj, The Court of Indar and the Rebirth of North Indian Drama.

40.   40.  Kathryn Hansen has discussed how, when the Irish play Colleen Bawn was translated and performed in India, it incorporated songs that were not part of the original play. Hansen, “Boucicault in Bombay.”

41.   41.  Hansen, “The Indar Sabha Phenomenon,” 105–6.

42.   42.  Hansen, “Boucicault in Bombay,” 66.

43.   43.  Hansen, “Languages on Stage,” 402.

44.   44.  Lunn, “The Eloquent Language.” With the arrival of the talkies in 1931, the cinema of the 1930s confronted additional challenges. These included the problem of recording sound live in settings beyond the stage. Now that the camera could bring to the viewer locations, sites, and situations that were not necessarily confined to the theater stage, what would be the role of the song in such situations?

45.   45.  N. Majumdar, “Between Rage and Song”; D. Mukherjee, Bombay Hustle, 143–82.

46.   46.  Aziz, Light of the Universe, 8.

47.   47.  Aziz, Light of the Universe, 9.

48.   48.  Booth, “A Moment of Historical Conjuncture in Mumbai,” 21–22.

49.   49.  Morcom, Hindi Film Songs and the Cinema, 11–12.

50.   50.  Morcom, Hindi Film Songs and the Cinema, 239.

51.   51.  B. Sen, “The Sounds of Modernity,” 85.

52.   52.  For a good overview of the economic dimensions of the Ayub Khan era, see S. A. Zaidi, Issues in Pakistan’s Economy, 110–23. Zaidi finds that “between 1958 and 1968 … growth rates continued to impress, and a substantial industrial and economic base was established” (110). He argues that the “Ayub Khan era was in fact highly progressive and dynamic, and that despite some negative consequences of its economic strategy, it was overall a resounding success” (110).

53.   53.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 78. On the Censor Board’s role during the midsixties, see Haroon, “Editorial: The Curse”; Haroon, “Editorial: Censor Board”; Haroon, “Editorial: The Cloud without Silver Lining.”

54.   54.  Report of the Film Fact Finding Committee, 9.

55.   55.  Report of the Film Fact Finding Committee, 8.

56.   56.  Report of the Film Fact Finding Committee, 259.

57.   57.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 113.

58.   58.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 73–78.

59.   59.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 77.

60.   60.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 74–75. I have been unable to find a viewing copy of Nai Kiran.

61.   61.  Shahab, Shahabnama.

62.   62.  M. Khwaja, “ ‘Shahab nama’ ka maqsad akhfai’yi zat hai”; Parekh, “Shahabnama, Its Creator and Critics.”

63.   63.  On the takeover of Progressive Papers, see for example, M. Khan, “Ayub’s Attack on Progressive Papers.” Shahab’s disingenuous recollection in the Shahabnama is in his chapter on the National Press Trust (781–94).

64.   64.  The Harvard Advisory Group economists had charted a policy of “Functional Inequality” for Pakistan, which focused on industrial development, concentrating wealth in a small number of business houses. Zaidi, Issues in Pakistan’s Economy, 121–22.

65.   65.  Shahab, Shahabnama, 746.

66.   66.  Shahab, Shahabnama, 747–48.

67.   67.  Kamran Asdar Ali on Ayub Khan’s cultural policies: “The state recruited a cultural leadership of artists, poets, journalists, writers, and film producers to ‘tame’ and ‘harness’ particularistic identities (to produce sameness, a unified Pakistani identity in a country that had multiple ethnic and linguistic groups). In this regard, the formation of the National Press Trust and the Pakistan Writers Guild were attempts to bring the intelligentsia around to supporting the cultural policies of the regime.” K. Ali, “Cinema and Karachi in the 1960s,” 392.

68.   68.  Jalib has been widely known as the “people’s poet” (‘avāmī shā‘ir). Jalib, Jalib biti, 227–29; Ahmad Bashir, “Main nahin manta,” 73.

69.   69.  Jalib, Jalib biti, 89.

70.   70.  Jalib, Jalib biti, 93.

71.   71.  On Habib Jalib’s participation in the film industry, see Jalib’s interview in Barelvi, Habib Jalib, 148–52. For a more detailed account, see S. Parvez, Habib Jalib: shakhsiyyat aur fann, 191–204; Jalib’s verse for the cinema is compiled in Jalib, Is shahr-i kharabi men, 103–71.

72.   72.  I. A. Rehman, “ ‘Somehow the Authorities Never Found a Non-farcical Reason for Arresting Me’—Habib Jalib.”

73.   73.  Jalib’s reminiscence on the charged context of 1962 public recitation of the poem at a poetry gathering in Murree is in Jalib, Jalib biti, 48–51. Jalib’s oral account on the poem’s context accompanied by a recitation in tarannum (melody) in his own voice is available on YouTube: Akbar, Habib Jalib. Also see Gardezi, “Qafas dar qafas,” 44–45. For the text of “Dastoor,” see Habib Jalib: fann aur shakhsiyyat, 142–43. This book was published by Jalib’s supporters in 1978 to celebrate his fiftieth birthday, with a title cover design by the artist Sadequain and the back cover consisting of verses by Jalib calligraphed by the artist. S. Parvez, Habib Jalib: sha‘ir-i sh‘ulah nava, 26–27.

74.   74.  Rahman, “Habib Jalib, His Dastoor”; S. Ali, “Habib Jalib, Pakistan’s Poet of Dissent Whose Lines Are Now Chanted on Both Sides of Border.”

75.   75.  Bashir, “Main nahin manta,” 73.

76.   76.  Barelvi, Habib Jalib, 152. It’s unclear whether Jalib meant lyricism; I prefer to transliterate the Urdu as lyric-ism as this retains the sense of Jalib’s own interpretation of the term and is specific to his poetry.

77.   77.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 72.

78.   78.  The Report of the Film Fact Finding Committee notes, “Unlimited freedom which now exists in this field … enables the unscrupulous adventurer to enter the industry at will and start doubtful enterprises which hardly ever reach their conclusion and swallow up considerable portions of limited technical facilities and adversely affect the time, effort and reputation of artistes, writers, technicians and other workers in this field. The exploits of such shady individuals whom the possession of a small capital entitles to a free entry into the field of film production brings disgrace and degradation to the industry which already suffers from bad name due to its uncertain commercial prospects and unsatisfactory working conditions” (8). Also see M. Mukherjee, “The Public in the Cities.”

79.   79.  “To reap golden harvests of box-office receipts, Sex, Crime Horror and Action of the ‘Western’ type are glorified by Producers. Mass taste is easily corrupted and all decent ideals or values of life are lost sight of. It is a sad reflection on the achievements of our Film Industry that it has failed to make capital out of appealing even to the crude instincts of the Mob and films specifically made to ‘catch’ the public have flopped miserably. This failure, illustrates both the lack of technical and artistic skills in the Industry and lack of true insight into mass psychology. Mass Taste has been too under-rated and the Industry has sacrificed moral, spiritual and artistic values to little purpose by stopping [sic] to the production of some very crude films which even the masses have rejected ‘en masse.’ ” Report of the Film Fact Finding Committee, 258–59.

80.   80.  The increase in economic disparity between East and West Pakistan at the end of the Ayub era is summarized in Zaidi, Issues in Pakistan’s Economy, 116–23.

81.   81.  Akhter, “Jibon Thekey Neya (Glimpses of life, 1970)”; Nitol, “Jibon Theke Neya, an Emblem of Political Satire.”

82.   82.  See chapter 3 for a discussion of Zerqa. Also see Petiwala, “Falasteen ka matlab kya?”

83.   83.  Barelvi, Habib Jalib, 148.

84.   84.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 49–56; Siddique, “From Gandhi to Jinnah”; Z. Shahid, “Early Corruption in Pakistan Film Industry.” Gorija lists several films that he characterizes as charba, Gorija, Pakistan ki 100 shahkar filmen.

85.   85.  Eastern Film took a strong stance against plagiarism. See, for example, Amrohi, “The Censor Problem”; Haroon, “Editorial: Censor Board”; Haroon, “Editorial: The Cloud without Silver Lining”; Haroon, “Editorial: The Curse”; Noorani, “Ek Tera Sahara.”

86.   86.  For a summary account, see I. Ahmed, “The Lahore Film Industry,” 67–69.

87.   87.  “They refused to compromise on principles and invested their talent in authentic art. Khwaja Khurshid Anwar, Masood Pervaiz, and Anwar Kamal Pasha were towering personalities of this group of idealists who sowed the seeds of a genuine Pakistani cinema in the days of its infancy,” notes Mushtaq Gazdar. Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 56.

88.   88.  Gorija, Pakistan ki 100 shahkar filmen.

89.   89.  Rajadhyaksha, Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid, 330.

90.   90.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 64; Siddique, “From Gandhi to Jinnah.”

91.   91.  Bhaskar Sarkar’s in-depth study on the effects of Partition on Indian cinema is very suggestive for examining this phenomenon in Lahore cinema. Sarkar, Mourning the Nation.

92.   92.  “Nasir Khan Profile,” cineplot.com, June 24, 2011, http://cineplot.com/nasir-khan-profile; Bali, “Most Pakistani Hindu Filmmakers Fled after 1947, but Not JC Anand.” A blog entry lists no less than 185 Bombay cinema personnel with familial connections with the territories that became (West) Pakistan. Amir, “Bollywood’s Pakistan Connection.”

93.   93.  Rajadhyaksha identifies “cinema-effects” as “tangible narrative productions with economic and political existence analogous to the economic production of a film. Such an effect can be produced as much within the cinema as by ancillary practices defined by the cinema but going beyond and outside it. A film narrative, seen as an ongoing process of sequencing and negotiating such effects (recognizing, consuming, and resisting them), may also develop a distinct political edge when this effect also produces a means to account for—and thence to navigate through—diverse extra-textual boundaries including, but not limited to, distribution circuits, national borders and firewalls.” Rajadhyaksha, “The Lahore Effect,” 324–25.

94.   94.  On the Indian serpent film, see M. Sen, Haunting Bollywood. Pakistani films from the fifties with serpent themes include Nagin (1959, dir. Khalil Qaiser) and Zehr-e Ishq (1958, dir. Masood Pervaiz). For a reading of Zehr-e Ishq, see Dadi, “Lineages of Pakistan’s ‘Urdu’ Cinema.”

95.   95.  Alonso, “Radio, Citizenship, and the ‘Sound Standards’ of a Newly Independent India.”

96.   96.  For an important study on the cassette player’s impact on music in India, see Manuel, Cassette Culture.

97.   97.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 5–6.

98.   98.  Rajadhyaksha, “The Lahore Effect,” 332.

99.   99.  Rajadhyaksha, “The Lahore Effect,” 332.

100. 100.  Rajadhyaksha, “The Lahore Effect,” 332.

101. 101.  “Lahore had clearly started something. If Hollywood developed, in the first two decades of the twentieth century a ‘mode,’ of performance, camera work, editing, and even celluloid-processing, that was founded upon what Janet Staiger identified as a ‘Hollywood Mode of Production’ premised on interchangeability, standardization, and assembly, what Lahore may have done was equally astonishing: a counter-mode, we may call it, that opened a way of making, showing and seeing films and indeed something resembling an industrial practice—or at least a functioning substitute for it—that produced a market ranging through the subcontinent. The “Hindi” cinema has been historically wedded to this mode. It has required an adherence to a cultural memory that has transcended borders and challenged nationalist domestication across the subcontinent. And it has come at a cost: its disqualification from becoming a national cinema.” Rajadhyaksha, “The Lahore Effect,” 334.

102. 102.  Dass, Outside the Lettered City, 105.

103. 103.  Rajadhyaksha, “The Lahore Effect,” 341–42.

104. 104.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 24.

105. 105.  Report of the Film Fact Finding Committee, 8.

106. 106.  The trope of the “backward but proud Muslim” emerged in the colonial era from the later nineteenth century. See Seth, “Governmentality and Identity.”

107. 107.  In January 1949, the renowned literary critic Muhammad Hasan Askari described the Muslim social film in India in his characteristically acerbic manner. “In truth, most filmmakers were Hindu and thus incapable of feeling any enthusiasm for the political or social aspirations of Muslims. But if you retain your own sense of self-worth then the Other has no choice but to alter their conduct: filmmakers had to bow before the demands of Muslims and thus the entity known as the ‘Muslim Social’ came into being.… The very earliest social films about Muslims depict the social world of wealthy families in Lucknow, in contrast to the hero of ‘Hindu Socials’—a man of the people who, in order to pursue an education or in order to improve a village would go and live there to work; he would fall in love with the feudal landlord’s daughter in his free time. The main occupation of the hero in the Muslim Social was ‘lover’ (he spent his free time flying kites). Art cannot flourish without a vibrant political life: no conception of service for the nation among Muslims had existed for the 15 or so years previous to this time, so how could it be represented on screen? Unsurprisingly, the Muslim Social remained the sort of film that featured splendid princely Lucknow pyjamas, paandaans [ornamental betel nut and leaf containers], and a few Id-ul-Azha [Islamic festival] scenes.” Askari, “Building Pakistan and Filmmaking,” 177–78.

108. 108.  Vasudevan, “Film Genres, the Muslim Social, and Discourses of Identity,” 28. For an account of the Oriental film and the stunt film, as well as the persistence of the Oriental film into the fifties in Bombay, see Thomas, Bombay before Bollywood. On Bombay films that draw from Islamicate legends and lyric tropes, see A. G. Roy, Cinema of Enchantment. For a study of the relation between Urdu literary forms and Bombay cinema, see Haq, Urdu fiction aur cinema.

109. 109.  Vasudevan, “Film Genres, the Muslim Social, and Discourses of Identity,” 31.

110. 110.  Vasudevan, “Film Genres, the Muslim Social, and Discourses of Identity,” 29.

111. 111.  S. F. Hasnain was part of the Fazli Brothers duo, whose other member is Sibtain Fazli.

112. 112.  Vasudevan, “Film Genres, the Muslim Social, and Discourses of Identity,” 35.

113. 113.  Vasudevan, “Film Genres, the Muslim Social, and Discourses of Identity,” 40.

114. 114.  A summary account is available by M. Ramnath, “The Progressive Writers Association.” Also see Jalil, Liking Progress, Loving Change; Coppola, Urdu Poetry, 1935–1970; Coppola, Marxist Influences and South Asian Literature.

115. 115.  Dass, “Cinetopia,” 109.

116. 116.  Dass, “Cinetopia,” 109.

117. 117.  Film scholar Debashree Mukherjee has observed that Urdu progressive writers “took to film writing with such gusto, when their Hindi peers consciously shunned this supposedly lowly form.” D. Mukherjee, “The Lost Films of Sa‘adat Hasan Manto.”

118. 118.  Dass, “Cinetopia,” 109. For an example of an event where affiliative leftist aesthetics traverse the high-low cultural registers, see “Pak Film Industry Meets Afro-Asian Delegates.”

119. 119.  “The Muslim social of the 1940s emerges from a particular moment in this discourse of cultural difference, and sought to negotiate a space on the screen, which was distinctive and new, a space for the Muslim in the contemporary world, and as part of a national imagination. It was very much a political product of its times. However, it lived alongside more durable forms, ones that could continue a promiscuous engagement with the hybridity of languages, dress, décor, and setting despite large-scale changes in the formation of nations and states.” Vasudevan, “Film Genres, the Muslim Social, and Discourses of Identity,” 42.

120. 120.  Rajadhyaksha, “The Lahore Effect,” 342. For the purposes of this study, it is important to note here that the leading actress and singer Noor Jehan, the star of Khandan (Family, 1942), Anmol Ghadi (Precious watch, 1946), and Jugnu (Firefly, 1947), was among the industry personnel who moved to Lahore, along with directors Shaukat Hussain Rizvi and Sibtain Fazli, after 1947. The poet Tanvir Naqvi had written the lyrics for Anmol Ghadi, whose songs became very popular. Beaster-Jones, Bollywood Sounds, 43–46.

121. 121.  Aujla, “Khurshid Anwar.”

122. 122.  K. Ali, “On Female Friendships & Anger”; K. Ali, “Cinema and Karachi in the 1960s.”

123. 123.  However, Salma Siddique strikes a note of caution: “The fact that India has a national film archive does not imply robust preservation or straightforward access: even where films survive, they are often not digitized or made available to researchers because of copyright regulations.” Siddique, “Archive Filmaria,” 197.

124. 124.  T. Cooper, “Raddi Infrastructure”; Siddique, “Archive Filmaria”; Zamindar, “Ek Haseen Archive.”

125. 125.  Among these archival resources, I have found the online Pakistan Film Magazine to be most useful, as it includes a complete database of films produced every year; provides extensive factual information, such as the names of the key personnel involved, titles of songs, screening history, et cetera; and is openly accessible digitally. “Pakistan Film Magazine,” Pakistan Film Magazine, accessed July 19, 2020, https://pakmag.net/film.

126. 126.  Kuhu Tanvir, “Pirate Histories,” 115–36.

127. 127.  Some of the reasons for the decline are summarized in Mumtaz, “The Best of Times, the Worst of Times.”

128. 128.  On Urdu poetry, especially by Faiz, and the Partition, see Mufti, Enlightenment in the Colony. For a reading that emphasizes Sufi tropes in Urdu poetry and in tales such as the qiṣṣa from North India, see Satia, “Poets of Partition.”

129. 129.  Mumtaz, “The Best of Times, the Worst of Times.”

130. 130.  Kirk, “ ‘A Camera from the Time of the British.’ ”

131. 131.  For the importance of the Hir-Ranjha qiṣṣa in the Punjab during the colonial era, see Mir, The Social Space of Language.

1. BETWEEN NEOREALISM AND HUMANISM

1.     1.  Jago Hua Savera can nevertheless be situated on the horizon of progressive cultural politics of midcentury. In the Urdu cinema of Pakistan, writers and directors associated with progressivism played a key role in feature films during the fifties and even the sixties. These individuals include many of the leading writers and directors: W. Z. Ahmed, Riaz Shahid, Khalil Qaiser, Zia Sarhadi, and many more. Serious films made in Dhaka in Bengali during this period include Asiya (1960, dir. Fateh Lohani). For a discussion, see Raju, Bangladesh Cinema and National Identity, 84, 132–39. Many of Zahir Raihan’s Bengali-language films from the 1960s are widely regarded as ambitious aesthetic and political ventures, most notably Jibon Theke Neya (Glimpses of life, 1970). For an analysis, see Akhter, “Jibon Thekey Neya (Glimpses of life, 1970).” Raihan had served as assistant director for Jago Hua Savera, and its lead actor Khan Ataur Rahman also plays a central role in Jibon Theke Neya as actor, music composer, and singer. For a discussion of the collaborative work between Raihan, Khan Ataur Rahman, and fellow travelers, see Hoek, “The Conscience Whipper.”

2.     2.  A short profile of A. J. Kardar was published as “Introducing A. J. Kardar.”

3.     3.  The novel and its author remain unacknowledged in the film’s opening credits. Overall, the story is far more ambitious and complex in its narrative scope than Jago Hua Savera. For example, the story has Hindu and Muslim characters, but the film does not depict a mixed community. The middleman in the story is Housain Miya, who has multiple preoccupations, one of them being an attempt to reclaim a low-lying deltaic island, settling it and making it agriculturally productive. All this is absent in Jago Hua Savera, which has a more streamlined and unified narrative that moves forward toward a cinematic denouement. For an English translation of Padma nadir majhi, see Bandyopadhyay, Padma River Boatman. Bandopadhyay himself was sensitive to the need for realism in cinema: “The common audience may not apply conscious judgment … but with the times their taste is changing. They want the story of real life and living humans in film … cinema cannot satisfy people any longer by resorting to romance, thrills, mythology and religion.” Quoted and translated in Biswas, “In the Mirror of an Alternative Globalism,” 83.

4.     4.  Raihan was disappeared and killed in 1972, probably by collaborators associated with the Pakistani Army.

5.     5.  For further discussion on Zahir Raihan and Khan Ataur Rahman, see Hoek, “The Conscience Whipper.”

6.     6.  Lassally, Itinerant Cameraman, 44–55, 164–68.

7.     7.  “Santi Chatterjee,” IMDb, accessed July 17, 2017, www.imdb.com/name/nm0154155.

8.     8.  “With Faiz himself contributing the lyrics, the music for the film was composed by Timir Baran, who was part of a New Theatres triumvirate that included R. C. Boral and Pankaj Mullick,” noted Saibal Chatterjee in “A Treasure Regained.”

9.     9.  “Movies & Music of India—Timir Baran.”

10.   10.  Damodaran, The Radical Impulse; M. Bhattacharya, “The Indian People’s Theatre Association”; Bhatia, “Staging Resistance”; Bharucha, “The Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA).”

11.   11.  On the making of Dharti Ke Lal, see the primary documents assembled in Pradhan, “The All India People’s Theatre Association.” On Tripti Mitra’s work with IPTA (as Tripti Bhaduri) in the 1944 play Jabanbandhi, see pages 254 and 372. Hiren Mukherjee writes of her performance, “No praise, however, can be adequate for Tripti Bhaduri and Anoo Das Gupta, who in their roles of peasant women could beat any professional hallow [sic].” H. Mukherjee, “Bengal Anti-fascist Writers and Artists 1944,” 372.

12.   12.  Jamil, Zikr-e-Faiz, 501. Jamil notes that A. J. Kardar had proposed adapting the story to film. Faiz liked the idea; enthusiastically wrote the script, screenplay, and dialogue; and even helped out with the direction.

13.   13.  Indian cinema was increasingly restricted for distribution in Pakistan beginning in the midfifties and completely prohibited within a decade. Protests by filmmakers in Lahore against the import of Indian cinema in 1954 are termed the “Jaal agitation,” because the lightning rod for this protest was the import of the Indian film Jaal (1952) to West Pakistan. Mushtaq Gazdar observes that “the restriction on Bombay cinema opened a new free and non-competitive market for local productions. 1956 proved to be the most fruitful year of the first decade in terms of box-office returns from indigenous cinema” (52). See Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 49–53. On exchanges of film, personnel, and themes between Indian and Pakistan, also see Siddique, “Meena Shorey” and “Archive Filmaria.”

14.   14.  The concept of “global neorealism” is a recent one in cinema studies, emphatically not one where the Italian development serves as a master template and all others are secondary but precisely the opposite—it takes each local articulation seriously in its own right, sees all of them as fully legitimate, and situates them in the post–Second World War period and the onset of decolonization, when varieties of neorealism were developed in many locations. Ruberto and Wilson, Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema; Giovacchini and Sklar, Global Neorealism. For an overview account, see Nowell-Smith, “The Second Life of Italian Neo-realism.”

15.   15.  On the concept of the “studio Social,” see Biswas, “In the Mirror of an Alternative Globalism.”

16.   16.  “Moscow International Film Festival (1959),” IMDb, accessed March 13, 2022, www.imdb.com/event/ev0000450/1959/1.

17.   17.  Lassally, Itinerant Cameraman, 55.

18.   18.  Raj, “Pakistan’s First Oscar Submission ‘Jago Hua Savera’ Goes to Cannes.”

19.   19.  Thanks to Tariq Omar Ali for this observation and for the citations below that span the years 1914 to 1952. These describe jute cultivators, but may well also characterize the general economic scenario of rural East Bengal during the early to mid-twentieth century:

The crores of rupees paid for the raw article have had no visible effect on the manliness or contentedness of the agricultural classes or even on their material prosperity. They have no idea of saving, and in most cases their earnings from jute are frittered away on profitless extravagances long before the next crop is on the ground. By increasing their credit the inflated prices of jute have deepened rather than diminished their general indebtedness. (F. A. Sachse, Settlement Officer, Mymensingh to Revenue Dept., Government of Bengal, February 21, 1914. Proceedings A, Agriculture Dept., Agriculture Branch, List 14, Bundle 28, National Archives Bangladesh)

There is a kind of poverty, which while not amounting to insolvency, nevertheless makes for precarious and uncertain living. It is this latter class of poverty, which is the real cause of indebtedness among agriculturists in Bengal. (Bengal Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee, vol. I, 1933, 73–74)

Poverty, illiteracy, indebtedness, love of litigation have however all combined to reduce many cultivators to the position of landless labourers. He neither can realize the importance nor can he afford to take recourse to improved methods of intensive farming for cultivating the small holding which he might yet own. (“Note by Cooperative Directorate for the Agricultural Enquiry Committee,” 1952, MSS EUR F235/303, India Office Records, British Library)

1.   20.  According to Lassally, the interior shots were done in Dhaka in a set constructed outdoors. Lassally, Itinerant Cameraman, 48–49.

2.   21.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 78.

3.   22.  Jago Hua Savera (booklet).

4.   23.  Raj, “Pakistan’s First Oscar Submission ‘Jago Hua Savera’ Goes to Cannes.”

5.   24.  Zaheer, The Times and Trial of the Rawalpindi Conspiracy, 1951.

6.   25.  Husain, Chiraghon ka dhuan.

7.   26.  Chatterjee, “A Treasure Regained.”

8.   27.  “The India-Pakistan Masterpiece That Fell through the Cracks.”

9.   28.  N. Ramnath, “Made in Pakistan with Some Help from India, Lost and Found Again.”

10.   29.  “1954–57 were particularly good years for India’s cinematic morale.” N. Majumdar, “Importing Neorealism, Exporting Cinema,” 181.

11.   30.  Ray, Our Films, Their Films, 42–43.

12.   31.  Jamil, Zikr-e-Faiz, 501–3.

13.   32.  On the “Jaal agitation” of 1954, which started to see Indian films being screened less in Pakistan, see note 13, above. Nevertheless, the realist social film Aadmi (1958) was directed by Lahore-based Luqman, who was close to celebrated Indian actor Dilip Kumar. The story was written by Ayub Sarwar, elder brother of Dilip Kumar, who wanted Dilip to star in it initially. See Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 70; Lanba, Life and Films of Dilip Kumar.

14.   33.  N. Majumdar, “Importing Neorealism, Exporting Cinema,” 187.

15.   34.  Biswas, “In the Mirror of an Alternative Globalism”; N. Majumdar, “Importing Neorealism, Exporting Cinema.”

16.   35.  Biswas, “In the Mirror of an Alternative Globalism,” 77.

17.   36.  Biswas, “In the Mirror of an Alternative Globalism,” 78. For an overview of the development of IPTA, see Bhatia, “Staging Resistance.”

18.   37.  Sunderason, Partisan Aesthetics.

19.   38.  Bharucha, Rehearsals of Revolution, 49.

20.   39.  Biswas, “In the Mirror of an Alternative Globalism,” 81. Also see Dass, “Cinetopia.”

21.   40.  N. Majumdar, “Importing Neorealism, Exporting Cinema,” 178.

22.   41.  Biswas, “In the Mirror of an Alternative Globalism,” 81.

23.   42.  It was released the same year as Vittorio De Sica’s landmark neorealist film Ladri di Biciclette (The bicycle thief, 1948).

24.   43.  Younger, “The River,” 166.

25.   44.  S. Cooper, “Henfi Agel’s Cinema of Contemplation,” 322–23.

26.   45.  Jaikumar, Where Histories Reside, 155–69.

27.   46.  S. Cooper, “Henfi Agel’s Cinema of Contemplation,” 323–24. The highly influential postwar cinema critic André Bazin proclaimed The River a “pure masterpiece” whose achievement was nothing less that the revelation of reality itself: “In The River the screen no longer exists; there is nothing but reality. Not pictorial, not theatrical, not anti-expressionist, the screen simply disappears in favor of what it reveals.” Bazin, “A Pure Masterpiece,” 118. For an assessment of Bazin’s influence in the postwar era, see R. Majumdar, “Art Cinema,” 588.

28.   47.  For a summary of these criticisms, see Younger, “The River.”

29.   48.  Such that by the mid-1950s, “one can find a continuum of films ranging from mainstream studio products such as Zia Sarhadi’s Footpath (1953) to hybrid independent and studio films such as Bimol [Bimal] Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin (Two Acres of Land, 1953) to state-supported independent films such as Pather Panchali.” N. Majumdar, “Importing Neorealism, Exporting Cinema,” 179.

30.   49.  Ray, Our Films, Their Films, 9.

31.   50.  Biswas, “In the Mirror of an Alternative Globalism,” 85.

32.   51.  Manishita Dass also examines these questions in “Look Back in Angst.”

33.   52.  Biswas, “In the Mirror of an Alternative Globalism,” 72–73.

34.   53.  Here I also note the analysis of realism in the Indian novel offered by Ulka Anjaria, which bears relevance for our discussion. In her analysis of realism’s purported belatedness and its ambivalences in South Asia, Anjaria observes, “Although a realist novel may seem to support colonial or nationalist hegemony, its instability allows it to elude any rigid ideology … a realist representation of the rural poor is not solely a means of incorporating that population into the universal fold of the nation, but can simultaneously show the inability of realism to capture the reality of social inequality.… Realism is sometimes complicit with dominant ideology, sometimes resistant, but mostly neither—or somewhere in between. This ambivalence is not always aesthetically pleasing but sometimes clumsy, reading at times more like inconsistency and hesitation.” Anjaria suggests that realism in its awkward silences and contradictions offers an aesthetic and social critique that cannot be neatly folded into a national register. See Anjaria, Realism in the Twentieth-Century Indian Novel, 8.

35.   54.  N. Majumdar, “Importing Neorealism, Exporting Cinema,” 190.

36.   55.  Biswas, “In the Mirror of an Alternative Globalism,” 78.

37.   56.  As Neepa Majumdar notes in “Importing Neorealism, Exporting Cinema,” 181, “If success abroad was the measure of pride in a national cinema, then 1954–57 were particularly good years for India’s cinematic morale. At the Cannes Film Festival in each of these years, an Indian film won either an award or a special mention.”

38.   57.  Ray, Our Films, Their Films, 42.

39.   58.  Biswas, “In the Mirror of an Alternative Globalism,” 76. Biswas perceptively remarks that the impact of neorealism “helped Indian cinema break away from a set of restrictions and lay the basis of modern ways of working with its own material … its reality lying outdoors … its people living out there … its novels, poems, and pictures” (89).

40.   59.  Dass, “Cinetopia,” 109.

41.   60.  For a good discussion of the intellectual genealogy of neorealism, including a discussion of Bazin and Zavattini, see Haaland, Italian Neorealist Cinema, ch. 2.

42.   61.  Zavattini, “Some Ideas on the Cinema,” 125.

43.   62.  “Neorealism … rejects all those canons, which … exist only to commodify limitations. Reality breaks all the rules, which you can discover if you walk out with a camera to meet it.” Zavattini, “Some Ideas on the Cinema,” 131.

44.   63.  Zavattini, “Some Ideas on the Cinema,” 126,

45.   64.  Zavattini, “Some Ideas on the Cinema,” 133.

46.   65.  Zavattini, “Some Ideas on the Cinema,” 126.

47.   66.  Zavattini, “Some Ideas on the Cinema,” 130, 132.

48.   67.  “La Terra Trema is a great bore, a colossal aesthetic blunder and a monumental confusion of styles,” noted Satyajit Ray in his damning critique. See Ray, Our Films, Their Films, 122.

49.   68.  Bazin, What Is Cinema?, 43.

50.   69.  P. Thomas, “Gone Fishin’?,” 22.

51.   70.  Steimatsky, Italian Locations, 90.

52.   71.  “Visconti endows the suffering of his characters with an aura of grace and grandeur … [and] boldly grafts diverse visions, scales, spaces, narrative and historical orders in a resonant chorale.… [The] cinematographic grasp of the location as an enframed chorale suggests a conception of nature as a contained, determinant, humanized stage—and a conception of reality as itself such a set.” Steimatsky, Italian Locations, 105, 115.

53.   72.  “Its opening sequence that portrays the homecoming of the fishermen just before sunrise after a whole night’s fishing in the river has been overwhelmingly influenced by a surprisingly similar sequence from Luchino Visconti’s ‘La Terra Trema,’ a masterpiece based on the plight of the Sicilian fishermen. Whether this was a conscious imitation or an accidental coincidence is not really important. The scene certainly added a lyrical quality to the severely austere mood of the story.” Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan, 71–72.

54.   73.  Zavattini, “Some Ideas on the Cinema,” 126–27.

55.   74.  Haaland, Italian Neorealist Cinema, 52.

56.   75.  Haaland, Italian Neorealist Cinema, 53.

57.   76.  Haaland, Italian Neorealist Cinema, 53,

58.   77.  Pucci, “History, Myth, and the Everyday,” 434.

59.   78.  Rajput, “River Life in East Pakistan,” 42. Also see Layli Uddin’s discussion as to how the Kagmari Festival in 1957 enacted a transformed understanding of rural Bengal. Uddin, “Kagmari Festival, 1957.”

60.   79.  In her analysis on the film Akaler Sandhaney (In search of famine, 1980, dir. Mrinal Sen), Manishita Dass observes how urban leftist Indian filmmakers repeatedly misconstrued and romanticized rural conditions in West Bengal even as late as in 1980. Dass, “Look Back in Angst.”

61.   80.  Raju, Bangladesh Cinema and National Identity, 138. His extended discussion on the files and their aesthetics is on pages 132–38.

62.   81.  Doss, Looking at LIFE Magazine.

63.   82.  Back and Schmidt-Linsenhoff, The Family of Man 1955–2001; Stimson, The Pivot of the World; Staniszewski, The Power of Display, 235–59. Roland Barthes’s influential critique of this exhibition is in his Mythologies, 196–99.

64.   83.  Sunderason, Partisan Aesthetics.

65.   84.  Another example is an article taxonomizing various types of boats in Bengal. M. A. Ahmed, “River Craft in Modern Bengal,” 37–39.

66.   85.  “[In 1958] during three and a half months lies the story of one of the great pioneering efforts in cinema history.… Every single item necessary for the intricate requirements of a feature film had to be packed and taken to the location.… The whole operation was planned and tackled with the precision of a military objective.” Jago Hua Savera booklet.

67.   86.  Lassally, Itinerant Cameraman, 44–55.

68.   87.  See Lotte Hoek on how critic Alamgir Kabir positioned Jago Hua Savera as an influential but troubling exemplar for socially committed cinema in Bangladesh. Hoek, “The Conscience Whipper.”

69.   88.  The long take and cinematic immersion in the riverine landscape is also celebrated in early Bengali-language productions from Dhaka, Mukh o Mukhosh (The face and the mask, 1956, dir. Abdul Jabbar Khan), and Asiya (1960, dir. Fateh Lohani). Zakir Hossain Raju observes that both films combine “images and sounds that quite ably represent East Bengal’s traditional lifestyle and the beauty of rural nature. Lohani himself admits that he was accused of using long takes of the natural scenery of rural East Pakistan.… I argue that the ‘unnecessarily’ long sequences of natural beauty and of folk culture in rural East Bengal actually portrayed the relationship of Bengali-Muslim identity within its local setting.… Asiya also repeatedly presents long shots of boats, rivers and clouds, and medium shots of water lilies. Moreover, it combines various scenes such as a snake-play by a snake-charmer in a rural market and women singing folk songs whilst thrashing paddy. These images are only remotely connected with the narrative development of the film, but are significant constituents of the rural culture of the Bengal delta. East-Bengali folk literature also plays [an] important role in the film. Not only are there a number of folk songs in the film, but sometimes the protagonists, the two young lovers, converse using folk riddles.” Raju, Bangladesh Cinema and National Identity, 138.

70.   89.  Lotte Hoek and Sanjukta Sunderason, email communication, October 31, 2016.

71.   90.  “The engagement with the indigenous saw a wide variety, ranging from presenting indigenous artists or their music, to using indigenous forms and tunes with political lyrics, to interpreting, mixing and borrowing between different forms, involving substantial aesthetic transformations.” Damodaran, The Radical Impulse, 153. Also see page 119, where she notes that the singer Hemanga Biswas included bhatiali songs in his performances.

72.   91.  Pradhan, “The All India People’s Theatre Association,” 251. Also cited in Anuradha Roy, Cultural Communism in Bengal, 1936–1952, 202.

73.   92.  Damodaran, The Radical Impulse, 153.

74.   93.  Anuradha Roy, Cultural Communism in Bengal, 202–4.

75.   94.  “Timir Baran’s own classical training and work/travels with Uday Shankar and the milieu of the IPTA in the 1940s and 1950s does open up a new mode of producing (and affirming) a lyrical scape, at once classical and folk.” Sanjukta Sunderason, email communication, October 4, 2017.

76.   95.  Folk Music of Pakistan. Songs available online for streaming at www.aspresolver.com/aspresolver.asp?GLMU;71822.

77.   96.  “Regional genres came to be appreciated across the region, such as the wistful love songs from the north—bhaoaya … and the haunting boat songs—bhatiali … from the east and south.” Schendel, A History of Bangladesh, 156. Also see Zakir Hossain Raju’s discussion of the first film made in Dhaka, Mukh o Mukhosh (The face and the mask, 1956, dir. Abdul Jabbar Khan), specifically the lyrics and picturization of the “song by the boatman.” Raju, Bangladesh Cinema and National Identity, 137.

78.   97.  Jasimuddin, “The Folk Songs of East Bengal.” Bhatiali is discussed on page 50.

79.   98.  The poem was written in 1952. For the Urdu text of poem with a gloss on its context, see Nasir, Ham jite ji masruf rahe, 139–43. The poem recited by Faiz is available on YouTube: “Shishon ka masiha koi nahin (Faiz Ahmad Faiz).”

80.   99.  Nasir, Ham jite ji masruf rahe, 260–61 (translation mine). Also quoted in Jamil, Zikr-e-Faiz, 502–3. On the dancer Rakhshi, see A. Parvez, “Rakhshi.”

81. 100.  Lassally, Itinerant Cameraman, 50.

82. 101.  On the “item number,” see, for example, Weidman, “Voices of Meenakumari.”

83. 102.  Morcom, Hindi Film Songs and the Cinema, 85.

84. 103.  Haaland, Italian Neorealist Cinema, 151.

85. 104.  Haaland, Italian Neorealist Cinema, 151.

86. 105.  Ray, Our Films, Their Films, 122.

87. 106.  Haaland, Italian Neorealist Cinema, 151–52.

88. 107.  Sanjukta Sunderason comments: “The question of dialect in Jago Hua Savera had struck me while watching the film. The minimal smattering of Bengali used in the film seems to have a sharp west Bengali accent. It could be an evident slip from the actresses from Calcutta, showing further how the local in the film was pastiche formulation.” Email communication, October 4, 2017.

89. 108.  Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan, 43, 71.

90. 109.  Mohaiemen, “Simulation at War’s End,” 35.

91. 110.  Shahidullah, “Common Origin of Urdu and Bengali.”

92. 111.  For an overview, see Schendel, A History of Bangladesh.

93. 112.  “Hamari Zaban,” Motion Picture Archive of Pakistan, accessed August 8, 2017, www.mpaop.org/mpaop/pak-film-database/chronological-of-films/1955–2/hamari-zaban. I have been unable to find a copy of Hamari Zaban.

94. 113.  Mufti, Enlightenment in the Colony, 230–31.

95. 114.  Lahiri, “An Idiom for India”; Lunn, “The Eloquent Language.”

96. 115.  Lahiri, “An Idiom for India,” 78.

97. 116.  “Movies from East Pakistan, Dacca,” Pakistan Film Magazine, accessed April 4, 2021, https://pakmag.net/film/db/EastPakistanFilms.php. Bengali/Urdu double versions number thirteen, while another forty-one are Urdu-only releases through 1971. Moreover, industry personnel would move across Dhaka, Lahore, and Karachi from the 1950s onward, and this continued after 1971, as exemplified by the team involved in the blockbuster Lahore film Aina (Mirror, 1977, dir. Nazrul Islam). See Hoek, “Mirrors of Movement.” Alamgir Kabir notes that the release of the Dhaka-made Urdu film Chanda (1962, dir. Ehtesham) marked a shift in films made in Dhaka for a few years until about 1965, with more emphasis on Urdu-language productions. Kabir, Film in Bangladesh, 27. Also see Raju, Bangladesh Cinema and National Identity, 84–85.

98. 117.  Hoek, “Cross-Wing Filmmaking,” 105.

99. 118.  “The Pakistan period was not only a time of political and economic struggle; it was also a time of crucial cultural change. After 1947 the inhabitants of the Bengal delta had a lot of rethinking to do. What did it mean to be a Bengali now that the old centre of Bengali culture, Kolkata (Calcutta), had become inaccessible.… What set this emerging elite apart was that they were not bilingual (Bengali–English or Bengali–Urdu) and that their frame of reference was the Bengal delta, not the entire subcontinent or all of Pakistan. Their new cultural style was … popular rather than aristocratic, open-minded rather than orthodox and delta-focused rather than national. Most importantly, it was expressed in the Bengali language. Dhaka and other rapidly growing towns in East Pakistan became centres of this cultural renewal.” Schendel, A History of Bangladesh, 152. Also cited in Raju, Bangladesh Cinema and National Identity, 116.

100. 119.  Despite a generally unfavorable environment in Pakistan for experimental cinema, leftist intellectuals continued their association with cinema, mostly in a commercial register. For example, Faiz wrote lyrics for the film Sukh Ka Sapna (Distant dream, 1962, dir. Masood Pervaiz). The leftist journalist and writer Hamid Akhtar (1924–2011) contributed its dialogue. I have been unable to find a copy of this film. On Akhtar, see K. Ali, Communism in Pakistan. Faiz also contributed lyrics to the Khalil Qaiser–directed films Shaheed (1962) and Farangi (1964), as well as Qaidi (Prisoner, 1962, dir. Najam Naqvi) and Ghoonghat (The veil, 1962, dir. Khurshid Anwar). On Faiz’s involvement in cinema, see Jamil, Zikr-e-Faiz, 500–509.

101. 120.  Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan, 71. Also see Hoek, “The Conscience Whipper.”

2. LYRIC ROMANTICISM

1.     1.  For a profile of Anwar from 1964, see Jaffery, “Khursheed Anwar.”

2.     2.  Anarkali is credited with popularizing the romantic myth of Anarkali, the dancing girl who fell in love with the Mughal prince Salim, the future Emperor Jahangir (1569–1627). This story was adapted numerous times for films produced both in Bombay and elsewhere. Taj himself adapted the play as a cinema screenplay, which served as the basis for a number of films in India, culminating in Mughal-e-Azam (1960), considered one of the greatest films of Bombay cinema. Desoulieres, “Historical Fiction and Style.”

3.     3.  Naushahi and Shibli, Syed Imtiaz Ali Taj.

4.     4.  See, for example, the Bombay film Mirza Ghalib (1954).

5.     5.  Naushahi and Shibli, Syed Imtiaz Ali Taj.

6.     6.  Films directed by Taj include Swarg Ki Sidhi (1935). Taj and Anwar had worked together on Pagdandi (1947), Intezar (1956), and Zehr-e Ishq (1958). For the latter two, Anwar wrote the story and screenplay, while Taj contributed the dialogue.

7.     7.  Khurshid Anwar’s interviews with Asghar Ali Kausar provide valuable biographical information on his early years. They were published in the Urdu newspaper Imroze, in fifteen parts, between June 10 and September 30, 1983. Kausar, “Khawaja Khurshid Anwar ki kahani.” I have henceforth used the following abbreviations to cite these: KAK1 (part 1, June 10, p. 6); KAK2 (part 2, June 17, p. 6); KAK3 (part 3, June 24, p. 9); KAK4 (part 4, July 1, p. 10); KAK5 (part 5, July 8, p. 6); KAK6 (part 6, July 15, p. 14); KAK7 (part 7, August 5, p. 9); KAK8 (part 8, August 12, pp. 6, 15); KAK9 (part 9, August 19, p. 11); KAK10 (part 10, August 26, p. 6); KAK11 (part 11, September 2, pp. 7, 8); KAK12 (part 12, September 9, pp. 8, 10); KAK13 (part 13, September 16, p. 13); KAK14 (part 14, September 23, p. 6); KAK15 (part 15, September 30, p. 9).

8.     8.  “The primary musical influence on my mind was that of classical music. As a child and as a young man I had the privilege to be present at the twice-a-week soirees at my father’s house which were graced with performances by such great names of the day as Ustad Waheed Khan, Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and my own teacher, Ustad Tawakkal Hussain Khan. My father was simply mad about music. He had a collection of close to ten thousand records, mostly classical music.” Usman, “Portrait of a Film-Maker”; KAK4.

9.     9.  “In the weekly soirees of music which were held in … [Anwar’s father’s] house, renowned masters used to perform, and it was here that the young Khurshid Anwar developed a taste for classical music. Seeing Khwaja Khurshid Anwar’s keen love for learning music, Khan Saheb Tawakkal Hussain took him under his tutelage in 1934.” A. Parvez, Melody Makers of the Subcontinent, 98.

10.   10.  Usman, “Portrait of a Film-Maker.”

11.   11.  Usman, “Portrait of a Film-Maker.”

12.   12.  KAK2.

13.   13.  KAK1. Taj evidently also wrote for Swami (1941, dir. A. R. Kardar), Khandan (Family, 1942, dir. Shaukat Hussain Rizvi), and Zamindar (Landlord, 1942, dir. Moti Gidwani). Anarkali renditions include The Loves of a Mughal Prince (1928, dir. Prafulla Roy and Charu Roy), Anarkali (1953, dir. Nandlal Jaswantlal), and Mughal-e-Azam (The great Mughal, 1960, dir. K. Asif) in India, and Anarkali (1958, dir. Anwar Kamal Pasha) in Pakistan. Taj and Anwar worked on Pagdandi (The path, 1947, dir. Ram Narayan Dave).

14.   14.  KAK2.

15.   15.  KAK2.

16.   16.  KAK10; Aujla, “Khurshid Anwar.”

17.   17.  Shakur, “Khurshid Anwar”; Chaudhari, Jahan-i fan, 75; Siddiqi, “Khawaja Khurshid Anwar.” Anwar had hired Roshan Lal Nagrath (1917–67, “Roshan”) as his assistant, who later became a renowned music director in Bombay cinema (and is the grandfather to the Indian star Hrithik Roshan). Roshan had composed the celebrated qawwalis for the 1960 film Barsaat Ki Raat (A night of the rainy season), which include “Na to karavan ki talaash hai.”

18.   18.  Aujla, “Khurshid Anwar.”

19.   19.  KAK14; KAK15.

20.   20.  According to Aujla, “if you are a good poet and you have taken training in classical ragas, you automatically have a head start over your contemporaries. Khurshid Anwar’s stint at All India Radio Delhi gave him a much-needed experience to start a new life as a film music director.” Aujla, “Khurshid Anwar.”

21.   21.  Aujla, “Khurshid Anwar.”

22.   22.  The flute and the violin play an important role in evoking a haunting affect in Anwar’s compositions: “Anwar composed 76 tunes during his Mumbai stint.… His tune in raag Pahadi, Papi papiha re pi pi na bol, sung by Suraiya, featured flute accompaniment played by the legendary Bengali flautist, Pannalal Ghosh [also in Parwana]. The extraordinary flair of flute accompaniment irreversibly convinced Anwar to rank the flute as the [instrument] most expressive of human feelings, much like he rated the violin being the closest to human vox, a conviction that is manifest in all his compositions.” Siddiqi, “Khawaja Khurshid Anwar.”

23.   23.  A. Parvez, “Khwaja Khurshid Anwar,” 99.

24.   24.  I. Ahmed, “The Lahore Film Industry,” 59–61.

25.   25.  Aziz, Light of the Universe, 6, also see 6–12; Rajadhyaksha, “The Lahore Effect.” For an elaboration of the concept of the Lahore effect for this study, see the introduction.

26.   26.  I. Ahmed, “How Pakistani Film Music Has Declined over the Decades”; Aujla, “Khurshid Anwar.”

27.   27.  These were a “small group of musicians-composers, singers, and arrangers … Naushad Ali, Shankar-Jaikishan, C. Ramchandra, Lata Mangeshkar, Antonio Vaz, and Sebastian D’Souza.” Booth, “A Moment of Historical Conjuncture in Mumbai,” 22. Booth notes, “The transformation of the Hindi song scene from a relatively static emotional soliloquy or staged performance to a component with the potential to serve as a unifier of both cinematic and narrative content was implemented during the 1948–1952 period.” Booth, “A Moment of Historical Conjuncture in Mumbai,” 35. Anwar’s reminiscences of his Bombay years are in KAK12. Also see Aujla, “Khurshid Anwar.”

28.   28.  Elam, “Commonplace Anti-colonialism.” According to historian K. C. Yadav, Bhagat Singh was possessed of “a giant of a brain.” Quoted in Moffat, India’s Revolutionary Inheritance, 60.

29.   29.  Moffat, India’s Revolutionary Inheritance, 48.

30.   30.  Moffat, India’s Revolutionary Inheritance, 66.

31.   31.  Moffat, India’s Revolutionary Inheritance, 55.

32.   32.  Quoted in Moffat, India’s Revolutionary Inheritance, 90.

33.   33.  Moffat, India’s Revolutionary Inheritance, 90.

34.   34.  Moffat, India’s Revolutionary Inheritance, 90–97.

35.   35.  Moffat, India’s Revolutionary Inheritance, 91.

36.   36.  Moffat, India’s Revolutionary Inheritance, 106.

37.   37.  Moffat, India’s Revolutionary Inheritance, 125.

38.   38.  Moffat, India’s Revolutionary Inheritance, 117; Rekhta, “#BhagatSingh ’ Hand-Written Letter from Jail in #Urdu to His Younger Brother Kultar Singh on March 3, 1931.Pic.Twitter.Com/TOPQRInj9G,” Tweet, @rekhta (blog), March 23, 2016, https://twitter.com/rekhta/status/712563730530177024?lang=en.

39.   39.  These images have continued to proliferate in Indian bazaar and calendar arts for many decades into the present. They often show Bhagat Singh in a frontal portrait pose, dressed in European attire with a fashionable trilby hat, which he had famously donned in order to disguise himself while on the run from the British authorities. The image of a bare-chested Chandrashekhar Azad twirling his mustache often accompanies Bhagat Singh. Azad had died in a shootout with the police in 1931 in Allahabad. Pinney, “Photos of the Gods,” 123–33.

40.   40.  One facet of reexamining the legacy of Bhagat Singh seeks to understand how HSRA’s legacy continues to reverberate in subsequent decades in subaltern and counterpublic spheres, beyond the safe borders of official nationalist history. In an exemplary recent study, Kama Maclean discusses the popular visuality associated with the HSRA members during their trial and after their passing. Maclean, A Revolutionary History of Interwar India.

41.   41.  Elam, “Commonplace Anti-colonialism,” 597.

42.   42.  Moffat, India’s Revolutionary Inheritance, 19. Moffat draws upon and expands Jacques Rancière’s theorization of dissensus. Moffat, India’s Revolutionary Inheritance, 17.

43.   43.  Moffat, India’s Revolutionary Inheritance, 223–45.

44.   44.  U. Khan, “Khawaja Khurshid Anwar.”

45.   45.  Usman, “Portrait of a Film-Maker.”

46.   46.  Usman, “Portrait of a Film-Maker.”

47.   47.  U. Khan, “Khawaja Khurshid Anwar.”

48.   48.  “In legal parlance, revolutionaries who took to the stand to testify were known as ‘approvers,’ or King’s witnesses. Crucially, an approver was both an informer and an accuser, who simultaneously confessed to his crime while accusing others in the court.… The legal presumption was that an approver’s testimony was a voluntary confession which required a certain measure of self-implication to hold judicial value. However, not all approver confessions were ‘voluntary.’ ” Vaidik, “History of a Renegade Revolutionary,” 218. The novelist Yashpal was considered unreliable after he had married. See Yashpal, Yashpal Looks Back, 160–62, 170–71. I am grateful to J. Daniel Elam for this reference and for his advice on the life and work of Bhagat Singh and the HSRA. On Yashpal’s memoir, see Elam and Moffat. “On the Form, Politics and Effects of Writing Revolution,” 517–18.

49.   49.  On Faiz Ahmed Faiz, see KAK1 and KAK10; on Mulk Raj Anand, see KAK1; on theater, see KAK2; on All India Radio, see KAK11 and KAK15; on Radio Pakistan, see KAK3 and KAK15; on classical musicians, see KAK4 and KAK13; on musical directors and playback singers, see KAK14. Regarding music scholarship, Anwar notes that Bhatkhande’s book classifies music in ten thaats but that a number of Muslim musicians had classified them well before him, such as Sadiq Ali, who also has ten thaats in his book Sarmaya-i ishrat. KAK13. For an appreciation of Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (1860–1936), see Nayar, Bhatkhande’s Contribution to Music. For a critical reading in broad alignment with Anwar’s views, see Bakhle, Two Men and Music. In a video interview, Anwar also positively mentions this study: Acharyah, Musalman aur barr-i saghir ki mausiqi.

50.   50.  KAK12.

51.   51.  Anwar dwells on this extensively in his interviews KAK1, KAK5, KAK6, KAK7, KAK8, and KAK9. In KAK10, he discusses communism, socialism, and fascism. He discusses his music in Bombay only in KAK12.

52.   52.  The presence of two attractive young women, the sisters Mohini Zutshi and Shyama Zutshi, lent a powerful aura of romance to these gatherings: “I was about 17, which is an impassioned age [tez t̤arrār ‘umr].” KAK5. On the Zutshi sisters, see Sahgal, An Indian Freedom Fighter Recalls Her Life; “The Fearless Zutshi Sisters of Lahore.” Anwar also attended the Indian National Congress session in late 1929, encountering Indira Gandhi (the future prime minister of India) as an enchanting teenager in the girl’s camp “whose presence mesmerized us for hours on end.” KAK5.

53.   53.  KAK5. I have not been able to trace a Central Revolutionary Party. Perhaps Anwar meant the Central Committee of the HSRA. There is mention of a “Central Committee of the Revolutionary Party, meaning the inner circle of the HSRA” in Maclean, A Revolutionary History of Interwar India, 106. However, in his memoirs, Anwar went to great lengths to disassociate himself from any of Bhagat Singh’s associates.

54.   54.  KAK7.

55.   55.  KAK6.

56.   56.  KAK8.

57.   57.  KAK1.

58.   58.  KAK7. “ ‘Approvement’ was an old but effective instrument of judicial pacification in British India.” Vaidik, “History of a Renegade Revolutionary,” 218.

59.   59.  KAK7.

60.   60.  “Jab maiṉ ne apne vālid kī bāt kā javāb diyā to sab ke t̤ot̤e uṛ ga’e” (When I refuted my father’s request, everyone was flabbergasted). KAK8.

61.   61.  KAK8.

62.   62.  KAK9.

63.   63.  U. Khan, “Khawaja Khurshid Anwar.”

64.   64.  KAK1. However, according to Faiz’s recollection, Anwar was among two or three close friends who were involved with Bhagat Singh’s movement: “The leader [sargẖana] of this group was Khawaja Khurshid Anwar, now a famous music director, who had converted my hostel room into a center [aḍḍā] for distributing underground literature. These texts were mostly on Karl Marx, Lenin, and the Russian Revolution. At times, I would also glance at them in a cursory way [kabhī kabhār sarsarī naz̤ar se maiṉ bhī dekh liyā kartā thā].” Faiz, Mah o sal-i ashna’i, 10. However, in his interviews, Anwar contests this: “I am astonished as to why Faiz wrote such a thing. Yes, I used to visit his room, but I don’t remember any details. Why would I distribute communist literature when I was never impressed by communism?” KAK1.

65.   65.  Anwar mentions “ultimate values” in English and also uses the Urdu phrase ḥatmī aqdār. KAK1.

66.   66.  KAK5.

67.   67.  The latter is especially difficult to pin down, given that Bhagat Singh was only twenty-three years old when he was put to death and his ideological views were in a process of formation. Maclean, A Revolutionary History of Interwar India, 6. Recent scholarship has argued for an understanding of Singh’s close reading of diverse texts and affiliation with them as enabling a sense of openness toward the future. For example, for J. Daniel Elam, Bhagat Singh’s Jail Notebook reveals that his “reading practices, especially in the face of death, suggest a new way to theorize ‘revolution’ as the perpetual deferment of authority and mastery, rather than the eventual assumption of those positions.” Elam, “Commonplace Anti-colonialism,” 592.

68.   68.  Anwar sarcastically observes, “This musician’s love for Pakistan was so encompassing that he soon abandoned it and returned to India.” KAK3. Z. A. Bukhari discusses the musician’s return to Delhi in his autobiography, Bukhari, Sarguzasht. Also see Kapuria, “Music and Its Many Memories.”

69.   69.  Bukhari was a veteran of All India Radio in Delhi. Lelyveld, “Talking the National Language”; Bukhari, Sarguzasht.

70.   70.  KAK15.

71.   71.  Ahang-e-Khusravi: Raag mala; Ahang-e-Khusravi: Gharanon ki gaiki. W. A. Khwaja, “Khawaja Khurshid Anwar.” Also see A. Parvez, “Khwaja Khurshid Anwar,” 99; Siddiqi, “Khawaja Khurshid Anwar.”

72.   72.  On the question of genre in the Gothic and horror films in Bombay cinema, see M. Sen, Haunting Bollywood, 9.

73.   73.  The threat of Indic myths and lifeworlds to modern bourgeois life in Zehr-e Ishq (1958) is analyzed in Dadi, “Lineages of Pakistan’s ‘Urdu’ Cinema.”

74.   74.  Sarkar, Mourning the Nation, 30.

75.   75.  The quote “figural sublimations and displacements” is from Bhaskar Sarkar in describing Indian films and their relation to the Partition. Sarkar, Mourning the Nation, 30. On Bombay cinema’s tropes of reincarnation in its midcentury films, see M. Sen, Haunting Bollywood, 25 and passim.

76.   76.  M. Sen, Haunting Bollywood, 42.

77.   77.  Jameson, “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture.”

78.   78.  The two films from the 1930s are Swarg Ki Sidhi (1935, dir. Imtiaz Ali Taj) and Suhag Ka Daan (1936). “Imtiaz Ali Taj,” Pakistan Artists Database, accessed April 4, 2020, https://pakmag.net/film/artists/details.php?pid=1441; “Swarg Ki Sidhi (1935),” IMDb, accessed July 24, 2020, www.imdb.com/title/tt0232745. Among Master Ghulam Haider’s first film compositions were those for Taj’s Swarg Ki Sidhi. “Master Ghulam Haider,” Pakistan Artists Database, accessed April 4, 2020, https://pakmag.net/film/artists/details.php?pid=1164. Zakhmi Kanpuri seems to conflate Gulnar with Zehr-e Ishq and mentions that it was based on Lakhnavi culture. He notes that Qateel Shifai, although writing lyrics for films for ten years, made a breakthrough in this film in terms of the popularity of his songs. Kanpuri perhaps confuses this with Zehr-e Ishq, because Qateel Shifai’s first film is Teri Yaad (1948). Kanpuri, Yadgar filmen, 163.

79.   79.  “Gulnar (1953),” Pakistan Film Database—Lollywood Movies, accessed May 29, 2020, http://pakmag.net/film/details.php?pid=45. On Haider’s work for Humayun (1945), Gregory D. Booth writes, “The musical results of the freelance/studio musician collaboration, the presence of specialist arrangers, and improving sound technology and expertise can all be heard in Mehboob Productions’ Humayun (1945). In the early 1940s, Mehboob Productions employed roughly fifteen musicians on salary, who were complemented in this film by the small group of freelance musicians who were associated regularly with the film’s music director, Ghulam Haider. Six of Haider’s musicians had come with him to Mumbai from Lahore and many, like Haider himself, did not read Western notation.… Humayun’s soundtrack illustrates how far music had progressed in the nine years since Amar Jyoti, both musically and technologically. The playback-singer system was now firmly in place; the voices of Shams Luckhnavi and Shamshad Begum (whose name is mysteriously absent from the title credits) dominate the soundtrack.… Humayun has an effective background music score that demonstrates increased range and flexibility and that continues under dialogue when appropriate, supporting the emotional content. In films such as Humayun, all the primary elements of the Bollywood sound fall into place; composers expand and develop these elements in subsequent decades until, by the 1970s at the latest, they had become almost totally subject to conventional treatment.” Booth, “That Bollywood Sound,” 90–91.

80.   80.  “Noor Jehan,” IMDb, accessed April 4, 2020, www.imdb.com/name/nm0420451. On Noor Jehan’s accomplishments as a singer in Mehboob Khan’s Anmol Ghadi (1946), see Beaster-Jones, Bollywood Sounds, 43–46.

81.   81.  I. A. Rehman, “Intezar.”

82.   82.  Anwar’s classicizing approach can perhaps be situated alongside Naushad Ali in India. On the latter, see Booth, Behind the Curtain, 264.

83.   83.  On “winking” as a strategy in the Hollywood musical Singin’ in the Rain (1952) that acknowledges the film’s artifice, see Feuer, “Singin’ in the Rain (1952), Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly.”

84.   84.  Booth, Behind the Curtain, 264.

85.   85.  On port cities, see Denning, Noise Uprising. A jazz musician named Micky Correa, “Karachi’s leading saxophonist,” performed in Bombay, as reported in “Personalities in Pictures,” Indian Listener 2, no. 15 (July 22, 1937): 664. Thanks to Harleen Singh for this reference.

86.   86.  Siddiqi, “Khawaja Khurshid Anwar.” Gregory D. Booth includes Sebastian D’Souza among the small group of industry professionals who between 1948 and 1952 codified the modern Hindi film song. See Booth, “A Moment of Historical Conjuncture in Mumbai.”

87.   87.  Booth, “A Moment of Historical Conjuncture in Mumbai,” 32. Also, “[Sebastian] D’Souza had been playing and arranging for his uncle’s jazz band in Lahore prior to Partition in 1947,” according to Gregory D. Booth, “That Bollywood Sound,” 93.

88.   88.  Anwar offers a detailed explanation of the technical problems in shooting this scene. Usman, “Portrait of a Film-Maker.”

89.   89.  Booth, “A Moment of Historical Conjuncture in Mumbai,” 32.

90.   90.  B. Sen, “The Sounds of Modernity,” 91.

91.   91.  Gregory Booth observes that the “newly created governments of India and Pakistan each had their own reasons for not encouraging foreign popular musical styles. It is perhaps ironic that many dance-band musicians chose to work in the Hindi film industry despite their preference for other musical styles. Many of these musicians were Goans, who spoke little Hindi and who rarely (if ever) watched for pleasure the films whose music they played for profit.” Booth, “That Bollywood Sound,” 92.

92.   92.  Morcom, Hindi Film Songs and the Cinema, 67.

93.   93.  Morcom, Hindi Film Songs and the Cinema, 170–71. She further notes, “Western music’s particular emphasis on the sense of ‘dynamic passage through time’ may have made it especially attractive to music directors. That Indian music is strongly identified with stasis but less so with transition and progression—whether at the level of structure or popular essentialist notions of the ‘mythical,’ ‘eternal’ nature of India—would lead to more borrowing of Western music in Hindi movies in scenes of progression than in scenes of stasis. These conceptions can perhaps be seen as factors justifying the use of music heavily laden with Western techniques in highly Indian scenes and contexts, given that Western music was and is anyway fashionable and one of the unique selling points of Hindi films, especially in the early days” (172).

94.   94.  On the significance of the opera Indar Sabha (The assembly of King Indar), composed by Agha Hasan Amanat in 1853, see Hansen, “The Indar Sabha Phenomenon.” Also see Hansen, “Heteroglossia in Amanat’s Indar Sabha.”

95.   95.  In fact, the renowned classical musician Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, whose hometown was in Kasur, West Pakistan, came to Pakistan after 1947 but left the country permanently in 1957 to return to India.

96.   96.  For accounts of the transition to sound and its implications for playback singing, see N. Majumdar, “Between Rage and Song”; D. Mukherjee, Bombay Hustle, 143–82.

97.   97.  But see Neepa Majumdar’s discussion of the difference between the value of authenticity in Hollywood exemplified by Singin’ in the Rain and Indian cinema of the period. N. Majumdar, Wanted Cultured Ladies Only!, 177–78.

98.   98.  For an analysis of Singin’ in the Rain, see Wollen, Singin’ in the Rain; Feuer, “Singin’ in the Rain (1952), Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly,” 440–54.

99.   99.  On the stardom of Lata Mangeshkar, see N. Majumdar, Wanted Cultured Ladies Only!

100. 100.  The celebration of the playback singer as a star in her own right contrasts markedly to the phenomenon of the “ghost voice” just a few years before. Meheli Sen observes, “Playback singing, for example, overlays a prerecorded music track atop the image track and imbues the form with an added layer of spectrality; not only do ghostly forms flicker via the apparatus, but ghostly voices of absent others (and shards of times past) accompany them in the present of the projected moment.” M. Sen, Haunting Bollywood, 5. A film magazine editor had remarked in 1944 that off-screen singing voices accompanying on-screen bodies constituted “artistic fraud.” N. Majumdar, Wanted Cultured Ladies Only!, 185.

101. 101.  Shikha Jhingan remarks on Noor Jehan’s career in Bombay cinema, “What made Noor Jehan stand apart from the other singers was the embodied nature of her performance. She retained the mehfil style of singing in which the live presence of the singer was underscored by heightened emotionality, corporeality, clear enunciation of lyrics, and the projection of an intense investment in performance.” Jhingan, “Sonic Ruptures,” 215–16. Also see Sundar, “Meri Awaaz Suno.”

102. 102.  A widely shared view is that Mangeshkar’s rise became possible only due to the place vacated by Noor Jehan. Jhingan notes, “There has been intense speculation that had Noor Jehan not left for Pakistan, Lata Mangeshkar may not have achieved the kind of hegemonic status that she did.” Jhingan, “Sonic Ruptures,” 215–16. And Neepa Majumdar observes, “The shift to the dominance of a few recognizable voices is explained in the Bombay film industry as a monopoly engineered by shrewd individuals such as Lata Mangeshkar, who were able to take advantage of the migration of several singers (such as the equally popular Noor Jehan) to Pakistan after the partition of India in 1947” (187). According to Majumdar, Mangeshkar’s playback status as a fully realized star text emerges in the wake of the release of Mahal (1949) and the demand by fans to know the name of the singer when its songs were played on radio: “Lata’s song from Mahal may be said to mark the transition from ‘ghost voices’ to the aural stardom of ‘playback singers,’ a transition forced by fans” (189). N. Majumdar, Wanted Cultured Ladies Only!

103. 103.  Rajamani, Pernau, and Schofield, Monsoon Feelings.

104. 104.  “[Sebastian] D’Souza’s professionalism (oral accounts emphasize the speed at which he could work, together with his flexibility) and the commercial success of the Kapoor-Shankar-Jaikishan films established a musical, professional, and economic framework that effectively normalized the use of a larger and more diverse film orchestra in the productions of scores in which harmony, sectional playing, and counterpoint figured prominently.” Booth, “That Bollywood Sound,” 93.

105. 105.  “Indiancine.ma: A Project by Pad.ma,” Indiancine.ma, accessed April 4, 2020; “Aankh Ka Nasha,” Pakistan Film Database—Lollywood Movies, accessed April 4, 2020, https://pakmag.net/film/details.php?pid=120.

106. 106.  Hansen, “Boucicault in Bombay,” 65–66. On Agha Hashr Kashmiri’s popular play Yahudi ki larki (The Jew’s daughter), see Hansen, “Staging Composite Culture.”

107. 107.  “Hollywood films and Latin-themed cabarets in Mumbai inspired a number of enterprising Hindi film song composers and arrangers, including C. Ramchandra, the composer duo Shankar-Jaikishan, O. P. Nayyar, and Naushad Ali.” Shope, “Latin American Music in Moving Pictures and Jazzy Cabarets in Mumbai, 1930s to 1950s,” 202.

108. 108.  For an extended analysis of this Albela song and its links with Carmen Miranda’s song in Week-End in Havana (1941, dir. Walter Lang), see Shope, “Latin American Music in Moving Pictures and Jazzy Cabarets in Mumbai, 1930s to 1950s,” 212–13.

109. 109.  Dass, Outside the Lettered City, 124–25.

110. 110.  I. A. Rehman, “Intezar.”

111. 111.  Dadi, “Lineages of Pakistan’s ‘Urdu’ Cinema.”

112. 112.  Malik, “Ghunghat (1962) Review.”

113. 113.  One of the film’s opening titles notes that idea of the ghost was adapted from a short story by Ghulam Mohammad titled “Dosheeza.”

114. 114.  Also a Lahore film released in 1965.

115. 115.  According to Arif Rahman Chughtai (son of the artist), this work is Lilly of the Fields. Email communication, July 4, 2020.

116. 116.  For a detailed discussion of Chughtai, see Dadi, Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia.

117. 117.  Faiz, “Musavvir-i Mashriq,” 73. The ghazal form had come under criticism by reformers during the later nineteenth century for its purported artifice and lack of realism and naturalism. For an extended discussion of Altaf Hussain Hali’s influential critique of the ghazal, see Pritchett, Nets of Awareness, chapter 12.

118. 118.  Chughtai, Maqalat-i Chughtai, vol. 1, 147.

119. 119.  Faiz is listed in IMDb and in www.pakmag.net as a lyricist but not mentioned in the title credits, which only list Tanvir Naqvi. “Ghoonghat (1962) - Pakistani Urdu Film,” Pakistan Film Magazine, accessed March 13, 2022, https://pakmag.net/film/details.php?pid=308. But see this note by M. A. Siddiqi: “Faiz’s song for the film Ghoonghat, More piyā ko ḍhūnḍ ke lā’o sakhī, sung by Noor Jahan, was written in a traditional Purbi vernacular (Western Standard Bhojpuri) embellished by poignant shehnai pieces with rhythmic adjustments in antarās.” Siddiqi, “Khawaja Khurshid Anwar.”

120. 120.  A. Parvez, “Three Uniquely Shot Pakistani Film Songs.” Jayson Beaster-Jones notes that Tanvir Naqvi had written lyrics for the Bombay film Anmol Ghadi (Precious watch, 1946, dir. Mehboob Khan) with Noor Jehan as star and playback singer. Many songs of this film “are still considered evergreen (i.e., classic) hits.” Beaster-Jones, Bollywood Sounds, 43.

121. 121.  M. Sen, Haunting Bollywood, 38.

122. 122.  For an excellent discussion of the modalities and significance of darshan, see Eck, Darśan.

123. 123.  Waheed, “Beyond the Wounded Archive,” 7–8.

124. 124.  As Meheli Sen notes in her analysis of Bombay Gothic films from the midcentury, “The phallic and moral economy of the investigative thriller is … constitutively aligned to the expulsion, or at least marginalization, of the female ghost—the rejection of the irrational-supernatural-feminine, which had heretofore insistently haunted and enslaved the male subject. This reorganization of narrative material would also come to be a generic convention of the Hindi Gothic during the 1950s and beyond.” M. Sen, Haunting Bollywood, 43.

125. 125.  “Āp hī jaise adīboṉ ne bahāroṉ ke nag¯ẖme, sitāroṉ kī kirneṉ, phūloṉ kī ḵẖushbū, ko’il kī kūkū, aur na jāne kyā alā balā milā kar ‘aurat ko devī banā kar chabūtre par rakh choṛā hai. Āp bhūl jāte haiṉ keh voh bhī āp kī t̤arah insān hai, us ke honṭ muskurā sakte haiṉ, us kī ānkheṉ ānsū bahā saktī hain, us ke pā’ūṉ thokar bhī khā sakte haiṉ, ḵẖāmiyāṉ us meṉ bhī hotī haiṉ, phir āp us bechārī ko devī kyūṉ samajh baiṭhte haiṉ?”

126. 126.  These include technical issues, such as from where do the temple bell sounds emanate? From the swinging bells at the temple themselves, whose cause of movement is never explained, or from the organ in Sunder Nivas?

127. 127.  Gorija, Pakistan ki 100 shahkar filmen, 72.

128. 128.  Meheli Sen has noted that in her analysis of midcentury Bombay Gothic films, “Historical and ideological imperatives necessitate that the narrative cannot remain in disarray, mired in returns and repetitions, either. Hereafter, the films deploy a tricky sleight of hand to accomplish virtually an impossible task—recuperate the impaired/imperiled masculinity of the hero and reinstate him to the helm of narrative agency. This recuperative gesture, then, will also reinscribe him within the modern time-consciousness of the nation-state. The universe of meanings that have gathered around the ‘ghost story’ must be, figuratively speaking, put to rest.” M. Sen, Haunting Bollywood, 42.

129. 129.  Usman, “Portrait of a Film-Maker.” “According to Khawaja Irfan Anwar, this interview is dated December 2015 (but of course it must originally date back to Anwar’s lifetime).” Comment in Facebook post by Ikrumul Haq, dated October 30, 2015, in Khwaja Khurshid Anwar (public group) on Facebook.

130. 130.  Shaina Anand notes, “Tellingly, that’s not how one would generally spell Usha. It’s not entirely wrong, but the ‘sh’ would be a different one.” Personal communication, June 10, 2019.

131. 131.  Sarkar, Mourning the Nation, 68.

132. 132.  Dadi, “Lineages of Pakistan’s ‘Urdu’ Cinema.”

133. 133.  Sarkar, Mourning the Nation.

134. 134.  Moffat, India’s Revolutionary Inheritance, 19.

3. CINEMA AND POLITICS

1.     1.  For a study of the disruptive role of romantic love in Indian commercial cinema, see Wani, Fantasy of Modernity. Manishita Dass has examined the relay of filmmakers and writers affiliated in the forties with the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) who moved to work in the commercial Bombay film industry. Their engagement with Bombay transformed the latter during the forties and fifties by bringing questions of social exploitation to the social film. She notes, “The cinematic legacy of the IPTA is usually discussed (if at all) in terms of an impulse toward social realism and often in terms of failure—the failure to inject a dose of social realism into Bombay cinema and the inevitable dilution of radicalism in the cauldron of mass culture. However, a focus on the failure of the social realist agenda makes us lose sight of the fact that social realism was one of the many strands of the IPTA movement in the 1940s; it also prevents us from exploring the ways in which the IPTA experience and aesthetic actually left their mark on Bombay cinema. As several scholarly and eyewitness accounts indicate, songs, dances, tableaux, and shadow plays—all of which relied on stylization and a fusion of entertainment and edification—as well as nonnaturalistic modes of staging and acting formed an integral part of leftist street theater performances right from the beginning.” Dass, “Cinetopia,” 110.

2.     2.  Rajadhyaksha, “The Lahore Effect,” 332.

3.     3.  In his critically insightful book published in 1969, Alamgir Kabir has perceptively remarked on the vast scale of Lahore’s film production: “Lahore now has 8 film studios, and a large number of directors … confidently turning out money-spinners, often with amazing frequency.” Kabir further notes, “Of course, the ‘gold rush’ forced a good number of them to abandon any artistic ambition. But directors like S. M. Yusuf and Masud Parvez [Masood Pervaiz] have proved that, at times, they too can be aware of the true needs of their medium and produce films that could pass for ‘bold attempts.’ And that may mean quite something under the circumstances. And there are other directors who have taken great pains to show that they are far from happy at the state of the art in Pakistan and have tried, however modestly, to bring about a fusion of ‘commercial’ appeal and the needs of culture and art in their efforts. They include directors like Anwar Kamal [Pasha], Khalil Kaiser [Qaiser], … Hasan [Hassan] Tariq, Qadir Ghouri, Sharif Nayyar, W. Z. Ahmed, Ahmed Bashir and S. Suleman.” Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan, 58–59.

4.     4.  Mushtaq Gazdar provides a useful overview: “Khalil Qaiser and Riaz Shahid … became known for their exploration of a cinematic verism that dealt with both the historical freedom movement and the contemporary struggle against autocracy.… [Qaiser directed] Clerk, a down-to-earth story in which he also played the title role. It was a bold attempt that caught the attention of the Press but not that of film-goers. Next was Shaheed. This was the pinnacle of Khalil’s achievement both as director and producer. It was written by Riaz Shahid, a progressive journalist who was aspiring to change the world through cinema.” Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 90.

5.     5.  Their fellow travelers include the directors Jamil Akhtar and Hassan Tariq.

6.     6.  For profiles of Tanvir Naqvi and Himayat Ali Shair from the sixties, see “Men and Ideas: Tanveer Naqvi”; Noorani, “Himayat Ali Shair,” 26.

7.     7.  Kanpuri, Zikr e fankar chale, 173.

8.     8.  On Nagin, see Sajjad, “Lollywood ki sanpon kay mauzu par banai gai film Nagin 1959.”

9.     9.  According to Kanpuri, the failure of Clerk at the box office was due to Khalil Qaiser playing an uncharismatic lead role. Kanpuri, Zikr e fankar chale, 178.

10.   10.  In an interview, industry observer Aijaz Gul reiterates the popular perception of this group of industry stalwarts: “Khalil Qaisar was rebellious because he was against corruption in the political system, whether it was the British Raj or the Pakistani government. Riaz Shahid was a writer and also became a director but essentially he was collaborating with director Khalil Qaisar. Tanvir Naqvi was their lyricist, Faiz Ahmed Faiz their poet and Rashid Attre their music composer. So it was a whole team. Riaz Shahid kept on writing against the vices of the system and the corruption in the establishment.… They took the subject of Palestine, Andalus, Kashmir. Shaheed deals with British corruption in the Middle East. Khalil Qaisar did not live long. He made Shaheed, Farangi, Nagin, Haveli, and two or three more films, and passed away in a very tragic way. So, Riaz Shahid took over and did continue with his revolutionary scripts and films. His film Zerqa deals with the independence of Palestine, Gharnata with Muslims in Spain and Yeh Aman with Kashmir. Gul and Amanullah, “Aijaz Gul on Cinema in Pakistan,” 180–81.

11.   11.  On the life and work of Jalib, see, for example, “Habib Jalib: The People’s Poet and Historian”; Jalib, Jalib biti; Habib Jalib: fann aur shakhsiyyat; S. Parvez, Habib Jalib: ghar ki gavahi; Barelvi, Habib Jalib; S. Parvez, Habib Jalib: sha‘ir-i sh‘ulah nava.

12.   12.  Kanpuri, Zikr e fankar chale, 175.

13.   13.  R. Shahid, Hazar Dastan.

14.   14.  Kanpuri, Zikr e fankar chale, 175–83.

15.   15.  Kanpuri, Zikr e fankar chale, 176–77.

16.   16.  For a reading of Neend, see N. Rehman, “Pakistan, History, and Sleep.”

17.   17.  Shakur, “Riaz Shahid.”

18.   18.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 92.

19.   19.  Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan, 170.

20.   20.  Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan, 89.

21.   21.  On Pakistani cinema’s relation to Bombay cinema: “Pakistan began with a micro film industry based at Lahore inheriting all that was bad in the filmart dispensed from the subcontinent’s erstwhile film capital, Bombay.” Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan, 81. On cultural awareness: “Any artistic upliftment of the cinema must be preceded by radical changes in the social outlook particularly in that of the new middle-class of West Pakistan. Education and culture are synonymous. Without the participation of socially conscious and truly ‘cultivated’ individuals, no artistic development is possible in the state of the cinema. At present, needless to say, this participation is insignificant.” Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan, 60. On plagiarism: “Lahore discovered a surprisingly easy but ethically indefensible way out—plagiarism. Story elements, treatments, musical scores including songs, even the titles from Bombay productions began to be plagiarized. One producer went for even greater ‘perfection’ and imported a plagiarism-expert from India who could reproduce latest ‘hits’ of Indian screen with greater authenticity except for the cast which just had to be Pakistani.” Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan, 82. On stereotypes: “Generally, there is no story without the romantic trio—two girls (one of whom is usually poor) and one boy. Rarely do two boys fight over the same girl unless one is a copy-book villain. In no story is the heroine allowed to confront the problem of having to choose from two equally attractive suitors because it is not nice for an oriental girl to have such a dilemma. She is, however, allowed to fall headlong for the one and only who is to be her husband in the end. Nearly the same goes for the hero. He, too, is never told to choose from two equally pretty, homely, and devoted maidens. The theme is usually divided into three parts. In the first, the trio let out their overtures. In the second, the feudal father or a dominating mother or whoever is the boss lets loose the strains and stresses in the intra-trio relationship. In the last, the climax arrives; the good and the lovables triumph and the trouble-makers either die off or become sincerely repentant. The values that are loudly glorified are the dignity of the poor (this often amounts to a glorification of poverty), right of the poor girl to love and marry the rich boy, the real evil is money and not quite its hoarder, benevolent aristocracy is preferable to its other varieties, sanctity of law and order and nationalism (this is often mistaken for patriotism and frequently reduced to chauvinism). Elements denounced are high society life (portrayed with parties, night-clubs, bars etc.) and westernization of the womenfolk.” Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan, 85–87. On realism: “The basic pattern of the themes of Lahore or Karachi productions is more or less fixed and few directors would dare to venture into variations outside it. All stories have a built-in fairy-tale-like quality. Problems of various kinds are created without regard for realism. As unreal problems do not call for realistic solutions, the ‘problems’ created in the films are solved just as extraordinarily so that in the end the audiences can go home without anything to think about.” Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan, 85. On sexuality: “Sex still remains the earner of bread and butter, by and large. In Punjabi films this is often stretched to newer and wider limits of vulgarity (sex in the Pakistani cinema usually means a display of the vital parts of a plump actress). No director would dare to think in terms of telling a story that has some resemblance with reality without songs sung in the play-back and those voluptuous hip-shaking dances that do not contribute at all to the development of the theme.” Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan, 83. Also see 171.

22.   22.  Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan, 87.

23.   23.  Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan, 171.

24.   24.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 114.

25.   25.  K. Ali, Communism in Pakistan.

26.   26.  On the arbitrary and heavy-handed character of the Censor Board, see Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 72–73, 93. Also see the cartoon lampooning the Censor Board published in the film magazine Nigar in 1961 and reproduced in Siddique, “Nigar hai toh industry hai,” 201.

27.   27.  Aijaz Gul notes, “As he [Riaz Shahid] had to face serious problems with the censor board, many people think that he died because of the system. His son Shaan, who is now a leading man in films, says: ‘Mere baap ko cancer ne nahin, censor ne maara’ (My father was killed not by cancer but by the censor).” Gul and Amanullah, “Aijaz Gul on Cinema in Pakistan,” 181. Also see Kanpuri, Zikr e fankar chale, 181; Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 93.

28.   28.  Jameson, “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture,” 137.

29.   29.  Jameson, “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture,” 140.

30.   30.  Jameson, “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture,” 141.

31.   31.  Wani, Fantasy of Modernity, 24.

32.   32.  Hall, “Notes on Deconstructing the Popular [1981],” 348.

33.   33.  Hall, “Notes on Deconstructing the Popular [1981],” 356.

34.   34.  Barelvi, Habib Jalib, 148.

35.   35.  Jaffery, “Lahore Calling”; Barelvi, Habib Jalib, 152.

36.   36.  Jalib uses the term “biggest S.H.O.” (The station house officer is the officer in charge of a police station in Pakistan.) Jalib, Jalib biti, 71.

37.   37.  Barelvi, Habib Jalib, 151.

38.   38.  Z. Shahid, “How Habib Jalib and Riaz Shahid Forged the Way for Socialist Cinema in Pakistan.”

39.   39.  For example, see Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 92–93 and 113; Rabe, “Raqs zanjeer pehen kar bhi kiya jata hai”; Mehmood, “Flashback.”

40.   40.  Faiz, “Film.”

41.   41.  Jameson, “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture,” 141.

42.   42.  Rajadhyaksha, “The Lahore Effect.”

43.   43.  For a recitation in his own voice of Habib Jalib’s poem “Dastoor,” which he wrote against Ayub Khan’s new constitution, see Akbar, Habib Jalib. At demonstrations in India in 2019 and 2020, the poetry of Jalib and Faiz has been recited. See, for example, Rahman, “Habib Jalib, His Dastoor”; S. Ali, “Habib Jalib, Pakistan’s Poet of Dissent Whose Lines Are Now Chanted on Both Sides of Border.”

44.   44.  I thank Aamir Mufti for his advice with this translation. For the full poem and translation, see Faiz, Poems by Faiz, 230–32.

45.   45.  See Manishita Dass’s reading of the bazaar in her discussion of cinema and the public sphere in late colonial India. Dass, Outside the Lettered City, 96–97.

46.   46.  Bhaumik, “The Emergence of the Bombay Film Industry, 1913–1936.”

47.   47.  While Zerqa champions Palestinian resistance, it also veers into stereotyping Africans and Jews. Ahmad, “Birth of a (Muslim) Nation.” For an enthusiastically affirmative reading of the film, see Petiwala, “Falasteen Ka Matlab Kya?”

48.   48.  A. Parvez, “Neelo”; Lone, “Memorable Romance.”

49.   49.  Christians and Hindus have played a key role in cinema in Pakistan. For example, see Rabe, “Five Pakistani-Christian Singers.”

50.   50.  For a discussion of the language politics among the leftists in West Pakistan and the widespread sense of racial superiority, see K. Ali, Communism in Pakistan, 107–9, 200–205.

51.   51.  Alamgir Kabir’s book, which was also published in 1969, just two years before the break of the country, and his sustained criticism of the Lahore and Karachi filmmakers can therefore also be read in the context of the growing estrangement and the divergence of the trajectory of cinema between the two wings of the country. Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan.

52.   52.  Manishita Dass, “Cinetopia,” 111.

53.   53.  Aijaz Gul notes, for example, that Clerk is “a good example of a film that deals with the poverty of an ordinary clerk who resists corruption, bribery and palm greasing, and who lives by his own rules … a good subject, but didn’t do very well at the box-office because it was very sad and grim.” Gul and Amanullah, “Aijaz Gul on Cinema in Pakistan,” 181.

54.   54.  On the roles played by Kumar in Bombay, see Siddique, “From Gandhi to Jinnah.”

55.   55.  Gorija, Pakistan ki 100 shahkar filmen; Kanpuri, Yadgar filmen.

56.   56.  Adnan, “As a Young Man, I Wanted to Write Short Stories, Not Dramas and Films.”

57.   57.  Faiz, “Film.”

58.   58.  As Mushtaq Gazdar puts it, “Though their work lacked artistic and technical finesse, its impact on the common people was direct and unambiguous.” Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 90.

59.   59.  On traditional leisure activities in Lahore, see Frembgen and Rollier, Wrestlers, Pigeon Fanciers, and Kite Flyers.

60.   60.  K. Ali, “On Female Friendships & Anger,” 125.

61.   61.  K. Ali, “On Female Friendships & Anger,” 125.

62.   62.  K. Ali, “On Female Friendships & Anger,” 125.

63.   63.  Faiz, “Film.”

64.   64.  Documents and reflections on Manto’s contribution to cinema are compiled in Abbas, Manto filmen (mubahis).

65.   65.  D. Mukherjee, “The Lost Films of Sa‘adat Hasan Manto”; Anjum, Manto aur cinema.

66.   66.  For a profile of Iqbal Shehzad from 1966, see “Men and Ideas: Iqbal Shahzad.”

67.   67.  “The film, unlike the original story, is forcibly injected with principles of probity.” Narayan, “The Forbidden Jhumke.”

68.   68.  Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan, 87–88.

69.   69.  Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan, 88.

70.   70.  Kanpuri, Yadgar filmen, 51–52.

71.   71.  “From this point, the wife becomes a zombie, a ṭhanḍā gosht (cold meat [or a corpse]), to use the title of another Manto story,” notes Hari Narayan in his review. Narayan, “The Forbidden Jhumke.”

72.   72.  Jameson, “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture,” 141.

73.   73.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 98–100.

74.   74.  Narayan, “The Forbidden Jhumke.”

75.   75.  Anjum, Manto aur cinema, 459.

76.   76.  Z. Shahid, “Iqbal Shehzad.”

77.   77.  “Hindi movies virtually never use rag or any other kind of Indian melody including folk or film melody, in scenes of disturbance. Moreover … many of the Western sounding techniques for creating disturbance, extensive chromatic movement, whole tone scales, diminished sevenths, and unmelodic motifs, apparently do so by virtue of being altogether out of the musical logic of any kind of Indian melody.” Morcom, Hindi Film Songs and the Cinema, 173.

78.   78.  According to Hari Narayan, the film’s “commercial success owed greatly to its music.” Narayan, “The Forbidden Jhumke.”

79.   79.  “Deebo Bhattacharya”; A. Parvez, “Deebo Bhattacharya—a Captivating Composer.” For a profile from 1966, see “Men and Ideas: Deboo Bhatacharjee.”

80.   80.  Mirza Ghalib, “Hazaron khwahishen aisi ki har khwahish pe dam nikle,” Rekhta, accessed July 13, 2020, www.rekhta.org/ghazals/hazaaron-khvaahishen-aisii-ki-har-khvaahish-pe-dam-nikle-mirza-ghalib-ghazals; Frances Pritchett, “219_03 [Ghalib, Ghazal 219, Verse 3],” Divan-e Ghalib, accessed July 13, 2020, www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ghalib/219/219_03.html.

81.   81.  Narayan, “The Forbidden Jhumke.”

82.   82.  Kabir, The Cinema in Pakistan, 87.

4. THE ZINDA BHAAG ASSEMBLAGE

1.     1.  “History—Lok Virsa,” Lok Virsa, accessed July 25, 2020, https://lokvirsa.org.pk/history. In 2019, Lok Virsa Museum screened Susraal (1962) as part of its “initiative to revive the classical cinema,” according to Radio Pakistan. “Lok Virsa Screens Film Susral,” Radio Pakistan, March 10, 2019, www.radio.gov.pk/10–03–2019/lok-virsa-screens-film-susral. For an assessment of Lok Virsa and its promotion of “folk” culture, see Gilmartin and Maskiell, “Appropriating the Punjabi Folk.”

2.     2.  Gazdar, Pakistan Cinema, 240.

3.     3.  See the introduction for a discussion of the Lahore effect. For Rajadhyaksha’s elaboration, see his “The Lahore Effect.”

4.     4.  Matteela’s website is http://matteela.org.

5.     5.  The film was made as part of a project on masculinity titled Let’s Talk Men, supported by Partners for Prevention, a joint program of four United Nations agencies for the prevention of gender-based violence. Directors Gaur and Nabi note, “The project came our way in 2010.… The commissioning editor was very open about it and didn’t try to introduce any particular agenda into the film.… That was fantastic because the story of Zinda Bhaag deals with ‘issues’ at a subterranean level and not in a very obvious way.… The commissioning editor of the series was Rahul Roy, himself a very well-known documentary film-maker.… Part of the funds for Zinda Bhaag were covered by this project, and the rest we raised privately.” Meenu Gaur, personal communication, July 7, 2017.

6.     6.  Gaur notes that the casting process was in some ways the opposite of the use of experienced actors and involved a development of method acting: “These were non-actors … What we did was look for particular personalities in the open auditions, and then during the rehearsal period develop the character further according to the personality of the person playing the role, e.g., Khurram Patras matched Khaldi’s personality in the auditions.” Meenu Gaur, personal communication, July 2, 2017.

7.     7.  W. Masood, “Down the River of Windfall Lights.”

8.     8.  Ahmad, “New Cinema from Pakistan,” 343–72; Hamid, “The Birth of a Cinema in Post-9/11 Pakistan”; Hamid, “Behind the Scenes.”

9.     9.  Rajadhyaksha, “The Lahore Effect.”

10.   10.  Hayles, “Cognitive Assemblages.” For Kajri Jain, in her earlier work on bazaar aesthetics in India and her more recent study of monumental cement sculpture in India, the word assemblage denotes “a confluence of heterogeneous systems and processes whose combination exceeds the acts and putative ends of its individual elements, and that enter further combinations with other assemblages.” K. Jain, “Post-reform India’s Automotive-Iconic-Cement Assemblages.”

11.   11.  Ahmad, “Film and Cinephilia in Pakistan”; Ahmad, “Explorations into Pakistani Cinema.”

12.   12.  Ahmad, “New Cinema from Pakistan,” 360–61.

13.   13.  Hoad, “Is Pakistani Film Experiencing a Revival?”

14.   14.  Ahmad, “Film and Cinephilia in Pakistan,” 90–92. See also Kirk, “ ‘A Camera from the Time of the British.’ ”

15.   15.  On Zibahkhana, see Khan and Ahmad, “From Zinda Laash to Zibahkhana”; Kirk, “Working Class Zombies and Men in Burqas”; and S. Masood, “Visions of Queer Anarchism.”

16.   16.  Ahmad, “New Cinema from Pakistan,” 358–63.

17.   17.  See Ahmad, “New Cinema from Pakistan”; Paracha, “New-Wave of Pakistani Cinema.”

18.   18.  The television serial since the late 1970s is arguably a more influential medium in contemporary Pakistan than its cinema, but the limited number of studies of the serials have largely not focused on their formal characteristics. Recent publications include Kothari, “From Genre to Zanaana.” The recent special issue of BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies 10, no. 2 (2019) on “Televisual Pakistan” includes essays on the television serial by Aisha Malik and Eliot Montpellier and an interview with serial writer Haseena Moin. And the inaugural issue of the online journal Reel Pakistan: A Screen Studies Forum 1 (2020) includes several student essays on Pakistani cinema and television serials. https://reelpakistan.lums.edu.pk/volumes.

19.   19.  For an account of the reforms enacted under President Pervez Musharraf, see Kazi, Religious Television and Pious Authority in Pakistan, 36–43.

20.   20.  The importance of media in constituting a sense of community follows and updates Benedict Anderson’s influential account of the rise of the concept of the modern nation through print capitalism. Anderson, Imagined Communities.

21.   21.  Zahid Chaudhary and the author interviewed Gaur at Princeton University on April 27, 2017.

22.   22.  Meenu Gaur, personal communication, April 27, 2017. The making of the film poster also referred to the making of publicity for earlier films. S. Iqbal created the poster art for Zinda Bhaag in a traditional hand-painted style that has now become virtually extinct. Zinda Bhaag’s Hand Made Poster.

23.   23.  On the formal and theoretical significance of narrative interruption in Indian action cinema, see Gopalan, Cinema of Interruptions. On the rise of “item numbers,” see Brara, “The Item Number.”

24.   24.  For a biographical account of Pran, see Reuben,—And Pran.

25.   25.  For example, see the compilation Pran—Villain of the Millennium—Best Dialogues, YouTube, 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIhB4NYNKlw.

26.   26.  Nadeem Paracha’s recapitulation of the citational typage of such characters is noteworthy: “If you ever catch a Pakistani film of the 1960s and 1970s … you will notice that most films shared visual and contextual commonalities regarding their portrayal of rich people.… A rich father would almost always be in a suit or a nightgown and thick glasses, holding a walking stick and chewing on a pipe. His daughter could often be seen skipping down from the twisty staircase in a white miniskirt, rolling a badminton racket in her hands and announcing, ‘Daddy, I go keelub and play badminton.’ At the keelub (club) she would venture from the badminton court to the bar where the lecherous owner of the club (usually played by the late great Aslam Parvez) would make her sip some whiskey. A mere sip would suffice for the girl to go dashing towards the dance floor to do the most anarchic version of the ‘hippie shake’ this side of the ’70s, before passing out. She would then usually wake up to realise that the lewd club owner had raped her in her drunken state.” Paracha, “New-Wave of Pakistani Cinema.”

27.   27.  “Directors of Pak’s Oscar Entry Zinda Bhaag Talk about Its Universal Appeal.”

28.   28.  R. Majumdar, “Art Cinema.”

29.   29.  A. Jain, “The Curious Case of the Films Division”; Deprez, “The Films Division of India, 1948–1964”; Adajania, “New Media Overtures before New Media Practice in India”; Jhaveri, “Building on a Prehistory.”

30.   30.  According to veteran media professional Javed Jabbar, an organization named Pakistan Institute for the Study of Film Art showed Satyajit Ray films in 1977. Jabbar, “The Little Road.” The Kara Film Festival from 2001 to 2009 promoted critical viewership of thoughtful cinema in Karachi. More work is needed to understand the role of film societies and viewing practices for alternative and world cinema in Pakistan.

31.   31.  See H. Zaidi, “Herald Exclusive.”

32.   32.  “Jamil Dehlavi’s Blood of Hussain, released in England … was banned under martial law and remains effectively proscribed.” “A. J. Kardar’s Door Hey Sukh Ka Gaon [Faraway village of peace], funded during the rule of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (1973–1977), never left the English laboratory it was sent to for post-production due to financing problems.” Ahmad, “Film and Cinephilia in Pakistan,” 82.

33.   33.  On the new hybrid, see Devasundaram, India’s New Independent Cinema. On hatke films, see the interviews by Elahe Hiptoola, Rucha Pathak, and Anurag Kashyap in Dwyer and Pinto, Beyond the Boundaries of Bollywood.

34.   34.  Devasundaram, India’s New Independent Cinema, 2.

35.   35.  Devasundaram, India’s New Independent Cinema, 6–7.

36.   36.  “The traditional Western conception of Indie cinema as films created outside the studio system is not necessarily applicable to Indian Indies, which often solicit the financial and infrastructural support of big corporate studios and Bollywood in order to survive.” Devasundaram, India’s New Independent Cinema, 271.

37.   37.  Devasundaram, India’s New Independent Cinema, 242.

38.   38.  Rubina practices “shop giving” rather than “shoplifting” in order to create demand for her soap. The term “shop giving” was deployed by the artist collective The Yes Men, who in their Barbie Liberation Organization project switched the voice boxes of several Barbie dolls and G.I. Joe action figures and then placed the altered toys back on the shelves for unsuspecting consumers to purchase. Firestone, “While Barbie Talks Tough, G. I. Joe Goes Shopping.”

39.   39.  Siddiqa, Military Inc. As Ali Nobil Ahmad memorably notes, “New Cinema’s best financed, most technologically advanced and highest-grossing films are also those most likely to warm the miniscule hearts of ISPR … ideologues and censors.” Ahmad, “New Cinema from Pakistan,” 347; “How Well Did Movies with ISPR Backing Do at the Box Office?”; Bokhari, “I Finally Watched Kaaf Kangana and Instantly Wished I Hadn’t.”

40.   40.  Ahmad, “New Cinema from Pakistan,” 361.

41.   41.  See Paracha, “Whatever Happened to Pakistan′s Film Industry?”; Ahmad, “New Cinema from Pakistan.”

42.   42.  “Zinda Bhaag also contracted production and post-production assistance from across the border, a common practice in Pakistani New Cinema, where the lack of technical infrastructure and personnel in Pakistan compels filmmakers to work with Indian or Thai expertise. In the case of Zinda Bhaag, the fact that many of the Indian personnel were familiar with Punjabi was an additional asset in terms of their being familiar with the site and context of the film.” Meenu Gaur, personal communication, April 27, 2017; July 2, 2017.

43.   43.  Meenu Gaur, personal communication, April 27, 2017.

44.   44.  Farina Mir has noted that the Hir-Ranjha story “surfaces repeatedly in Punjab’s history in places one would least expect to find it or any other love story,” such as being embedded in a Sikh dynastic history from 1849 and used as a “sacred” book upon which anticolonial revolutionaries took oath in court in 1940. Mir, The Social Space of Language, 1–3. On the var, see p. 38.

45.   45.  For an analysis of the persistence of the Oriental film into the fifties in Bombay, see R. Thomas, Bombay before Bollywood. On Bombay films that draw from Islamicate legends and lyric tropes, see A. G. Roy, Cinema of Enchantment. For an account of Sufi tropes in Urdu poetry and in the qiṣṣa from North India, see Satia, “Poets of Partition.”

46.   46.  Meenu Gaur, personal communication, July 2, 2017.

47.   47.  Zinda Bhaag, The Genius behind Pani Da Bulbula; “Zinda Bhaag Revives ‘Pani Da Bulbula.’ ” Significantly, these popular references depart from the crisis-ridden role of Punjabiyat as a living subaltern form of comedy and theater as much as of Sufi verse, albeit one without any purchase on power.

48.   48.  “ ‘Ei poth jodi na sesh hoye’ (Bangla Song), 2011,” YouTube, accessed June 8, 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEzqQNh70KY. “This Kumar/Sen hit … including their characteristic low-angle, soft-focus close-ups and stylized movements, yielded one of the most popular song picturizations of the decade, the classic motor bike scene number ‘Ei path jadi na shesh hoi.’ ” “Saptapadi (Ajoy Kar) 1961,” Indiancine.ma, accessed April 4, 2020.

49.   49.  Meenu Gaur, personal communication, July 17, 2017.

50.   50.  Meenu Gaur, personal communication, July 17, 2017.

51.   51.  Elias, On Wings of Diesel; Paracha, “Beyond ‘Horn OK Please.’ ”

52.   52.  Meenu Gaur, personal communication, July 17, 2017.

53.   53.  “Wa-Yabqa-Wajh-o-Rabbik—Faiz Ahmad Faiz,” Rekhta, accessed June 8, 2017, https://rekhta.org/nazms/va-yabqaa-vajh-o-rabbik-faiz-ahmad-faiz-nazms.

54.   54.  An article from 1965 in Eastern Film magazine titled “Pak Film Industry Meets Afro-Asian Delegates” notes that “Iqbal Bano … stole the show with Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s ghazal.” It is unclear as to which specific poem by Faiz was presented there. “Pak Film Industry Meets Afro-Asian Delegates.”

55.   55.  However, Faiz’s poem, along with lyrics of Habib Jalib’s poetry (as noted in chapter 3), have been deployed in street demonstrations in India against the government in 2019 and 2020. See, for example, Daniyal, “The Art of Resistance”; Rahman, “Habib Jalib, His Dastoor”; S. Ali, “Habib Jalib, Pakistan’s Poet of Dissent Whose Lines Are Now Chanted on Both Sides of Border.”

56.   56.  S. Khan, “Zinda Bhaag’s Music Is Quintessentially Pakistani.”

57.   57.  Ahmad, “New Cinema from Pakistan,” 364.

58.   58.  Rajadhyaksha, “The Lahore Effect,” 332.