GHULAM - E - MUSTHAFA
Isolated Secularism
The more correct word would be populist. Every expectation is predictable and the manner of meeting this expectation is even more predictable. Even the most “novel” story with it’s desperately different plot-twists end up being boringly predictable because of the way it is told. Take the hero, Ghulam-E-Musthafa. He is the awesomely feared right hand man of Abba (Paresh Rawal who sports a co-ordinated range of designer dhoti-kurta-angvastram outfits). Abba is the local don of what appears to be a small North Indian town and he wields considerable clout with the administration. The don is universally called Abba ever since Musthafa bestows upon his Hindu benefactor this Muslim term of address. The don had picked up Musthafa and his Sudama as orphaned kids off the streets. Musthafa is a devout Muslim who prefers to pray at the picturesque, deserted mosque by the river than with a congregation. Actually you don’t ever see another Muslim character except the corrupt minister Imtiaz who needs the don’s muscle power to win elections and retain his seat.

Parto Ghosh makes being a Muslim a lonely affair. It is doubtful if he intends it as a statement for the condition of Muslims as a community. The idea is to underline the piety, loyalty and basic integrity of Musthafa even though what he does for a living is kill people at the behest of his master and surrogate father. The focus of all corruption in society is the office of the mines and minerals department where lucrative granite mining contracts are up for grabs and goes to the man who pays the price demanded by Abba and the minister Imtiaz.

The other baddies in town own a sleazy hotel where Kavita (Raveena Tandon) does a vigorously folksy cabaret to support a blind and ailing mother. Musthafa rescues her from the younger boss’s unwanted attentions and soon realises that she is a decent girl. But his visit to the decent girl’s house invites the disapproval of self-righteous, middle-class neighbours, foremost among whom is the Dixit family. Mr Dixit(Shivaji Satam) is the new officer in charge of the granite department and such is his shining honesty that he wins Musthafa’s reluctant admiration. Mrs Dixit (Aruna Irani) has this funny habit of calling out a stern “Mr Dixit” to her husband between rounds of elaborate pujas complete with Sanskrit slokas and making endless rounds of coffee. The family is supposed to look and act like South Indian Brahmins— Dixit’s ash marks on his forehead and Mrs Dixit’s insistence that her coffee mugs remain pristinely unpolluted by the touch of anybody’s lips, more so Musthafa’s mark, out their ethnic identity. I know no South Indian Brahmin woman who calls her husband Mr so and so.

Through a combination of patently contrived plot devices, Dixit is suspended for taking a bribe when the man had earlier spurned lakhs offered by Musthafa— a bribe for the bright young son’s engineering seat, dowry for the nubile daughter’s wedding and treatment for Mrs Dixit’s asthma. Musthafa’s dreams of marriage are shattered by a car bomb which was intended for the don but kills innocent Kavita. Now Musthafa’s mission is to safeguard the Dixit family from the lustful machinations of the new officer who takes Dixit’s place.

Nana Patekar and Aruna Irani liven up the second half with their constant friction: amusing, sentimental and salutory by turns before things succumbs to melodrama. Abductions, booth-capturing, electoral mayhem and tear-jerking sentimentality drown out the comparative restraint of the earlier half. Musthafa converts Amma’a die-hard Brahmin intolerance to maternal love — the rest of the family had succumbed to his brand of acerbic charm earlier. After this conversion, Musthafa meets noble martyrdom since he wants to surrender to the police and give up his criminal ways.

Nana Patekar’s subdued — and consequently more persuasive — performance gives the film its effective moments though some of the heroics he is called upon to perform are patently absurd. Aruna Irani is likeable in a role which makes Hindu orthodoxy amusing, not something objectionable. The others are adequate and fill out the usual requirements of melodrama with a patently nationalistic message.

The hoarding and the title of the film had provoked criticism from the Muslim community. There is a far more fundamental criticism which the basic premise of Ghulam-E-Musthafa invites. The underlying assumption of the story is that the Muslim can be “honoured” for being nationalistic only when he makes his piety subservient to the service of the majority community and wins their trust and affection with love. There are so many instances all through the film where this message is rammed home. Musthafa always prays alone in a lonely mosque and when he becomes a barely tolerated inmate of the Dixit family (for their own good), he quietly decides to take his prayer mat into an inside room because some of the orthodox women of the neighbourhood look askance at his offering namaz in the front hall. The only politician we see is a corrupt Muslim minister who is worried about his minority status. Intentionally or otherwise, Ghulam-E-Musthafa underlines the isolation of the Muslim in the film’s Hindu society. Parto Ghosh’s obvious message is to orthodox Hindus to accept the Muslim but the deeper message is aimed at the Muslim. This is secularism Hindi film style.