From Rocky Aur Rani to Aap Jaisa Koi: Bollywood, please stop stereotyping Bengali women

Indian Express

2 days ago

Hindi films have always thrived on regional stereotypes in portraying Punjabi, Tamil, Gujarati or Bengali characters, shoving their distinct culture into a cubbyhole of stereotypes. Filmmakers set the camera lens for the audience rather than let the audience find their own lens to read the character or even trust the character to win hearts. The latest victim of this cinematic trope is the liberal Bengali woman.
The pendulum has been swinging between the old-world grace of a goddess-like Paro in Devdas or Lalita in Parineeta to the schizophrenic and mysterious Manjulika of Bhool Bhulaiyaa. That's why when Piku Banerjee burst on the screen with her cotton kurtas, her everyday elegance, her straightforwardness and her fierce choice to be her father's caregiver, she seemed so anchoring. Piku is a woman first, a Bengali second.
However, the same cannot be said of her descendants, Rani Chatterjee in Rocky and Rani Kii Prem Kahaani and now Madhu Bose of Aap Jaisa Koi, both from producer-director Karan Johar's stable. Each one is a sassy, self-assured, outgoing and fiery woman, daring to choose lesser men, even drawing them out of their shell of patriarchy. They reclaim agency and sexuality with the same elan, though one should not be a metaphor for the other. They end up being clones of each other with gossamer saris hugging their contours, heavily-kohled eyes, junk jewellery, bindi and flowing hair. What is problematic is the sexiness of their attire and image being a metaphor for their intellectualism and free spirit. In our society, the right to be seen and heard is still out of reach for most women, hoping to grasp any opportunity, golden or not.
Even more problematic is the fact that they are all upper caste Bengali women, coming from a privileged, elite background and an enabling environment that automatically lends them a voice. They haven't had to earn their place as such. This rarefied context puts them leagues above the majority of women who still haven't found a voice in the mainstream.
It is in that sense that both Rani and Madhu become a shell, a filmmaker's pretence of gender parity, rather than holding up a mirror to society. Contrast this with Bengal filmmakers Basu Chatterjee and Hrishikesh Mukherjee, who humanised their women protagonists, Bengali or not, with working-class sensibilities and an everydayness, with meet-cutes at the bus stop and romances in a rained-out city, all of them working in offices, taking the bus and train, munching peanuts. In fact, Bengali women were among the first in India to actively pursue education and enter the workforce, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The women's renaissance in Bengal was not only led by the empowered women of the privileged elite, like the Tagores of Jorasanko, but by ordinary women. Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain was not formally educated in English but became a leading writer and activist. Sarala Ray founded the Gokhale Memorial School and championed women's access to higher education. Binodini Dasi, born into a poor family, became a courtesan, but awestruck by the stage, she became an actor when she was only 12. Forced to quit the stage at age 23, she documented the social prejudice faced by women like her in her autobiography.
Bengal's revolutionaries comprised women from both the lower strata and middle classes, most of whom did not have access to formal education. Matangini Hazra, a peasant woman, and 15-year-old widow Nanibala Devi, who was a runaway and learnt English at a Christian mission, took to armed struggle against colonial rule. The Tebhaga movement had women peasants demanding their rights as sharecroppers. Pritilata Waddedar and Kalpana Datta, both from ordinary families, not only became armed revolutionaries but managed underground networks and courier runs for the resistance movement. This mass women's participation challenged traditional gender roles. In fact, middle-class Bengali women began to be part of the urban workforce late 1940s onwards despite bigger challenges of acceptability.
This evolution of the modern Bengali woman is important in understanding why she should not be trivialised or forgotten. Challenging patriarchal ideologies and constructs, the early pioneers did not wage a war but just stood up to be counted. In his novel, Ghare Baire (The Home and the World), Rabindranath Tagore had himself articulated this when he wrote. 'For we women are not only the deities of the household fire, but the flame of the soul itself.' And that flame doesn't need a bralette, a wispy saree or high heels. Sensuousness is about the fullness of a lived experience, not just the right to show a cleavage. If anything, the mainstream film industry has ended up propping cardboard cutouts instead of celebrating flesh-and-blood women.
[e-mail]