This is What They Look Like
Stereotypes of Muslim Piety in Calendar Art and Hindi Cinema

A Multi Media Work-in-Progress
by Yousuf Saeed

Disturbing as it may sound, the prejudices in the society about the people of certain communities usually come from the various stereotypical images one sees everyday in popular media and mass visual culture. Among various forms of popular art found in India's public spaces, an important category is the religious posters and calendars depicting deities, saints, and places of worship. Besides posters that deal with recognizable Hindu subject matter, one finds images with Muslim themes, typically portraying the shrines at Mecca and Medina, Quranic verses in calligraphy, the portraits of local Sufi saints, their tombs, miracles, and other folklore. Since a poster or calendar is frequently meant to decorate the walls of a home, its imagery is always bright and attractive - young women or children shown as embodiments of perfect innocence and beauty and a pious character. And this is where the typecasts of communities too get established in the mind of the onlooker.

Who are "Indian Muslims?" Although this essay is trying to study the stereotypes of Indian Muslim community established by Indian popular media, it runs the risk of itself participating in the consolidation of such stereotypes by using the generic term "Indian Muslims". Probably a clarification is required. It is practically impossible to put all the followers of Islam residing in India into one monolithic category. They are culturally, linguistically, demographically, economically, professionally, and perhaps politically as diverse as the rest of the Indians. They even follow the tenets of Islam differently all over South Asia. Thus the author of this virtual essay assumes that there is no one standard image which can represent the demographic diversity of Indian Muslims, even though consciously or otherwise, India's popular media continues to depict them through standard emblematic images. However, one can also not ignore the recent (or past) trends among Muslims of South Asia to be inspired by the notion of Pan-Islamism where some of them start identifying with a more sanitized version of Islam, which practically orients them to a more Arab or Middle Eastern culture devoid of the local South Asian hue. Although popular Indian cinema or TV may have started depicting such sanitized Muslims, often in the negative role of a religious extremist, devotional posters and calendar art still continue with the classic look of a Muslim. Hence the definition of Indian Muslims for this essay would depend on the context in which each image has been produced by the artist, used by the buyers, and featured on this web-gallery. We are open for comments, contributions, and suggestions.

To explore how these images help build popular stereotypes of certain ethnic or religious identities such as Indian Muslims, one could begin by examining some broad differences between various types of posters. The images with clearly Hindu and Muslim themes differ, mainly, in the variety of subject matters they depict, and the purpose they fulfill in a devotee's life. Most Hindu posters represent deities, gods, and goddesses, their attributes and myths, utilizing narratives that have been followed since ages, even though the painting/art styles may have changed. In practice, a two-dimensional image of a Hindu god or deity serves more or less the same purpose for an average devotee which an idol or statue does, that is, worship or dhyana. However, India's Muslim devotional posters, which may or may not have been drawn by a Muslim, carry some distinct differences from such Hindu images - even though some elements of polytheism can still be found in it. Since the making of pictures, other than those of Mecca and Medina, has been frowned upon in most Muslim societies, human figures are often replaced by Arabic calligraphy, flowers, crescent moon and other inanimate icons illustrating various concepts.

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Posters Gallery - List of featured posters and videos

This virtual gallery is based on popular posters and film clips collected by Yousuf Saeed. The film clips are in Windows Media format (wmv) embedded within the web pages. These should run smoothly in most web-browsers that support multimedia. They are also being made available in .mov format for Mac users. In case you have difficulty running or downloading the film clips, kindly let us know. Film clips are slightly heavy files (between 1 and 4 MBs), ideally suited for broadband connections. The film clips and posters are used here for non-profit, educational purposes.
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