The depiction of a pious Muslim woman in popular posters may not have been possible without drawing inspiration from popular Hindi cinema. A genre called the ‘Muslim Social’ pervaded Mumbai’s film industry for many decades post 1950s, contributing largely to the stereotyping of the Muslim community in the popular imagination through classic films such as Mughal-e Azam (1960), Chaudhvin ka Chand (1960), or Mere Mehboob (1963). Since the Hindi cinema industry tries to cater to a wide section of the society, and a large chunk of its audience comprises north India’s middle-class Muslims, it has to produce movies that can be seen by thousands of conservative Muslim families amongst whom it is still taboo for an unmarried girl to go to the cinema with friends. At its height, this genre of movies, although its main motive was entertainment, portrayed Muslim women as the role models of modesty, morality, and tehzeeb (etiquette).The stories of these films may have also drawn from a wide variety of available literature such as Urdu novels meant for the shareef zadis (the noble daughters). One of the earliest films of such kind, Nek Parveen (1946) tells the story of a pious Muslim girl who overcame the hardships of life through her persistent belief in God, managing to successfully reform her husband from his gambling habits and so on.

The typical praying posture icon in the Muslim calendar artmay have been inspired by a genre ofdevotional Muslim films with nameslike Khwaja ki Diwani (1981) or Mera Salaam (1981) featuring the importance of a pilgrimage to Sufi shrines. Beside the ones that became famous, there are hundreds of lesser known titles such as Hamara Haj (1957), Idd ka Chand (1964), Madine Ki Galiyan (1981), and so on. These films probably fall in the same devotional genre that produces films such as Jai Santoshi Maa (1975) or Shirdi ke Saibaba (1977). However, the typecast image of religious woman (Hindu or Muslim) remains the central character in most of such films,as it is the woman of the family who suffers most. While going through endless hardships in life (or suddenly hearing some bad news) a Muslim mother, wife or a sister always runs towardsa corner of the house whichhas a devotional image pasted on the wall. In extreme cases, she visits a saint’s tomb with her jholi (scarf) held out in a posture of ‘asking’, while an animated Qawwali troupe sings and claps in the backdrop. Suddenly the miraculous rays of light from the jali or lattice of the shrine start showering on the praying woman - her wishes come true (Jahan Ara 1964, Bahu Begum 1970). In the posters, these rays of light often come from the icons of Mecca/Medina. The praying women are always an embodiment of extraordinary beauty, replete with gold jewelry and expensive clothes.

Of course, the Muslim Social movies weren’t restricted to modest family sagas – their stories ranged from historical classics (such as Mughal-e Azam) to nawabi decadence (Pakeezah, 1971), and Mumbai’s slum-dwellers (Coolie, 1983) to thepresent-day Muslim extremists (Sarfarosh, 1999), the stereotyping getting sharper and more negative as the time passed. There has hardly been any movie(say between 1950-2000) where the story depicted a Muslim family or character with ordinary traits such as a career-conscious youth, an office-going husband, or a vegetable-selling woman. Muslims have to always have a special and distinct character. Only recently have some directors made conscious effort in giving non-conspicuous roles to characters with Muslim names.

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