Relevant Hindu-Muslim Sociopolitical Relations
The class and religious difference create tensions in the laborer's perception of the more lavish lives of their employers and these laborer associate Arab dancing with Hindu vices, such as eating meat, drinking alcohol, and smoking. These vices coincide with the misrepresentations of Muslim characters in Bollywood films, who are rarely protagonists and often serve as vehicles for influencing the main character to take up the aforementioned vices (Islam).
The narrative of the "good Indian" moves out of India and becomes modernized is all too common in Bollywood films. This common Bollywood narrative of a son or husband who goes abroad to work or study exists in movies like in Pardes (1997), Dil Chahta Hai (2001),and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001), and parallels the real story of Indian labor migration, in which men go alone and send remittances and money home to their families, as Weiner details (1982). The movies often show the character bringing his modernized habits home to India, which often conflict with the traditional Hindu practices to which his parents or wife adhere. While portraying these narratives, Bollywood films conflate Hindu traditions with the Indian tradition (Kumar). In the 2012 movie, English Vinglish, the traditional Hindu protagonist visits her son in America ends up learning to accept and enjoy the non-Indian customs of her son's family, such as singing both the Indian and American national anthems.
There exists a juxtaposition between the negative depiction of the modern vice and the simultaneous positive and endearing depiction of the same vice, both of which the movies often include. Bollywood portrays these traditions and practices, that often belong to Indian Muslims, as "other" and not normal while simultaneously admiring them (Kumar). The relationship between the Hindu and Muslim identities relates to the centuries old relationship with the Moghul empire; the Muslim King Akbar is more known and loved by all Indians (Hindus, Muslims, etc.) than any other monarch or government of India. As a diasporic Indian Hindu, I read stories about King Akbar growing up and Bollywood continues to make movies about him, such as Jodhaa Akbar (2008). He was both feared and loved in the same way Bollywood fears and loves Muslim and Arab aesthetics.
Sources:
Azhar, Muhammad. Indian migrant workers in GCC countries, Diaspora Studies, 9:2, 2016, 100-111, https://doi.org/10.1080/09739572.2016.1183890.
Campbell, Kay Hardy. “Folk Music and Dance in the Arabian Gulf and Saudi Arabia.” Images of Enchantment: Visual and Performing Arts of the Middle East, edited by Sherifa Zuhur, American University in Cairo Press, 1998, pp. 57–69. Accessed at: https://archive.org/details/SherifaZuhurImagesOfEnchantmentVisualAndPerformingArtsOfTheMiddleEast
Hussein, Nazia, and Saba Hussein. “Interrogating Practices of Gender, Religion and Nationalism in the Representation of Muslim Women in Bollywood: Contexts of Change, Sites of Continuity.” Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal, vol. 2, no. 2, 2015, pp. 284–304., https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v2i2.117.
Islam, Maidul. “Imagining Indian Muslims: Looking through the Lens of Bollywood Cinema.” Indian Journal of Human Development, vol. 1, no. 2, 2007, pp. 403–422., https://doi.org/10.1177/0973703020070208.
Kumar, Sanjeev. “Constructing the Nation’s Enemy: Hindutva, Popular Culture and the Muslim ‘Other’ in Bollywood Cinema.” Third World Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 3, 14 May 2013, pp. 458–469., https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2013.785340.
Weiner, Myron. “International Migration and Development: Indians in the Persian Gulf.” Population and Development Review, vol. 8, no. 1, 1982, pp. 1–36. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1972688.
