Haq Recreates Shah Bano on Reel

Haq, a recent film featuring Emran Hashmi and Yami Gautam in the lead, is inspired by the Shah Bano case, 1985. It has renewed public attention on one of India's most debated legal judgments concerning Muslim women's rights, and the Uniform Civil Code (UCC). The case remains a milestone in balancing personal laws with constitutional principles.

The Muslim identity and its representation, especially within the matrix of modernization in India has changed our perspective towards Muslims, more often prejudiced against than for and this reflects itself through the creations of filmmakers.

Add to this the volatile environment of the currently politically constructed “communal” conflicts that do not really exist and yet are reiterated everyday by a gossip hungry, maliciously greedy media often disguised as “objective and neutral reporting.”

Earlier, the “Muslim Social” came to be classified, a bit ambiguously however, into two classes – the “Classic Muslim Social” that described the nawabi and Badshahi culture mapping the luxurious lives of the aristocratic class settled mainly in Lucknow and old Delhi. And two, the “New Wave Muslim Social” that portrayed the metamorphosis in the lives of middle class and low middle class Muslim families caught within the ghetto, that divides them from elite Muslim families on the one hand and the Hindu majority on the other.

The Supreme Court ruling of triple talaq being “against the Constitution and Islam” created the space to discuss the Muslim identity in Bollywood films. The judgment came two years after Uttarakhand’s Shayara Bano approached the top court when her husband of 15 years sent her a letter with the word ‘talaq’ written thrice to divorce her. The film has an open-ended closure, leaving the audience guessing.

Remember B.R. Chopra’s Nikaah (1982)? Till this date, one does not recall a single film other than Nikaah that dealt with the dicey issue of instant triple talaq in Muslim marriages. One really cannot understand this lack of concern for the Muslim law strongly biased against Muslim women. Nikaah was initially titled 'Talaq, Talaq, Talaq' by producer, director B R Chopra but the title was changed to Nikaah after consultation with a Muslim friend.

Haq, however, is quite a romanticized, glamorous, glitzy and young presentation of the real life Shah Bano who was 62 and destitute when she went to court demanding maintenance from her husband, way back in 1978.

The main argument is based on the question of whether a divorced Muslim woman can claim maintenance beyond the Iddat period under the secular section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code or whether the Muslim Personal Law places no compulsion against the husband’s liability to pay maintenance.

In conclusion, after seven years of arguments in different courts, the panel of judges in the Supreme Court – as per the real events in 1985– rule that there is absolutely no conflict between Muslim Personal Law and the secular section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code. This counters the long argument placed by Shazia Begum’s husband Abbas Khan (Emraan Hashmi) on the final day of the hearing. The chief justice in the movie (Anand Desai) passes a verdict making it incumbent on Khan to pay maintenance to his first wife and three children

The script is sandwiched in a frame that opens with Shazia Begum narrating the story of her marriage, followed by the birth of three children The narrative trips back into time between the narrations opening with the grand wedding of Shazia and Abbas Khan, the heir of an aristocratic family and a much-in-demand lawyer through three generations and ends when she finally wins her fight establishing a new code of legal conduct according to the Muslim Shariat.

The marriage drifts into repeated pregnancies of Shazia Begum and Abbas Khan’s increasing lack of interest in his wife and children. When Shazia is expecting her third child, after a three-month tour of his ‘ancestral property’ somewhere, Abbas returns with a brand new wife in tow and installs her in their original bedroom.

The two co-wives naturally do not like each other leading to Shazia leaving her maternal home with three children to settle with her parents where her father, a very liberal maulvi (Danish Hussain) backs her right through her legal fight and tells her she is right in claiming what is hers. But he dies when his school for teaching Koran to young students fails because the parents take their children away as both the cleric and his daughter are branded kafirs.

Suparn Verma’s talent lies in not allowing the film to remain confined to the court cases. It widens the social canvas of Shazia and her father’s constant struggle against social ostracism, against their debates with the religious superiors of the Islamic faith and against the constantly insulting and humiliating behaviour of Abbas specially when Shazia comes back to her ex-husband’s home to live in a portion of the mansion Abbas had gifted to his new “Begum” long ago. The cold-blooded and cruel manner in which Abbas repeats “talaq” thrice by throwing wads of notes on the table where his family has assembled is dramatic

Though the film throws up many moments of using loud cinematic melodrama, Verma maintains subtlety and restraint. He has taken many cinematic liberties with Shah Bano’s original story but this seems purely for the film’s commercial prospects which he could not afford to ignore. But the film would never have become so powerful without the support of the brilliant performances of Yammy Gautam, Emran Haashmi, Danish Hussain and the rest.

Gautam is shaping up to become one of the most effective and versatile actors in Bollywood today and Emraan Hashmi has already proved himself to be very good and in control.

Too many songs tend to disrupt the narrative in the beginning but control is established gradually. The crowds in the lanes where Shazia lives and where they insult her openly, offer a strong social comment against a woman who had the guts to question the validity of Sharia laws.

The editing is quite good and smooth, changing softly and smoothly from one visual context to the next and the cinematography keeps pace with the constant demands on it with rapid changes in space, time and social contexts.

The very fact that Shah Bano moved the court for maintenance reaffirms that a woman needs maintenance whereas the man does not. Though now a husband can also claim maintenance from a working wife if he has no income, for women, dozens of cases are filed across the courts in the country for maintenance from husbands. It does not matter whether the woman is Hindu, Christian, Muslim or Sikh, maintenance is always linked to a woman and most commonly, a married woman. Which also goes to show that in any Indian marriage, patriarchy and male dominance prevail.

In the wake of the Delhi riots, Saheli, a woman’s organization in Delhi, brought out a newsletter on Religion and Women in March 1985, which concluded …”It is we who have to stop believing in Gods and start believing in ourselves, in our inalienable right to a decent life on this earth…our God has to be replaced by our love of humanity and our hatred fo injustice.”

This sums up the contention that women are indeed, a minority question. But have things changed in 2025? Just asking…..