THE WAY WE WERE

By Asif Noorani

The writer was the editor of Pakistan’s most widely circulated English language film magazine Eastern Film from 1963 to 1970.

December 16 marks the 45th anniversary of the secession of the eastern wing of Jinnah’s Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh. Much has been written about the traumatic events of the time and the political repercussions of the country being cleaved into two. But the loss of East Pakistan was not just devastating on a psychological, economic or political level. In very real terms, it also affected Pakistan culturally and socially. One of the things lost in the discourse is how the events of 1971 affected Pakistan’s film industry.

In the chaos that reigned on the streets of Dhaka towards the end of the civil war in December 1971, Zahir Raihan’s older brother, the eminent journalist and author Shahidullah Kaiser, had gone missing. He had been rounded up by pro-West Pakistani forces on December 14 along with other intellectuals and his whereabouts were not known. After the Pakistan Army surrendered on December 16 and the nation-state of Bangladesh was declared, Zahir kept looking for him.

In late January, despite the danger, Zahir went searching for his brother to Mirpur on the outskirts of Dhaka. Mirpur was a stronghold of the pro-West Pakistan Bihari community which had fought against the pro-independence forces that Zahir had actively aligned with. Zahir too disappeared.

The setting up of the Film Development Corporation Studios, with modern facilities — including a film processing laboratory — in Dhaka came as a boost to film-makers. From merely five movies in 1963 the number jumped to 16 the following year.

Zahir Raihan on the sets of his film Kakhono Asheni.

Zahir Raihan had been one of the most promising directors of united Pakistan. A prolific writer and journalist himself, Zahir had cut his teeth in practical filmmaking as the chief assistant director on Jago Hua Savera, the celebrated Urdu-Bengali 1959 film penned by Faiz Ahmed Faiz and directed by A.J. Kardar. Since then he had produced and directed Pakistan’s first colour film Sangam (1964) and Pakistan’s first CinemaScope (widescreen) movie Bahana (1965). He had also directed a number of artistic Bengali films such as Kakhono Asheni (She Never Came, 1961), Shonar Kajol (Golden Eyeliner, 1962) and perhaps most memorably Kanchar Deyal (The Glass Wall, 1963) which had been compared to the films of Bengali Indian auteur Ritwik Ghatak. His disguised political satire against Ayub Khan’s regime Jibon Theke Neya (Taken From Life, 1970) had also been praised by the likes of Satyajit Ray.

The loss of talented film-makers such as Zahir Raihan was only one aspect of the loss that befell the Pakistan film industry with the secession of East Pakistan. Aside from the loss of creative people and skilled technicians, Pakistani cinema was also deprived of a major market and production centre. In 1971 there were 400 cinemas in all of Pakistan and a quarter of them existed in East Pakistan. In 1970, 114 films had been produced in the eastern wing of the country alone, including three in Urdu.

This setback to Pakistan’s film industry has often been mentioned nominally by filmmakers but never really written about in any detail. It would take another decade for the Pakistan film industry to recover somewhat — only to run into another disaster during Gen Ziaul Haq’s martial regime, the effects of which are being felt to this day.

The story of East Pakistan’s influence on Urdu filmmaking is no less riveting.

The year was 1962 and there was nothing much to write home about on the film scene in what was then West Pakistan, except perhaps for the debut of Waheed Murad as a supporting actor in veteran S.M. Yousuf’s film Aulad. On August 3, the first Urdu film from East Pakistan Chanda was released without any fanfare.

Producer Anis Dossani, who had earlier got the East Pakistan-based Ehtesham and Mustafiz to make Bengali films for him, commissioned the brothers to produce the first Urdu film in Dhaka. While Jago Hua Savera and Shaukat Hashmi’s Hamsafar (1960) had earlier been shot in the eastern wing of the country, they were essentially West Pakistani movies.

There were initially no takers for Chanda. Jagdish Anand, the proprietor of Eveready Films (now Eveready Communications), agreed to distribute it in Punjab and the NWFP (now KP) but producer Anis Dossani was left with no choice but to release the movie in cinema halls on ‘commission basis’ in the other territories — comprising Karachi, the rest of Sindh and Baluchistan.

Shabnam and Rahman in Chanda.

If one is looking for the effectiveness of word-of-mouth publicity, then there can be no better example than Chanda’s. Like the Bengali films from Dhaka, it was aesthetically pleasing. But in addition to the picturesque background, there was also the realistic acting and lilting music. The movie didn’t draw large crowds initially but later went on to celebrate a silver jubilee (25 weeks in the cinemas). Jharna, the Hindu girl who made her debut playing the secondary heroine and would become known as the superstar Shabnam, ended up winning the Nigar Award for Best Supporting Actress, while Subhas Dutta bagged the Best Comedian Award.

A greater success was achieved a year later by the same team’s Talash. The Shabnam-Rahman starrer, studded with fine music by Robin Ghosh, was among only three Pakistani films that stayed in the theatres even after old Indian movies were allowed back into cinemas. It withstood the onslaught for 50 consecutive weeks and celebrated a golden jubilee (50 consecutive weeks on screen).

The setting up of FDC (Film Development Corporation) Studios, with modern facilities — including a film processing laboratory — in Dhaka came as a boost to film-makers. From merely five movies in 1963 the number jumped to 16 the following year. Of these seven were in Urdu, which included Sangam. Naila, West Pakistan’s debut in colour cinema, came only a year later, at the same time that Dhaka produced Zahir Raihan’s widescreen Bahaana as well as the Dossani-Ehtesham-Mustafiz team’s Mala, Pakistan’s first colour widescreen movie.

A publicity still from the movie Talash.

Scoring the music for Zahir Raihan was Khan Ataur Rehman, a man of many facets. He was a producer, director, screenplay writer, composer and also an actor. Khan Ata, as he was commonly called, made great contributions to Pakistani cinema. Among the extraordinary films that he made were Nawab Sirajuddaulah (1967) and Soye Nadya Jaage Pani (1968), which were released in both Bangla and Urdu. Since Kabori, the heroine of the latter film, could not speak Urdu, he got his friend’s daughter, the singer Najma Niazi — who had also recorded songs in her mellifluous voice for the movie — to dub the leading lady’s dialogues.

Another bilingual movie to be produced in East Pakistan was Shaheed Teetu Mir (1969). But these films were bilingual in a different sense from the earlier Jago Hua Savera, in which the fishermen of East Pakistan spoke in Bengali and the urban population conversed in Urdu. Some thought this was perhaps the main reason behind its failure at the box-office in both the wings of the country because half the movie was not understood by cine-goers of both the wings.

The neo-realistic Jago Hua Savera was based on a short story by Bengali writer Manik Bandhopadhyay with a screenplay by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, who also wrote the lyrics of the songs. They were set to music by the Calcutta-based Timir Baran, known as the father of the Indian symphony orchestra, whose first film score was for P.C. Barua’s Devdas (1935). Baran had earlier also composed music for two Karachi movies — Anokhi and Fankar (both 1956) — including the famous song ‘Gaarri Ko Chalana Babu’. Jago Hua Savera starred Khan Ata and Zurrain Rakhshi from East Pakistan while the the Calcutta-based theatre actor Tripti Mitra played the female lead. Director AJ Kardar, like producer Nauman Taseer, was from Lahore but took on the immensely talented but new-to-film Zahir Raihan from Dhaka as his chief assistant director.

A still from Indhan.

As pointed out earlier, Zahir would go on to forge a stellar career in films. A point worth noting is that while Raihan’s Bengali films fell in the realm of arthouse cinema, his Urdu movies were in the genre of commercial films. It is said that he made Urdu films (read commercial movies) to finance his forays in the realm of artistic Bengali movies.

According to Mushtaq Gazdar’s invaluable book Pakistani Cinema 1947-1997, in all 47 Urdu movies produced in East Pakistan, ranging from Chanda to Jalte Suraj Ke Neeche (also by Zahir Raihan, 1971), were released in the country’s west wing. Making films in Dhaka was a boon for West Pakistani filmmakers because the cost of production was lower there. Rahman, for example, charged a fraction of what Waheed Murad or Mohammad Ali would. The most notable of the Urdu films made in East Pakistan were Chanda, Talash, Bandhan, Milan, Indhan, Sangam, Kajal, Nawab Sirajuddaulah and Chakori.

Talash, the Shabnam-Rahman starrer, studded with fine music by Robin Ghosh, was among only three Pakistani films that stayed in the theatres even after old Indian movies were allowed back into cinemas.

Suroor Barabankvi who had been fortuitously plucked from the offices of the Anjuman-i-Tarraqi-i-Urdu in Dhaka to write the lyrics for Chanda, would go on to write the lyrics for most Urdu films made in Dhaka as well as direct two films himself. One of them, Aakhri Station (1965) was based on a story by the famous Urdu writer Hajra Masroor and was appreciated by viewers with a taste for artistic movies. Shabnam played a mentally challenged woman to perfection. Whenever she was asked why her subsequent performances could not match the standard set by her in Aakhri Station, her patent answer was “Simply because I have never been offered such a challenging role again in my entire career.”

There were exchanges of stars from both wings before the creation of Bangladesh. While almost all of them were in Urdu films, Shamim Ara did play the main character in a Bengali film Misher Kumari (1970) and earlier Zubaida Khanum had recorded a Bengali song for Azan (1961). Nasima Khan, the Bengali actress who played leading roles in both Urdu and Bengali films, produced her movie Geet Kahin Sangeet Kahin (1969) in Lahore where she shared screen honours with popular actor Mohammad Ali.

One more East Pakistani worth mentioning was singer Bashir Ahmed (1939-2014), whose Urdu pronunciation was flawless. He recorded songs in both languages and composed lilting music for some films and occasionally also penned Urdu songs under the pseudonym B.A. Deep. He was from Calcutta (now Kolkata) and was married to a Bengali. He stayed in Dhaka when Bangladesh was created.

The remarkably mellifluous Ferdausi Begum also remained in Dhaka while the composer Muslehuddin, who’d achieved his fame in West Pakistan, settled in London with his West Pakistan wife Naheed Niazi after the country’s split.

A poster of Pakistan’s first colour film Sangam.

Most immigrants from Dhaka to the truncated Pakistan after the creation of Bangladesh, including Naqi Mustafa, the Nigar award-winning screenplay writer for Nawab Sirajuddaulah, could not make it big in what was left of Pakistan.

Producer Anis Dossani, the pioneer of Urdu films in East Pakistan, didn’t do too badly on the other hand. He engaged the well-established director Pervez Malik and together they made such successful movies as Anmol (1973), Pehchan (1975), Talaash (1976) and Gumnam (1983). He did, however, always lament the loss of the empire that he had left behind in Dhaka, which included his family’s shares in two cinemas.

Likewise, director Nazrul Islam (1939-1994), who too was from Calcutta and could speak Urdu only with some difficulty, achieved even greater success in Lahore than he had in Dhaka, where he had already made hits such as Kajal (1965). He moved to Lahore because his wife was Urdu speaking from Uttar Pradesh and she felt insecure in Bangladesh. Nazrul, or Dada as he was widely known within the film-making community, would go on to make some highly successful films such as Ehsaas (1972), Bandish (1980) and Nahin Abhi Nahin (1980) as well as one of the biggest hits ever in the country, Aina (1977) which would play in cinemas for eight years straight. He won Nigar Awards’ Best Director’s trophy three times.

There were, however, two further interesting cases. Nadeem, who got his break as an actor and singer in Dhaka, was originally from Karachi. On the other hand, Bengali-speaking Runa Laila, actually made her debut as a playback singer in Karachi in Hum Dono (1966) while still in school. Her father, a government servant, eventually opted for Bangladesh in 1974. By that time Runa had become a front-ranking singer, winning two Nigar Award trophies for Best Female Playback Singer, once for Commander in 1968 and two years later for her ditty from Anjuman. She later sang for films in Bangladesh and India. The one song she sings invariably and draws huge applause at desi concerts the world over is ‘Shahbaz Qalandar.’

While on singers, one cannot forget Shahnaz Begum, who rendered some lovely national songs and film ditties in the early seventies. She later went back to Dhaka, where she was accused of conspiring against Bangladesh. She has of late become very religious and doesn’t respond to queries about her career as a singer, which seems to be true because this writer made at least two phone calls but met with no success.

Who knows how Pakistan’s film industry might have evolved had the creative forces, diversity and intellectual subtlety of East Pakistan continued to influence Pakistani film-making. It can only be speculated upon. But 45 years on from the trauma of the break-up of Pakistan, it is important to acknowledge that we are culturally poorer because of it. It was not just territory that we lost in 1971.

Click on the tab on top to read about how Ferdausi Begum's voice still haunts music lovers and to revisit some of her songs.