'Songs of Paradise': Bollywood's latest attempt to depoliticise the Kashmir Valley
'Songs of Paradise': Bollywood's latest attempt to depoliticise the Kashmir Valley
When it comes to depicting Kashmir in cinema, Bollywood has either misrepresented the ravaged conflict or romanticised the beauty of the Valley.
When Kashmiris are invoked, they are placeholders for Indian fears - the violent Kashmiri male terrorist who must be erased - or for Indian saviourism - the meek Kashmiri women who must be saved.
It is through this prism that Danish Renzu’s new film Songs of Paradise attempts to depoliticise and deflate Kashmiri stories through banal art.
Now showing on Amazon Prime, Songs of Paradise tells the story of a young Kashmiri woman named Zeba (Saba Azad) who defies a traditional upbringing and its strict patriarchy to become Kashmir's "Nightingale".
The film begins with Rumi, a young researcher (played by Taaruk Raina) who looks to document the forgotten story and journey of Zeba Akhtar to Noor Begum, an exquisite singer who became a household name in Kashmir during the 1950s.
As is customary, Zeba is shown to come from a staunchly conservative Muslim family. Her father is a tailor (Bashir Lone), a soft-spoken Kashmiri man who is always seen to support his daughter; her mother (Sheeba Chadha) is portrayed as a conservative and traditional woman on the lookout for a match for her daughter.
For such a family, the idea of their daughter singing professionally is clearly unthinkable. But with her father's support, Zeba adopts the moniker Noor to avoid being recognised as a singer in the conservative society. And she is given wings to fly.
When a respected music teacher (Shishir Sharma) discovers Zeba's voice during a wedding party, he trains her secretly. He sends her to a competition held by Radio Kashmir, where she meets Azad (Zain Khan Durrani), a poet recently returned from London.
When Zeba/Noor is subsequently shamed for performing in public, Azad marries her, stepping in as her saviour.
Azad calls her inquilab, the "revolution".
The young woman is given her freedom and she becomes a legendary figure. A heartfelt tale of feminist triumph in rustic Kashmir.
But herein lies the problem.
For those who know Kashmir, and its history, the film's quiet effort to strip Kashmiri politics from Noor's rise by packaging her neatly into a musical about a triumphant woman is maddening.
Zeba/Noor Begum is really the story of Raj Begum, a Kashmiri singer who rose to stardom in the 1950s. The film says just above the opening credits that it was inspired by "her songs".
But the story it reimagines for her is not merely fictitious (which a filmmaker is entitled to do), it is farcical and manipulative.
Who was Raj Begum?
Raj Begum was born in 1927 in Srinagar's Magarmal Bagh, squeezed between Batamaloo and the Jhelum River.
Still under Dogra rule, it was a time of immense hardship in Kashmir. For women, singing was not seen as respectable.
Courtesans like the hafizah clustered in Srinagar's Maisuma sang for the elite but were called immoral by society.
In such a world, for a young girl from a working-class background to sing in public was an act of courage. In the film, Begum's journey is shown as a struggle against patriarchy and social conservatism in Kashmir.
Begum began as a wedding singer until a patron recognised her voice. At the time, the institution of courtesans was approaching an end; a new space was opening for women singers, a development that Begum benefited from.
Her talent, notwithstanding, there were other developments at the time that helped her rise.
'As is the norm with Bollywood, Danish Renzu's Songs of Paradise is just the latest in a long tradition of depoliticising Kashmiri art'
In 1944, Kashmir's Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah's Naya Kashmir manifesto promised land reforms, women's education, equal pay, and voting rights.
Abdullah was however repressive, too, and Kashmiris refused to accept his support of the accession to India.
So, he used songs and poetry as a distraction to bring people together, and to create an identity for Kashmir.
When Radio Kashmir started auditioning singers, Begum entered, and soon her voice was being broadcast across the Valley as a symbol of "change".
But soon the ground shifted.
In 1953, Abdullah was removed from power, and Kashmir entered another period of repression. The Plebiscite Front, formed by Mirza Afzal Beg, demanded the promised vote on Kashmir's future; however, its members were jailed, tortured, and silenced.
The political movement found itself increasingly under the hammer.
Meanwhile, Begum's star was on the ascendant.
As is the norm with Bollywood, Danish Renzu's Songs of Paradise is just the latest in a long tradition of Indian films depoliticising Kashmiri art.
Whereas the film shows Begum as married to a poet, who saved her and helped her career, in reality, Begum was married to a senior police officer in Kashmir, who oversaw the cultural department.
His name was Qadir Ganderbali, and it was his department that became the loudspeaker for Indian nationalism and integration in Kashmir.
Over and above his facilitation of Begum's artistic career, Ganderbali was notorious for inflicting torture on those seen as anti-India or demanding a UN plebiscite.
Her marriage to Ganderbali - effectively an arm of the state - tied her to the very structures of power that not only facilitated gross human rights violations in Kashmir but also used art as a means to cover for it.
Her spectacular talent notwithstanding, she was a vehicle of artwashing in Kashmir.
But even here, the Songs of Paradise can't fully escape the web of lies.
In the film, the poet who is shown to help Begum rise is played by an actor, who, in real life, has faced allegations of physical abuse.
That the filmmakers chose to remove Ganderbali's role in the repression of Kashmiris only to have an actor accused of physical abuse play Begum's saviour demonstrates the extent of the rot.
Indianising Kashmir
The effort to tell a story of an individual feminist triumph at the expense of the native people is a long-time settler tactic.
It was used by the British in India, by the Americans in Afghanistan, and used by India in Kashmir.
But director Renzu is not an outsider. He is Kashmiri.
Instead of grounding the story in lived reality, he presents a version made for the Indian eye, or the Kashmiri elite, those with the privilege to see Kashmir as merely an aesthetic, a postcard.
This poses a deeper question: who can really be trusted with the stories of Kashmiris?
For decades, Indian cinema has reduced Kashmir to romance, mountains, violence, or stereotypes, never to people.
Kashmiris themselves are rarely shown as people with agency and history. Their existence has been shaped by a long, painful history, militarisation, and conflict.
But even on the question of representing Kashmiri culture, the film fails to depict it accurately.
'Songs of Paradise is another act of selling Kashmir as a land of exotic voices and cultural triumphs'
In one scene where Azad tells his modern aunt about how Begum is changing the musical space for women, she looks up at a lake and says: "Shrinagar ki hawaa hi kuch aur hai - Azaad hawa" (The air of Srinagar is something else - it is the air of freedom).
His aunt continues, adding that she knew that it was women who would bring change to Kashmir.
In a single dialogue, the attempt to both Indianise Srinagar or Shrinagar and alter the meaning of azadi or freedom is made clear.
In a few scenes later, as she is introduced on radio once more, she is described as "The voice of freedom. The voice of the valley."
Kashmir's call for azadi is turned into something softer, depoliticised, and almost benign.
But for Kashmiris, azadi has never been a hollow slogan.
Likewise, in another scene, at a dinner: one of the dishes served is Rista, a classic Kashmiri meatball dish.
Begum tries to teach the Indian researcher Rumi how to pronounce the word. But she mispronounces it herself and offers an Indianised version for the word.
In another, where Sufi legends, including Lad Ded and Nund Reshi, are mentioned, the actors don’t even bother pronouncing the names accurately.
While subtle, and seemingly petty, these careless inclusions add to the hollowness of the production.
The Bollywoodification of Kashmir, in which the singer is a sanitised legend - a voice without context - and subjects around her are mere placeholders for little but aesthetic value.
His disclaimer that the film is a work of fiction is untenable because it is a work of deliberate propaganda, rubber-stamped by the Indian government and its Ministry of Information, which are thanked before the opening credits.
Over the past few years, especially since the revocation of Article 370 in 2019, the projects to integrate and the attempts at cultural erasure have been relentless.
Again, this is not new.
Historians have pointed out how post-accession leaders like Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed used cinema as propaganda - sentimentalising integration with India, especially targeting Kashmir's Muslim majority.
Bollywood has continued this practice, whether through romanticising Kashmir as a paradise or by sensationalising it as a land of violence.
After the abrogation of Article 370, the state's "integration on paper" was even marketed as freedom for Kashmiri women, while actual Kashmiri women’s voices were excluded from the conversation. That the filmmakers would produce and release a film that told a story about a young Indian man searching for a way to tell a story of a "forgotten" Kashmiri voice while India suffocates all of Kashmir today, is also an abominable irony.
Songs of Paradise is not just a misrepresentation of Begum's life, it is another act of selling Kashmir as a land of exotic voices and cultural triumphs, while wilfully stripping away the political soil from which those voices emerge.
And when the film casts a lead actor long accused of harassment and brands this as a story of women's empowerment, the irony becomes harder to ignore.
