Some time back, I was standing at the gate of our housing society, waiting for my daughter’s school bus to arrive. A neighbour, the mother of one of my daughter’s classmates, began complaining about the poor standard (according to her) of teaching in the school, which is Christian mission-run. Her contention was that teachers who aren’t qualified, or don’t really excel, are allowed to stay on in the school simply because they’re Christian. “You see them in the school photos,” she said. “All converts, you can see by their faces.”

I pointed out gently that most Christians in India (or actually, across the world) have been converted, at some time or the other, either in their own lifetimes or through their ancestors.

“No, no, that’s not what I mean,” she said. “I mean people who have been given incentives by missionaries to convert. I have lived in South India, I have seen a lot of this.” She must have seen the look on my face, and she hurried to clarify. “You can tell they’re converts, because of their mixed names.”

“I have a mixed name,” I said. Madhulika Liddle.

And then, I think, the penny dropped. So far, she had forgotten, perhaps, that I am Christian.

She blustered. “Of course, of course. But not you. I mean people who look perfectly normal but are Christian.”

“Normal? So Christians are not normal?”

By which time the school bus had arrived and I think both of us were relieved to have an end to what had become an awkward conversation.

But this chat, and the mindset it reveals, brought to my mind two interesting examples of ‘looking perfectly normal but being Christian’ (or whatever; not Hindu, I think, was the implication). [As if our faith is stamped across our features].

The first is Shahu Modak, the actor who worked in literally dozens of Hindu mythological films, all the way from his debut in the 1932 Shyam Sunder (where, as a child actor, he played little Krishna) to the 1980s. Over the course of this very long career, Shahu Modak acted in some thirty films as Krishna, and many others as Sant Gyaneshwar, Narad, Bharat, etc.

The second is Manhar Desai. Although Desai acted in many mainstream films (even opposite Meena Kumari in Madhosh), it was with mythologicals that he really hit his stride, working in a slew of films (especially opposite Nirupa Roy, another person who was a stalwart of mythologicals). Sati Naagkanya, Sati Anusuya, Naag Mani, Ram Hanuman Yuddh, Janam-Janam ke Phere, Shankar Sati Anusuya, Mahabharat… all had Manhar Desai in them.

The point?

Both Shahu Modak and Manhar Desai were Christians. Shahu Modak was Marathi Christian, and Manhar Desai was from a Gujarati Christian family that moved to Bombay when he was a child.

Both looked (as my neighbour would put it) ‘normal’ enough, and had names that were ‘normal’ (not even ‘mixed names’!) enough to have them fit easily into the many roles they played in Hindu mythologicals. As gods, even, ironically enough (or demi-god; the screen grab below is from Mahabharat, in which Manhar Desai played Karna).

Of course, the realm of cinema is all about make-believe; your personal beliefs, your faith, might very well need to be put aside because on screen, you’re acting. The same goes for singers, music directors, lyricists etc: you might write/compose/sing—in essence, act, through your words/music/voice—a faith that isn’t yours. The most oft-quoted example of that is Mann tadpat hari darshan ko aaj (composed by Naushad, with lyrics by Shakeel Badayuni, and sung so feelingly by Rafi), but there are countless others. Asha Bhonsle’s Ya nabi salaam alaika, for example; or dozens of other Muslim devotionals sung by her and Lata (Ae mere maalik mere parvardigaar is one of my favourite devotional songs ever). Or the many, many bhajans sung by Rafi.

In the old films, it wasn’t just the music, naturally. It was also the films themselves. In a country where the population has been of an overwhelmingly Hindu majority for centuries, it’s hardly surprising that most of our films have also been about Hindus (the Muslim socials fall into their own category). Not necessarily films which are devotional or mythological, even; the average Hindi film has generally featured Hindus. Often, that’s not overtly visible through the film. But every now and then, there might be a scene showing a pooja, or a bhajan—and then who stops to think that the actor isn’t Hindu? Or, in a Muslim social or a Mughal-dynasty (say) film, an actor who isn’t Muslim?

Because that’s what acting is all about, isn’t it? The real persona is shed for the assumed one.

It had to be, because the number of Muslims (especially) who acted in Hindi cinema was—I think—somewhat disproportionate to the numbers in real life. While many of them acted under their real names (Waheeda Rehman, Rehman, Nigar Sultana, Mumtaz, Shakila, Feroz Khan, Nazir Hussain, Suraiya, Agha, Mehmood, etc… too many names to count) there were many who assumed a screen name that was more ‘Hindu’ (if you want to call it that): Dilip Kumar (probably the most famous of them all), Meena Kumari, Madhubala, Shyama, Ajit, Veena, Johnny Walker, Jayant, Jagdeep…

Plus, of course, the many others who were neither Muslim nor Hindu. The Sikhs (Dharmendra, Geeta Bali, Kuldeep Kaur), the Parsis (Sohrab Modi, Daisy and Honey Irani, Jal Khambata), the Jews (Nadira, David, Sulochana/Ruby Myers, Pramila), and—this is where I came in—the Christians. Besides Shahu Modak and Manhar Desai, also Kalpana Karthik, Helen, Smriti Biswas, Sonia Sahni, et al.

Mirroring this multi-faith population of film crew and cast, there was often a nod, onscreen, to a multi-religious society as well. Even if most films featured Hindus, there were people of other faiths thrown in every now and then. True, the Christians, Parsis and Sikhs tended to be embarrassingly stereotyped. Parsis would be caricatures, eccentric to the nth degree. Sikhs would be either stupid, or very belligerent (though Jaagte Raho had a very memorable, canny bunch of Sikhs, even played by Sikhs).

The Christians would either be the goodie-goodie type (Mrs D’Sa of Anari comes to mind), or the buffoon (typically Tuntun in a dress and floppy hat, accompanied by a Sunder/Mukri in an il-fitting suit and cardboard top hat). More often than not, Helen, in one of her umpteen roles as a dancer, would be playing a Rita/Rosie/Lily/Kitty/Jenny/Suzie/whatever—the no-holds-barred, uninhibited Christian who has no qualms about putting herself on display in a public place, and hooking up with the villain.

Often, the hero or the heroine would have a very dear friend who was not Hindu. They would stick together through thick and thin, and would even (as in the case of Jayant’s and David’s characters in Mem-Didi) get up to all sorts of not-very-commendable activities together.

Sometimes, in early films, the entire focus was on Hindu-Muslim unity: Dev Anand’s debut film Hum Ek Hain (1946) and V Shantaram’s Padosi (1941) are both centred round the idea of Hindus and Muslims living harmoniously together. Much later, Yash Chopra’s Dharmputra (1961) made a hard-hitting and wise point about the ills of bigotry.

But let me not turn this into a treatise. This post just stemmed from an incident, and I found myself looking back on one of the many reasons I like Hindi cinema of a certain vintage. It underlined the fact that our constitution declared India a secular country, and it tried to portray a multi-faith society. Sometimes, that attempt went a bit bonkers (Amar Akbar Anthony, while beyond my blog’s timeline, is a case in point), but occasionally—in a Manmohan Krishna singing Tu Hindu banega na Musalmaan banega, for example—it made history.