The Great Shamsuddin Family: Indian Muslim Representation And The Cost At Which It Comes

In a time of saffron-tinted, anti-Muslim propaganda cinema, we are gifted a layered, humorous film that murmurs a political statement about the increasing disquiet in the hearts of Indian Muslims. The Great Shamsuddin Family (2025), written and directed by Anusha Rizvi and produced by Mahmood Farooqui, is set over the course of a single day in a Delhi flat of a modern Muslim woman who has less than twenty-four hours to finish her presentation for a teaching job in the US. But her plans derail after her family slowly takes over her flat with their respective dramas and a collective, comical chaos. Underneath the sustained comedy is a creeping, encompassing anxiety around matters of love, expression, marginality and a flickering sense of safety. As an Indian Muslim writer, I found a momentary solace in the accurate representation of my community and in the solidarity of a vampirical question mark—where do the art and sensibilities of an Indian Muslim belong and is safety to be automatically forsaken in the pursuit of expression?

The relief of relatability, however, is short-lived when one remembers (I use the word ‘remember’ for a reason) the controversial and questionable moral ethics of the makers of the film. In 2016, a lower court in Delhi had first convicted and sentenced Mahmood Farooqui to seven years of rigorous imprisonment for sexually assaulting a US scholar, Christine Marrewa-Karwoski, while she was visiting his home in Delhi in March 2015. The conviction was later overturned by the Delhi High Court and echoed by the Supreme Court in 2017. Justice Ashutosh Kumar concluded that he had to give “the benefit of the doubt” to Farooqui because even though the survivor had repeatedly said no to his advances and tried to physically resist, she admitted she had ultimately gone along with it.“Instances of women's behaviour are not unknown that a feeble no may mean a yes,” the judgement stated. The judge argued that, “In an act of passion, actuated by libido, consent could be complex, and it may not necessarily always mean yes in case of yes or no in case of no.”

Anusha Rizvi, the writer and director of The Great Shamsuddin Family and Farooqui’s wife, unequivocally supported her husband throughout the trial and stood by his version of the truth. It is understandable—although only to an extent—that a spouse may find themselves conflicted in a situation like this and, for whatever reasons, stay fixed in the salvation of their partner’s reputation. But Rizvi vehemently insisted on invalidating the sexual violence committed against the survivor and dismissing the incident in its entirety. In an interview with The Quint, Rizvi had said: “Look, I am all for women coming forward to speak of sexual harassment. But how do we define sexual harassment? What are the boundaries and the restrictions that must not be crossed? And who decides these boundaries? I am a feminist, and not just in theory. I’ve spent a lot of time fighting for gender equality. But gender equality doesn’t mean men should be hauled over the coals for relationships gone wrong, or even a date gone wrong.” She went on to add, “When Mahmood was in jail, I would visit him and meet so many young men from well-to-do backgrounds, holding terrific jobs, blessed with dreamy lives, now in jail because their relationship ended badly and they were accused of rape.”

Her statements established that not only was she convinced of her husband’s innocence, she was also convinced of the innocence of other ‘well-to-do young men’ she had just met. She went on to vilify women, question their sincerity in understanding whether their bodies have been sexually violated or not and put the burden of her family’s suffering on the shoulders of survivors.  “…you can’t make victims of men just because the rape-count in the jails is low. A woman should think of what she is doing when she accuses a man of a sex crime. When a man goes to jail, his whole family goes to jail with him… It is great that women and men are addressing the issue of gender politics and sexual boundaries. But somewhere, we need to draw a line between sex crimes and imagined versions of it. Please think it out before making an allegation. When a man is accused of a sex crime, his entire family suffers with him.”Rizvi reiterated her beliefs about the imprisoned men she’d met during her visits to Farooqui in jail during an interview with DNA as well.      

Ironically, this distasteful, hypocritical lens of Rizvi’s feminism creeps into her film as well. The protagonist, Bani (Kritika Kamra), has an academic friend, Amitav (Purab Kohli), who is very much a predator and actively persuades his students/mentees into dating him. On the day the film is set, Amitav brings his recent convert, Latika (Joyeeta Dutta), “a twenty-something,” to Bani’s flat. Latika’s character is made out to be relatively dumb, abruptly rude and lacking in her understanding of feminism. The power imbalance in Latika’s relationship with Amitav is apparent, much like the imbalance was between Farooqui and Marrewa-Karwoski, who looked upto him as a mentor figure. The best thing about The Great Shamsuddin Family is the beautiful, capable cast of women who have embodied the physical and verbal language of Indian Muslim women—each generation a different flavour of feminism. But the feminist treatment that the Shamsuddin Family receives in the film is not extended towards Latika, the youngest woman in the same room. Why is Amitav’s predatory behaviour brushed off as a vain attempt to impress Bani and why is Latika met with rude, unsympathetic glares, much like Rizvi’s public vilification of a woman her husband had allegedly assaulted?

Before Marrewa-Karwoski had filed the FIR against Farooqui, she had reportedly tried reaching out to him via email, describing the assault and how he had wronged her. Rizvi had responded to that email instead of Farooqui, apologising and initially seeming to understand the “ordeal” Marrewa-Karwoski must be going through, only to later slyly suggest that Farooqui suffered from bipolar depressive disorder. Marrewa-Karwoski requested Rizvi not to blame his actions on BPD and instead, address the power equation in the scenario. Rizvi also went around, throughout the duration of the trial, asking her friends and peers not to believe the survivor and cut her out of their social lives. Danish Hussain, the key prosecution witness in the case, was also contacted by Rizvi, urging him not to intervene and convince Marrewa-Karwoski not to press charges.

According to Rizvi’s actions, feminism is good to partake in when it comes with glorification, and helps make good art, but not when it comes at the cost of questioning those around us. Rizvi’s feminism is far from intersectional; it is self-centred and comes with a convenient pair of peripheral blinds. So, yes, The Great Shamsuddin Family is a sweet, much-awaited respite for Indian Muslims, but the sourness of Rizvi’s hypocrisy curdles that experience.

The word ‘remember’ was used at the beginning of this article on purpose. The counsel for Farooqui, in their last statements of defence, had questioned, dissected, analysed and dismissed the survivor’s memory of the events and eventually achieved an acquittal. Farooqui was given the benefit of doubt on account of his bipolar disorder, amongst other things; whereas Marrewa-Karwoski’s entire ordeal was considered negligible because her memory of getting sexually violated was found ‘faulty’—and ‘faulty’ was Hussain’s recollection of his phone call with the survivor right after the disturbing incident.

As an Indian Muslim woman, I was glad to see my community represented the right way. But as a survivor of sexual abuse, I know how it feels to have one’s most uncomfortable memories of assault questioned, manipulated and discarded. So, while choosing between the art or the artist should feel like the most common conundrum of all time, ‘remembering’ feels like the best way to go about a dilemma like this—remembering the past wrongdoings of a flawed pair of hypocritical artists; remembering that acquittal of predators doesn’t always mean justice; remembering that more often than not, records are set straight by erasing them; and remembering that good representation of a marginalised community is not worth it, if it comes at the expense of disregarding sexual violence against women and its mockery thereafter.

Afreen Akhtar is a writer and a multidisciplinary artist based in Delhi.