General Rani (1995)

General Rani, also known as Aqleem Akhtar (and Adnan Sami Khan’s grandmother), was the title accorded to one of Pakistani history’s most fascinating characters.  Much has been written about her in articles, about how she played the typical burqa-clad subservient wife to her policeman husband until she decided she had endured enough.  She threw off her veil, told her husband to go to hell, and was ready to take her chances on her own terms. 

She walked out of the marriage and decided her best asset in life was the lessons she had learned around sleazy men (cops, no doubt) in a male-dominated world.  She decided she would play men by her rules, eager to exploit their weaknesses, and she knew precisely how.  She played her cards craftily enough for her to one day assume the title of General Rani because of her association with the highest rank in the land; the president of Pakistan.

General Rani had men falling at her feet, and she would reward their devotion with the choice of starlets from the film world or the cream of the crop from the Red Light Area.  Essentially General Rani started a thriving brothel for the high and mighty and had enough dirt on them to keep them in line.  She was given VIP protocol and treatment due to her liaison with the president. She and some of her girls ruled the roost in the highest corridors of the land. 

Eventually, she was silenced by the Bhutto government and muzzled and imprisoned in her own home with various drug smuggling charges, most probably fabricated.  Finally, those she sent her girls to for entertainment turned on her. She became a dangerous liability and loose cannon with her allegiances favouring those no longer in power.  As the government changed, so did General Rani’s fortunes.  As the generals were momentarily sent packing, her star faltered and she was considered a threat on some level, enough for essential people to want to get rid of her.

In early 1995, a film by the name of General Rani starring Anjuman was submitted to the censors for certification, immediate red flags came up in a country where civilian governments are just pretty little puppets to fool Western donors into coughing up money in the name of “democracy” and where all real power is in the hands of another.   The Power base is a touchy subject to talk about, and even stating the obvious can earn you a premature burial in some ditch somewhere, as many have discovered over the years.  Calling a spade “a spade” in some parts of the world is tricky. Thus, a film like General Rani, based on a character of questionable morals who was also known to be hobnobbing with the nation’s highest brass, would seem like a very dodgy proposition indeed.

The first objection to the film was even before the film’s content had even been examined!  The title itself was found to be offensive to the “censor board” who demanded that the name of the film be changed, and the word “General” be dropped. It would undoubtedly be considered disrespectful to the high and mighty of Pakistan, those decorated generals each wearing a Superhero outfit under their khakis.  Even referring to the forces as “equals” is like committing an unpardonable, treasonous crime.

In 1995, we had a government that the “people had supposedly elected”; it still amounted to the same old cardboard puppet show with the ultimate ringmaster being above politics.  

All the dialogues in the film where the word general was used had to be dubbed over and changed to “Madame” if the film was to receive a clean chit from the censor’s office. And so the film producers, having printed thousands of posters and publicity flyers and prepared a trailer, would now have to back peddle and change everything from “General” to “Madame”, which was deemed a good substitute.  How deliciously ironic that General Rani’s grandson till last week (June 2016) was the head of the Sindh Censor Board for Film until he resigned just this week for “personal reasons”.  Another grandson has built a successful career in Bollywood as a music director.

This effect on the film is that it received more publicity than it could have imagined. Before the film was released in May 1995, the public was aware that it was a movie that had already caused the censor some problems and was considered a hot, controversial subject.  What remained to be seen was just how much of Aqleem Akhtar’s life would be depicted accurately or would the film exploit her “infamy” and mould a masala plot around her reputation as Pakistan’s most powerful woman between 1969 –’71.

The majority of the cinema-going public wasn’t particularly in tune with the controversy about the censorship issues nor the notoriety of the title character. They were mostly just concerned with the entertainment and escapism the film would provide them. The cast was full of Lollywood favourites Anjuman Sultan Rahi and Ghulam Mohiuddin from the old school. As well as the up-and-coming new superstar Reema and the popular if irritating Jan Rambo but towering above them, all was one of Pakistan’s greatest cinema icons, Nadeem, in a decisive role as an incorruptible beacon of light amidst a world of murky sleaze, vultures like politicians and a rotten judiciary.

Anjuman, carrying the film on her ample shoulders, is resplendent in the role of General Rani, even if it doesn’t take long to realise that only a few elements of reality have been used and the rest of her history conveniently omitted.  It would be suicide to have depicted General Rani as the person she was accurately because that would have ruffled many mighty feathers and raised many questions of various politicians whose family still had their fingers in the political pie.  Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the founding father of the ruling People’s Party himself, was a regular at General Rani’s “parties” and used her services for entertainment on numerous occasions, according to articles and interviews subsequently published and available on the internet.

  Therefore, this cinematic version of “General Rani” is only telling you a small percentage of her tale, and the way she is depicted is more like a criminal overlord Boss Bitch who has connections to all the corridors of power in the land and who uses her girls judiciously to keep the power brokers in line.  Then there is the family of Aqleem Akhtar, who has managed very well in their chosen fields of life and would not have reacted well to having “the dirt dug up and dished out” for obvious reasons. The rest of the movie is draped in a pseudo-nationalistic bombast primarily delivered by the upright soldier of morality, Nadeem.  He stands by his morals, the Pakistani flag, and Quaid e Azam. He refuses to watch silently as his nation is bartered and traded away by the corrupt and powerful.

Anjuman has the rich bitch cackle fine-tuned to perfection as she spends half the movie showing the world what a heartless, cold Boss Bitch she is, a bit like Griselda Blanco, having people and families tortured and mowed down at whim.  Yet underneath that cold-hearted brutal power, there lives a woman who is hiding incredible sorrow. She lords it over her underworld connections, clearing the path for them to strike deals with dubious politicians and she takes her cut and maintains her position as the ultimate power broker in the land.    A sorrow she has learned to suppress, but one that will ultimately be unlocked by a stirring speech or two by Nadeem.  General Rani’s murderous façade comes crumbling as she reveals the horrors she has endured to survive in a cruel, corrupt, and unequal world.

  General Rani’s awakening after she has assassinated Nadeem’s entire family is the turning point and suddenly the power balance starts to shift.  Will a mentally unstable Nadeem be able to thwart the corrupt system now that he has General Rani at his side with all her knowledge of the wheeling’s and dealings, or will the corrupt system have the last laugh?  Will a repentant General Rani, a Mad Sultan Rahi, a reformed lawyer Ghulam Mohiuddin and a chastened bad girl Reema be able to save Pakistan or will it be sold off like one of Madame Rani’s girls to the highest bidder in Dubai? Sultan Rahi plays a loose cannon, rather dim-witted evidently, as he changes sides quite frequently.  He ultimately fights for his flag against the cancer of corruption, threatening to wipe the country out.

Throw in a few sultry dance numbers by Reema and co, a few fight-and-chase scenes on water and a few shots of what might be Dubai and fuse them with this political masala-laden plot.  Add the political scenario in 1995, Reema and the controversy of the censor board and Aqleem Akthar and the result was a box office bounty in the summer of 1995 as the film blazed away to glory.

A similar film, Golden Girl, followed the following year with many of the same ingredients but without the same success.  Madame Rani is a film that should have been the best film ever to be made about a real personality from Pakistani history; instead, it turned out as an entertaining masala-laden romp with the usual ingredients and Anjuman turning on her star power and eating up the scenery as the title role character.  As a masala entertainer, it clicked with the masses big time. Still, as an accurate depiction of the life of one of Pakistan’s most exciting personalities, it merely skirts around the fact that it is even about the same woman. In that sense, it is a highly frustrating experience.