‘Haq’ review: Film on the Shah Bano case dances around a thorny issue
‘Haq’, starring Yami Gautam and Emraan Hashmi, is a restrained retelling of the Shah Bano story that only hints at its implications for today's India
There’s a scene in Dhoom Dhaam (2025) where Yami Gautam’s character goes off on a rant about patriarchy. It felt to me a moment written for the express purpose of being able to share on social media as a ‘mic-drop monologue’—which is exactly what Netflix did a few days after the release. I was reminded of this by a scene in Haq, where Gautam’s Shazia Bano, accosted in the marketplace, exhorts onlooking women to really read the Quran and not submit meekly to their husbands. Another mic-drop, I guess, but one complicated by the subject, the times, and the actor.
Shazia is based on Shah Bano, a divorcee whose long legal battle for the right to receive alimony reached the Supreme Court in 1985. The court ruled in her favour—a hugely controversial decision, as many saw it in contravention of Muslim Personal Law. In response, the Congress government at the time enacted a law that limited the effect of this judgment, in large part shifting the maintenance of divorced Muslim women back onto their family or the Waqf board.
Suparn S Varma's Haq is not the Shah Bano film I was expecting—not exactly, anyway. For one, it only reaches the courts halfway through. Before that, it’s a fairly restrained look at the romance of Shazia, a maulvi’s daughter, and lawyer Abaas Khan (Emraan Hashmi), followed by a slow souring of the relationship. One day, out of the blue, he brings home a new wife, Saira (Vartika Singh). Shazia, though distraught, tries to make the new arrangement work, but finally gives up and moves back to her parents’ place with her three children.
There are those who might’ve hoped that a film about an oppressed Muslim woman and Islamic law would be the kind of Hindutva propaganda that graces our screens every few months now. Haq, written by Reshu Nath, isn’t that at all—though whether it still serves to further a right-leaning political line is worth pondering. It offers an unconditionally supportive Muslim cleric in the person of Shazia’s father, played by Danish Husain, to counter all the patriarchal ones opposing her claim. Even Abbas isn’t shown to be an oppressive sort, just someone who uses existing rules to justify a self-serving decision. The only outright caricature is Abbas’s boorish, wife-beating neighbour.
In the Supreme Court, Abbas, representing himself, launches into an impassioned defense of shariat. He speaks of the independence movement, of Pakistan, of the difficulties of being a minority and importance of Islamic law to Muslims in India. Varma loses his nerve and adds vaguely sinister music at the end, but it’s a thoughtful speech, and Hashmi delivers it sincerely. The film clearly doesn’t agree with his point of view, but it finds time and the right language for it.
Working with cinematographer Pratham Mehta, Varma finds a simple, stark look for his film—roomy framings, muted colours, lots of natural light. Gautam’s performance mirrors this starkness, her eyes flashing with hurt and resentment as her husband causally moves on from her, occasionally exploding at him and society at large. The film hints at the larger political implications of the case, but mostly keeps a tight focus on Shazia. This restraint is abandoned in the final moments, when the present government is congratulated for the abolition of Triple Talaq and the Uniform Civil Code is finally, inevitably mentioned.
There are implications to Gautam playing Bano that transcend what is, in isolation, an impassioned performance. In Uri (2019), a film about the 2016 cross-border strikes by the Indian military, and Article 370 (2024), about the revocation of the special status of Jammu & Kashmir, she played a RAW agent and an NIA agent respectively. Both films (one directed by her husband, Aditya Dhar, the other written by him) are laudatory of the central BJP leadership to a level indistinguishable from propaganda. A Uniform Civil Code has been a longstanding demand of the RSS. Haq may not be anyone’s idea of a hard-right film. But I imagine it’ll be the first of several in coming years to address the code.
‘Haq’ is in theatres.
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