Techno-Nostalgia Colorization of K.asif

BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies
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Techno-Nostalgia: Colorization of K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam

Ramna Walia
BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies 2013 4: 137
DOI: 10.1177/0974927613503233
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Leadership Insights from Jaina text Saman Suttam� 137��
Techno-Nostalgia: Colorization BioScope

4(2) 137–158
of K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam © 2013 Screen South Asia Trust
SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi, Singapore,
Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/0974927613503233
http://bioscope.sagepub.com
Ramna Walia
Abstract
The incantatory aura associated with K. Asif’s magnum opus, Mughal-e-Azam (1960), a film that was
marveled at as a technological benchmark for its experimentation with the new technology of color in
Bombay cinema, has greatly mobilized the vocabulary of a “classic” as it traveled from the restricted
and potentially obscure space of traditional archives back into the domain of public exhibition through
its re-release in a colorized avatar. This article traces the material displacement and virtual dispersion
of the film through the category of the remake. As the film goes through optical and chemical changes,
memory of the film is mobilized to reflect on the digital and its relationship to the traditional film
archive. In this process, the cultural biography of the film as a classic is employed to not just map the
divergent impulses of cinema’s celluloid history and its interaction with contemporary digital culture,
but also as a way of re-telling the history of the Bombay film industry as it recycles its archive and alle-
gorizes the past.
Keywords
Cinema, Globalization, Memory, Technology, Archive, Remake, Classic, culture, History, Color
Mughal-e-Azam is the mother of all films. “Ma ka remake nahi hota”

—Shah Rukh Khan1
“The mother of all films,” “the greatest Indian film ever,”2 a “saga of epic proportions,”3 “ek haseen
khwab” (a beautiful dream); Hindi cinema’s “ajooba” (miracle),4 Karimuddin Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam
(1960) more often than not eludes any corporeal description within popular culture. From its inception
over six decades back in 1945 to its release and legendary after-life, verbose hyperbolic figurations have
been deployed to describe the film. The most expensive Indian film of its time, Mughal-e-Azam boasted
of high production values, spectacular sets, skilled art direction, lavish costumes, immortal dialogues,
and extraordinary performances by the leading stars of the era—Dilip Kumar, Madhubala, and Prithviraj
Kapoor. The film was released during the early days of color technology in India and three of its reels
were shot in color. The color sequences became the highlight of the film and mesmerized audiences
across the country.5 Forty-four years later, the film was colorized and re-released with digitally
re-mastered sound across theatres in India. Widely advertised as a “classic extravaganza,” the promotions
drew on the memories associated with the film’s lavish production, the autobiographies of its stars,
Ramna Walia is an independent researcher and PhD scholar at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal
Nehru University, New Delhi, India. E-mail: ramna.walia@gmail.com

138 Colorization of K. Asif ’s Mughal-e-Azam
gossip (affairs, finances, fall-outs), as well as scandals. In addition to this, reminisces of the film’s initial
reception were mobilized to build on the film’s status as a “classic.”
The essential feature of a “classic,” according to writer–lyricist Javed Akhtar, is that it always appears
“new and, (yet) strangely, that it has always existed: It crystallizes an experience, a conflict that is
simultaneously ancient and modern” (Akhtar, 2007, p. vi). On the eve of the thirty-fifth anniversary of
Ramesh Sippy’s blockbuster film Sholay (1975), filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma wrote on his blog, “Why is it
that Sholay doesn’t age?” He continued, “It just seems to stand still at the ‘pause’ button of a cinematic era
for the last 35 years without aging one bit…” (Varma, 2010). This was a valid observation from a director
whose credentials suffered a major setback due to the failure of his attempted remake of this enduring film.
Amid frantic debates around Sholay’s tryst with failure in Ram Gopal Varma ki Aag (2007) and successful
experimentation with its re-release in a digitally upgraded avatar, there emerged the practice of remaking
that lay at the cusp of these debates, that of colorization and re-release of old black and white films. The films
at the centre of this debate were K. Asif’s magnum opus Mughal-e-Azam (1960), B. R. Chopra’s Naya Daur
(1955), and Amarjeet’s Hum Dono (1961). These were the films that used the discourse of the “classic” to
suggest that while colorization alters, or rather, upgrades the material form of the film in accordance with the
aesthetic demands of the multiplex, it retains the overall content of the original. The optical and chemical
changes incurred during this process of colorization, I argue, present a new way of thinking about Bombay
film history and its relationship with the material object of the past. At the same time the colorization discourse
also creates an active canon that mobilizes the aesthetic memory of the original through the act of remaking.
The Bombay film remake has emerged over the last one decade as a prominent industrial practice.6
From the tragedy of Devdas (1955, 2002, 2009) to Farhan Akhtar’s remake series, Don (1978, 2006,
2011), from Karan Malhotra’s Agneepath (2012) to the all-encompassing formula of the 1970s in Om
Shanti Om (Farah Khan, 2007), we have seen how “pastness” has found a significant articulation in
contemporary film culture. The remake, although not an alien term in the Indian context, has so far been
restricted in its use to a scattered body of “creative influences” from Hollywood and other regional cin-
emas.7 Bombay films by this logic do not remake, they rehash the “formula.” The discourse implies that
India “steals” and “borrows” Hollywood plots, sprinkles them with a little magical idiosyncrasy called
“the masala” or produces standard story lines that define what circulates in the global circuits as
“Bollywood” (Blakely, 2009). The Bombay film remake thus emerges as a twice removed progeny of the
original. In fact, in a cinema that defies generic forms of filmmaking and is “disposed to” copying and
borrowing, can we even talk of an “original?”
In 1969, when Walter Benjamin in his now canonical work, The work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction, declared the end of the aura of the “original” in mass cultural forms, little did he know that
the past would come to haunt and even re-define what constitutes the original. While Benjamin looked
at painting and photography, recent scholarship has viewed the anxiety linked to the original as an ever-
present phenomenon which is intricately related to the relationship between culture and technology. In
fact, visual communication theorists such as Chris Pinney, Stephen Inglis and Partha Mitter have argued
that mechanically reproduced images circulate differently in diverse cultural contexts, particularly in the
context of South Asian visual culture. Stephen R. Inglis, in his essay, “Master, Machine, and Meaning:
Printed Images in Twentieth-Century India,” observes that in India, “mechanically reproduced images
continue to participate in the reality of the ‘objects’ or personages depicted, and this participation, the
active association of the image and its sacred source, helps account for the nature, popularity, and
ubiquity of images in modern India” (Inglis, 1999, p. 123).
As old films move beyond domestic sites of television and radio into a global cultural economy
through virtual sites, video sharing portals and DVD markets, the original emerges as a sign of this new
BioScope, 4, 2 (2013): 137–158

Ramna Walia 139
dispersed economy. It is this combination of a sense of lingering continuity with the past as well as a
desire to break from it that makes the remake such a significant cultural practice. Central to this media-
tion is the role that technology plays in reflecting this change. Moreover, the experiences of piracy, the
Internet, and the compressed co-existence of old and new technologies have created a new sensorium.
Drawing on visual and aural codes from this scattered body of domestic screens and numerous such
subterranean industries (especially that of music and film piracy), the remake offers spectators a return
to the theatre, an experience of going back in time to inhabit the position of a film spectator who is at
once a part of the present sensorium as well as connected to an imagined past. The remake can then be
seen as an off-shoot of this new visuality, a symptom of the cultures of recycling, nostalgia, and temporal
compression—all of which animate contemporary debates on technology and culture. Central to the
transitory status of Bombay film culture and the politics of remembering the past is this ostensible
investment in the role of memory.8 In narrating the techno-cultural history of the Bombay film industry,
the remake offers a method for the interpretation of cinematic memory.
Mughal-e-Azam (Color) begins with the invocation of its status as a classic. But clearly this classic is
not “old.” In its colorized avatar, the film conforms to contemporary technological innovations and taste,
but it still retains an organic link with the past. With its restoration for the public, the print of the film as
material object was taken out of the archive and exhibited in theatres with the stamp of the new. Through
this transference, the aura associated with the classic was reinvented with the use of color. Here lies
the complex interaction between digital technology and the material object.9 As I will show, the
divergent impulses of digital technology’s interaction with analog became the prism through which
Mughal-e-Azam (Color) successfully restaged its entry into “an event” that according to Ram Gopal
Varma’s conclusive remark on classics, “happen(s) once in a lifetime” (Usai, 2001).
“Never Before-Perhaps Never Again!”: The Aura of Mughal-e-Azam

One amongst the many historicals produced during the period, the novelty of Karimuddin Asif’s
Mughal-e-Azam was not its subject—a known folklore of the time—but rather his grand vision of the
era, captured through its mise-en-scène and cine-lore attached to its making. It is via this account of its
production that the film establishes its classicism.10 Mughal-e-Azam’s production profile has constantly
interacted with the personal histories of its cast and crew to construct its “classic” status.
Set in the sixteenth century Mughal period under Akbar’s rule,11 Mughal-e-Azam narrated a fictional
love story between the royal prince Salim and an ordinary court dancer, Anarkali. Facing opposition to
the romance from Akbar, Salim rebels against his father and declares war on him. After facing defeat in
the war, Salim is sentenced to death. Anarkali begs for his life and is condemned by Akbar to be walled
alive. In return for a promised favor to Anarkali’s mother earlier, Akbar spares her life and Anarkali is
exiled through a secret tunnel. Salim never comes to know about the final transaction between Anarkali’s
mother and Akbar and the lovers are separated. The inspiration for the story came from the Urdu novelist
Imtiaz Ali Taaj’s fictional account in his play Anarkali. The play inspired many theatrical and cinematic
productions. Among the grand successes based on the theme were films like Charu and Praful Roy’s
Loves of a Mughal Prince (1928), Ardeshir Irani’s Anarkali (1928) and S. Mukerjee’s film of the same
name produced in 1953. Despite the success of this theme of unrequited love within the royal quarters
during Akbar’s reign by his predecessors, Asif was determined to create his own version of immortal
love between a man who according to many historical records, was married first at the age of fifteen and
BioScope, 4, 2 (2013): 137–158

“collected a seraglio of eighteen wives,” and a

woman whose historical presence remains shrouded
in mystery.12
Between October 1945 and May 1946, Filmindia
produced a series of posters announcing the inception
of a “Gorgeous Historical” to be produced by Shiraz
Production starring Veena, Nargis, Chandramohan,
and Sapru. The details of the posters changed over the
years to the extent that by the time the film released in
theatres, the only constant detail was director K. Asif
and his dream project Mughal-e-Azam (Images 1
and 2). A production shadowed by the unfortunate
deaths of the cast and crew members, the loss of its
creative team to the partition of India and Pakistan and
an unfathomably increasing budget, Mughal-e-Azam’s
entry as the template of lavishness and romance within
popular Bombay cinema was not an easy one. It was
on August 5, 1960 that this celluloid monument was
finally released in 150 cinema theaters across the
nation, 15 years after it was first announced.
The harrowing pre-production process of the
film started when Asif lost his producer, Hakim
Shiraz Ali who migrated to Pakistan in 1947.
Shapoorji and Palonji Mistri of Sterling Investment
Corporation Limited decided to produce the film.
The film was revived and after the shooting of ten Image 1. First Announcement of the Proposed
reels another tragedy struck. Chandramohan who Historical in Film India, October 1945.
was playing the role of Emperor Akbar suffered a Source: Personal Collection.
fatal heart attack and production got held up again
for a year. Asif then decided to start the project afresh with an entirely new cast. Famed film and theatre
personality Prithviraj Kapoor was cast as Akbar. Playing the role of a torn father and a just king, Kapoor
immortalized the role and in the years to come, his name became almost synonymous with royalty.13 For
the role of Salim, Dilip Kumar, the “tragedy king” of Bombay cinema was approached. The actor was
reluctant to play a historical role and was convinced only after a wig worth ` 300,000 was imported from
London to make him look like a prince (Warsi, 2009). After Nargis’s exit from the project,14 the shooting
went on for over a year without a lead actress. Asif finally found his Anarkali in Madhubala. Deified as
“the Venus of the Indian Screen,” she immortalized the role of the lovelorn kaneez. But it was her love
affair with the leading man, Dilip Kumar, that played the critical role in deifying her as the tragic courte-
san Anarkali. While love between the two leading actors of the film, Dilip Kumar and Madhubala, was
blossoming on the sets and was heading toward matrimony, Dilip Kumar’s testimony in support of B.R.
Chopra’s petition against Madhubala’s breach of contract for Naya Daur (1955) broke their relationship
and the romance came to a tragic halt. In an interview, the late actor Ajit said that “Madhubala shed many
tears during the making of Mughal-e-Azam. Every shot with her prince was a trial and caused her trauma”
(Warsi, 2009, p. 92). The love and tension between the lead pair however was eloquently captured in the
characters of the star-crossed lovers, Salim and Anarkali.
BioScope, 4, 2 (2013): 137–158

Ramna Walia 141
Image 2. First announcement of the cast of Mughal-e-Azam published in Film India, May 1946 with Veena, Nargis,
Chandramohan Sapru and Durga Khote. The casting of the film changed dramatically over the coming years as
the shooting of the film got stalled.
Source: Personal Collection.
BioScope, 4, 2 (2013): 137–158

The image of Salim gently caressing the face of Anarkali with ‘Prem Jogan...’ sung by the legendary
classical singer, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan playing in the background remains to this day a prime example
of cinematic eroticism.15 Asif wanted the best voice to do the playback for Tansen, the royal Mughal
court singer. Music composer Naushad suggested the name of Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. Determined to
bring the reclusive singer on board despite being aware of his aversion to “filmi music,” Naushad per-
suaded Asif to see Bade Ghulam Ali Khan at his bungalow, only to be categorically told of the singer’s
hostility to film music. The determined Asif asked Khan to quote his price. Angered by this stubbornness
but humbled by the visit of a guest to his abode, Khan quoted an enormous sum of ` 25,000/-, almost ten
times the fees paid to the best singers of the industry at the time. Asif relented and said, “That’s all! Here
is the advance of ` 10000/-, you’ll get the rest after the recording.”16 It was Asif’s handsome Shehzada
and beautiful Kaneez who inspired Khan to render the formidable “Prem Jogan...” recorded four times
before it was finalized17 (Warsi, 2009, p. 127).
The music of the film captured the soul of Asif’s dream. Drawing from varied influences of bhakti,
sufi, and folk traditions, music composer Naushad infused life and character into the aural track and enli-
vened the screen with the spirit of poetry, love, and rebellion. But it was the inimitable “Pyar kiya to darna
kya...” that went on to become an anthem of rebellion in the decades to come. Inspired by a folk song
“Prem kari chori kari naye...,” and shot exquisitely on the famed set of Sheesh Mahal, the song truly
epitomized all the grandeur of Asif’s vision for the film. Standing at 30 feet high and built with an
astounding cost of ` 1.5 million, the set of Sheesh Mahal took two years to construct. Hundreds of artisans
from Firozabad (Uttar Pradesh) were summoned to embellish the set with millions of mirrors. After com-
pletion, Asif realized that the mirrors reflected light on the lens of the camera and the production was
stalled once again. Months later, a special technique was used by cinematographer R.D. Mathur to refract
the light off the mirrors from the camera. The production continued and Asif decided to shoot the sequences
of Sheesh Mahal in color. Three reels were shot which further increased the cost of the project. A frus-
trated Shapoorji relented, but with the ever-escalating budget expressed his reservations saying, “Mera
director pagal ho gaya hai, Kaanch ka pura karkhana lagaya hai” (“My director has lost his mind, he’s
built a factory of mirrors on the set!”) (Warsi, 2009, p. 58). Asif however was undeterred. The extravagant
set of Sheesh Mahal stood high at Mohan Studios as a popular tourist attraction almost three years after
Mughal-e-Azam had hit the theaters. Adorned with mirrors and exquisite art work of the most skilled
craftsmen of the country, the set became a testimonial to the “imagination and lavishness” of its maker
(Filmfare, 1960c). The grandeur of Mughal-e-Azam was clearly captured in the visual syntax of this set.
Often labeled a deewana, Asif was a man driven by a quest for the perfect shot. In O. P. Rahlan’s
documentary on the making of the film—Two Reeler on Production and Premiere of Mughal-e-Azam
(1972)—cinematographer R.D. Mathur recalls how “The best of Delhi tailors were brought to Mumbai
to stitch the costumes for Akbar and Salim, the delicate jewelery worn by Anarkali was crafted by gold-
smiths in Hyderabad, a silver artisan from Kolhapur created the royal crowns, ironsmiths from Rajasthan
made the shields, swords, spears, dagger, armour, and other war paraphernalia, designers from Surat
were asked to weave the zardosi on costumes while the footwear came from Agra” (Rahlan, 1972). Such
was the lavishness of the film that a week after its release, an exhibition of its costumes, jewelery, and
other items of artillery etcetera was organized at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay.18 For the war scene
between Akbar and Salim, Asif requested the then Defence Minister V.K. Krishna Menon to grant per-
mission to use the Jaipur cavalry. A battalion of 8,000 troops, 2,000 soldiers, 2,000 camels, and
400 horses were used to shoot one of the most elaborately staged war scenes in the history of Indian
cinema. The stories of these intricately designed costumes, elaborately shot war scenes, and the profligate
sets of the Sheesh Mahal testify to the extravagance of the film and the grand vision of its maker.
BioScope, 4, 2 (2013): 137–158

Ramna Walia 143
On September 11, 1959, Filmfare carried a full page article reporting Asif’s insistence on the use of real
pearls and precious stones for the last scene of the shooting.19 Durga Khote, playing the role of Akbar’s
wife, distributes diamonds, pearls, and other precious stones amongst her palace staff when her son Salim
returns from war. Not only did Asif insist on the use of real stones, it was reported that he was satisfied only
after he learnt that “their weight was 12 pounds more than his” (Filmfare, 1960a). Asif’s extravagant style
of filmmaking and rumors about the squandering of Shapoorji’s investment continued to do the rounds.
The budget of the film was now a monumental rupees 12.5 million, which at that time was phenomenal.
The skepticism around the completion of the film finally withered as Asif’s production came to a
close. Mughal-e-Azam was set for an all India release on August 5, 1960. The film was sold for an
astounding price of ` 1.7 million per territory at a time when the average rate per territory was less than
` 400,000–500,000 (Vijaykar, 2010). In sync with the grandeur of the era the film had set out to capture,
invitations designed as a royal scroll and titled “Akbarnama” were sent out to “command” the guests to
arrive at the grand opening of the film. An imperial premiere was organized at Bombay’s Maratha
Mandir. The foyer was decorated to look like a Mughal palace. Industry veterans poured in large num-
bers to witness the end result of the most expensive film ever made in India. Filmfare ran a story on the
premiere of the film and wrote, “As befitting the splendour of Mughal-e-Azam, the premiere of the film...
was a glittering occasion...All filmdom seemed to be there” (Filmfare, 1960b). The film opened to
largely positive reviews. It had captured the imagination of the viewers with its lavish scale, excellent
performances, immortal dialogues and soulful music. The film made a record collection of ` 4 million
by way of advance booking in its first week (Filmfare, 1960c).
Audiences queued up in front of theatres to see the film. Many stood and lived outside the theater for
days. Hiten Gada, Director of Shemaroo Video recalls how an unprecedented demand for tickets of the
film forced the management to close ticket bookings for three weeks, “something that had never happened
before—or since” (Vijaykar, 2010). A ` 1.30 ticket was sold in black for an amount as high as ` 200.
Newspapers widely reported the success of the film and the mass hysteria amongst the audience. The
Bombay Times of India wrote, “Never in the history of the Indian Film Industry has there been a motion
picture the release of which witnessed such mass hysteria. This fabulous production is … a tribute to the
patience, sincerity and almost religious fervour of its maker, the enigmatic Mr. K. Asif, whose weakness
for splendour and spectacle, pomp and pageantry is not less than that of any Mughal Emperor.”20 Another
case of a man from the rural interiors who notoriously sold his household belongings to buy a ticket at
` 200 in black was widely covered by the media (Warsi, 2009, p. 140). Mughal-e-Azam became a mega
success and collected sales amounting to ` 35 million. It ran houseful in Maratha Mandir for three years,
a record for Indian cinema.
The aura of Mughal-e-Azam as a film, “true” to its epic proportion of creation and reception, circulated
in the form of an epic after-life in the decades to come. Retracing the hysteria around the film, Shakil Warsi
recalls how the ban on the export of Indian films in Pakistan led to an “eight day advance booking of
flights from Karachi to Lahore to catch beamed signals from Amritsar on the day the film was telecast on
India’s first national television channel Doordarshan in 1976” (Warsi, 2009, p. 141). In the 1990s, the
satellite rights of the film were sold at an astronomical figure of ` 5 million for five years, over five times
the average price of a film. The satellite rights were renewed in the year 2000 at ` 12.5 million, another
record in the history of satellite telecast (Salgia, 2005, p. 129). The most expensive film went on to become
the most successful film in the history of Indian cinema. As one of its first promotional advertisement in
Filmfare declared with a prophetic resonance—“Never before- and perhaps never again!” (Production
Digest, March 12, 1960), Mughal-e-Azam garnered the position of a celluloid monument (Image 3). On
November 12, 2004, the film was re-released in theaters across India and history was all set to repeat itself!
BioScope, 4, 2 (2013): 137–158

Image 3. The splendour of Mughal Architecture captured in the pre-release poster of Mughal-e-Azam with the
prophetic words “Never Before-Perhaps Never Again” from Filmfare, July 1960.
Source: Personal Collection.
BioScope, 4, 2 (2013): 137–158

Ramna Walia 145
“The Renaissance of Mughal-e-Azam”: Colorizing an Unfulfilled Dream

Have you noticed how so many garba grihas in Tamil Nadu temples are now garishly lit with flood lamps? The
true devotee would like to view the deity by natural light, or by the glow of an oil lamp...Colorising a film is no
different.
—Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Filmmaker21
The 1960s was a decade marked by a transformative spirit. Empowered with the promise of global
access to technological innovations, ease of travel, and aspirations for leisure, a new kind of film culture
was emerging within Bombay cinema (Mazumdar, 2011). The use of Technicolor engendered new
possibilities for filmmakers as they re-conceptualized the role of costumes, locations, set design, and
make-up in their film.
While color had made its entry with Cinecolor in the film Kisan Kanya back in 1937, it was Mehboob
Khan’s Aan (1952) that became the first film to be made in Technicolor. According to a “Statement of
Production of Colour Films in India,” released by the Indian Academy of Motion Pictures, till the year
1971, “the ratio of black and white films to color was disproportionately, standing tall at an astounding
gap of 298 to 134 color films” (Ramachandaran, 1981). In the wake of this new technology of color,
Richard Misek describes the landscape of the 1960s mediascape as a assorted playfield where “the
choice of black and white, of color and of black and white and color coexisted.” Emerging at this
moment of “countless chromatic juxtapositions” (Misek, 2010, p. 69), film culture of the 1960s acquired
a heterogeneous character. It is not surprising then that Mughal-e-Azam embodied an impulse for tech-
nological experimentation. Dazzling the audience like never before, the colored sequences of the film
became a template of splendor.
While promoting the film before and after its release, the posters published in film magazines
focused on this visual grandeur enhanced by the technology of color. Weeks after Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam
(1960) was released, one such advertisement in the film magazine Mother India for instance
invited the viewers to see the grandeur of the film. The advertisement stated, “(a) picture you can’t say
you have seen, unless seen umpteen times...Count your Score!” (Mother India, December 1960;
emphasis mine). Such emphasis on the optical in the publicity of the film accentuated the association
of early color with the sensual and the spectacular (Gunning, 1995; Neale, 1985). As a material addition
to the black and white film, early color lay primarily outside the thematic constraints of the film. This,
according to film theorist Tom Gunning, provided “an extra sensual intensity which (drew) its
significance, at least in part from its difference from black and white” (Gunning, 1995). The high
production value of the film—its epic scale, panoramic interiors, and experimentation with color had
pushed the boundaries of how far cinema could go. With numerous re-runs on television, a plethora of
trivia around its stars, its making, its fashionable Anarkali designed clothing, and its impeccable
dialogues; Mughal-e-Azam had already acquired a reverential position in popular culture. Circulating
within these networks of information, the sets of Sheesh Mahal had become a reference point for Asif’s
vision. The influences of the film on art, fashion, and set design came primarily from these colored reels
of the film.
Over four decades after the release of the ‘original’, its producers mulled the possibility of bringing
to life Asif’s desire to make the film in color by re-shooting the entire film. What would Mughal-e-Azam
have looked like if Asif had the finances and the technology to make it in color? Such a project was
estimated to cost over ` 2000 million, and so the film was instead revived for colorization.
BioScope, 4, 2 (2013): 137–158

As a technique, colorization was invented by Wilson Markle and was first used in 1970 to add color
to monochrome footage of the moon from the Apollo mission.22 Essentially a chemical process, coloriza-
tion was developed to add color to black and white footage. The process begins with a monochrome film
print from which a digital copy is produced. The grey level in each shot is regulated while color is added
to each frame. Over the years, colorization entered the domain of newsreels, documentaries, as well as
old black and white films. Not unlike sound, the process of colorization became an industry standard.
The colorizing of Mughal-e-Azam was undertaken by the Indian Academy of Arts and Animation
(IAAA), Pune, in 2002.23 They first restored the prints before transferring them to the digital format. The
restoration work was done by Iris Interactive Laboratories, Chennai. Fungus, cuts and cracks were
removed from the original negative and the frames were stabilized by removing jerks and jitters (Salgia,
2005, p. 131). Further, each image of the film was broken into still frames and color was added in
accordance with available software technology. This technology selects colors from its system of a
virtual color palette. Over 300,000 frames of the film were then colorized by a “meticulous procedure of
color balancing, color selection and reformatting using a process called Natural Colorization that filters
out wrong colors from the palette.”24 With the help of the colored sequences of the original film, old
photographs and exhibition stock, books and paintings on the Mughal era, the procedure was completed
and the film was transferred onto a 35mm negative. The sound of the film was also cleaned at Chace
Production, Los Angeles, and converted to Dolby surround sound. With assistance from music director
Uttam Singh, an orchestra of 120 musicians was added to the original soundtrack. After two years of the
process and with an investment equivalent to the making of a new film, Mughal-e-Azam had risen from
the archives. Distributors Dinesh Gandhi and R. Sippy paid over 22.5 million upfront for the territory of
Mumbai alone (Parthasarthy, 2004). The film was re-released with much fanfare and in keeping with the
royal premiere of 1960. Mughal-e-Azam (Color) premiered at the Eros Theatre in Mumbai and it hit the
theatres across India on November 12, 2004 with over 150 prints. Once again, it became a grand success
at the box office with the second largest opening of the week, next only to veteran film director Yash
Chopra’s Veer Zaara. The film ran for 100 days in fourteen theaters across India. Alongside its stupendous
run at the box office, perhaps the greatest in the history of re-releases in world cinema, Mughal-e-Azam
(Color) generated fierce journalistic and academic debates on the subject of colorization.
In 1935, J.A. Ball, Vice President and Technical Director of Technicolor Motion Picture Corp, USA,
complicated the easy assumptions of a return to forms of the past. Ball emphasized that:
The art of the color cinematographer is intermediate between that of the painter and that of the stage artist. The
painter has to work with pigments having a limited range of contrast but has great freedom of choice as to compo-
sition. The stage artist works with light, and so does not encounter the pigment limitation; but he must select his
costumes, backgrounds, etc. to be harmonious in a great variety of arrangements, most of which are more or less
out of his control. In color cinematography the difficulties of both are combined; there is the pigment limitation
combined with the comparative lack of control of composition. (Ball, 1935, p. 133)
Technicolor founder, Herbert Kamus reiterated the importance of choosing color designs in accord-
ance with what Cinematographer Winton Hoch (1942) called the “hue, chroma, and value” of the set.
Thus Kamus (1938) emphasized that:
if a script has been conceived, planned, and written for black and white, it should not be done at all in color. The
story should be chosen and the scenario written with color in mind from the start, so that by its use effects are
obtained, moods created, beauty and personalities emphasized, and the drama enhanced. Colour should follow
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Ramna Walia 147
from sequence to sequence, supporting and giving impulse to the drama, becoming an integral part of it, and not
something super-added.
What then is the authoritative process of colorization of black and white films?
Reacting strongly against Mughal-e-Azam (Color), film archivist and former Director of the National
Film Archive of India, P.K. Nair stated that the business of colorization deteriorates the spacio-temporal
matrix of a cultural product. Nair argued, “As an archivist, I am totally against any form of tampering
with the original either putting sound on to a silent film, or color to a black and white image or blowing
up an unsqueezed 35mm frame to a 70mm panoramic format” (Nair, 2002). Further, said Nair:
this is a fallacy akin to someone coming up with a proposal that the Taj Mahal has to be painted afresh to make it
acceptable to modern viewing sensibilities and thereby increase the tourist traffic. Films like Mughal-e-Azam are
part of the country’s cultural heritage. It is our responsibility to attach the same reverence and sanctity to our film
classics as we do to any cultural product and not allow them to be disfigured or distorted. Let us not squander our
rich cultural heritage for some cheap profits. (Parthasarthy, 2004)
While Nair voices his concerns about technological superimposition on the original, in another review
of the film, Gautaman Bhaskaran of The Hindu said, “Does Madhubala look prettier with painted lips
and rose-tinted cheeks than she did shorn of these embellishments in the 1960 black and white edition?...
Celluloid creations such as Mughal-e-Azam are best kept away from the gloss and sheen of colour”
(Bhaskaran, 2004). Both Nair and Bhaskaran employ the vocabulary of art and classicism and the nos-
talgia associated with heritage film formats. Colorization is viewed here as an act of cultural sabotage
wherein technology and commerce are positioned in direct opposition to the concept of the original.
Can the technique of a synthetic paintbrush that adds features to the original be seen as innate to the
original? Can the chemical changes in an existing art object change its authentic aesthetic value? If
Asif’s intention to make the film in color was enough to warrant changes then why would there be a need
to evoke its materiality? The history of colorization has recorded debates between color as an aesthetic
choice versus color as a tool of technological upgradation.
Though these debates are relatively new to Bombay cinema, the colorization of black and white films
by studio executives like MGM’s Ted Turner25 were fiercely protested by various factions within
Hollywood who argued that “it distorted film history, violated creative rights of the original filmmakers,
and was basically a form of ‘vandalism’.”26 Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, John Huston, and Woody Allen
lobbied with the US Congress against such “computerized graffiti gangs.” As a result, the Film Integrity
Act of 1987 was passed in the US to preserve select classics.27 While many criticized the procedure as a
form of artistic defacement, there were others who saw its potential to reach a cross-generational audi-
ence and moreover, as an act of restoration. Colorization in Hollywood however, was restricted to home
viewing releases. Mughal-e-Azam became the first film in world cinema to be colorized for a theatrical
release. Moreover, Asif’s desire to color the film was located in the future and in colorizing the film for
a re-release the discourse of the film’s “classicism” was employed. With colorization Mughal-e-Azam
could now move toward a fulfilment of Asif’s incomplete dream.
Since the commercial veracity of Mughal-e-Azam was clothed in the rhetoric of its classicism and
incomplete project, the colorization procedure of the film invoked a notion that there was technological
“lack” in the past that had to be “corrected” to address the shifting tastes of the audience (Salgia, 2005).
The project moreover was based on the idea of “progress.” Film historian Tom Gunning cautions against
such a notion of progress that simply “displaces unresolved problems (for instance of color, status of
BioScope, 4, 2 (2013): 137–158

celluloid and value of a classic) onto new material” (Gunning, 1995). This tendency, for Gunning,
casts old media as “bad objects” which “good objects of new media will absolve” (Gunning, 1995,
p. 39). The argument made by technicians was one that tended to “correct” the flaws of the original and
promised to compensate for its “deficiency.” The “history of screen colour,” says Richard Misek, is “in
fact a history of colour and its absence” (Misek, 2010, p. 17). A material addition to the film, color
witnessed its transition from “artisanal forms like hand painting, stencilling and tinting” to the onset of
“natural” color in the industrial field of production post the 1960s to its current virtual incarnation in
post production (software technology). Beginning its journey as an oppositional material scheme to the
black and white format, Misek records how color inserted itself in the history of film craft and technology
to assume the position of a visual default. Assuming the role of a “technological relic,” black and white
film prints then occupy the status of the “material leftover of the past” (Misek, 2010, p. 85). In the
colorization of old black and white films, the genealogy of this development of color breaks out of its
chronology to redress questions regarding its role and its relation with celluloid. Black and white film
thus becomes an indexical feature of the “old” which can be posited against color as a visual default of
the “new” cinema.
In this changing landscape of the digital as an industrial function in Bombay cinema, older modes of
representation gain a momentum. The “look” of the film object lingers on and circulates in various tech-
noscapes, even as the content remains the same. Embodying within it these paradoxical impulses and
using the vocabulary of shifting tastes of the audience and the unfulfilled dream of its maker K. Asif,
what we witness in Mughal-e-Azam’s classicism is the state of a film culture in a moment of transition—
that is, the movement from analog to digital raising questions about commercial viability and restoration.
While the emergent paradigm of digital technology has been invested with the power to overthrow the
hierarchy of the industrial organization of filmmaking, the digital conversion of the original is seen as an
act of archiving. Giovanna Fossati in his influential book, From Grain to Pixel: The Archival Life of Film
looks at the transition from analog to digital as an ongoing process that warrantees an interplay between
the film object, archival practice and technology. Fossati foregrounds the need to reshape film archival
practices which are in sync with new technology (digital) as well as changing viewer expectations while
acknowledging a constant tussle between the film as a material artifact and film as a conceptual artifact.
As the latter does not recognize the ontological change from analog to digital, Fossati argues that film
restoration projects cannot offer a simple allegiance to the original, but rather a celebration of different
interpretations of the same, challenging in the process, the archivist to locate the cross-fertilizational
impulse within the film and discovering “a multiplicity of objects, both material and virtual” (Fossati,
2009, p. 259) The film object therefore is of a mutable and mobile constitution, which is constantly in
motion.
The function of technology within Bombay cinema has been restricted to basic color grading and
editing. In the last decade however there is an accelerated growth of complex digital effects and anima-
tion in this sector.28 In the global economy, the circulation of world cinema allows for the interaction of
various technologies with analog in both its material and immaterial (virtual) form. The space of the
digital therefore ushers in a new soft industry which was until recently at the periphery of the processes
of film production and post-production. Mughal-e-Azam’s movement from the revered skills of its arti-
sans to the service of technological advancements of software and various processes of virtual enhance-
ments, echo Michael Hart and Antonio Negri’s idea of “immaterial labor.” Immaterial labor, for Hart and
Negri, provides the measure of shift in the production of goods in a global economy from the industrial
domain to that of the informational (Hart and Negri, 2000). Mughal-e-Azam in its remake embodies this
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Ramna Walia 149
transition. In an attempt to establish Mughal-e-Azam’s sacrosanct position within Bombay cinema, it is

this history of its pre-production that becomes the central determining force in re-establishing its aura.
As the film enters the wired currents of image circulation, it lends itself to the ontological anxiety
wherein images can be infinitely manipulable.29 Media theorist Lev Manovich reminds us that “the com-
puter does not distinguish between an image obtained through the photographic lens, an image created
in a paint program or an image synthesized in a 3-D graphics package, since they are made from the same
material-pixels” (Manovich, 2001, p. 300). Combining the sensuality of pre-cinematic artisanal proc-
esses of color 30 (seen as being closer to painting) and returning to the moment when Technicolor was
introduced in India, the remake of Mughal-e-Azam embodies the discourse of color in its very concep-
tion. Manovich reiterates the use of simulation and digital composition of images as a return to nine-
teenth century pre-cinematic practices of manual construction and goes on to announce the death of
cinema as an “indexical media” to becoming “a sub-genre of painting”31 (Manovich, 2001). But how do
the parameters of the graphic shift when post-production film remaking conflates the aura of the original
with the painterly and the graphic? In fact, is the distinction between black and white and color, past and
present, monochrome and Dolby sound purely oppositional? While a linear technological history of
cinema can be read as a movement from an “obsolete” technology to another, the aesthetic impulse
of colorization allows for a more mediated and complex channelization of technology.32 In the case of
Mughal-e-Azam for instance, the realm of the digital is used to authenticate the mythic efficacy of the
film as a classic.
The making of the original Mughal-e-Azam, the aesthetic practice of its filmmaker and the labor
deployed for its production are evoked as a phantom presence to give credence to the remake. The
remade version draws on both celluloid history and the digital future. While scholars like Lev Monovich
have also argued for the oppositional model between the digital and the analog, in the case of the remake,
the binary crumbles to open the film to its auratic history as a black and white classic and simultaneously
points to what Dipesh Salgia, Project Head of the colorization procedure for Sterling Investment
Corporation (which undertook colorization of Mughal-e-Azam) calls “the 21st century film-going
experience.”33 Reconfiguring digital dispersion through the discourse of the classic, the remake carries
material evidence of the transition from analog to digital in the process of colorization. What the post-
production remake uncovers, is the contours of a “new” aesthetics—a re-contextualization of the industry
and its revised role, mediated by the emergence of special effects and digital technology. The allegorical
conflict between the digital and the analog provides a new opportunity for forging an opposition between
technology and art (Rodowick, 2007, p. 5). Through a balancing act between a potential digital revolution
and its reinvention of the cinematic form on the one hand and the discourse about the apocalyptic
disappearance of the film object on the other; the remake of Mughal-e-Azam foregrounded the materiality
of the film’s existence. So while on the one hand, it reflected on the fusion of futuristic filmmaking
(technology versus production) and technology’s aim to create a “classic” aesthetic, on the other hand, it
complicated the retelling of a simple tale of nostalgia associated with a particular order of technology.
Salgia consciously marked a departure from the negative connotations attached to the term colorization
and technology. He refers to coloring as a “Renaissance of Mughal-e-Azam” as opposed to just
colorization (Salgia, 2005, p. ix). The term then serves to situate the entire process as an act of
commemorating the classic. Salgia emphasized the status of the film to remind us that “Almost every
historical/mythological topic has experienced multiple remakes in India. Even Salim–Anarkali had four
remakes. But after Mughal-e-Azam, there has been no remake on (this) theme” (Salgia, 2005, p. 128).
What is foregrounded, besides the obvious budget constraint is not the fact that there have been no
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remakes, but rather that there “can” be no remake for this magnum opus. Responding to a similar
question on the possibility of remaking Mughal-e-Azam, the great grandson of Prithviraj Kapoor, film
actor Ranbir Kapoor says, “We have better cameras, more money and a bigger audience but the heart of
Mughal-e-Azam, the soul of Mughal-e-Azam was made only once and it cannot be remade.”34 Debanu De
in his review of Mughal-e-Azam (Color) reiterated this myth, by claiming that “It’s [Mughal-e-Azam is]
an experience—not a formula to be repeated again and again” (De, 2004). Again by employing the
vocabulary of the classic and emphasizing the incomplete dream of K. Asif, colorization was justified.
Moreover, colorization emerged as a potential rebellion against the remaking of old films at the
level of production. Deepesh Salgia says, “Mughal-e-Azam has great love scenes but no sex, it has great
war scenes but no violence, it has beautiful dances, no item numbers. That’s why everybody likes
Mughal-e-Azam even today.”35 Salgia uses hyperbole and negation to create a binary opposition between
the values of the past and present wherein contemporary Bombay cinema is synopsized as an
amalgamation of sex, violence, and item numbers. The remake then fuses the twenty-first century
theatrical experience (technology) with the aesthetics of the classic. Through a narrativization of the
process of colorization Salgia made an attempt to break the traditional binary between art and
technology, re-affirming the status of the film’s original “value” and technology as a means of sustaining
its aesthetic value in the contemporary.
But while Mughal-e-Azam’s classicism and Asif’s vision for the film were employed to justify the
colorization procedure, why did B.R Chopra’s Naya Daur and Amrajeet’s Hum Dono Rangeen fail?
Perhaps the answer lies in the evocation of material evidence and the circuits through which films travel.
Upon its re-release in 2004, Mughal-e-Azam had traveled through several circuits of film festivals
including the 55th Annual Berlin Film Festival where it was honored under the retrospective and homage
category. In the year 2011, as the film celebrated its 50th anniversary, the 9th Pune Film Festival opened
with an ode that further traveled via various festival circuits in Leeds, Ireland, and Uganda, among oth-
ers. Mughal-e-Azam’s journey began a decade and half before it was released, and half a century after its
release in color, the film continues to circulate in popular culture, accentuating its mythic status, a myth
that the digital revolution was able to reiterate and add value to.
The Dispersed Economy of Mughal-e-Azam

The hallowed status of Mughal-e-Azam as a classic was built through a rhetoric of fandom, magazine
covers, posters, logos and film reels, personal reminisces, and folksy tales of unfulfilled dreams, and
family genealogies that acted as testimonials, foregrounding a desire for the new version of the film.
From the old black and white photographs of the premiere and tales from industry insiders about the long
queues of desperate viewers waiting to buy tickets outside Bombay’s Maratha Mandir to the yellowed
worn-off ticket that is till date kept as a souvenir by its distributor Madan Kothari, to the memory of the
film’s run at the box-office, Mughal-e-Azam’s legendary status was produced by such material evidence
of the past.
In excavating the past in these sites of ruin, I follow Vivian Sobjack’s cue to practice history through
“productive unreliability and partiality of lived and invested memories, murmurs, nostalgias, stories,
myths and dreams” (Sobjack, 2000, p. 300). Writing at the turn of the millennium, Sobjack argues that
the “raw” material of the past that was used earlier to narrate the progressive tale of history has now
entered the hyper-real economy of mass-mediated proliferation where material excavation of the past
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Ramna Walia 151
can be yielded only through “fragmants, traces and potsherds” of an earlier representation. Sobjack’s
position on film history as a shifting and an unstable site re-establishes knowledge of the production and
consumption of material objects in the post-production film remake as the prism through which the dis-
course of classics can be staged (Ibid.). It is through such evidence that the cultural life of a film and its
re-activation is narrated as a “coherent” form of nostalgia. Mughal-e-Azam (Color) built its discourse of
classicism by weaving together its fecund after-life in literature, art, photography, and cinema. Life
around the film became the material evidence that not only justified the changes, but the very conception
of a revised version. The use of old photographs, video footage of the premiere, trade figures, and inter-
views available in the bonus section of the DVD of the film then became the method through which the
history of Bombay cinema was narrated.
From the unveiling of the new film at Mumbai’s Eros Theatre to the description of the technique
behind its making, the narrativization of the journey of the film as constructed by the DVD extras of the
remake have established Mughal-e-Azam as “an encyclopaedia of its time” that carried within itself a clas-
sic cinematic experience. Assimilating documentary features, theatrical trailers, bonus song features, and
interviews, a conglomeration of industry veterans (actors, directors, musicians), technicians, and contem-
porary stars were brought together to construct the history of Bombay cinema. What is foregrounded in
these accounts is what Reeves in his account of black and white photographs and their morphing, calls an
emotively charged memory (Murray, 1999), that is built in order to precipitate the consumption of mythic
history and the after-lives of cult film classics. While these accounts strengthen the cultural credence of
the past, it is important to note that in the discourse of the classic, the past is constructed selectively. The
accounts for instance portray K. Asif as an “eccentric genius” with each of the crew members and family
members casting him as a deewana. Gross misappropriation of the funds and extravagances are under-
played by emphasizing the paradoxical traits of Asif’s grand vision and his simple lifestyle likening him
to a badshah (Emperor) and a fakir.36 It is Asif’s “genius of madness,” as the documentary commentary
states, that lends a credible note to the theatrical trailer of the color version dubbing Mughal-e-Azam as
“the first, the last and the never-before film.”37 The circulation of the fluid film object acquires a performa-
tive position in the reiteration of its own
legendary past that must, along with the
remade film object, be re-channelized in
its marketing.
The changed iconography in the pro-
motion of Mughal-e-Azam (Color) for
instance, accentuated the status of the
film as the star, a phenomenon wherein
actors, writing, music, direction, and their
reception crystallized into a mythic tale
of its own ossification. Departing from its
original promotional impetus (primarily
in the film posters) on the theme of unre-
quited love and justice, Mughal-e-Azam
in its contemporary marketing sold itself
as a “classic.” “The Greatest Indian Film Image 4. Publicity poster of Mughal-e-Azam (Colour, 2004)
Ever”38 was the byline, reflecting a clever harping on the aura of “The Biggest Indian film ever”.
marketing strategy of foregrounding the Source: Personal collection.
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popularity and posterity of the film. Classicism as a value emerged in the course of the film’s cultural
biography, and the status of heritage was bestowed on the film through a renewed cultural after-life
(Image 4).
The aura of Mughal-e-Azam in the last one decade has also entered various academic discourses
within Indian film scholarship. Sumita Chakravarty has analyzed the opening sequence of the film as a
constitutive force that evokes history through its geography in order to construct a national discourse.
Film scholars Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen have examined Mughal-e-Azam as a Muslim historical, a
genre that explores the aesthetic and iconographic imaginary of Islamicate culture within Bombay cin-
ema. They make a case for the presence of the Mughals in the genre of historicals arguing that the notion
of justice became central in such narratives as they mobilized “a popular imaginary of Akbar and con-
nected that with the secular values and pride of the nation” (Bhaskar and Allen, 2009, p. 43). While these
writings try to theorize the socio-historical and generic-cultural context of the film, the academic indexes
of Indian film history continue to resonate the hyperbolic templates employed over the years. In his
Encyclopedia of The Motion Picture in India, B.D. Garga points out that Asif pushed the popular legend
to an extreme by inserting “a happy ending” but contends that the “best of Mughal-e-Azam has never
been surpassed” (Garga, 1996, p. 176). The Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema condenses the film’s aura by
classifying it as a “classic megabudget spectacular and best known historical romance” in the history of
Indian Cinema (Rajadhyaksha and Willemen, 1998, p. 365).
Documentary filmmaker Nasreen Munni Kabir released her book, The Immortal Dialogues of
K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam, a written translation of the dialogs of the film from Persianized Urdu to
English. In her introduction to the book, Kabir cites Javed Akhtar’s lament against the deterioration of
spoken language and remarks that the dialog of Mughal-e-Azam should be included as part of academic
curriculum in schools and colleges (Kabir, 2007, p. xii). Embellished with over 29 photographs from
the colorized version of the film, Kabir’s book ascribes the literary character of the film to the intrica-
cies of its spoken language. In response to Anurag Kashyap’s declaration that the era of dialogues is
over, Kabir positions Mughal-e-Azam’s dialogues as refined and different from the “vulgar” language
prevalent in contemporary cinema. In the process she presents a notion of heritage and aesthetic value
(Ghosh, 2011).
Recently, actor Shah Rukh Khan produced a documentary feature on the film, bringing together
industry insiders along with the Asif Family (Munjal, 2011). Beginning with Asif’s vision of the film and
its success to its re-release in color, the film extends its classicism through veteran artist M.F. Husain’s
series of paintings based on the film. Husain was commissioned by K. Asif’s son Akbar Asif to
commemorate the film. The documentary looks at Mughal-e-Azam as a family inheritance and as a
document that keeps the “legacy of K.A Asif’s ‘jayadaat’ (inheritance) alive.” Produced by Red Chillies
Entertainment Ltd., the documentary acknowledges the “completion” of K. Asif’s “unfinished agenda”
of colorization and suggests how its artistic rendition is furthered in Husain’s paintings. This association
invokes the painterly detail of the film and marks K. Asif as an artist. Talking about Husain’s rendition
of the film on canvas, Asif’s daughter Shabana triumphantly declares that, “talent has created history
again.” These parallels between the genius of Asif and Husain expand the auratic field of the film,
pushing it into the realm of art.
Besides the numerous attempts made by the industry and K. Asif’s family, the virtual existence of
material on Mughal-e-Azam on video sharing websites like YouTube allows for a more fragmented dis-
semination of the film’s memory, constructing a public archive of its place within popular culture. In
our globalized economy, where images travel at a mind-numbing speed, the film object disperses across
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Ramna Walia 153
various forms of popular culture—from calendar art to video sharing public portals, from vintage
magazine covers to Broadway musicals, from DJ remixes to the ancillary industries of advertising
and fashion. The binary structure of the “original” and the new has given way to a fragmented
memory. Mughal-e-Azam (Color) mobilizes and retraces this dispersed filmic and extra-filmic life
of the film to build a testimonial that embeds the original as a running annotation in the reconfigured
new version.
At the premiere of Mughal-e-Azam (Color), actor Raza Murad compared the unique value of the film
to the famed Taj Mahal.39 The use of this architectural metaphor for the film as a monumental relic
appropriately captured the discourse of classicism used to construct the memory of the film. An invisible
heritage site was now made available to the multiplex audience. It is in this movement of the “cultural
relic” from the restricted and enclosed space of the “traditional archive” or from the medium of television
and the Internet back to the theaters that the remake reassembles the fragmented film object scattered
across multiple mobile and immobile spaces to narrate its own history. However what remains
unexamined in this process is whether this return is a sign of the cyclical nature of history or if is
it a more complicated network of historical tourism. While Naya Daur and Hum Dono failed to register
the grand success that they were and did not even recover production costs in the remake, Asif’s
Mughal-e-Azam successfully resurrected its grandeur, acquired a mythical status as a grand memorialist
of Bombay film culture, and staged “the classic” as a form of a mise-en-scene. All this, while exploring
how the process of colorization meets at the various intersecting points of new technology and assimilated
memory.
In a trend that continues to evoke debates, a recent report in Outlook reported that the process of
colorization is underway for the Guru Dutt films. Reacting violently to the news, G.S. Bhaskar called
this process, “Sacrilegious!” For him, “tampering with his (Guru Dutt’s) images is like tampering with
the world that god created. It is akin to eco-balance.” (Srinivasaraju, 2010).
Notes
1. Quoted in a press conference in 2011. See ScreenIndia (2011).
2. These were some of the phrases used in the Mughal-e-Azam (Color, 2004) official theatrical trailer on the
DVD.
3. See Mughal-e-Azam (Color, 2004); DVD Cover Synopsis, Shemaroo, January 2007.
4. The phrase was used in the Mughal-e-Azam (2004), DVD Extras, ‘Stars Speak’, a documentary feature directed
by Jayesh Sheth.
5. Film distributor of Mughal-e-Azam (1960), Madan Kothari narrates instances of people getting up from their
seats in cinema theatres and clapping the moment Anarkali’s rebellious song ‘Pyar Kiya to Darna Kya’ played
on screen. See Mughal-e-Azam (Color, 2004), DVD Extras.
6. Film remakes have been an important part of Bombay’s film history. However, remake as a practice was always
relegated as a lowly form defined purely through its parent “mirror image”—Hollywood, or regional cinema. In
the last decade, remakes of old blockbusters and classics have resurrected the practice. As the plagiarism dis-
course continues, the Bombay film remake disturbs and expands the term by setting this trend as an indigenous
practice.
7. Another immediate point of reference for remaking films has been Hollywood’s customary practice of
remakes with films like King Kong (Cooper and Schoedsack, 1933; Guillermin, 1976; Jackson, 2005), Invasion
of the Body Snatchers (Kaufman, 1978; Siegel, 1956), The Fly (Cronenberg, 1986; Neumann, 1958), Godzilla
(Emmerich, 1998; Honda, 1954) among others. Here, the “remake” emerged as a form most analogous to
genres like horror and science fiction.
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8. In the case of Mughal-e-Azam, the discourse of classicism upholds the film’s place in an imagined, “glorious”
past while digitally upgrading its material form. The post-production remake mobilizes this complex equation
between technology and memory to re-circulate the object in the new market economy.
9. While popular discourse presents the digital merely as a replacement of the classical analog print, media
theorists like Paolo Cherchi Usai have argued that the materiality of an object is directly related to its
indexicality (Usai, 2001).
10. Mughal-e-Azam’s notorious tales of production and legendary run at the box office have been a part of cine-lore
for decades. O.P. Ralhan’s documentary, Two Reeler on Production and Premiere of Mughal-e-Azam (1971),
was the first to provide material evidence of the making and release of the film. More recently, Shakil Warsi’s
Mughal-e-Azam: An Epic of Eternal Love (2009) provides a compilation of Mughal-e-Azam’s life on celluloid
and beyond. This section relies primarily on these sources along with journalistic accounts, articles, anecdotes,
interviews, reviews, and DVD commentaries. It is in the narration of its “story” that Mughal-e-Azam’s cultic
power is evoked.
11. Abu’l Fath Jalal ud-din Muhammad Akbar (1542–1605), also known as Akbar-e-Azam was the third
Mughal Emperor after Zaheeruddin Mohommad Babur and Nasir ud-din Muhammad Humayun to rule
over most of the Indian Subcontinent.
12. The Filminsi (1960) review cited Salim’s first marriage at the age of fifteen. The Prince was married a number
of times after that. As far as Anarkali’s historical presence is concerned, it has not been established till date.
Anarkali Bazaar and a tomb on the premises of the Punjab Civil Secretariat in Lahore, Pakistan are the two
contested sites associated with her identity.
13. In an interview with CNN-IBN, Shammi Kapoor narrates the conviction with which his father Prithviraj
Kapoor performed the role of Akbar. He would enter the make-up room saying, “Prithviraj Kapoor ab jaa rahaa
hai.” When ready, he would come out saying, “Akbar ab aa rahaa hai!” (Prithviraj is now departing and Akbar
is now arriving!) Also, see http://www.screenindia.com/story.php?id=656505&pg=-1
14. The romantic relationship between Prithiviraj Kapoor’s son, the much married actor and director Raj Kapoor
and his leading lady of the time, Nargis, was widely reported in the media and later in other biographical
accounts. It is believed that Nargis’s association with Raj Kapoor professionally as well as personally led
to her exit, as Kapoor was wary of her pairing with his rival star, the much single Dilip Kumar. See CNN
IBN special feature on ‘Bollywood Blockbusters-n Mughal-e-Azam’ (http://ibnlive.in.com/shows/Bollywood-
Blockbusters/253023.html).
15. Mahesh Bhatt (1993) drew attention to the memorable love scene “shot in extreme close-ups of just faces
in which Dilip Kumar tickles the impassioned face of Madhubala with a white feather. This was perhaps
the most sensitively portrayed erotic scene on the Indian screen” (Rajadhyaksha and Willeman, 1998,
p. 365).
16. This anecdote is related in Mughal-e-Azam (Color, 2004) DVD Extras, The Making of Mughal-e-Azam.
17. Bade Gulam Ali demanded a preview of the scene from K. Asif, who arranged for a special edit for the maestro.
Shakil Warsi, in his account of the negotiation, writes, “after watching Madhubala and Dilip Kumar enact the
love play, a pleased ustad responded, ‘Anarkali kafi khoobsurat hai, Shahzada bhi khoobsurat hai’ (Anarkali is
quite beautiful, so is the Prince)” and decided to record the song (Warsi, 2009, p. 127).
18. The exhibition was organized on August 12, 1960. See Filmfare, August 26, 1960b. Also, O.P Rahlan’s Two
Reeler on Production and Premiere of Mughal-e-Azam (1972) captures the visit to the set of Sheesh Mahal as
a tourist site. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd25VcCtE1Q
19. For this scene, Asif overlayed the floor of the set with glass, “so that the ‘pearls’ and ‘precious stones’ falling
on it may be registered.” See Filmfare, September 11, 1959.
20. This has been quoted in “Media Comments,” the press release of Mughal-e-Azam (Color, 2004). See Salgia
(2005, p. 129).
21. Quoted in Parthasarthy (2004).
BioScope, 4, 2 (2013): 137–158

Ramna Walia 155
22. The footage of the mission in color is available on Discovery Channel’s “When we left earth: NASA Missions.”
See http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/classic-nasa-film-apollo-11-1.html
23. As detailed in Mughal-e-Azam (Color, 2004), DVD Extras, “How it happened: The Technology Behind the
Making of a Dream.”
24. The software was designed to accept only those colors that have similar gray tones as the original shot.
In one shot, for instance, Salim holds a rose in his hand. “The art director initially suggested a red color, but the
software did not accept it. The historians then explained that the rose could not have been red, because in those
days, roses were pink and red roses are a hybrid variety” (Salgia, 2005, p. 131).
25. Turner, a studio giant had proposed colorization of films like Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941), Michael
Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942), John Ford’s How Green was my Valley (1941), and Frank Capra’s Its a wonderful
life (1946). Studio libraries are a popular phenomenon in Hollywood where studios like Warner Bros. make a
financial gain of over $500 million per year. For more on studio libraries, see Hoyt (2010).
26. In the 1980s, amidst uproar regarding colorization by Ted Turner, The Writers Guild of America, West, called
the process “cultural vandalism,” as quoted in Wenli Wang (2004, p. 7).
27. Gary Burns in his article, ‘Colorization’, refers to the exorbitant costs of setting up a formal system for
recording any process of Colourization of old films and cites how “the main legacy of colorization is
the National Film Registry, established by Congress in 1988 in response to the colorization controversy.
The Registry is a list of films, selected by experts and expanded annually, that, if colorized, will have to
be labeled with a disclaimer” (Burns, 1995). See, http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/C/htmlC/colorization/
colorization.htm
28. As per a recent Nasscom report, “the animation industry in India was around US$460 million in 2008 and is
set to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 27 percent to reach US$1.16 billion by 2012. The market has
been defined as animation entertainment (US$120 million in 2008), animation education (US$53 million) and
custom content development (US$187 million) and multimedia/Web design (US$ 100 million).” See Swati
Prasad (2009).
29. D.N. Rodowick cites Philip Rosen to reflect on the spatial and temporal instability of film, where the comput-
ability of digital images leads to infinite possibilities to be “reworked, reappropriated, and recontextualized”
(Rodowick, 2007, p. 15).
30. “By the early 1920s, 80% of films were colored in one way or another. There were a few efforts to record the
actual colors in a scene, but most often color was added after filming. Areas of the frame might be painted over
by stenciling or by freehand. More commonly, the shots were dipped into dyes, yielding images that were tinted
(washing over the image and coloring the areas of white, as in the frames below) or toned (coloring the darkest
areas and leaving the white areas white)” (Bordwell, 2009).
31. Tom Gunning makes a similar argument when he states that the “digital aspires to the condition of painting, in
which color, shape, texture, all the components of an image are completely up to the painter.” (Gunning, 1995,
p. 41) In the case of a remake, the debates around the digital get complicated by a direct intervention and interaction
with the analog. For Gunning’s article, see http://www.nordicom.gu.se/common/publ_pdf/157_039-050.pdf
32. In his influential thesis, The Virtual Life of Film (2007), Rodowick looks at the simple oppositional model
between analog and digital as facile as it presumes the existence of a stable film history. He asserts that each
print of film is in itself capable of differentiating from the other and thus is in a continual state of innovation
and change.
33. Taken from the Mughal-e-Azam (Color, 2004) DVD Extras.
34. Taken from the Mughal-e-Azam (Color, 2004) DVD Extras, Special Feature Documentary.
35. Quoted from the Mughal-e-Azam (Color, 2004) DVD Extras.
36. Taken from the Mughal-e-Azam (Color, 2004) DVD Extras, Commentary on the making of the film.
37. See the official theatrical trailer of Mughal-e-Azam (Color, 2004), DVD Extras.
38. Taken from the Trailer of Mughal-e-Azam (Color, 2004) in the DVD Extras.
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39. Raza Murad at the premiere of Mughal-e-Azam (Color), 2004 said, “If wealth alone could suffice the making
of Taj Mahal or Mughal-e-Azam, then who knows how many Taj Mahals and Mughal-e-Azams would have
been made by now, but neither has anybody been able to make another Taj Mahal, nor has anyone come even
close to making a Mughal-e-Azam...It didn’t happen. The reason being, besides money, one must have the
madness and the obsession...!”
See, Mughal-e-Azam, DVD Extras, Premiere, 2005.
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Techno-Nostalgia Colorization of K.asif

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BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies

Techno-Nostalgia: Colorization of K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam

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Techno-Nostalgia: Colorization BioScope

Mughal-e-Azam is the mother of all films. “Ma ka remake nahi hota”

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“Never Before-Perhaps Never Again!”: The Aura of Mughal-e-Azam

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“collected a seraglio of eighteen wives,” and a

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“The Renaissance of Mughal-e-Azam”: Colorizing an Unfulfilled Dream

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transition. In an attempt to establish Mughal-e-Azam’s sacrosanct position within Bombay cinema, it is

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The Dispersed Economy of Mughal-e-Azam

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