# Talk:Pakeezah

The Devanagri spelling of the movie's name is incorrect.
Specifically, it has an extra dot under the "k" sound. This dot is not needed, and makes it incorrect.
Explanation:
The original Devanagari alphabet does not have certain sounds, such as "f" or "z" or "q" (as in "Quran"). However, due to long contact with Persian/Arabic and due to the development of Urdu, certain foreign sounds were added to the script. These additions were done by taking a letter representing a sound close to the one to be added, and then modifying it by the addition of a dot below it.
For example:
Original letter ज (the "j" sound) - modified to ज़ (the "z" sound), by adding a dot.
Original letter फ (the "ph" sound) - modified to फ़ (the "f" sound), by adding a dot.
Original letter क (the "k" sound) - modified to क़ (the "q" of Arabic), by adding a dot.
Original letter ग (the "g" sound) - modified to ग़ (the "gh" of Arabic), by adding a dot.
Original letter ख (the "kh" sound) - modified to ख़ (aspirated "kh" of Arabic), by adding a dot.

In this case, the Devanagari version of "Pakeezah" has been written as पाक़ीज़ा (with dots under both "k" and "j". The dot under the "j" sound is correct, since it converts the "j" to a "z". However, the dot under the "k" would convert it to the aspirated "k", which is typically transliterated in English as "q", as in my previous example of "Quran". So the Devanagari spelling there would be read as "Paqeezah", which is incorrect. The correct word is "Pakeeza", as written in the Urdu version which follows: پاکیزہ
The correct Devanagari spelling would be: पाकीज़ा  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.176.200.23 (talk) 09:56, 18 December 2009 (UTC) 
यह ज़रूर किसी हिन्दू का काम है. क्यों की "पाकीज़ा" उर्दू लफ्ज़ है, जिस ने भी यह लिखा, ज़बरदस्ती "क" की जगह "क़" लिख दिया यह सोच कर की उर्दू है. कमबख्तों, स्कूल में कुछ पढ़ा लिखा भी या सोते रहे?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.176.200.23 (talk) 10:09, 18 December 2009 (UTC) 
It is indeed incorrect. I can read Devanagari as well as Arabic, and when I read the Devanagari I immediately noticed the qaf. I looked at the Arabic and saw kaf and not qaf. Additionally, when I have heard paakeezaa said by native Urdu speakers, I do not hear qaf but kaf.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.195.127.15 (talk) 19:15, 16 October 2010 (UTC) 

Filmfare --Nicholas Michael Halim (talk) 06:25, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
The Illustrated Weekly of India --—Nicholas Michael Halim (talk) 11:22, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

This film is 147 minutes. [1]. Cbfc is a 148 minute. The British Film Classification certificate is 153 minutes. Australia film Classification 153 minutes [2]
[3]. Cinzia007 (talk) 10:01, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

The movie's runtime is 147 minutes, not 175 minutes. This is a fact and should be fixed. Normally, runtimes don't come with sources on Wikipedia because it is self-evident within the film itself, but since someone who I'm assuming is the page manager is refusing to let me change it without adding a source, then I guess I have to play along and add a source for that.
In any case, regarding IMDB: per the article on citing IMDB, it is acceptable to do so when the citation confirms a self-evident fact within the film, because the film is considered its own source. This includes the film's runtime. So, IMDB should qualify as a valid source for the film's runtime. And yet, my edits including IMDB as a source for the runtime are being removed. Why is that?
Since I don't want an edit war, I'm taking the issue here so as to solve a problem with this article. To reiterate: the runtime is 147 minutes, which is an easily provable and very important fact about the film, but the article incorrectly states it's 175 minutes. This is misinformation, and it must be changed somehow, and if we need a citation, then I don't see why IMDB can't qualify for that.
AnyGuy (talk) 16:51, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

@Nicholas Michael Halim There seem to be harv errors with refs 8, 12, 18, 28. Could you fix them? Thanks — DaxServer (t · m · c) 16:55, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

@清风与明月: This is a GA i.e. it has been vetted for sources and article content including the language used therein. You claimed that "After checking the references cited in three places, the original article did not mention prostitution at all. The tawaif, courtesan and dancer are mentioned, and prostitution is not written about. The original texts of the three cited sources were compared." This is clearly false, as we see:

Either vamps oozing sexuality or prostitutes with a heart of gold, their characters were doomed to stay unmarried, and invariably achieved redemption only through death.— https://www.thehindu.com/society/history-and-culture/tawaifs-of-awadh-the-first-women-of-hindi-cinema/article61578284.ece
The source clearly uses the term here (and elsewhere) and is talking about what the characters were portrayed as, even mentioning the hooker with a heart of gold trope which underlies such films including this one which is sampled later on in the article.

Mother: Are you a prostitute by birth?Daughter: No, circumstances have made me one.— https://web.archive.org/web/20050901094549/http://www.screenindia.com:80/20020308/fspecial.html
While discussing the another film (Umrao Jaan) as a comparative to this film.

Shahabuddin's father espouses a view that stigmatises the courtesan as the prostitute who cannot be liberated, echoing the views of the conservative Muslim middle classes of Lucknow.— https://liverpool.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.3828/liverpool/9781906733681.001.0001/upso-9781906733681-chapter-007
Your assertion hence cannot be sustained. You unilateraly overhauled the meaning of an important section of the article which had gone through a GA-review. You have already been warned against these disruptions in multiple articles, Wikipedia is WP:NOTCENSORED and your editing is tending towards WP:IDONOTLIKEIT with specious reasoning.
If there are sources which critique the portrayal of tawaifs/courtesans as prositutes add them to the article (The Hindu discusses exactly this) but please do not go around nitpicking words to replace. Gotitbro (talk) 03:53, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't want to start an argument, but I think you are too prejudiced. You subconsciously think that they are prostitutes and must be engaged in prostitution. So even if the reference material states this , you still firmly believe that it is a prostitution film.
Regarding the saying that this movie is a prostitution movie and belongs to Muslim culture. The reference cited here is "'Tawaifs' of Awadh: The first women of Hindi cinema". The reference does not say that this movie and tawaifs are prostitutes. The reference clearly says that “tawaifs are skilled performers, not prostitutes”. This is also an article on the Hindu website.
For the second reference, "Courtesan and Cinema", the title also uses "courtesan", not "prostitute". So it is not appropriate to use the article's description of umrao jaan as a prostitute to determine that this article identifies them as prostitutes. Because other articles translate umrao jaan as courtesan or dancer. Even in the 1981 Umrao Jaan movie, the director posted something about the movie on Instagram, saying that umrao jaan was an artiste.
The narratives of Pakeezah and Umrao Jaan both play out the internalised guilt of the Muslim diaspora quite explicitly. Pakeezah initially introduces a woman who, because she is a tawaif, is rejected as an unfit bride by her lover’s family. She subsequently dies after giving birth to a daughter who later also becomes a tawaif and falls in love with a man who is her father’s brother’s son. This patriliny is unknown to the lovers. The daughter, in turn, is spurned by her lover’s family. This man, however, rejects his family in favour of the tawaif whom he wishes to marry. In an effort at rehabilitating the tawaif and giving her a new identity, he gives her a new name - Pakeezah - meaning “pure woman”. The name resonates with the associations of another name - Pakistan - which literally means the homeland of the pure. Despite her love for the man, Pakeezah refuses to consent to the marriage, because she is ashamed of being a tawaif and is unwilling to ruin the man’s good name. Pakeezah consents to the marriage only when, in a highly melodramatic final sequence, she is revealed to be the daughter of the very family that had rejected both her and her mother as unfit brides. Thus it is only when Pakeezah is reunited with, and accepted by, her father that she can honourably marry her lover/cousin. Since in Muslim kinship groups, marriage between paternal first cousins is considered the ideal match, this marriage reconciles Pakeezah to both her natal family and her family through marriage. What is more, order is restored through a rehabilitation not just of Pakeezah, but, belatedly, of her wronged mother as well. The fact that the roles of both mother and daughter are played by the same actress - Meena Kumari - is significant because this dual role establishes a continuity between the suffering of mother and daughter. In the film’s last scene, Pakeezah is bid farewell by her father and received into her husband’s family. This movement - daughter to bride - is unexceptional for a tawaif, who is, by definition, outside the institution of marriage and the arena of respectability.
The passage does not say that the reason for the rejection of marriage is prostitution. In the past, status and class differences could also lead to rejection of marriage. For example, women in lower-ranking occupations such as maids could also be rejected, but is the reason for the rejection definitely because of prostitution? The same is true for tawaif.
The third article citing prostitution. This article also does not mention the prostitution movie. Kamal Amrohi: Pakeezah
It certainly wasn't in the post-war decades, which produced a whole series of film-makers, stars, musicians and playback singers worthy of anyone's attention. Among these directors was the Muslim Kamal Amrohi, whose Pakeezah qualifies as one of the most extraordinary musical melodramas ever made - "poetry, fantasy and nostalgia rolled into one on an epic scale", as one Indian critic has said. Amrohi was a writer and poet in Urdu and Hindi as well as a director, but only made four films. Pakeezah was his third and had been planned years before it could be made as a starring vehicle for Amrohi himself and his third wife, Meena Kumari (pictured), the famous Hindi tragedienne. ... Set in Muslim Lucknow at the turn of the century, its central character is a courtesan and dancer who dreams of leaving her life behind but gets rejected by her man's family as unmarriageable and dies giving birth in a graveyard. Her daughter (also played by Kumari) grows up in her mother's profession, desired by men for everything but a respectable marriage, and is even prevented from seeing her father. She then falls for a mysterious stranger who turns out to be her father's nephew. When the marriage is forbidden, she is forced to dance at her lover's arranged wedding. There, her father at last recognises her, claims her as his child, and she's able to marry. The feel-good ending doesn't quite undermine what has gone before - which is a wonderful, if sometimes unwitting, lesson in the hypocrisy of the time towards women.
My changes are all based on references. If they are not clear, I will not deliberately change them. None of the three references say that this is a prostitution movie, right? In addition, regarding the third reference, "Like other prostitution movies, sex is not directly portrayed", is this true? For real prostitution movies, such as Gangubai and other real movies, prostitution and pimping such as street solicitation are shot very straightforwardly. So according to the third reference, Indian courtesan movies are more appropriate. Indeed, sex is not directly portrayed in many Indian courtesans. But if you say Indian prostitution movies, they are really very straightforward about sex.
Look at the reference you sent, "Six: Erotic Spectacle: Pakeezah (The Pure of Heart, 1972, Dir. Kamal Amrohi)". It didn't mention prostitution films, it said courtesan films. Indian prostitution films must have prostitution, but courtesan films may not necessarily have prostitution. Some courtesan films do have prostitution, and it is directly mentioned in the film. As for the degree of sexual depiction, Pakeezah is obviously less sexually explicit than many prostitution films. The reference you gave also mentioned the degree of sexual depiction in "courtesan films", not the degree of sexual depiction in "prostitution films".
This is the content of the first reference you mentioned. The first reference we mentioned is the same one. The article clearly states that they are performers, and the original words mentioned when prostitution are “Sensing the decline of their kothas and dreading a push into prostitution, the multi-talented tawaifs began migrating to other professions”.
Without a precise grasp, I will not check the references to make revisions. Just like Gangubai and many other clear prostitution films, even if you want to say it is not a prostitution film, you can't do it at all. Look at the four references we have talked about now, the one that determined and confirmed that Pakeezah is a prostitution film and was refused marriage because she was a sex worker. There is no definite answer, right? And they all say it is a courtesan film, even the role of a dancer. 清风与明月 (talk) 05:23, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
The Hindu does delve into this, between tawaifs and prostitution, and notes that the depiction tended in Hindi cinema tended to give way to the latter. The issue here being the portrayal of tawaifs in films not what the profession actually might have actually entailed. I had not seen The Guardian reference and I agree it does not mention prostitution but the rest of the references clearly do, including The Hindu, Screen (do not solely focus on the title) and Ahmed.
We go by what sources say and they have indeed analyzed this film in the context of prostitution in India or perceptions there of (Ahmed) besides the issues of tawaifs, we should not WP:SYNTHESIZE otherwise through our own WP:ORIGINAL RESEARCH and differentiation of what does and doesn't fall into it. Gotitbro (talk) 10:05, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
I also mentioned the portrayal of tawaifs in movies. The article meant that some tawaif movies portrayed tawaifs better. There are many such movies, some of which involve prostitution and some do not, which in itself cannot be classified as prostitution movies. For example, the movie Mandi involves prostitution, which was also mentioned in the article. But the article did not mention that Pakeezah is a prostitution movie. The article said that this profession is also portrayed in movies and TV.
I didn't just look at the title, I read the content of the article. You see, the content I excerpted for you is all from the article. I didn't target this movie based on my personal thinking. I just think that the four references did not clearly say that this is a prostitution movie, and there is no evidence that the characters are engaged in prostitution. It seems a bit biased that Wiki must label it as a prostitution movie. Because there are many courtesan and tawaif movies, but this Pakeezah is separately classified as a prostitution movie. In this case, should the various series of umrao jaan movies and other similar courtesan and tawaif movies also be marked as prostitution movies? If so, it is recommended not to classify only Pakeezah here.
Or we can just remove the classification of Pakeezah as a prostitution movie, and let passers-by understand for themselves whether there is prostitution involved in each of these courtesan and tawaif movies. I think this is more balanced. Moreover, the text in the reference material also says that Pakeezah belongs to courtesan movies and dancer roles. So let's combine the two views, for example, correct the content to tell about "hooker with a heart of gold". In "Indian courtesan movies and some movies related to prostitution, sex is not shown too directly." "Society rejects the female characters in the play to engage in occupations."
There may be different opinions on this in some articles and professional film reviews. Why not take a more middle-of-the-road overview, whether the movie is about prostitution, what their identities are, and use a neutral description to let readers pass by and understand it according to their own ideas. I thought about it, and there are different opinions, and the middle description seems to be more pertinent. 清风与明月 (talk) 14:08, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
Please do not divide your replies in multiple comments it makes the formatting and readability difficult. Coming to your latest edits: please do not WP:EDITWAR (per WP:BRD) and reach WP:CONSENSUS first. This article passed a GA-review and you cannot unilaterally change its basic tenets.
We go by sources, not what we feel (WP:SYNTH) should be inserted.
You have been reverted by multiple editors already. Gain consensus or start an WP:RfC but do not unilaterally edit war. And please read the guidelines. Gotitbro (talk) 10:08, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
Nonetheless, I have incorporated some of the changes in your edits without censoring other aspects (including category removal). Gotitbro (talk) 10:29, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
Thank you 清风与明月 (talk) 14:25, 6 June 2024 (UTC)