Mother Supreme
With the recent restoration and re-release of Umrao Jaan (1981), Himanshi Aggarwal revisits the film from a queer lens, as Rekha’s titular character serves as an allegory for anyone forced to perform respectability in a world that denies them legitimacy.
Over 40 years since its first release, the decision to restore and re-release Muzaffar Ali’s 1981 Umrao Jaan during Pride Month feels nothing short of poetic. Revered for its grand visuals, haunting ghazals, and Rekha’s unforgettable performance, the film returns to the screen not just as a cinematic classic, but as a cultural touchstone. It is particularly symbolic for queer audiences who have long idolized Rekha not just as an actress, but as the “Mother of Bollywood Queer Icons.” In a film where things are hushed and coded through glance, rhythm, and restraint, Umrao Jaan speaks directly to those who’ve always had to read between the lines.
Inspired by Mirza Hadi Ruswa’s 1899 novel Umrao Jaan Ada, Ali’s Umrao Jaan follows the story of Amiran (Rekha), a young girl abducted from her home and sold to a kotha (brothel) in Lucknow. Here, she is reborn as Umrao and trained in the arts of poetry, music, and classical dance. Her transformation into a celebrated courtesan is both an ascent and a tragedy; her beauty and grace become her currency, yet love and freedom remain out of reach.
Umrao Jaan is particularly symbolic for queer audiences who have long idolized Rekha as the “Mother of Bollywood Queer Icons.” In a film where things are hushed and coded through glance, rhythm, and restraint, Umrao Jaan speaks directly to those who’ve always had to read between the lines.
Her doomed romance with Nawab Sultan becomes the emotional core of the film, but it is the solitude of Umrao’s journey—and not the love story—that lingers long after the film ends. Ali’s direction gives the film a slow, graceful pace, while Khayyam’s music and Shahryar’s poetry become extensions of Umrao’s soul. The film’s ghazals serve as an internal monologue, filled with longing and unspeakable pain.
The world of Umrao Jaan is a world of surfaces and subtext, illusion, and performance, one where everything must be beautiful—even sorrow.
At the heart of Umrao Jaan is Rekha, delivering what is arguably the defining performance of her career. She doesn’t just act as Umrao; she becomes her. With every flick of the wrist, every turn of the head, every carefully measured glance, Rekha builds a character who is always performing, always composed, yet never at peace. Her Umrao doesn’t cry out; she dissolves slowly, through her poetry, her silences, and the quiet stillness that settles in her eyes. In Rekha’s hands, Umrao is not simply a courtesan betrayed by love; she is a woman navigating a world where identity must be constructed, curated, and always at guard.
It is in this space between performance and truth that she is found by queer audiences. In the absence of well-represented queer characters in Indian cinema, LGBTQIA+ viewers have long clung to codedness as a form of representation. Courtesans in cinema have often stood as complex figures, disrupting societal norms around love, power, and gender. Their lives are shaped by performance, beauty, and a certain distance from social norms, and Umrao Jaan is no exception. Her very existence questions the traditional structures of family, respectability, and domestic femininity. For many queer viewers, characters like Umrao offer a rare reflection of lives lived through artifice and resilience. Her carefully performed femininity, layered with grace and sorrow, echoes the experience of those who have had to express identity, desire, or emotion through subtlety and self-protection. In this way, the character becomes emotionally legible to viewers who have long read between the lines to find fragments of themselves on screen.
Rekha’s broader filmography only deepens this connection. In Khoobsurat (1980), she played Manju, a lively, pants-wearing, rule-breaking outsider who openly challenged patriarchal order. With her short hair and carefree swagger, Manju offered a rare, subtly androgynous presence in mainstream Bollywood. In the song “Saare Niyam Todd Do” (Break all the Rules), a young Rekha can be seen dancing dressed in masculine clothing and hair, dripped with queer subtexts. Again, in Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996), Rekha returned to the courtesan figure, but this time as a sensual, commanding mentor, exuding power through every gesture. The Mira Nair film had sapphic symbolism, and has furthered Rekha’s image as a queer icon. These contrasting roles, playful and butch-coded on one end, sultry and femme-fatale on the other, showcase her fluidity across gendered expressions, and it’s this very fluidity that queer audiences hold dear.
For gay men, she is a goddess of spectacle, dripping in gold, tragedy, and camp. And for the sapphic audiences, her allure lies not only in her sensuality but in her masculine strength. Her butch-coded, oversized-blazer-wearing photoshoots in the 80s and 90s remain staples in queer Tumblr and Pinterest archives.
Rekha’s real-life persona has only added to her legend. She has never conformed to Bollywood’s expectations of womanhood; she has been fiercely private, often elusive, and largely uninterested in explaining herself. Her relationship with her long-time companion and manager, Farzana, has been the subject of decades-long speculation. At the same time, her much-publicized connection with Amitabh Bachchan has frequently been cast, by some, as a smokescreen, a decoy. These speculations are less about gossip and more about how queer people have historically learned to read celebrities: decoding silences, questioning performance, and holding space for what is never said.
Rekha has never confirmed or denied any of the speculations. In a legendary moment on 100th episode of Rendezvous with Simi Garewal (2012), when asked if she would marry a woman, Rekha simply replied, “Why not?” It was a moment that needed no follow-up, one that queer viewers frquently return to, holding on to its refusal to explain or apologize. The lack of positive representation leaves queer audiences hanging on to any subtexts that they find.
Today, elements of Umrao Jaan live on not just in film history, but in queer spaces, particularly in drag. Sushant Divgikr, an Indian drag artist also known as Rani Kohinoor, recalls growing up idolizing Rekha, and calls her ‘mother supreme.’ Umrao Jaan’s songs, like “In Aankhon Ki Masti”, “Dil Cheez Kya Hai”, and “Justuju Jiski Thi”, are often performed by drag performers, who channel Rekha’s elegance and pain as part of a wider ritual of self-fashioning and resistance. The flowing costumes, the intricate adas, and the deliberate movements, are not just imitations, but acts of homage. In drag, Umrao lives on not as a tragic courtesan, but as a survivor, a storyteller, a queen.
Umrao Jaan is not simply a story of love and loss; it is a story of how beauty, grace, and coded resistance become tools for survival. It speaks to everyone who has ever had to perform a version of themselves to be safe, seen, or belong. Rewatching Umrao Jaan through a queer lens doesn’t distort the film, it expands it. The character becomes more than a tragic heroine; she becomes a cypher.
Umrao’s life is an allegory for anyone forced to perform respectability in a world that denies them legitimacy. She is beautiful, but she is also bitter. She is seen, but never truly known. She is desired, but rarely loved on her terms. And through Rekha she signals a queerness long before before the word queer was allowed to exist in Indian cinema.
***
Himanshi Aggarwal is a freelance journalist currently pursuing her Master’s in Journalism at AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia. Her interests lie in stories related to politics, human rights, and social issues, though she also enjoys exploring social media, pop culture and art. She also loves music, cats, and flowers. You can find her on Instagram: @byemanshi.
