Why is Chowdhury Shaheb always the villain?

Illustration: TBS

Jibon's life is perpetually blue and the skies over his younger brother Akash are always grey. Jibon being the older and sensible one toils his life away at the factory floor, trying to make ends meet for a sick mother and a carefree younger brother at home. Akash, on the other hand, is drowning in the misery of having to let go of Sadia – the love of his life – because she is Chowdhury Shaheb's only daughter. 

"If our love is true, no one can part us, not even your father, Sadia," says Akash to Sadia right after Chowdhury Shaheb dismisses him for his below-the-poverty-line status, while also crying for no apparent reason. 

If this sounds like the baseline of nine out of every 10 Bangla movies to you, you have seen enough of them to know what we are talking about. Instead of trying to take some load off his older brother's shoulders, Akash plots a scheme of stealing Sadia from her father. But Chowdhury Shaheb is hellbent on proving how Akash is the worst match for the lovely Sadia.

Some directors do try out Khan and Ahmed as some other surnames of Bangladeshi royalty, but Chowdhury Shaheb always remains the number one prickly classist. But in our course of 'antagonising' Chowdhury Shaheb so much, did we ever question why the Chowdhury title was singled out as the villain in most of the movies? 

The answer may lie in the Chowdhury title's history and meaning. Though the exact history of the title may vary depending on which historian you ask, most agree the title was popularised by the Mughals in the centuries passed. Origin stories tend to warp a lot with time. 

That is also the case with how we apply the Chowdhury title in our daily lives. But the one constant is that the title is, invariably, tied to status and wealth even to this day, though its intended purpose is not known to most.

So I did some digging. As far as the origin of the Chowdhury title goes, it can be traced back to the Sanskrit term 'catur-dhara'. Breaking it down, 'catur', or 'chatur', means four and 'dhara' means 'holder' or 'possessor', literally meaning 'holder of four'. In other words, the title used to be given to the head of a community or a caste who had to look after "all four sides" of an estate. However, I wanted to know more.

It led me to Towheed Feroze, the Media and Information Advisor at the Delegation of the European Union in Bangladesh, but more importantly, a veteran movie buff. 

"In the Bangla films from the 70s and 80s, even in the 90s, a certain formula was followed – there is division between the rich and the poor. Most of these films were aimed at the masses. So, the common approach was to showcase the lower-middle class as the virtuous class, while the upper class were often shown as arrogant and very supercilious for their very pronounced sense of hubris," Feroze said. A pattern was forming.
 
I remember from my childhood days crowds of working class men in my hometown mindlessly bawling at the TV set at village tea stalls. This was especially the case when Chowdhury Shaheb dissed Akash.

Looking for more answers, intrigued as ever as I was, I reached out to Bangla Academy Literary Award and Ekushey Padak awarded writer/historian Muntassir Mamoon. 

"The name began to be used that way since the Mughal reign," he said. Thus I knew my research was on the right track. "The Chowdhury title was given to a class of people who collected rents on behalf of the Mughal emperors at designated provinces and estates. They quickly started to become Zamindars in their vicinity. The title became associated with high-society eventually," he added.

"You can buy fancy things with your money but you can never buy love, Chowdhury Shaheb! Mind it!" said Akash as he stormed out of Chowdhury Shaheb's cardboard palace. The crowd empathised with Akash. Oh! Chowdhury Shaheb would also often offer money to the Akash in exchange for leaving his daughter be. Understandably, Akash replied, "You can't buy love with money!" Could he not though?

"In 80% of the movies, the rich were vilified and demonised. As part of this formula the term 'Chowdhury Shaheb' was actually used to identify an upper-class section of society which was detached from the rest of society and looked down upon the poor," said Feroze. 

I was starting to better understand why the Chowdhury surname has often been used as a pejorative term. 

"You must have heard of the famous line, 'You can't marry a daughter (or son) of the Chowdhury family unless you…' this was just used to show higher social standing in Bangali society," he added.

According to Feroze, the British continued to use the title as the Mughals did previously. The title was awarded by the British to the prosperous business classes who pledged allegiance to the British colonial system. But the title, as mentioned before, was already popular long before the British Raj. It was however the British who popularised the name in that fashion. 

Can you give me a few more examples? "For example, if you look at the Syed title, any person with the title as the prefix is believed to be the descendant of the Holy Prophet Mohammad. That's not the case with our country though; anyone can take up the Syed prefix," he said.

So, anyone could assume the Chowdhury title and roleplay royalty, at least in Bangla movies' standards. 

Okay… history apart, who could tell me what was actually going on in the Bangla movie scene? I got in touch with Matin Rahman, a well known Bangla movie director from the 80s and 90s. He offered some interesting insights into the matter.

"You could essentially buy the Chowdhury title during the British reign. The consensus is that individuals with this title have to be respected. This had no professional implication," Rahman said. It did apply professionally back in the Mughal era but we are talking about Bangla cinema here, where nothing makes sense; come on! 

"We usually saw Chowdhury has a lofty and spacious hall room with two staircases meeting in the centre. He would talk down from up there [literally talk down] and then come down the stairs screaming. For the sake of dramatisation, Chowdhury sounds like the part of an over-the-top overlord," he added.

But why not Khan or Ahmed Shaheb? "Being a three and a half syllable-long word, it also sounded more dramatic than Khan Shaheb or Ahmed Shaheb," he said laughingly. Like Feroze with the Syed title, Rahman pointed to how the Thakur title also meant royalty in Indian films. In essence, Thakur and Chowdhury are interchangeable names of power abusers, according to the cinema industry expert. 

It could be a subtle jab at the Colonisers that the Chowdhury title was used as the oppressor's synonym. But subtlety was never a strong suit of Bangla movies or their makers. What I think is they found the name fancy enough and overdid it. They overdid it to a point that even to this day I question my friends with the Chowdhury surname about their sense of integrity. Just kidding! 

It could be that the narrative of Bangla movies is now different to what it used to be, but they still have some of the same old properties, told in a different way. Some things never change!

Anyway, at the end of the movie Chowdhury Shaheb dies – very slowly and not until he is done telling Akash how wrong he was about him and that he trusts him with his Sadia. Only then does Chowdhury Shaheb die and not a moment earlier. Death also has to take his permission to do its job, you see? 

Sadia and Akash immediately move to an empty park, like nothing ever happened, to dance to the worst choreographed moves in history, to immortalise their love.