No one epitomised contradiction more than Fearless Nadia. She was Australian and yet a symbol of Indian nationalism. She was both erotic and prim. She was blonde, her Hindi diction flawed, but she almost always played Indian characters. Nadia was India’s most unconventional superstar. Born in 1908 as Mary Evans in Perth, she ruled the box office playing an Indian woman fighting injustice and saving the masses from oppressive rulers. What’s more, she always performed her own stunts.
The fate of Wadia Movietone changed forever when they signed her for Hunterwali in 1935 . No distributor was willing to take it, so the Wadias had to do it themselves. No one could imagine that when a blonde woman, in poor Hindi, declared “ Aaj se main Hunterwali hoon”, the audience would go berserk.
Hunterwali was just the start of Nadia’s tremendously successful career. The close was Khilari (1961), Nadia’s last film, where she plays Agent X1, a spy who saves India’s most famous scientist from the clasps of the archvillain, Golden Dragon. Once again, Nadia breaks every possible convention of a spy film. Unlike the Hollywood film Spy featuring Melissa McCarthy, Nadia doesn’t have to grapple with issues like gender and body image in order to become a spy. She is the best Indian agent, she trains other agents, she is responsible for all the planning, and the best action scenes belong to her. It is a quintessential Nadia film, one in which women being equal is a given.
Inside a Wadia film
J.B.H. Wadia described his own films thus: “… stunts, thrills, fast action, and slapstick comedy had a big way of success in my films. But there was always something more, something different, and something of vital importance in the life of the nation in them. I had made it a practice to weave my stories and screenplays around the burning problems of the day such as Hindu-Muslim unity, and our struggles for Freedom.” ( Wanted Cultured Ladies Only , Neepa Majumdar). All the films contained nationalist propaganda in some form. For example, she plays the role of a Dalit girl, Hansa, who becomes Hurricane Hansa, in a 1937 film of the same name, to avenge her wronged family.
Directed by Homi Wadia, Khilari is no different from the usual Wadia structure. It has signature Nadia moments, like the one where she lifts a man up and throws him in the air. In a TV interview in the 80s she mentioned that during her screen test for Hunterwali , Homi Wadia had asked her if she could lift a man. She agreed to give it a try and successfully lifted and threw a man. Nadia once said, “He would then make me do it in every movie, naughty man!”
Khilari also has its moments of slapstick, with Nadia’s sidekick Sundar providing the comic relief. In a scene where Agent X1 and Sundar are posing as bartenders, and Sundar is asked to serve Black Dog, Sundar quickly brings in a black puppy and says “ Yeh raha aapka black dog . ”
The film is full of such moments that help diffuse the tension. Since Nadia was in her 50s, there aren’t too many stunts. Even though buxom, Nadia was surprisingly convincing when playing a man.
Dorothy Wenner declared Nadia a “radical feminist actress”. Nadia was a symbol of women’s emancipation, but another less recognised aspect is that all her films have a patriarchal backdrop, and yet her male lead and supporting cast always treat her as an equal. Nadia is never a weak woman who initially accepts her subservient role in patriarchy, and later finds her inner shakti to fight injustice. Rosie Thomas in her article on Nadia titled ‘Not Quite Pearl White’ calls Nadia a virangana. She refuses to enter any negotiation with patriarchy and demands equality from the very beginning.
Nadia and her men
John Cawas, the leading man in most of her films, existed primarily to support her in action scenes. Their romance was never complicated, and they always shared a relationship of mutual respect. Even though Cawas was a star in his own right and popularly known as the Indian Eddie Polo, he always played second fiddle to Nadia.
In Khilari, the male lead, Dileep Raj, supports Nadia and romances her to create a faux James Bond ambience.
Villains obviously played a major role in Nadia’s films. They served as conduits for Nadia to express her nationalism and feminism.
In Khilari, Golden Dragon is a beautiful woman, introduced as a Miss Moneypenny aspirant. But like most of Wadia’s villains, she too is flat. Even though she breaks the mould of a typical supervillain, her character has little nuance.
Khilari gives us a middle-aged, stout woman spy pitched against a young, attractive and greedy woman. The film is a clash between socialist values and capitalist greed. Interestingly, men play no role in the narrative, existing only to back the women, and no questions are asked about their subservient role. In Nadia’s world, women don’t rule, they simply are equals.
The writer is a historian based in Queen’s University, Canada. Watching old Bollywood films keeps her going.
