Ghunghat (1960 film)

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Ghunghat
Directed by	Ramanand Sagar
Starring	Pradeep Kumar Bina Rai Asha Parekh
Music by	Ravi
Release date(s)	1960
Country	India
Language	Hindi
IMDb profile

This article is about the indian film. For the Pakistani lollywood film of the same name, see Ghunghat (film).

Ghunghat is a 1960 Hindi movie directed by Ramanand Sagar. The film stars Bharat Bhushan, Leela Chitnis, Pradeep Kumar, Bina Rai, Asha Parekh, Helen, Rajendranath, Rehman and Agha. The films music is by Ravi. The film became a hit at the box office.^[1]

Ghunghat is not a film. It is a Hindi word which describes a type of hijab worn by Indian women to cover their head. Basically Indian women dressed unisex before the advent of Islam; that is they wore an unstiched cloth (called Sari) in a loincloth fashion as men. Indian women never covered their head and often left their upper bodies uncovered. After the muslim invation of India, non-muslim Indian women were asked to wear the Sari in wrap around way like a frock and also use part of it to cover their head and face in public. Basically the Sari grew in length with an end which is used to cover the bosom and then the head and face. This is a culutural concession made by the Indian women to survive their Islamic rulers. To verify this you have to look at pre-Islamic sculptors of women in any museum in India or Europe and note that women in ancient India wore the Sari the same way as men or Indian priests wear a Dhoti and never covered their upper body. In some parts of South India and Sri Lanka where Islam was not prevalent you can still find women (mostly older women) wearing the Sari in loincloth style. This allowed women to work in the fields beside men or even ride a horse like men. Someone should write a separate article on this subject after studying the evidence in museums of ancient Indian clothing. Of course if you look at Buddhist cave paintings in India or in Sri Lnka such as Siguria, you will note that Indian women often went around wearing just pieces of jewellery and nothing else. I have deliberately used the word Indian women and not Hindu women because the word Hindu is a misnomer cooked up by Arabs. India never had any Hindus just like America never had any Indians. Indians called themselves Bharatiya (just like natives in Americas called themselves Comanche and Sioux) and they practiced many religions such as Shaiva, Jaina, Vaishnava and Buddhist. The ghunghat was and is still a form of cesorship of women, still practiced in rural parts of Northern India and is a symbol inequality of sexes prevalent in Indian society introduced and enforced by the muslim rulers.o