Overview

• Media retrospectives in Filmfare and Bollywood Hungama detail Mughal-e-Azam’s 16-year production saga and its record-breaking budget.
• Feroz Abbas Khan’s stage musical adapts K Asif’s screenplay with select cuts and additions, introducing Santarash as the play’s narrator.
• Theatrical performances feature original Naushad compositions and begin with a specially recorded message by Lata Mangeshkar.
• Cultural analyses highlight the film’s pioneering depiction of Hindu-Muslim tolerance as a bridge in post-partition India.
• A new feminist reading examines Anarkali’s entombment sequence as a metaphor for female agency and patriarchal constraints.