Recently, I was practically forced by some of my friends to watch the comedy Ladies First (2026) on Netflix, starring Sacha Baron Cohen and Rosamund Pike. The film follows a successful, arrogant man who wakes up in a parallel world, where women dominate society and men experience the sexism and discrimination women face in the real world.
I found the premise remarkably familiar. This contemporary corporate comedy took me back to the genius of actor, director, writer and singer Rangeela and to the film Aurat Raj (1979), made during one of the darkest periods in Pakistan’s history.
The similarity is not simply that both films reverse gender roles. Both use that reversal to expose the absurdity of power, prejudice and social expectations. But Rangeela did it nearly five decades earlier, by taking two of Lollywood’s then-biggest male stars — the charming Waheed Murad and the macho Sultan Rahi — and casting them in roles that demanded traditionally feminine behaviour!
Imagine Waheed Murad, Pakistan’s quintessential romantic hero, dressed as a woman and dancing to Tassawar Khanum’s ‘Ve Sab Toh Sohniya’, or Rani, one of the screen’s greatest female stars, dressed as a man and lip-syncing to Rangeela’s unmistakably baritone voice. And if you can picture that, imagine Sultan Rahi — the jatt of Pakistani cinema — being rescued from ghundas (goons) while acting as a woman!
Decades before Hollywood’s most recent revisiting of the battle of the sexes, Rangeela’s Aurat Raj used gender reversal, political satire and cinematic absurdity to skewer power and prejudice
The story begins with Waheed Murad playing a thoroughly chauvinistic and philandering husband who decides to divorce his beautiful wife, played by Rani. She has had enough of his arrogance and decides that the answer is more equality, and demands an election, turning women’s equality into a political battle. The women eventually win, helped not so much by manifestos or policy as by entertaining the electorate with dancing to secure votes.
Aurat Raj was released in mid-1979, during Gen Ziaul Haq’s martial law era, when women’s rights and legal status were being sharply restricted. In that context, a comedy imagining women taking political control was more than a mere gag. It was a mischievous reversal of the social order by Rangeela.
In the film, the women eventually take full control of the land and, with the help of foreign consultants, try to consolidate their power by acquiring an expensive bomb capable of reversing genders! The shahi khazana (state treasury) is quite empty, yet the government — run entirely by women — desperately wants this miracle technology.
A deal is eventually struck, with land reportedly being traded to acquire the bomb. Once this bomb is exploded, all the men become women — complete with long hair and saris — and the women become men, with moustaches and trousers. The twist comes when the women start behaving as chauvinistically as the men earlier.
However, despite its innovativeness, the film was not an immediate commercial success, and reportedly bombed at the box office, only acquiring cult status later. It was also banned by Gen Zia’s regime, which considered references to a “women’s army” as a direct attack on the regime, adding another layer to its significance as a work of political satire.
The plot of Aurat Raj can also be read as a sly reference to India’s nuclear ambitions under then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. India conducted its first nuclear test in 1974, and Rangeela transforms that very geopolitical development into a comic fantasy: a female leader acquires a bomb not to destroy the world, but to turn men into women, in order to make them experience the treatment women have endured since time immemorial.
What makes Aurat Raj particularly fascinating is the way it appears to bring together influences from cinema, literature and politics. Rangeela was probably fascinated and inspired by Peter Sellers’ Dr Strangelove Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), with its dark satire centring on nuclear politics, as well as Urdu satirist Shaukat Thanvi’s popular Urdu short story, Biwi [Wife]. Shaukat Thanvi’s story has often been credited as the originator for the basic premise of Aurat Raj.
There also seems to be a touch of Charlton Heston’s Planet of the Apes (1968) and Rangeela appears to replace the apes with women, creating a kind of “Planet of the Eves” situation — a world in which women occupy the top of the social and political order, and men suddenly find themselves on the other side of the power equation.
Interestingly, the role that eventually went to Waheed Murad was first offered to then up-and-coming actor Usman Peerzada. He turned it down for two reasons: having grown up watching Rani’s films, Usman could not imagine himself as her “leading man.” More importantly, he did not like the concept.
Speaking to Icon, Peerzada recalled Rangeela as a remarkable man who, despite being unlettered, possessed an extraordinary ability to observe and learn from those around him.
“One night, he came over to my place and asked me to sign the film, in which he had reversed the sexes of the lead characters,” remembers Peerzada. “When I refused, he said, ‘Sultan Rahi has no qualms about playing a lady, so why do you?’ I was of the opinion that Sultan Rahi could survive such a role, while I could not. And that is how the role eventually went to Waheed [Murad].”
However, Rangeela was not prepared to let Usman Peerzada escape Aurat Raj entirely. A few days later, Saeed Khan — Rangeela’s real name — returned with another proposition.
“Now he wanted me to play one of three cowboys who arrive in town, Western-style, after the women have taken over, and finally set things right. I eventually agreed, playing one of the three cowboys, alongside Asif Khan and Badar Munir.”
I couldn’t help wonder how many of us have truly appreciated just how far ahead of his time Rangeela was with Aurat Raj? Nearly five decades before Ladies First turned the reversal of gender roles into a global comedy premise, Rangeela had already taken the idea, given it a distinctly Pakistani flavour, and turned some of Lollywood’s most macho men into punchlines!
Aurat Raj is certainly not a perfect film: its screenplay is uneven, its humour can be crude and some of its ideas have not aged particularly well. But the ambition still remains remarkable. Remember: Rangeela did not have Netflix, Hollywood budgets or the benefit of a global conversation about gender politics. All he had was a camera, an appetite for experimentation and an almost reckless willingness to try anything.
Rangeela turned politics into comedy, masculinity into a punchline, and gender inequality into a cinematic role reversal. Perhaps that is why Rangeela survived as a cultural force from the late 1950s into the early 2000s. He understood something that today’s filmmakers often forget: cinema does not always need to be perfect to be memorable.
The writer is a vintage cinema enthusiast. He can be reached at suhaybalavi@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, ICON, August 16th, 2026