Year-End Special: Making sense of the Padmavati row

Widespread protests against Sanjay Leela Bhansali's magnum opus Padmavati call for a need to introspect our relationship with history

Had things gone according to plan, Sanjay Leela Bhansali would have had the last laugh of 2017. It was on September 21 that the first look of Padmavati (based on slices of history about Alauddin Khilji's invasion of Rajput kingdom of Chittor), then slated for a December 1 release, was unveiled. Be it the larger-than-life sets, the opulent costumes, Ranveer Singh's swagger or Deepika Padukone's unibrow - everything received Netizens' vote of confidence. Hysteria gripped social media and suddenly December seemed too far away.
Three months later, that narrative has changed. The fate of Bhansali's INR 200-crore film hangs. No release date has been announced yet. Last heard, the Central Board of Film Certification in India had instituted a committee and even invited a member of the erstwhile royal family of Mewar to look into the matter. In the past few months, the Rajput Karni Sena and other hardliners have mounted a protest against the film claiming it misrepresents and masala-fies their history. Such was the rage that a BJP leader announced a bounty of INR 10 crore to behead Bhansali while a leader of Karni Sena threatened to chop off Padukone's nose. Of course, the fact that they haven't seen the film is made to seem irrelevant.
So, millions of viewers cannot watch a film because it might, just might, hurt the sentiments of a section of people who haven't seen the film. This might sound like a script of a disaster film, except it's playing out in realtime. If 2017 was a year of highs, the Padmavati row was a low that taught a few lessons, chief among them being introspection into our relationship with history.
Histories are written by rulers, but immortalised by artists. The 16th century Sufi poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi was one such artist. Even as historians debate if Padmavati ever existed, there is little argument over the fact that she wields immense power on the pages of Jayasi's epic poem Padmavat. It is the story of a queen immolating herself in anticipation of her honour being under threat from a foreign invader. It is an immensely empowering idea - snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, if you like - to have a woman morally defeat an all-powerful ruler. The valour at the heart of this story - whether truth or fiction - lends itself to being an idea so strong in its appeal that it must be celebrated. In India, where many cultural groups co-exist, protecting these ideas become a way of protecting one's history. However, ideas evolve only when they are dissected. Moreover, no idea should have to be above interpretation because history itself is about perceptions. Can a three-hour film change the collective perception of Padmavati? For a thinking audience, the more interesting question is: what are the layers that a film like this could peel off should it aspire for something more than entertainment?
Sanjay Leela Bhansali is known to take creative liberties with his subjects. After all, it was in his Bajirao Mastani that Kashibai and Mastani matched steps even though there had been a contention that the former had gout and couldn't walk properly. Such digressions, often part of a filmmaker's artistic licence, need to be assessed but in the realm of film critique. Forbidding a film's release reeks of our discomfort with history, or rather what we believe to be history!
anamika@khaleejtimes.com