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Watching Padmaavat in Pakistan: Why it did not leave me reduced just to a vagina

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Mehr Tarar
Mehr TararFeb 03, 2018 | 20:58

Watching Padmaavat in Pakistan: Why it did not leave me reduced just to a vagina

Disclaimer: This is not a review of Padmaavat, and is not in any way intended to hurt the moral, cultural, individual and collective sensibilities of any living or dead person, royalty, real or imagined, or animal.

At the end of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s magnum opus Padmaavat, I did not feel reduced to a vagina - only. There, at least that’s out of the way. What did happen was a little playful foreplay between two other parts of my body - brain and that annoying little thing called heart, and before it led to anything serious both called a truce.

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What did happen: Padmaavat dil ko nahin lagi.

Full disclosure: Since I watched Khamoshi: The Musical in 1996 I’ve been in love with Bhansali’s films, utterly fascinated with his unorthodox-ness (Leela is his mother’s name), his pained love for his father, and his larger than life women. Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam showed how love conquers it all. I watched Devdas more than I’d care to confess, and its “Aik baat hoti thee tab tum bahut yaad aati thee...jab jab main saans leta tha tab tab” became my litmus test for any long-term romantic feeling. Black to me was the new yardstick for excellence in Indian films. Unseeing eyes, unsaid words, unheard endearments, Black showed love in ways I didn’t even know existed. Saawariya was a delightful little drama with a towel-clad Ranbir Kapoor and his nightly search for love. Guzaarish remains Hrithik Roshan’s best performance, loss, longing, pain expressed through his beautiful eyes. In Goliyon ki Rasleela Ram-Leela, the chemistry between Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh was so sizzling it scorched the screen and senses in a way you knew their love was doomed. In the final scenes of Bajirao Mastani, Bajirao’s physical destruction and Mastani’s incarceration for their love haunted me for days.

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Then came Padmaavat, erstwhile Padmavati. Remove the i, add an a, cover a midriff, add a few more paeans to Rajput glory to appease the angry Karni Sena and their ilk in India, and voila, you have your new box-office hit. Bhansali doesn’t disappoint. Superficially. Spectacular, opulent, operatic, extravagant, decadent, Padmaavat is all that and more. Sets, cinematography, costumes, music, background score, the painstaking detail to every little aspect of the film culminates into a visual treat that is so inimitably, so beautifully Bhansali.

The cast is impressive. Deepika Padukone is every “ada” the maharani Padmavati, beautiful, ethereal, regal, poised, eyes expressively welled up in almost every scene without a tear falling down her almost stoic face. Shahid Kapoor in his restrained and powerful portrayal of the noble Ratan Singh is praiseworthy within the restrictions of his role. Jim Sarbh is the delightful surprise whose Malik Kafur is so sensitively yet wickedly portrayed you want him as your best friend and fellow warrior. And then there is Ranveer Singh as Alauddin Khilji, the bad, bad king without a single redeeming trait. Ranveer is so good you can’t take your eyes off him, he is so effective as Khilji he takes your breath away. Ranveer as Khilji owns Padmaavat.

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After watching Padmaavat on Thursday evening in Lahore with my 14-year-old nephew, Zain, I felt what I don’t normally feel after a Bhansali movie: dil ko nahin lagi. Bhansali’s films have that quintessential passion that makes his ordinary characters extraordinary, but in Padmaavat, other than in the villain Khilji, passion is as elusive as the lack of authenticity in the film that is feted as a celebration of womanhood, a celebration of virtues of Rajputs, and a condemnation of everything Khilji (read: Muslim?). Padmaavat’s disclaimer insists on it not being a factual account of anything real, but after watching the film, the first thing you say to the person sitting next to you, in my case Zain: who is Bhansali kidding? Duh.

I asked two elderly women what they thought of the movie, and their instant answer: bilkul aachi nahin lagi. Other people joined our tiny but loud discussion outside the cinema, and the gist of the commentary goes like this: why did our government allow this movie to be shown? How could our censor board pass this excuse of a film that is nothing but an insult to Muslims? If it’s not a factual historical account, why show the Muslim king and his folks in this hugely unflattering manner? They have shown a Muslim king going crazy not just for a woman but a woman he has never even seen.

Much has been written about what the real Alauddin Khilji was, what he looked like, how he behaved, and his caricaturing as Bhansali’s Khilji. Rana Safvi sums up what many Indian historians have said: “Khilji was anything but savage. It was under his rule the Delhi Sultanate heavily drew from Persia, one of the oldest and most sophisticated civilisations of all time. The rulers followed the exact code of conduct and etiquette as in Persia… very formal, the eating, dining and sartorial choices. Khilji was aware he was cruel but he was not the kind to be running after women and then conquering kingdoms. He was only interested in expansions and conquests. Alauddin was a ‘cruel imperialist’ and a good military strategist who wanted to crush Mongol invaders.”

Rani Padmavati, many historians, state, never existed. “It is said that the story of Rani Padmavati, also known as Padmini, and Alauddin Khilji’s siege of King Rawal Ratan Singh’s Chittor took place in 1303. However, Irfan Habib (Indian historian) claims that Rani Padmavati was not a historical figure as there is no record of her before 1540. According to him, the queen was a fictional figure created in the poem, Padmavat written by Malik Muhammad Jayasi in 1540.”

As a subcontinental Muslim whose ancestors in the time of Khilji were in all probability Hindu, I feel defending a Muslim king is redundant in this context. Many kings of all faiths and nationalities were cruel tyrants, and that is recorded history. Caligula, Montezuma, Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler, Richard III, Rudolf II, Murad IV, Eric XIV of Sweden, Leopold II of Belgium, Bad King John-King John I, the list is endless. What I do find even more troubling than the distorted depiction of Khilji is the timing of the movie.

In 2018, Padmaavat is all about what most films, politically correct and morally cognisant, try not to be: Binaries of absolute evil and absolute good; rewriting of history; the other-ing of Muslim in the time of dangerous religious divides; maniacal obsession of a Muslim king for a Hindu rani in the time of ugliness of bigotry-induced words like “love jihad”; showing of a green flag with a white crescent in an ISIS-affected world; a Muslim king’s heinous mistreatment of his wife while the Hindu king’s unquestioned relegation of his first wife to a corner of the palace (my nephew thought she was his mother the way he treated her); scenes of savage meat-eating in the time of cow-lynching; eulogisation of Rajput values despite the Rajput rajas’ refusal, as per the film, to help Ratan in his fight against Khilji; killing of Ratan with the proverbial arrows in the back while engaged in a one-on-one combat with Khilji; expansionism, defeats of Mongol invaders and military acumen of a Muslim king reduced to his months-long siege of Chittor in his single-mindedly self-destructive pursuit of a woman he had seen only once in a mirror for a second or two.

I wonder what purpose, if any, the distorted presentation of these real or fictional narratives of the 14th century serve in the 21st century.

The jauhar, self-immolation, of Rani Padmavati, is the dizzyingly stunning dénouement of a tale of valour and moral integrity of Rajput women and their queen. It is a scene that is so potent, so goosebumpy, it hits you in the face with its glorification of a regressive, patriarchal and misogynistic display of ideal virtues of a Hindu woman. In 1306, in 2018, I may consider the option of death over rape or slavery, a female victim of one or both must be free of any judgement from anyone, but how that choice pans out is what has to matter in this age of gradual but steady empowerment of women against suppression. The existence of jauhar is undeniable. What is counter-productive is its glorification.

What is shown in Padmaavat as the only option for a queen, her royal entourage and ordinary women dressed in their bridal finery is troubling for a myriad reasons. Does it showcase the agency of the fearless Queen Padmavati who devises battle strategies, tricks Khilji, fights for her husband’s release and questions her husband’s foolish ideas but asks for her husband’s permission to perform jauhar, a two-minute scene in a 164-minute movie? It is about choice of death over rape and slavery, but in the scene is a little girl holding the hand of her pregnant mother; were the unborn baby and the child given a choice? The premise is the hugely unfair and dangerous generalisation that even old women, pregnant mothers and little girls would not be spared humiliation and pain on the hands of a Muslim Khilji and his “inhuman” warriors.

The evil Muslim king and the saintly Hindu queen in their final battle of power...

Indian history is as much mine as it is of any subcontinental inhabitant, whether native or invader. Ergo my right to question. Ergo I repeat: I wonder at the timing of Padmaavat. Is this a mere coincidence or a methodical endorsement of the other-ing of Muslims in an India that is as much their home as it is of any other Indian inhabitant? Is this a manifestation of a deliberate ideological divide of a secular India that celebrates its diversity, pluralism and values of tolerance and co-existence?

Which India has been shown in Padmaavat?  

Last updated: February 04, 2018 | 22:16
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