Revisiting Padmavati’s story in contemporary cinema gives her an earthly persona and detailing that fall far short of the reverence she has commanded. Hence the row
Years ago, on a visit to Fatehpur Sikri, an ASI guide had put things in perspective while pointing out to the Jodhabai Mahal or the quarters of Akbar’s Rajput queen, who was never named as such in annals and simply called Mariam-us-Zamani by the emperor’s official historian Abul Fazal. “The tagging of the quarters happened after the widespread success of Mughal-e-Azam though these are the quarters of the Rajput wives and women of Akbar’s court with their separate kitchen too,” he had said. Much like the identity of Padmavati today, Jodhabai’s too wavered between historicity, myth-making and finally a metaphor. But an onscreen depiction gave solidity to the concept and simplified history for an audience for whom films are a way of transporting themselves into the days of our civilisational glory and reliving them retrospectively. And since Hindi cinema is about addressing the popular pulse and gaze, and not an Oscar-style documentary, seldom do filmmakers get into the niceties of the post-colonial reading of history, its varied interpretations or nuances. By and large, it sticks to the oral versions in the same way that Amar Chitra Katha introduced us to history coloured with myth in our childhood. It’s just another matter of telling a good story.
Perhaps, this is the reason for the latest discomfort over Padmavati, who has been lionised and elevated to divinity by a Sufi bard almost 200 years after her supposed historical existence. And revisiting her story in contemporary cinema, through digitally enhanced recreations and topline Bollywood stars, might give her an earthly reality and detailing that fall far short of the reverence she has commanded. In the metaphorical version of Padmavat, she is extolled as purity inviolate, one who not only jumps into the fire but becomes a part of a cosmic energy field which reduces human avarice and lust to ashes and subsumes mortal existence to universal truths. The film version, which has her doing theghoomar in front of her besotted husband and king, lends her a loving human touch that, in the minds of devotees of Rajput lore, encroaches into her deification and ethereal persona.
Historically, both Jodhabai and Padmavati have emerged as metaphors of Rajput women royals who have grown in stature following their marital alliances to polygamous men but who held their own despite their powerful spouses. Jodhabai, though not named as such in documented history, was a warrior princess who is known to have encamped at battle zones given her military acumen, is understood to have carved her own special place in the zenana khana, and who ultimately gave the empire its heir. She is among the first characters in Akbar’s matrimonial alliances with Rajput kings and chieftains, a bloodless social coup of sorts to entrench his suzerainty. Yet in popular psyche, this acquiescence got magnified into a love story and in secular consciousness, a coming together of religions. And one which was on Jodha’s terms; it is always Jodha-Akbar and not Akbar-Jodha. In Mughal-e-Azam, we see the stentorian and stout mother of Salim (played by Durga Khote, herself a pioneer of cinema) caught in a mature debate with the rotund but authoritative father, Akbar (played by none other than the legendary Prithviraj Kapoor) over a generation gap issue in the domestic confines of their private chambers. In its time, the parental banter had a contemporary resonance, of an old order colliding with the new wave in a nation that was youthful about carving its destiny. Also it was a far insular story of family conflicts than the relationship itself. By the time Ashutosh Gowariker decided to retell the Jodha-Akbar story on an epic scale, its historicity was first called into question with activists challenging the very premise of marriage as a coercive takeover of Rajput, and by extension, home-grown pride. In a post-liberalised, globalised world, nobody wanted the irritants of colonial or Mughal history to soil a resurgent identity of a new India in the popular culture space dominated by Bollywood, which, in a flat digital world, has a reach of amoebic proportions. So Gowariker’s Jodha and Akbar were posited as two individuals with differing ideologies who come together, improving, understanding and reconciling with each other in the process. Played by two good-looking actors in Aishwarya Rai and Hritik Roshan, it was a story of two young people who grew into love with history as a cosmetic and rather incidental backdrop. Gowariker’s Jodha-Akbar went on to become a hit simply because it was a glorified rendition of a Mills and Boon romance. There was no social conflict or commentary here.
Padmavati differs from Jodha Akbar simply because it is not a story of convergence but about divergence and involves the violation of that old vow of “thou shalt not covet another man’s wife.” Khilji, the tyrant invader, who for whatever historical legacy he may have left behind as an administrator, in the end was solely motivated by desire, lust and greed to possess her, and by extension Chittorgarh, through devious means. There’s a medieval bestiality of Khilji’s purpose which dims the ardour of the love between Ratan Singh and his Sinhalese queen. Padmavati, has, therefore, been perceived not just as the Rajput woman in peril, but as the receptor of Indic culture under threat from rapacious imperialists. In times of the sharpening clash of civilisations and new world gender constructs, this seems to have struck a discordant chord, the idea of a woman as the prize of war. And while Padmavati’s incandescent glow ultimately crushes the ego of Khilji, that comes at the cost of her self-destruction and self-immolation. Besides, history has it that the Rajput ruler mostly surrendered, overpowered as he was by troops of the Sultanate. In that sense, the heroism of protecting Hindu honour, integrity and identity against a Muslim invader fell squarely on the shoulders of Padmavati in subsequent retelling through ballads or the written texts of Rajputana. Once lionised and canonised thus, she came to be invoked time and again whenever there was a need for patriotic fervour and was seen as non-negotiable in the Indian reconstruct. Had this not been so, then Bhansali would not have attempted a film on the “sacrifice for honour” theme.
However, there’s the bothersome issue of jauhar, seen by most women as a passive resistance to the marauder. Self-annihilation for honour, in the end, didn’t stop Khilji's hunger or change the course of history. Many may argue that Padmavati epitomised the feminist equivalent of “my body, my being, my terms,” but in the mass psyche, the woman’s “death for honour” theme only satisfies the male protectionist ego and conforms to a societal archetype. Which is what cinema thrives on. Why else has not mainstream Hindi cinema taken up the stories of other powerful women of the house of Chittor who existed in the real world and who chose to stride into the battlefield and deliver a punch of a blowback like no otherIJ The history of the 16th century is replete with decisive and independent women like Tarabai, Karmavati, Jawaharbai and Mirabai, who were daughters-in-law and widows too. Tarabai had an unerring ability to strike an arrow from her horseback and wrested her land back from the Afghans. Jawaharbai led a cavalry charge and Karmavati excelled in the art of political alliances. They are revered as much and frankly would resonate better at a time when the woman is renegotiating her space in Indian cinema and popular culture. Deepika Padukone, the actor, may be earning more than her male co-stars in Padmavati but we would rather she had a real flesh and blood template from the House of the Sisodias.
(The writer is associate editor at The Pioneer)