Indian politicians lack the courage to say Padmavati is based on a myth

At the heart of the Padmavati controversy that has generated more headlines recently than the Narendra Modi government not convening the winter session of Parliament is how we, especially our leaders and political parties, look at history and the myth-making process.

Debates on facts versus fiction lie at the core of how we make sense of the past and develop a scientific attitude towards history. Padmavati, a film directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali with Deepika Padukone playing the eponymous role of the 14th century Rajput queen, is not the first and sadly will not be the last film in the Indian subcontinent to stir a major political controversy.

Water, a 2005 critically acclaimed film made by Deepa Mehta, faced major backlash from Hindutva outfits at that time as they claimed that the film defamed Hindu traditions and customs by showing the plight of widows in the holy city of Benares during the late colonial era.

The violence at the film set forced the filmmakers to shift the location to Sri Lanka. In the face of large-scale protests surrounding any film such in India, we have rarely witnessed anyone from the political community going against "public sentiment" and taking a stand for artistic freedom to present any historical/mythical event or character. Leave alone any tall leader from a political party calling any claimed historical character like Padmavati fictional on the basis of the work done by most historians. This is totally unimaginable in today's India.

Most historians trace the character of Rani Padmavati to the 16th century poem written in Avadhi by Malik Muhammad Jayasi. Jayasi's epic ballad written 200 years after the death of Muslim emperor Alauddin Khilji extolled the virtues of a Rajput queen, who embraced death by immolating herself on the pyre of her husband whose kingdom was attacked by Khilji. Despite the fact that themes like Sati and a wife's devotion to her husband are glorified in the poem, which many historians find problematic, they emphasise more on the fact that she is a fictional character with no mention in any other historical records.

Amir Khusrau (1253-1325) provides the earliest account of Khilji's attack on Chittor in his chronicle, Khazain ul-Futuh, but makes no mention of any queen named Padmavati. Interestingly, Jayasi's poem "Padmavat" was translated in the far-east by a Bengali poet Syed Alaol after it was commissioned by the Arakan king in 1651.

Then the key text around the modern storytelling of queen Padmavati came into picture with East India Company official James Tod's book Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, which he wrote in 1829-32 based on the oral traditions of Charans and Bhats (chroniclers and genealogist). Padmavati's portrayal in the Tod's Annals, rather than Alaol's version of Padmavati became the basis of retelling her story in most Bengali works in late nineteenth and early twentieth century - Rangalal Bandyopadhyay's Padmini Upakhyan (1858), Jyotirindranath Tagore's play Sarojini ba Chittoor Akraman (1875), Kshirodprasad Vidyavinod's play Padmini (1906), Abanindranath Tagore's Rajkahini (1909). US-based historian Ramya Sreenivasan's book The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen (2007) focuses on this particular aspect of how colonial knowledge systems shaped the early ideas of nationalism among the local elite.

The Rajput community contradicts these views based on many folktales and other oral traditions popular among them and valorise Padmavati as the symbol of female honour. In a recent debate on NDTV show, "We the People", the 76th custodian of royal house of Mewar, Shriji Arvind Singh Mewar claimed that Rani Padmavati was "an individual in existence", who got married in his family therefore no question can be raised on her existence.

RSS ideologue Rakesh Sinha during an Aaj Tak TV debate on the Padmavati controversy stressed that we cannot pitch written records against the oral traditions which also contributed in shaping India's history but rather focus on the "meta narrative" around queen Padmavati and her deified identity among the Rajputs. If the film has followed the meta narrative then it is fine, but if not then all the protests against it are legitimate, he said.

The protests against the film have received official sanction with the Gujarat government already banning its screening and chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana threatening to go the same way. Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has gone a step ahead and declared that his government will introduce a chapter on Padmavati as rashtramata (mother of the nation) in school textbooks and set up a memorial to commemorate her valour.

Only Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee have come out in full support of the film and its makers and have spoken about their right to freedom of expression. No political leader has dared to speak on the authenticity of the story of Padmavati yet.

The controversy around the release of the film has again put the question of what are the ideals of a state. The state in Ambedkar's Constitution is progressive, modern and democratic in nature but to imagine a nation we are increasingly going back to mythological and religious characters. It actually raises questions on the ideals of democratic citizenship for diverse communities in India who may not subscribe to the same myths. Indian politicians therefore must engage with history in a critical manner rather than abuse it for the purpose of exclusionary politics.

Here the case of Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia and his stand on the Hanka manuscripts is pertinent to note. The manuscripts, considered the most important Czech literary relic from thirteenth century were discovered in the beginning of nineteenth century by Vaclav Hanka, an eminent scholar of medieval Bohemian history. The manuscripts played a major role in forming Czech national consciousness in the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, Hanka had forged them.

A group of Czech scholars, including Masaryk (before he became president in 1918), publicly questioned the authenticity of the manuscripts (also known as "The Love Song of King Vaclav"). This created a huge political controversy at that time and Czech nationalists branded Masaryk a German spy. Accusations were made over how he was not ethnic Czech and he could not understand the Czech soul and therefore he should disappear from national life. The "true Czechs" decided that to call the manuscripts forged was synonymous with the thesis that "those who awakened the modern identity of the Czechs were fools and swindlers," and that the matter of national rebirth was a "fraud and great stupidity".

Masaryk, on the other hand, stressed on the scholarly and moral dimension of the debate over Hanka manuscripts. "If it is forgery," he said, "We have to admit it publicly. The Czech national identity must not be built on a lie. We will not be able to understand our own history if we keep company with falsifications. The dignity of the nation requires defence of the truth or rather learning the truth, and nothing more, as it is moral to courageously acknowledge a mistake that needs to be made known."

We can see no Masaryk among the Indian politicians today in the face of the Padmavati controversy. Someone should stand up and say that the story of the Rajput queen is a work of fiction.

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