From Rani Padmini to now, we don’t need men to defend our honour

One of the greatest qualities of the Indian intellectual tradition is its respect for all points of view. Much of this is symbolised by Padmavat, the 16th century poem by Malik Muhammad Jayasi, which celebrated and venerated the myth of Rani Padmini. Yes, a Sufi poet who wrote a poem in praise of the Rani of Chittor, and forever gave us the legend of her extraordinary courage in the face of conquest.

According to the late Aditya Behl, the brilliant Indologist who wrote Love’s Subtle Magic: An Indian Islamic Literary Tradition 1379-1545, edited by Dinanath Batra’s bête noire, Wendy Doniger (yes, I can hear the collective sharpening of rightwing knives), the poem and therefore Padmini, became “an emblem of the successful and tragic conquest of Hindustan”.

And like most things Indian, it meant many things to many people. For the Rajput chroniclers, he says, Padmavati "was the lovely queen who died rather than submitting to the wicked Sultan Alauddin Khilji, thus preserving the symbolic honour of a defeated people". For the Afghan and later, the Mughal courts, she was an “erotic object” and the “centrepiece of an Indian landscape, the crystallisation of the beauty and allure of a subjugated people”.

Ironically, adds Behl, for the nationalists, she was the emblem of a heroic resistance of a foreign imperialism, “a key figure in the narrative of the recuperation of Hindu honour despite the tragic fall of the Rajput states to the sultans of Delhi”.

The poem, from which much of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s movie is inspired, clearly portrays Padmavati/Padmini as a woman whose beauty is “the most radiant of all lamps”, enough to cause anxious lovers to swoon and lakes to bloom with lotuses (hence her name, Padmini, the lotus woman). It makes a hero of Khilji only as much as many centuries later Bollywood would make heroes of onscreen stalkers ranging from Darr to Tere Naam to Raanjhana.

He is a man who is irresistibly drawn to the beauty of Padmavati though she is the picture of resistance - she doesn’t even allow her face to be seen by Khilji, who conspires to see her reflection in a mirror.

There were similar protests when Jodhaa-Akbar released, though not such extreme loutish behaviour - and would the Rajasthan government like to explain exactly how goons got into a place where the shooting was taking place?

What this suggests is an extreme desire on the part of the Right to reinterpret parts of history that they don’t want to be reminded of - though many suggest that Padmini’s jauhar itself is an invention of James Tod, typical of the British who wanted to see “all Rajput history as Hindu defence against Muslim invasion”.

This indeed is what Romila Thapar says (another red rag to the Batraites) - that the Right wing view of Indian history is very much in the colonial tradition of communalising history.

Rajput kings often used their women as pawns for alliances that ensured public peace and private prosperity.

Has anyone in the Karni Sena tried to examine how these women felt? Or, like always, do they feel they can speak for women, dead and alive? Appropriate the battle for their honour, while uttering abuse, as one Twitter observer noted, that insults women?

Indian women, in reality as well as imagination, don’t need the Karni Sena to fight for their cause. Sita didn’t have anything except her own integrity to fall back on when her virtue was questioned by Ram.

Draupadi was traded by Yudhisthtra without her consent and humiliated in open court. Mirabai was sought to be poisoned by her in-laws who could not tolerate her devotion for Krishna - incidentally, she too was from Mewar, like Rani Padmini.

Indian women, in history and in reality, are quite capable of fighting their own battles in a culture that continues to glorify male obsession as love.

They fight this battle every day, with their intellect and their passion. They don’t need a bunch of old men to do it for them.

And as far as our history is concerned, it’s as glorious and as complicated as it ought to be.

How a filmmaker chooses to interpret it is entirely his prerogative. It took a Sufi poet’s epic to remind us of her courage. It may well be a Bollywood director’s mission to make her contemporary.

Also read - Assault on Sanjay Leela Bhansali shows India is more scared of its fictions than history