By the way why were Rajputs baying for Bhansali’s blood? Do they know they actually should admire him for being so reverent to them and so contemptuous to Muslims. The hurt is on the other side. The way Jalaluddin Khilji (Raza Murad) and his nephew Alauddin Khilji (Ranveer Singh) have been portrayed is outrageous. The king is a red-bearded man who reflects more greed than majesty and his nephew is a kohl-eyed, blood-hungry, sex-hungry mean lech – the meanest possible caricature of a Muslim prince. Insult can’t get lower than this. It’s not just an insult to the Muslim character, but the language, the folklore, the very idiom that symbolises Muslim-hood looks unspeakably gross.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat has two chapters. The Rajput chapter and the Khilji chapter. The Muslim king is all what the Rajput king is the opposite of. Allauddin is known for lechery, treachery, dread and all the ugliest imaginable traits that make a man a monster. On the other side Raja Ratan Singh (Shahid Kapoor) is righteous, valorous, principled, and dignified. Even the poet Amir Khusroo (who is being historically revered for being a legend) has been debased as king’s henchman and reduced to a petty joker of the royal court. It’s a comic chain of events that leads to a tragic end. We still bang our head as to what inflamed the Rajputs of India against the film and the film-maker.
Such images sell well in the modern intellectual and political discourse as they are meant to demonise an already demonised community the world over. Different story that Muslims have themselves offered the material for such caricaturisation, but film-making as a creative art has to rise above the level of propaganda if it’s to sustain on merit.
The whole fury (mostly instigated for electoral reasons) was against Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s epic poem Padmaavat that shows a Muslim king getting enamoured with a Hindu woman Rani Padmavati. That fictional bias of making a Hindu a loser and a Muslim a gainer sparked off the whole fire. The issue is not about the historical authenticity of the scenes, events and characters, the issue is the way even liberal thinking class of India is pandering to the right-wing Hindutva terror. Even after glorifying the Rajput character beyond measure, Bhansali begged hooligans of Karni Sena to calm down, to see the movie and to grant him the document of approval. But being so bitter on other count reflects a cheap mindset which certainly doesn’t behoove a film maker of Bhansali stature. By all secular standards of history and art, it’s condemnable.
The man even suspended the screening of the film and didn’t mind even changing the name to remove the focus from the queen Padmavati to the epic Padmaavat. But for the other community his disregard pours through every word, every scene of the film. Sanjay’s savage depiction of Muslims must restore his `good guy’ image in the Sena. All his sins by now must be washed out.
It’s really difficult to lose a bad reputation. Muslims are already notorious for being violently emotional against any kind of (what they think) sacrilegious. The dog has already been given a bad name and long hanged. But here the case is reverse. Who will hang the other dog?