Padmavaat: Historical accuracy or patriarchal injustice?
Fresh from attending first-day screening of Padmavaat, I am still reeling from the conflicted feeling this film evokes in its viewers. The film feels like an extension of Bollywood director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s previous two movies. In fact, I am unsure why Ram-Leela (2013), Bajirao Mastani (2016) and Padmavaat (2018) are not considered part of some reverse chronological trilogy.
Padmavaat was released amidst threats of violence from Karni Sena, an upper caste religious organization. Much to my surprise, Karni Sena should have had nothing to be worried about from this film. In fact, the film is akin to propaganda in favour of upper caste Hindu nationalism. The movie oozes with traditionalist religious pride and dehumanization of women –both of which are instruments of South Asian patriarchal structures transcending beyond simply Hinduism.
The movie’s problematic politics is disguised with grandeur and elegance. The larger-than-life palaces, royal chandeliers, elegant clothes, and of course the gorgeous actors and actresses are only few of the things that add appeal to this movie. It is rather easy to forget one’s own indignation when a shirtless Shahid Kapoor, playing Ratan Singh, oiled and bare-chested, speaks so nobly of “Rajput principles.” These principles denote him a custodian of his wife, Rani Padmavati, allowing him to regulate her every action. The poetic dialogues Ratan Singh and Padmavati exchange as a form of romantic courtship are literally expressions of ownership by the husband over the wife.
It is perhaps even easier to be oblivious to our moral commitments when a pure and perfect vision of Deepika Padukone as Rani Padmavati is seen inspiring her court maidens to commit jauhar (an age-old Rajput practise of self-sacrifice by burning oneself) in order to protect the “honour” of their martyred husbands. The honour mentioned here is strictly speaking, ownership of these women’s bodies and sexuality by their families. Alas, these women’s bodies are shown as merely instruments to manifest the male ego and wage war. The war which Bhansali glorifies in the movie as well, whereas war is anything but the murder of hundreds of innocent people. Padmavaat, in short, is Bhansali’s three-hour long ode to how a women’s body is a battlefield for men’s pride.
Bhansali is seasoned in creating problematic female protagonists. Leela, Mastani, and Rani Padmavati are all male fantasies of beautiful, “alpha” females with brains and combat training who can also be tamed into being obedient wives and devotional lovers. Clearly, the male auteur-director in Bhansali is far from understanding the politics of female body, speech, and agency. Therefore, it is not surprising that the only way Bhansali knew how to provide agency to his female protagonist in Padmavaat is by having her commit jauhar.
The ending sequence of the movie is a good five minutes of magnificent cinematography. Bhansali makes use of bold and contrasting colour grading to resemble embers of a fire that reflect pride instead of fear in actress Deepika Padukone’s overly-exoticized eyes. As Padukone’s character leads a crowd of women dressed in red sarees, including a pregnant woman and a child bride, into their deaths, the inspiring soundtrack “Rani Sa” plays in the background. Bhansali’s conclusion to Padmavaat is a celebration of a practice that is inherently tragic and violent for most women.
Perhaps, the argument can be made that the film intended to maintain historical accuracy. The act of jauhar was prevalent during that time and in the poem from which the screenplay was adapted from. However, the filmmaker should take into account the ways historical fiction can impact society, especially in the context of South Asia where religious sentiment and hyper masculinity oscillates within historical rationalization. How does a movie such as Padmavaat distinguish itself from being perceived as fictional recreation instead of a religious re-imagination, especially when there is a visual culture of religious symbolism in the region? And what of historical accuracy when Bhansali decided to portray Alauddin Khilji as a monstrous villain eating meat off the bone and terrorizing his sultanate?
The scene where Rani Padmavati is asking Ratan Singh permission for committing jauhar in the case that Rajputs lose battle, for example, was a o publicly condemn jauhar? Perhaps, a sign of protest from the Ratan Singh, maybe even out of love instead of principle, could have changed the whole narrative. Instead, the scene exercises ethos and uses poetry to romanticize patriarchy. A doey eyed Padukone utters to Ratan Singh, “One cannot even die without your permission, dear sir.”
I am also thinking back to my own childhood when my grandparents would narrate (Islamic) religious history as stories about pious men for the purpose of morale-building. Through story-telling, these tales of Caliphs and Sultans were meant to provide lessons of how to act, behave, and censor ourselves according to a religious moral code. Thereby, it also built an identity based on a glorified religious past. This age-old technique can prove dangerous because it uses a problematic past to justify the status quo of the present.
To stress on this point, it is worth noting that the most historically accurate part of this legend should be the fact that the myth of Rani Padmini itself was created by Sufi poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi and historians have disputed the actual existence of any such queen. Yet, Karni Sena chooses to ignore that fact and still refer to the character as an actual Rajput Queen. They are clearly missing the point of fiction, let alone historical fiction. With a premise like that, how much can one argue in favour of artistic license in depicting jauhar and Rajput pride? The film is a call for invoking sentiments of orthodoxy in reactionary viewers.
At the core of this situation lies Bhansali’s position as a male director who gets excused for being a “genius artist.” Bhansali may have made this movie out of certainty that he will break-even with his costs, or perhaps he made it purely for aesthetes. But when a filmmaker has reached such a scale of mass popularity, their art work should be held up to higher moral standards. The idea that art is separate from society/reality is simply a bourgeois luxury. Directors should be wary of the social functions of their films. For next time, Bhansali and other directors like him should seriously measure their work beyond its aesthetic significance.
