Historians are not sure
whether Padmavati is a mere legend or a historical figure. That doesn’t matter either. Objective truth is not the concern of most
people. People want convenient
truths. People want truths that serve
their practical purposes. Most religious
truths belong to that category.
Padmavati is also one
such expedient truth. What is that
truth?
I am Rani Padmavati, the Queen of Chittor. People call me the Queen of Beauty. I have never understood why our men bother
about beauty at all. They are warriors
and love fighting. Bravery, physical strength and honour are the values they
really cherish and want all of us to possess.
We cherish beauty too. But we’d
prefer to keep beauty veiled behind the purdah.
If anyone other than the husband dares to raise the purdah, he will be
killed. Beauty is a private property
among us. We, the women, are our men’s
private properties.
That is how my story of Padmavati
began, a story which I wrote when the controversy about the Bhansali movie
broke out. My story was, among other things, a peep into
the Rajput perception of women. Women
are men’s possessions in that perception.
Precious properties. Their very
identity is concealed behind the veils that drape their faces. The men will fight on behalf of those
properties just as a savage tribal man would hunt heads to keep as his glorious
trophies.
At the end of that story,
Padmavati sets herself ablaze in order to “guard the Rajput honour.” The other major purpose of the Padmavati
legend (apart from teaching that women are men’s private properties) is
precisely that: the honour of the tribe is the honour of the man and it is a
woman’s duty to sacrifice herself for safeguarding it.
The legend of Padmavati, like
most legends, is created in order to reinforce certain ideals which some
powerful individuals of a community want to reinforce. Today when some individuals are fighting to
guard the honour of Padmavati, what they are actually doing is to reinforce their
version of certain tinted truths.
Whatever those truths may
be, the fact remains that they are their truths and not everybody’s
truths. In other words, Sanjay Leela
Bhansali has as much right to explore Padmavati’s psyche as Salman Rushdie had
to explore the psyche of Prophet Mohammad in Satanic Verses or Nikos Kazantzakis had to delve into Jesus’ mind
in The Last Temptation of Christ.
Moreover, who are the
Rajputs to tell the other millions of people what they should think, create and
entertain themselves with? When they
dictate terms to the artist or anyone else, like the right wing organisations in
the country have been doing in the past few years, they are behaving just like
the crusaders of the Dark Ages.
India should liberate
itself from such parochial and obsolescent mindset. The Rajputs and similar crusaders in India
are taking the country backward into more and more darkness.
From 'Man Against Myth' by Barrows Dunham |
all such issues are raised nowadays to polarize the society for the bigger gain in 2019 elections but as you have said these things taking country backward again
ReplyDeletePower games always create their own truths. We are passing through a dangerous phase as there are too many power games all of which are clandestinely supported by the central power for its own nefarious motives.
DeleteVery true Sir. The current regime does not believe in democracy... What they are aiming to do behind tge scenes is to convert India into a theocracy...
ReplyDeleteAnd they seem to be succeeding. That's what's scary.
DeleteCant share my thoughts and views in this issue as i dont have any knowledge about this.
ReplyDeleteBut i must say...i liked your writing as always.
Thank you.
Delete