‘Padmavati’ Controversy: Fair Is Foul and Foul Is Fair

By today’s yardstick, Mughal-e-Azam was the original, unadulterated case of ‘Love Jihad’, writes Saeed Naqvi.

Ranveer Singh is playing the role of Alauddin Khilji while Deepika Padukone is essaying the role of Rani Padmavati. 

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

Padmavati, in a sense, is a neighbourhood story. My village, Mustafabad, happens to be in Rae Bareli, which embraces numerous Chishtiya Sufi shrines or places where the saints spent some time. One of the saints was Khwaja Ashraf Jehangir Semnani, whom Malik Mohammad Jayasi, the author of Padmavat, was devoted to.

Jayasi would faint at the controversy surrounding his masterpiece.

Naeem Ata Shah, in his flowing orange robes and headgear, often visited Mustafabad. Jayasi, who preceded Tulsidas, in the list of the great poets of Awadh, was an endless source of quotations. So was Tulsidas, whose correspondence with emperor Akbar's premier courtier, Abdul Rahim Khan-e-Khana, on meter and structure of poetry, one heard about later and which is something one would have expected more scholarship on.

Protesters Vying for Revenge With a Retrospective Effect

To a most unexpected source I owed my acquaintance to the fact that Rahim, known for his dohas, wrote devotional poetry on Lord Rama in Sanskrit. The source happened to be Vishnu Kant Shastri, former Vice Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University. It always puzzled me how a man of such catholic interests – knew Jaisi as well as Akbar Allahabadi backwards – had actually emerged from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) stable.

If Jaisi’s flight of fancy can create so much mayhem, I shudder to contemplate the fate of the 1960 classic, Mughal-e-Azam, in a similar circumstance. By today’s yardstick, that was the original, unadulterated case of ‘Love Jihad’. In fact, the settled conventional wisdom in the 1960s conceded Akbar’s victory at Haldighati.

Dilip Kumar with Madhubala in Mughal-e-Azam. By today’s yardstick, it was the original, unadulterated case of ‘Love Jihad’.(Photo Courtesy: Youtube Screenshot)

The national mood today has reversed the outcome of that battle in favour of Maharana Pratap. There have been suggestions that New Delhi's Akbar Road be renamed "Maharana Pratap Road".

In other words, revenge with retrospective effect is in order. To give this trend a more contemporary twist, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has demanded that an FIR be lodged against Mulayam Singh Yadav for ordering the police to fire on 'kar sewaks' in 1990.

In that framework, it can be argued that producer K Asif glorified Akbar's ‘Love Jihad’. For that unforgivable guilt, copies of the film must be consigned to the flames by way of historical revenge. Dilip Kumar, who played Prince Salim, is unwell; otherwise, he could have been brought into focus of public ire with great effectiveness on the eve of key elections with a singular purpose – polarising the polls.

  Protests against ‘Padmavati’ in Varanasi.(Photo Courtesy: Twitter)  

Secular Examples Hold Little Weight When It Comes to Communal Violence

At a time when logic has been crowded out by a rush of non sequitur, some pundits have attempted common sense. However, it doesn’t seen to be working.

The new cultural brigade destroyed the grave of Wali Dakhni who showered adoration on this land with such verses as:

"Koocha e yaar ain Kashi hai
Jogiya dil wahaan ka baasi hain."

(The lane where my beloved lives is like holy Varanasi;
The yogi of my heart has made it his dwelling place.)

The sentiments the poet represents did not deter the vandals seething with anger against historical injustices of the past.

Never will the bandish "Munmohan Braj ke rasiya" in ‘Raag Paraj’, steeped in Krishna lore, be sung better than by Ustad Faiyyaz Khan. They tried to desecrate his grave in Vadodara, regardless.

Rasoolan Bai's plaintive appeals to Rama, in so many of her songs, did not protect her house from being gutted during the 1969 Gujarat riots. It did not matter that the Congress was in power then.

What is being tapped into is something which gained a lease of life after the partition and which invites instant, angry, passionate response at the street level.

In his very first speech at the Parliament after the 2014 elections, this was precisely the nerve PM Narendra Modi touched: "The nation has to recover from the subjugation of 1,200 years".

This is what differentiates the present government from previous regimes. Congressmen may have privately believed in “1,200 years of subjugation,” but they considered it tactically proper to speak only of the British as foreigners.

The Theme of Unrequited, Unattainable Love

Let us, meanwhile, revert to Jayasi's purpose in Padmavati. The sentiment is common in Western poetry too.

Desire of the moth for the star, of the night for the morrow. The devotion to something afar from the sphere of our sorrow.

PB Shelley

Shelley's lines are an ultra simplified version of the interplay between love and beauty which Jayasi is delineating.

Padmini and Khilji are secular symbols of Jayasi’s elaboration of the theme on an epic scale.

Keat's "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know" can also be tossed in to simplify communicating Jayasi.

Maulana Hasrat Mohani communicates the mood thus:

"Maslak I Ishq hai parastish e husn
Hum naheen jaante azaab-o-sawab."

(Love's purpose is adoration of beauty.
Gains and losses I do not measure.)

Should the ever-expanding tribe of the new cultural warriors run out of ideas, here are some on offer, gratis. They should denigrate with retrospective effect those Muslims who dared to take liberties with Hindu Gods. Remember, how India's greatest modern painter, Maqbool Fida Husain, was exiled for his supreme guilt: excessive adoration of goddesses. His "adoration" was considered lewd by the protectors of culture and faith.

A visitor looks at a painting by MF Husain during an exhibition in Mumbai. (Photo: Reuters)

Well, in like fashion, Maulana Hasrat Mohani deserves to be shamed retrospectively. He wrote a great deal about Krishna in Urdu, but in his Bhasha or Braj verses he takes liberties:

"Mose ched karat Nandlal"

(Krishna teases me all the time)

"hum hoon jo dei liptai ke hasrat
Saari yeh chalbal nikaal"

(One day I shall embrace him tight and squeeze out all his mischief)

"Squeeze out", in a tight embrace, has erotic connotations which should be unacceptable to the new cultural brigade.

(A leading commentator on diplomatic and political affairs, Saeed Naqvi can be reached on [e-mail]. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own.The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

(This article has been published in an arrangement with IANS.)