Cut to the Chase: Even if Padmavati Was Real, Violence Isn’t Cool

Whether Padmavati lived or not, whether a Sultan of Delhi was enamoured or not, what halts a story from being told?

For several months now, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Deepika Padukone, Shahid Kapoor, Ranveer Singh and a host of well-meaning Bollywood personalities have been screaming, till they’ve been blue in the face, about how Padmavati is fictional.

Common citizens, harried by the mounting threats to people’s noses, heads and other body parts, have hurriedly jumped into the fray too, to protest what they claim isn’t history, but myth.

You could fall on either side of the bandwagon – but that isn’t the point. The point is, who decides what you can take up arms for, in a democracy? History can’t be reframed according to convenient contemporary narratives, so that armchair antagonists can sit back and purr, “Now that sounds and suits us just fine!”

Need a little more help decoding the absurdity?

Picture this –

In 1857, a man with a grandiose jet-black moustache and a hulking frame, stomped up to the British army and took them all on. This man called Mangal Pandey fought and he slashed, he torched and he hollered in the name of the motherland – and he won. The Brits were shooed out! They’d barely managed to last a 100 years in this new country. Sepoy Mutiny? Shoo! This was the First (and Last War of Independence).

And did you hear of that military-green-attired, full-moon-bespectacled Bengali gentleman who most in the garrison called ‘Netaji’? He brought back a whole Japanese and German army back to colonised India, where they made mincemeat of the invading British – and changed the rest of history as you knew it.

Yep. All of that happened. Or would have, if posses of modern (re)writers of history, fact and fiction were to have their way. Did Padmavati really exist? Or did she remain confined to Jayasi’s poesy? Did an Alauddin Khilji lay siege to her husband’s kingdom simply so he could have her? Did an enraged and emboldened rani truly throw herself into a pit of fire that swallowed her up and saved her honour?

We do not know for sure; there are yay-sayers and nay-sayers for every whataboutery in the grand Padmavati saga that refuses to end.

From ‘Hurting Public Sentiment’ to ‘Hurting Public Property’

But here’s the clincher that everyone seems to be skirting around – what if she did live, breathe, love and hate? What if a king, who wasn’t her husband, truly lusted after her, and what if he, in a fit of unashamed, unabashed longing, did dream of the woman he couldn’t have?

Why shouldn’t a creative person have the right and liberty to imagine stories, as is one’s right?

In March this year, a faction of the Karni Sena flexed its muscles and vandalised the Chittorgarh Fort to set siege to its mirrors (its mirrors!), smashing pretty much anything that reflected light because of the myth/fact that Alauddin Khilji had espied the beautiful Rani through one of the fort’s mirrors. Does “hurting public sentiment” automatically translate to making train-wrecks of historical artefacts?

Whether Padmavati lived or not, whether a Sultan of Delhi confessed to being enamoured of her or not, what stops a story from being told?

In fact, if that were the line to be taken any time a piece of writing hurt/offended/irritated, we might as well pack up our bags and go live in caverns the pre-historic women and men built in the Neanderthal Era. Oh wait, that’s a myth. Genesis came first. No, the Neanderthals never – but that’s documented history – nope, it’s all a myth. Let’s retire.