On an unusually balmy day in late March, I visited Rajasthan’s famed Chittorgarh fort. I was very touristy about the whole thing: lathering myself in sunblock, clicking a million photos of the various gates, palaces and temples inside, tsk-tsking at rubbish heaps and general litter.
As twilight approached, I was ready to call it a day, having decided that the most enjoyable bit had been mentally copyediting the museum’s plaques.
That’s when snippets of a conversation made its way through the cool evening air to my ears. I looked around and spotted the source: a middle-aged tourist guide expounding on the history of the place to a large family. We were in Rani Padmini’s gardens – ruthlessly maintained spots of greenery and flowers – and the guide was narrating an incident from folklore.
He spoke of the siege of 1303, where the Sultan of Delhi Alauddin Khilji rallied his forces against Mewar, as Chittor was known then. In this version of the story, the evil Muslim ruler attacked Mewar to secure for himself Rana Ratan Singh’s wife, Rani Padmini, whose beauty was the stuff of legend. He kidnapped the Rana, whereupon the queen sent warriors disguised as herself and her attendants to the Sultan’s camp who managed to rescue the Rana. The Sultan gave chase, a battle ensued, the Rana was killed and Mewar fell. Rani Padmini, instead of surrendering, gathered all the other queens and committed jauhar or self-immolation.
This is Padmavati, the subject of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s upcoming film.
History: HTTP 404
Patidar leader Hardik Patel recently took a break from agitating for reservation to agitate for something else, instead: historical accuracy in the film. He told a newspaper that his party PNS will create disruptions in shooting and protest against its release if the legacy of Rani Padmini, a regional icon, is damaged.
This is a good time to mention that though legends and myths about the figure abound in the state and popular imagination, many scholars doubt the actual person ever existed. Hazrat Amir Khusrau’s Khaza’inul Futuh, the only extant contemporary account offers no mention of her. She first crops up, along with her talking parrot, in Malik Muhamad Jayasi’s 1540 CE epic poem, Padmavat; from here, the legend takes a life of its own, settling in cultural memory, suffering embellishments and changes, being turned into novels, operas – and now a film.
Her-story: In Defence of Historical Inaccuracy
At the risk of being lynched by everyone who spent good money on Mohenjo Daro, I would like Sanjay Leela Bhansali to run historical accuracy over with the steamroller of cinematic, opulent imagination. He has his physical and temporal location all laid out for him – in the form of 14th century Mewar, an impossibly sprawling fort, the luxurious life of royalty, a world scorched white by the midday sun.
But the story, alas. For his story, he has nothing but a bare-bones patriarchal fantasy of ideal femininity: unbelievable beauty, unquestioning fidelity, all culminating in the ultimate sacrifice. This is where the film can truly shine. Give us female subjectivity in all its glorious, gory complexity, Mr Bhansali. Don’t make the central protagonist of your story an empty vessel for an emptier historical legacy. Don’t make her a perfect portrait or a prize to be fought over. Let her breathe, dream, doubt, fall, question. Give us a female character that goes down in the annals of film history as a feat of imaginative sympathy, pure creation.
You have a blank canvas, Mr Bhansali – for history is silent, and legend inadequate. The 180-crore question is – what you will do with it?
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)