Padmavati: A hard look at looking left

Padmavati may not have been real but there is no dearth of recorded history about jauhar among Rajput queens and princesses

Two recent incidents encapsulate the fraught — and sometimes absurd — nature of political discourse in India today. One is the long-running protest against Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s upcoming film, Padmavati, by some groups in Rajasthan who claim that the film defiles the memory of the eponymous queen.

The other is comments made by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar this week in which he called homosexuality a “tendency” that could be reversed. Both incidents in themselves are not spectacular but the disparity in the reaction to them in the mainstream media is.

Sri Sri’s comments were criticised in the media on a number of grounds — homosexuality is innate, not an acquired trait; the rights of LGBT persons deserve protection; and loose statements such as his vitiate the atmosphere  — that can be summarised as attempting to undo the “emotional violence” that he caused to the LGBT community.

Indeed, “emotional violence” is a running theme through the politics of the global left today. Its most potent manifestation is the American campus where reports routinely emerge on how student bodies, with help from sympathetic professors, decide what is verboten and then enforce it on the pain of ostracisation or, worse, violence.

These include, say, professors encouraging students to use gender-neutral pronouns in deference to the transgender, or speaker engagements getting cancelled if the speaker wishes to air ideas that could cause discomfort to a minority of any stripe — racial, sexual, religious, and so on.

In Sri Sri’s case, the charge of bigotry — a word thrown around so casually these days, it has lost all meaning — was particularly unfortunate because he has been a vocal supporter of LGBT rights. Whether homosexuality is a tendency or not is open to debate; the question has long exercised scientists but has failed to yield a definitive answer. Are we then to understand that we will only permit supporters to a cause if those supporters pass every criterion of agreement and test of acquiescence that we subject them to?

This stand may still have been justifiable if it were applied consistently. Sadly, it is not, beholden as it is to myriad permutations of intersectionality and victimhood, a state of affairs that can sometimes lead to great internal contradictions.

Padmavati. Courtesy: Deepika Padukone/Twitter

After violence was reported on the sets of Padmavati earlier this year, Bhansali came out in defence of his film, reiterating that he was not aiming to romanticise the fatal infatuation that Alauddin Khilji harboured for the queen. More recently, he has confirmed that there is no dream sequence between the two characters in the film.

Many in the media have rightly spoken up against the violence, and have written passionate commentaries on the perilous state of freedom of expression in India. The argument goes something like this: can an ostensibly mature democracy like India allow a bunch of hooligans to hold a film’s screening to ransom?

When framed thus, the argument possesses unyielding merit. But if subjected to another rubric, namely emotional violence, it becomes less attractive. Here I refer not necessarily to the hurt sentiments of the Rajput community, which many in the left may brand the gaseous emissions of majoritarianism, but to the blood-curdling ritual that Padmavati underwent to protect her honour from Khilji.

We are told, furthermore, that there may not even have been a real Padmavati — an argument I find baffling from a cohort whose own protests can stem from perceived slights and imagined grievances. Perhaps Padmavati was not real but there is no dearth of recorded history about jauhar among Rajput queens and princesses.

If we were to look at events through the lens of ideology, as the left advises we do, then should not the memory of Padmavati be preserved as a cautionary tale of what women have been historically subjected to? When the left is too keen on using politically correct language and vetoing “wrong” ideas, shouldn’t it be at the forefront of the protests against the film, demanding to know how it depicts Khilji’s murderous lust and Padmavati’s self-immolation?

I am not justifying the violence done on the sets of the film, nor am I denying the importance of freedom of expression to artistic creativity. I am questioning, rather, the assumptions that drive the politics of the left. I fear these contradictions stem from the left’s concretisation of identity politics, which does not permit looking at events for what they are but privileges them for what they can signal.

If the left wishes to uphold true freedom of expression, it must encourage all voices and arguments that contribute to a civil, non-violent discourse. Cherry-picking causes to support is unlikely to win it much support.
 

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