Where imagination is not free

In the ‘Padmavati’ controversy is a larger

 indictment.

Written by Shubhra Gupta | Published:November 21, 2017 12:48 am

Some years back, on a touristy swing-about to Chittorgarh, after Jaipur and Udaipur, we found ourselves climbing the steps to the fort from where Rani Padmavati was said to have committed “jauhar”. The fort lay quietly in the sunlight. The steps were worn, the edges smoothened by tramplers down the ages. And then we reached the jharokha from where we could see the point from which this queen, along with many other Rajput women, was said to have flung herself into the deep water.

Several hundred years later, on that crisp autumn day, looking down into the gently-rippling water, we could imagine the scene, and ask ourselves: What must she have felt as she climbed to her death? There was nothing to say she existed, but something about the place led us to close our eyes and conjure. This is what good stories lead us, and filmmakers are nothing but storytellers.

That power of imagination is presumably what helped Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Bollywood’s Bard of Baroque, create his multi-crore epic, starring Deepika Padukone, Shahid Kapoor and Ranveer Singh in the roles of Padmavati, Raja Ratan Sen, and Alauddin Khilji.

In the last few weeks, as the outrage surrounding Padmavati has reached a bizarre crescendo, I’ve been thinking wistfully of what it is like to imagine freely because it seems like an impossibility in today’s India. In the absence of written records, we have only our imagination to colour the landscape, and conjure up a “queen”, all decked up in her wedding finery, about to leap to her death.

Those who have been breaking the law, threatening to cut off body parts and behead those associated with the film if it releases, have not seen it. No one has, except for a couple of media persons; the rest — the sword-brandishers of the self-styled Karni Sena, the so-called descendants of Padmavati, the government functionaries turning a complicit eye to the rabble rousers, the producers who have agreed to defer the release — are just part of the depraved circus which is increasingly replacing all civilised discourse in India.

What’s worse, it could lead to stunted creativity in perpetuity. That is bound to happen if filmmakers and other people who create art, whether we like it or not, are constantly being held to ransom. It is not a cynical “marketing ploy”. How can it be if lives are at stake?

It doesn’t matter if it is a myth, or real. It doesn’t matter if a Rajput princess and a Muslim ruler do share the same frame. We the people should have the freedom to decide what we can see. The same freedom applies to the filmmakers: Deepika should be more worried of the industrial strength nath causing damage to her nose rather than some sharp object wielded by a hoodlum. We have the right to embrace or reject a work of art on our thought-out metrics: Is it good, or lousy, or is it, like so much else, a bit of both?

Given Bhansali’s propensity to go overboard, we could easily nix the movie. But those who like that sort of stuff should have the freedom to get their bottoms on the seat, with overpriced popcorn to go along.

Bhansali’s Devdas (2002) has a song-and-dance featuring Paro and Chandramukhi, played by Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit .When the film came out, there was animated chatter about whether Paro and Chandramukhi ever met. Litterateurs said they didn’t. But did that artistic license cause people to threaten damage to movie halls? No, we all vigorously swung to “Dola Re,” and for a time, it became the go-to Garba song.

In 2008, Ashutosh Gowarikar’s Jodhaa Akbar, when the UPA was in office, caused much furore. Part of it was very similar. Was Jodhaa fictional? Was she really the Mughal emperor Akbar’s wife/consort? Historians gave varied opinions; the tamasha died down, and the film came out. The only thing I remember is a song in which dervishes whirled, and a scorcher of a scene in which Aishwarya Rai, as Jodhaa, looked longingly at Hrithik Roshan, as Akbar.

I doubt whether the film would have made it to the screens today. Because someone, a victim of identity politics or rabid casteism, would have threatened to slice off Rai’s gorgeous nose. And no one in power, either at the state or the Centre, would have raised even a minatory eyebrow.

Even as I write this, the 48th edition of the International Film Festival of India ( IFFI) is opening in Goa, where two films (S Durga and Nude) have been summarily dropped. I’ve watched the pertinent, powerful S Durga, and it needs to be seen widely.

If our imaginations are bound by those who arrogate to themselves the power to tell us how to create or consume art, or perchance to dream, of what purchase is humanity?

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/sanjay-leela-bhansali-padmavati-controversy-where-imagination-is-not-free-4946856/