by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Economy, Large Enterprise, News, Politics
By Archana Sharma,
Jaipur : The ban on the film “Padmavat” in Rajasthan, it seems, is turning out to be a boon for tourism in the state. The Mewar region of the state — home to the fabled queen Padmini, the subject of the movie — has been witness to a phenomenal rise in tourist numbers in December 2017.
A large number of tourists from across India have been flocking to the significant cities of the region, which include Udaipur and Chittorgarh, last month and in the first week of January, ever since the controversey erupted over Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s period drama “Padmavati”. The film has finally been cleared after being re-titled “Padmavat”, among other changes.
The numbers have almost doubled in Padmini’s “home town” of Chittorgarh — to 81,009 in December 2017 from 40,733 in the same month the previous year, the town’s assistant tourist officer, Sharad Vyas, said. Chttorgarh Fort is where Padmini is said to have performed “jauhar” (self-immolation) after her husband’s defeat at the hands of Alauddin Khilji, ruler of the Delhi Sultanate.
“Tourists are curious to know about the place Queen Padmini belonged to. The town has gained national fame all of a sudden with so much happening over the film ‘Padmavat’,” Vyas told IANS.
The number of tourists also witnessed a sudden rise from Dec 25 (Christmas) to the first week of January.
“People have become more aware about history. They come and ask about stories related to Padmini, (her husband) Rawal Ratan Singh and Alauddin Khilji. Surprisingly, they come prepared with historical facts and want to see the places where history was made,” Sunil Sen, a registered government guide in Chhitorgarh, told IANS.
Most of the tourists coming to Chhittorgarh want to see the mirror where, according to legend, the queen’s face was shown to Alauddin Khilji, Sen said, adding that they are also keen to see the place where queen performed jauhar with around 16,000 women after her husband’s defeat.
Of the big rush seen on the last Sunday of 2017 (December 31), he said that the tickets for the fort were exhausted and in spite of long queues of tourists, the gates had to be closed early.
“Never ever has Chhittorgarh seen such a huge number of tourists. Hence it won’t be wrong to say that the film ‘Padmavat’ has taken the name of the town to the national level,” he added.
Even the demand for guides has risen here as people want to hear stories about the legendary queen, he said.
Sudhir Gurnani, owner of Hotel Mira in Chittorgarh, said tourists coming to the town have also been to Udaipur to know more about its ruler Maharana Pratap “as well as about the culture of Mewar”.
“Tourists coming to this lake city have been asking questions about Chhitorgarh. They want to know more about Queen Padmini and her cultural background. Many of those coming here return via Chittorgarh,” Arun Kumar Remtia, a guide from Udaipur, told IANS.
Shurti, the sales manager at the upscale Lake Pichola Hotel, also confirmed that the tourist numbers have gone up this season in Udaipur. “Earlier, we used to see a big number of foreign travellers in and around the city; however, this season, the trend has changed. There is a big number of domestic tourists in Udaipur,” Shruti told IANS.
The rising figures signify that there has been curiosity, inquisitiveness and eagerness to know more about Padmini and her legend.
(Archana Sharma can be contacted at archana.s@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Saeed Naqvi,
“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, including Khwaja Ashraf Jehangir Semnani, the saint Malik Mohammad Jaisi, the author of “Padmavat”, was devoted to. Jaisi would faint at the controversy surrounding his masterpiece.
From nearby Salon, Naeem Ata Shah in his flowing orange robes and headgear, often visited Mustafabad. Jaisi, who preceded Tulsidas, in the list of great poets of Awadhi, 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.
To a most unexpected source I owed my acquaintance with 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 victory at Haldighati.
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 a 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 — polarise the poll.
At a time when logic has been crowded out by a rush of non sequitur, some pundits have attempted common sense. It will not work.
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 past historical injustices.
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 Partition and which invites instant, angry, passionate response at the street level.
In his very first speech in Parliament after the 2014 elections, this was precisely the nerve 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.
Let us, meanwhile, revert to Jaisi’s purpose in Padmavati. The sentiment is common in Western poetry too. The “desire of the moth for the star, of the night for the morrow. The devotion to something afar from the sphere of our sorrow.”
Shelley’s lines are an ultra simplified version of the interplay between love and beauty which Jaisi is delineating. Padmini and Khalji are secular symbols of Jaisi’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 Jaisi.
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.
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 saeednaqvi@hotmail.com. The views are personal.)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Jaipur/New Delhi : The body of a man was found hanging at Jaipur’s Nahargarh Fort on Friday with messages denouncing “Padmavati” scribbled on rocks nearby even as passions for and against the controversial film continued to rage.
While National Award winning actor Prosenjit Chatterjee and actress Rani Mukerji voiced distress over the violent rant against the film’s producer-director and actors, some people in New Delhi burnt filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s effigy outside a metro station.
However, there was some much-needed relief for Bhansali and Viacom18 Motion Pictures.
The Delhi High Court dismissed a PIL seeking an expert committee of historians and social activists to examine “Padmavati” to ensure there were no “distortions”, saying such “hopeless and misconceived” pleas were “encouraging” those agitating against the film.
Also, West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee became the first Chief Minister to say she was ready to welcome the film and its crew — at a time when Chief Ministers of at least four other states have opposed the movie’s release.
Hindu groups backed by the BJP are up in arms against the movie over conjectures that it distorts history about Rajput queen Padmavati and Rajput culture.
Police in Jaipur said they were finding out whether the 40-year-old man’s death — his body was found on the outer walls of the Nahargarh Fort — had anything to do with the “Padmavati” row.
The message, scrawled on rocks nearby, read, “Hum putle nahin jalate… latkate hain” (We don’t burn effigies, we hang them).
“‘Padmavati’ ka virodh karne walon… Hum main hai dum.” (Those protesting against ‘Padmavati’ … We have guts)
Deputy Commissioner of Police Satyendra Singh told IANS that the dead man had been identified as Chetan Saini, a resident of Jaipur’s Shastri Nagar who ran a jewellery and handicrafts business.
Singh said it was not clear if it was murder or suicide and that it would be too early to relate the messages on the rocks to “Padmavati”.
The Rajput Karni Sena, which is most vocal against the movie, denied any involvement in the case.
“We express complete disapproval of it and deny our involvement in any manner,” Vivek Singh Shekhawat, the Rajasthan General Secretary of the group said.
The release of the Hindi film, earlier scheduled for December 1, has been deferred.
Bhansali continued to get the support of the film fraternity.
Prosenjit Chatterjee said “directors will stop doing historical films the way it has been handled”. Rani Mukerji said she stood by Bhansali: “He knows that I back him, love him. He is my darling and Sanjay truly believes how much I love him and he knows how I stand by him.”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amit Kapoor,
It’s that time of the year again when our sentiments are hurt, and it is acceptable to temporarily suspend liberal democracy because of it. The latest victim of the now-ubiquitous tyranny of hurt sentiments has been Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s “Padmavati”, which has been accused of twisting historical “facts”. After a series of unfortunate events over the last week pertaining to the movie, which involved a couple of death threats, its makers have been left with no option but to “voluntarily defer” the release date.
Moreover, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab have been happy to oblige the groups issuing death threats and inspiring violence by banning the film from their states. Likewise, Uttar Pradesh has urged a delay in the release of the movie fearing law and order problems. This begs the question whether the onus of law and order lies with the government or the creative community? Should filmmakers limit their freedom of expression and contemplate the law and order consequences of their work?
The situation seems even more ludicrous and bizarre when it is realised that the protagonist of the movie around which the controversy is centred is, in fact, a fictional character based on a half-fantastical epic poem of the 16th century by a Sufi poet. Rani Padmavati makes her first appearance in history in poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s “Padmavat”, which narrates a tale of Alauddin Khilji’s siege of Chittor that had happened in the 14th century.
In the poem, Khilji, upon hearing of Padmavati’s beauty, marches towards Chittor to demand her hand in marriage and manages to defeat her husband. But, before he could reach her, Padmavati commits jauhar (self-immolation).
Now, Khilji defeating Rana Ratan Singh of Chittor in 1303 is a historical fact but there is no evidence of the existence of any one by the name of Padmavati back then. There is also no historical evidence that the desire for a woman played any role in Khilji’s attack on Chittor.
This figment of a poet’s imagination was told and retold over centuries, slowly becoming a symbol of Rajput glory and defiance in the face of external threats. Initial translations of the poem showed Khilji courting Padmavati with the intent of marrying her. However, during the colonial period, in order to inspire patriotism, the translations gradually evolved into that of a heroic queen choosing death over a lusty Muslim invader to save her honour.
It is this version of the story that has become an indisputable fact of history in the minds of the ones who are hurt by Bhansali’s depiction of Padmavati.
It is becoming worrisome that the tolerance levels of the country have fallen so low that a group merely needs to make a violet display of disaffection for freedom of expression to be curtailed. The demands of the disaffected group are first met before any reasonability behind them is understood.
The Indian constitution also imposes some restrictions on freedom of speech but those can be imposed only under certain circumstances and “hurt sentiments” is certainly not one of them. It needs to be understood and ensured that curtailment of freedom of expression can only be done on objective grounds and not based on sentiment. The courts have repeatedly made that clear.
When the Uttar Pradesh government banned Periyar’s “Ramayana – A True Reading” in 1976 because it was an alternate narrative of the epic and hurt Hindu sentiments, the Supreme Court quashed the ban and reprimanded the government for catering to supporters of the ban instead of being objective and supporting a measured criticism of faith. The government’s acting out in response to the “Padmavati” row makes the same error of pandering to subjective demands.
Apart from repeatedly violating fundamental rights, the low tolerance level of Indians is also problematic from a developmental perspective. A society which is tolerant towards a diverse set of ideas becomes a hotbed of economic growth and innovation. The growth story of United States is the best evidence in modern times of how acceptance of different ideas and an environment that is conducive to questioning can spark a developmental revolution. If India sacrifices creative freedom at the altar of sentiments and emotions connected with fictional entities, innovation will easily take a back seat and growth will become ever-elusive.
This trend of growing intolerance can, therefore, prove to be dangerous at many levels. The unreasonable controversy around “Padmavati” and the litany of others preceding it need to condemned and, most importantly, not receive government support. Instead, governments need to be intolerant of intolerance. In case people displaying emotional connect with fictional characters are continued to be gratified, we might as well create a generation of people that are no different than children waiting for gifts from Santa on Christmas morning.
(Amit Kapoor is chair, Institute for Competitiveness, India. He can be contacted at amit.kapoor@competitiveness.in. Chirag Yadav, senior researcher, Institute for Competitiveness, India has contributed to the article)
—IANS