Who’s hiding behind Padmavati?

Who’s hiding behind Padmavati?

Context

The violent assertion of Hindu masculinity is masked as concern for a woman

Sati being Evangelised

• All disputes about history and myth are about the present. Nearly two centuries after sati was abolished, the myth of a woman who embraced death to protect medieval honour is being evangelised by an upper-caste establishment. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister has hailed her as “rashtramata Padmavati”, the mother of the nation.

Repressing Freedom of Women

In India today, the clan and the community are more powerful than the individual

Current Events

• We have seen the marriage of a 25-year-old annulled by a court because she was once Akhila and now Hadiya, who chose to marry a Muslim
• In Kerala, again, Shruti Meledath was confined to a “reconversion centre” that coerces Hindu women who have relationships with men of other religions to “return” to the fold
• Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s film, S Durga, was first refused a CBFC certificate and dropped from the IFFI, without explanation. The ministry of information and broadcasting went to court to stop its screening. The film follows the journey of a Muslim man, Kabeer, and his Hindu girlfriend, Durga, on a road trip through misogynistic India.
• Politics: The political imagination that has tarred all inter-faith love as “love jihad” is doubling down on all forms of expression and imagination. It is especially troubled by women’s sexual choices.

The Irony: Patriarchal Deception

• The men fighting for Padmavati and threatening the actress with bodily harm. But that is the very nature of patriarchal deception
• It pretends to protect women when its agenda is to control and subjugate her, to decide who she can have a relationship with and whether she can board a bus alone to go to college
• It pretends to place her on a pedestal and worship her, when it is building a wall, or maybe a pyre, around her

Questions Galore: The Real Issue

• In a country with a shocking record on gender equity, who is worried about the real-life Padmavatis? What of the Padmini struggling to be born in Rajasthan, a state with an appalling sex ratio? What of the girl who has managed to enter college, despite all the odds stacked against her?

What needs to be done?

• These flesh-and-blood women don’t need the protection of Kshatriyas.
• They need the right to health, equality and justice, which a feudal order has always denied them — and which a democratically-elected government owes them
• They need the freedom to make their own sexual choices.

Conclusion

For these young women of India, Rani Padmavati is best left behind as a myth, mothballed and made obsolete. They have many more tales of courage to write