{"id":33737,"date":"2018-10-30T14:11:55","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T08:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=33737"},"modified":"2018-10-30T14:11:55","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T08:41:55","slug":"whos-hiding-behind-padmavati","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/whos-hiding-behind-padmavati\/","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s hiding behind\u00a0Padmavati?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/opinion\/columns\/whos-hiding-behind-padmavati-controversy-rajput-karni-sena-alauddin-khilji-deepika-padukone-scene-4953386\/\"><strong>Who\u2019s hiding behind\u00a0Padmavati?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Context<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The violent assertion of Hindu masculinity is masked as concern for a woman<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sati being Evangelised<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>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 \u201crashtramata Padmavati\u201d, the mother of the nation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Repressing Freedom of Women <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In India today, the clan and the community are more powerful than the individual<\/p>\n<p><strong>Current Events<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>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<\/li>\n<li>In Kerala, again, Shruti Meledath was confined to a \u201creconversion centre\u201d that coerces Hindu women who have relationships with men of other religions to \u201creturn\u201d to the fold<\/li>\n<li>Sanal Kumar Sasidharan\u2019s 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.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Politics:<\/strong> The political imagination that has tarred all inter-faith love as \u201clove jihad\u201d is doubling down on all forms of expression and imagination. It is especially troubled by women\u2019s sexual choices.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The Irony<\/strong><strong>: <\/strong><strong>Patriarchal Deception<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The men fighting for Padmavati and threatening the actress with bodily harm. But that is the very nature of patriarchal deception<\/li>\n<li>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<\/li>\n<li>It pretends to place her on a pedestal and worship her, when it is building a wall, or maybe a pyre, around her<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Questions Galore: The Real Issue<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>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?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What needs to be done?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>These flesh-and-blood women don\u2019t need the protection of Kshatriyas.<\/li>\n<li>They need the right to health, equality and justice, which a feudal order has always denied them \u2014 and which a democratically-elected government owes them<\/li>\n<li>They need the freedom to make their own sexual choices.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who\u2019s hiding behind\u00a0Padmavati? 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&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/whos-hiding-behind-padmavati\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Who\u2019s hiding behind\u00a0Padmavati?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704904065},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}