Purushottam Agrawal - Absurdity of epic proportions: Are people aware of the content in Jayasi's Padmavat? / Mukul Kesavan - Rajputs redux: Padmini's long afterlife
Malik Muhammad Jayasi sure composed his
magnum opus Padmavat, glorifying a Rajput legend of valour, and casting one of
the most powerful, competent Muslim kings as the villain of his narrative. Why
is there an issue with Padmavati despite Sanjay Leela Bhansali reiterating that
his movie is based on Jayasi's work?
Malik Muhammad Jayasi belonged to the
Chishtia order of Sufis. His miracle-legends have been part of popular memory.
The most stunning miracle he performed -- the Padmawat -- has been around
physically for five centuries. Jayasi composed his magnum opus in 1540 in
Awadhi, its manuscripts were mostly found written in the Persian script. Taking
the legend of Padmini from the oral traditions of Rajputana, Jayasi created a
fascinating texture of legend, history and mythology (Hindu as well as
Islamic), drawing liberally from his vast knowledge and life experiences. Padmawat
was apparently an instant hit in the literary circles of north India, and was
also translated into Bengali in the sixteenth century itself. Thus, to Jayasi
goes the credit of taking the Padmawati legend to Bengal; wherefrom a number of
novels, plays and poems glorifying the Rajputs were to emanate in the
nineteenth century.
Ever since Ramchandra Shukla, the most influential historian of Hindi
literature, published his edition of Padmawat (1924), its excerpts have
inevitably been included in Hindi syllabuses, from schools to post-graduate
programmes. Shukla situated the text in a historical context in which after
initial conflicts, Hindus and Muslims were coming to terms with each other:
"A century ago, Kabir had already castigated bigotry of every kind. One is
not sure of the pundits and mullas, but ordinary people had recognised the
unity of Ram and Rahim...only those sadhus and fakirs could hope to win popular
admiration who seemed beyond discriminating on religious lines... For Hindus
and Muslims alike, it was time to open up to each other. People were tending
towards sharing rather than distancing. Muslims were willing to listen to the
Ram story of the Hindus and Hindus were ready to hear the Dastan of Hamza...
and sometimes both tried to explore pathways to God together."
To Shukla, Padmawat
was a luminous signpost of this shared search of the pathway to God. He wrote
about Padmawat with as great a passion and critical acumen as he did about his
most favourite poet - Tulsidas. Taking a cue from the "last stanzas"
of the epic, which supposedly "hold the key" to Sufi content
"hidden" in the text, he thought it was an allegory of Sufi spiritual
practice. But, Mata Prasad Gupta, the great text-critic and scholar of the
early modern vernacular literature of north India, in his edition of Padmawat
(1963), based on a comparative study of sixteen manuscripts of different
periods, comes to the convincing conclusion that the so-called 'key stanzas'
were "added to the text much later." He concludes that far from an
allegory of any kind, Jayasi was, in fact, composing a richly layered poem of
human desire and love.
Jayasi was a practising
Sufi, but he did not compose Padmawat to propagate or preach Sufism or any
other edition of Islam. He wrote it to celebrate human love, luxuriating in all
its aspects - desire, wandering, coupling (described in uninhibited, moving
erotica), jealousy, separation, struggle, suffering and sacrifice. If at all he
wished to preach anything, it was human, carnal love, which in its deep reaches
becomes sublime and transforms the mortal human into the immortal and divine
('manush prem bhayau baikunthi'). At the end of his epic, he is confident that
'anybody listening to this poem, written in blood and tears, is bound to
feel-and sing-the pain of love him/herself'. He writes of the inevitability of
death and identifies with the universal human desire to leave behind memories:
"Who in this world does not long for abiding fame? / I hope the readers of
this story also remember my name."
His hope did bear
fruit. Even if he is not as popular among the masses as Kabir, Tulsi, Mira or
Surdas, his Padmawat fired the imagination of scholars of both literature and
history. Apart from Shukla and Gupta mentioned here earlier, the two most
important works are: a fascinating Bhashya (a scholarly commentary) on Padmawat
by Indologist Vasudeva Sharan Agrawal and a thought-provoking monograph by
eminent poet, critic and Lohia acolyte Vijay Dev Narain Sahi.
It is important to internalise
all this to see the current controversy in perspective. Please note that Jayasi
glorified a Rajput legend of valour, and in the process cast one of the most
powerful and competent Muslim kings as the anti-hero of his narrative. But, he
was not penalised by his Muslim peers or benefactors. He presented a brahmin
Raghava Chetan as the real villain of the piece, and brahmin sentiments were
not hurt. He described with abandon the beauty of Padmini and her love-making
with Ratansen, he did not hesitate to describe the jealous fights between
Padmawati and Nagmati (Ratansen's first wife) and Rajput modesty was not
outraged.
As is expected of a
great poet, Jayasi put love and life in the ultimate existential perspective of
transience in the face of impending death. In a poignant poetic move, at the
end of his saga, Jayasi makes victorious Alauddin reflect not only on his
pyrrhic victory (duly noted in the ironic manner he talks of how 'Chittor was
taken over by Islam') but also on the nature of insatiable desire. He picks up
Ratansen's ashes from his pyre (also the pyre of his two wives) lamenting: 'I
actually wanted to avoid this' and continues, 'Desire is insatiable, permanent
/ but this world is illusory and transient / Insatiable desire man continues to
have/ Till life is over and he reaches his grave.'
Contrast this
poignancy with the absurd theatre playing out around a film that in all
likelihood will only reiterate smug, self-satisfied stereotypes of Rajput
'valour'. The 'warriors' are announcing rewards for chopping off a woman's nose
ostensibly in defence of the honour of another. It's not really about the
honour of a woman, but an unmitigated male chauvinist fantasy that denies the
woman any individuality, a chauvinism that finds expression in a woman
self-immolating or in widow-burning. The glorification of this medieval fantasy
continues unfortunately, in subtle and not so subtle ways. Bhansali's film is
going to contribute to this glorification. This is the sub-text of claims that
the film actually upholds Rajput 'honour'.
Personally speaking, I
just detest Bhansali's obsession with vulgar opulence and cannot forgive him
for massacring the beautiful self-destructive tragedy of Devdas. But
criticising someone for lack of subtlety or genuine understanding of a subject
is one thing and issuing death threats is quite another. It is no surprise that
many BJP leaders are implicitly or explicitly endorsing such threats. Of late,
the Congress chief minister of Punjab has also endorsed the 'right to nurture
hurt sentiment'. The violence of 'hurt sentiments' persists despite the 'No
Objection' certificates issued by journalists Ved
Pratap Vaidik, Arnab Goswami and Rajat Sharma, none of whom can be
'accused' of being left-liberal or 'sickular'.
It's true that
'freedom of expression' is not limitless, but the limits are set by law, not by
armed mobs invoking hurt sentiment. Also, irrespective of the historicity or
otherwise of the persona of Padmawati, even an artist as uninspiring as
Bhansali has a right to poetic licence. Given the present state of historical
knowledge, the character of Padmawati can only be described as legend, and
legends happen to be more deeply entrenched in the cultural memory of a people.
This begs the
question: what makes your memory or sentiments so brittle? Even if someone has
a different take on a shared memory, why should it bother you if you are so
attached to it? Asking this question will take the wind out of the politics of
hurt sentiment, and put the matter in the realm of rational enquiry which, of
course, is anathema to all warriors of hurt sentiments.
Finally, the absence
of rational argument doesn't by any means indicate the absence of calculation.
There is nothing 'spontaneous' about organised, aggressive display of hurt
sentiment of any kind. It is always politically motivated, the gist of which
comes out clearly if the right questions are asked. So, ask why there is no
outrage against the boss of the production house. Ask if it's mere coincidence
that just before the Gujarat elections, the electronic media is obsessing about
this 'burning' issue while ignoring seemingly 'mundane' issues like the Rafale
deal, the plight of farmers and the bloodshed on the jobs front.
Among all bhakta and
sufi poets, Jayasi was the most insistent on his poetic persona. He was also
painfully conscious of his 'ugly' appearance and bodily deformities, and
confronted them with confidence in the power of his poetry: "Muhammad,
poet of love, ugly and frail, causes laughs and jeers / but hearing his verses,
nobody can hold back tears." The poet was conscious
of his bodily deformities and could use his poetry as an antidote. Are we
willing to face the deformities of our souls, our minds? Are we blessed with an
antidote, or just condemned to inch towards a fractured social psyche, a
violent society and a dysfunctional state?
Mukul Kesavan - Rajputs redux: Padmini's long afterlife
The rearguard action that Rajputs have steadfastly fought to find honour in medieval defeat continues with the battle of Bhansali. Once upon a time the effort to salvage glory from the wreckage of history consisted of bardic narratives and modern hagiographies that talked up episodes of individual valour, embedded though they were in collective failure.
Indian cricket fans of
a certain age will sympathize with this strategy. There was a time when the
Indian cricket team won very little: it managed a few honourable draws and lost
most of the Tests it played. Being a fan meant lingering over great individual
performances in a losing cause. Pataudi, hobbled but heroic, limping to two
brave fifties in Australia; Gavaskar scoring centuries in both innings of a
Test against Pakistan on a tour that we lost 2-0; Azharuddin's blazing hundred
in England in reply to Graham Gooch's match-winning triple century; these
performances gave us something to remember. We found consolation where we
could: we totted up individual averages, counted Gavaskar's centuries and
proved to our satisfaction that Kapil Dev was a better all-rounder than Ian
Botham, Richard Hadlee and Imran Khan. Especially Imran Khan.
Likewise, revisionist
patriots and virile Hindus were fans first and historians afterwards. They
looked to former Rajput captains for both inspiration and consolation. Rana
Sanga and Rana Pratap became names to conjure with in colonial India as
generations of Bengali boys called Rana will tell you. The heroic refusal of
the rulers of Mewar to serve as vassals was read as a moral victory in the
absence of any other kind. More recently, Hemu, who occupied Delhi before being
defeated by Akbar's army, was hailed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the
Vishwa Hindu Parishad as an Indic night-watchman who briefly occupied the
imperial crease before Akbar's long innings… read more:
https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/rajputs-redux-188019
See also
