Khilji the new villain

India has a new villain. Thanks to the recently released controversial Bollywood movie, ‘Padmaavat’, by director Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Alauddin Khilji, a 14th century Muslim king of the Delhi Sultanate, has suddenly found renown as a bloodthirsty monster who plundered the Hindu kingdom of Chittor for his insatiable carnal desire for the queen, Padmavati or Padmini, fabled for her unmatched beauty and character.

The portrayal fits into the current pattern of the demonisation of Muslims. It complements the existing anti-Muslim and Islamophobic public mood and the political narrative that it engenders to enhance the electoral constituency of Hindu extremists. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Professor Aditya Mukherjee of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) described the film’s depiction as a “manufacturing of hurt sentiments...with an eye on politics”.

The film’s trailer paints Khilji as a menacing barbarian, complemented by Flowing hair and a wayward bushy beard, draped in a rough, woolly-like costume. His habitation is depicted as a dark dungeon that befits a pirate in the common imagination, as propounded by the Hollywood, rather than a great king.

On the contrary, the sultans of Delhi lived in aesthetically decorated palaces with ornate designs that were often adorned with precious stones. They were robed in the finest of silk and velvet clothes, often etched with baroque motifs and appealing designs. The sultans were highly civilised in their mannerisms, including in their gastronomic pursuits – unlike what has been shown in the movie where one of the scenes depicts Khilji gobbling up a piece of meat in a fashion that fits a savage.

An Indian commentator described that the scene showed Khilji “like a Neanderthal”. To add to his menace, the sultan is shown laughing like a gangster, a trick taken from the old Bollywood stylesheet that is supposed to add another layer of scare to a creepy character. His army is shown with green flags and a white crescent that creates an uncanny resemblance with Pakistan’s flag – an object of continued hate speech. The actual flag of the Delhi Sultanate was dark green with a black vertical line running on the left.

This depiction of Khilji, the second most powerful king of the Delhi Sultanate, is grossly incorrect; and his interaction with Rani Padmavati is also entirely fictional. There are no historical accounts that can prove her existence. Professor Mukherjee calls the story “a poet’s imagination” as “there is no historical evidence of this event”. Bhansali claims that the period drama is an adaptation of a 16th century epic poem by poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi.

Amaresh Mishra, an Indian public intellectual and a political activist who has written award-winning history books as well as fiction is not convinced. 

He strongly contests Bhansali’s claim and describes Jayasi’s “Khilji as a noble character who is a victim of [an] illusion or maya”. The film  shows Khilji as a savage Muslim” – a characterisation that is far from Jayasi’s depiction, he told me. 

Citing historical sources, Mishra describes Khilji “as the first ruler who put India on a path to modernisation. He had the land fit for cultivation measured; shifted away from relying on feudal barons towards establishing a direct relationship of the state with the peasantry; and standardised weights and measures”.

Mishra claims that the Khilji depicted in the movie is based on the portrait depicted by James Tod, an East India Company official. He describes Tod as “a charlatan British colonial-adventurer who wanted to sow divisions between Hindus and Muslims”. Tod published the story in his three-volume book, ‘The Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan’, in 1829. It received critical reviews for “his undue confidence  in the epics and ballads”. In his introduction, Tod claims: “The poets are the chief, though not the sole, historians of western India”. In a later edition, William Crooke, the editor, describes Tod as an “amateur” who “was notoriously a partisan of the Rajput princes“. Crooke attributes Tod’s mistakes to his over reliance on the Brahman pandits whom he had employed. “They, too, were not trained scholars in the modern sense of the term, and many of his mistakes are due to rashness in following their guidance”. Tod’s scholarship was so widely discredited that, according to Crooke, “neither on his retirement, nor at any subsequent period, were his services, official and literary, rewarded by distinction”.

Mishra blames the film for promoting a “pro-colonial, anti-national, anti-Muslim, Sanghi [Hindu extremist] worldview”. He says that the real issue is “the depiction of Khilji as the bad Muslim versus Bhansali’s Rajputs as good Hindus”. Mishra accuses Bhansali of pandering to the Hindu extremists: “The Sangh Parivar [the collective name for the groups espousing Hindutva extremism] loves Bhansali’s version. [The] Sangh knows this version will reinforce anti-Muslim stereotypes”. He is also worried that the fringe but consistent “protests against the film can any time be turned against Muslims”.

Professor Mukherjee also believes that the narrative is being manufactured around the Hindu-Muslim conflict, which was non-existent at the time. “Unknown groups have suddenly woken up to protect the honour of Hindus and to portray Muslims as perpetrators of evil”. A recent review in The Indian Express was candid about the motivations of the  Film director: “Far from any subtle touches, Bhansali’s good Hindu and the bad Muslim is so stark that we are left with no illusion about which part of the political firmament he wants to be on the right side of”.

Postscript: After watching the film during a special screening, the mediator between the extremist group, Karni Sena – which wants to ban the film  – and the filmmakers, Suresh Chavhanke, told the media that “Khilji has been portrayed in the manner [that] he should have been portrayed”, calling it a victory for Rajputs. Interestingly, the Pakistan Central Board of Film Censors (CBFC) has cleared the film for release, declaring the film fit  for public exhibition without any excision”.

Twitter: @murtaza_shibli