Muslims vs Rajputs: How Padmaavat's Portrayal Perpetuates Hindutva Narratives

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat (2018) was mired in controversy since January 2017, one year before its release. The issue: a rumor that the movie included an intimate scene between the Muslim king Alaudin Khilji (Ranveer Singh) and the fictional Hindu queen Padmavati (Deepika Padukone). Although Bhansali clarified that the film did not feature such a sequence, protests raged on, with a member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party offering a bounty of 1.2 million USD on the heads of Bhansali and Padukone. While it is unclear how much this controversy affected its final content, the film unabashedly glorifies the Rajputs and overtly vilifies Khilji and his clan. Bhansali juxtaposes the Hindu Rajputs and Muslim Khiljis to show the former as having integrity, honor, and courage while depicting the latter as conniving, murderous, devious barbarians. Seven years ago, Padmaavat represented a distinct shift from nuanced, dignified portrayals of Muslim rulers as protagonists in Hindi cinema, to narrow, barbaric ones as exclusively antagonists, perpetually at war with Hindu kings. Some such films include Kesari (2019), Panipat (2019), Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior (2020), and Samrat Prithviraj (2022). These films, now ubiquitous in mainstream Hindi cinema, blatantly and repetitively reproduce false binaries and stereotypes about contemporary Muslims using historical fiction, perpetuating dangerous narratives of Hindutva history. In Padmaavat, Khilji is depicted as the epitome of monstrosity. He is first introduced capturing an ostrich, shortly before orchestrating a strategic marriage with the current Sultan’s daughter – a manipulative move. On the night of his wedding, Khilji engages in demeaning sex with a woman other than his wife, brutally murdering his “friend” who walks in on him, and then proceeding to sexually assault the same woman. From the beginning, therefore, he is represented as a loveless, immoral savage with no respect for women. Padmaavat also portrays Khilji and his clan as having no culture, besides saying a few “Allah”s and once being seen praying namaz. When they are not killing each other for power, they engage in animalistic wrestling or war dance. Moreover, Khilji eats raw meat like an animal, perpetuating the stereotype of the beastly meat-eating Muslim in India. While such a bigoted representation is often whitewashed with discourse about Bhansali’s artistry and Singh’s embodied performance, it has significant political implications in India today. There are countless examples of BJP leaders denigrating Medieval Muslim rulers, using them as a dog whistle to attack Muslims in India today, and attempting to erase their history. In January 2022, the Union Home Minister Amit Shah emphasised affinity with the Jat community, saying, “You fought Mughals, we are also fighting [them]”, in a brazen reference to contemporary Indian Muslims.In January 2020, a BJP Member of Parliament Tejasvi Surya warned, "Unless [the] majority community remains vigilant, the days of Mughal Raj may not be far away," to stoke fear of Muslims taking over India. On social media, official handles of the BJP and its troll armies spread disinformation related to Indian history, tarnishing the Mughals and concocting falsehoods of their targeting Hindus and Hindu culture. In other words, the narratives in Padmavat do not exist in a political vacuum.In the film, Bhansali conversely represents the Rajputs as noble, righteous, cultured, and inherently peaceful. The Rajput characters Ratan (Shahid Kapoor) and Padmavati personify good Indian values: they are married, and have a tender, loving relationship. They celebrate Hindu festivals like Holi and Diwali. In one scene in Padmaavat, Ratan emphasises that they “treat guests like God,” according to Hindu custom, and even extend hospitality to Khilji when he visits them for a meal. Khilji, in contrast, later captures Ratan under the guise of inviting him for a meal. In another scene, when Ratan has the chance to kill a wounded Khilji, Ratan says, “You’re lucky your enemy is a Rajput. We don’t attack the wounded and helpless.” He later adds, “You should learn some ethics too, Alaudin. They will make you into a human being.” This scene positions these two characters – Hindu and Muslim – as foils to each other: One is the epitome of integrity and the other of immorality. It also further reiterates Khilji as nonhuman. The cinematography and editing in Padmaavat further cement the binary between the noble Rajput protagonists and murderous Muslim antagonists. Scenes of Khilji and his clan strongly feature shades of black and extremely dim lighting, evoking darkness and destruction. On the other hand, the Rajputs in Padmaavat are warmly lit and wear bright reds and other vibrant colors to highlight their beauty, culture, and stunning architecture. In her 2009 book Education as a Political Tool in Asia, historian Marie Lall explains how the Hindutva ideology divides South Asian history into distinct Hindu and Non-Hindu segments.While the former’s rulers belong to the “Golden Ages,” she explains, the latter are assigned the Medieval Period, where “Muslim rule” is associated with brutality, decline, warfare, and destruction. This representation of Indian history as a perpetual saga of Hindu-Muslim conflict suits Hindutva’s current conception of India as a Hindu nation perpetually at war with its Muslim neighbors. The ideology thus distorts Indian historiography, according to historian Romila Thapar, demonising Muslim rulers to justify othering ordinary Muslims in India today.The plot of Padmaavat additionally perpetuates Hindu Nationalist conspiracy theories of "Love Jihad", the idea of Muslim men ravaging and forcibly converting Hindu women to expand Islam. The film follows Khilji’s quest to get Padmavati in his possession, and Ratan’s commitment to protecting her: the battle at the end is called a “religious war.” When the Rajputs lose this war, all their women perform the act of sati – self-immolation to protect their honor – instead of being brutalised by Khilji and his clan. Led by Padmavati, the women are filmed moving in slow-motion towards their “honorable death,” dressed in blood-red with glorious, inspiring background music. Khilji runs around them like a desperate lunatic because he cannot “obtain” or “conquer” Padmavati now. The film thus suggests that the Rajputs had the real, moral victory because the women protected their honor.Aside from the patriarchal implications of valorising sati, Padmaavat also reinforces stereotypes about Muslim men as violent, lecherous, and immoral and highlights the need for Hindu men to protect Hindu women from Muslim men at all costs. This is a major tenet of Hindutva and the BJP, who routinely weaponise the law to target and harass interfaith couples.Padmaavat thus perpetuates harmful stereotypes about Muslims, encouraging prejudice and manufacturing hate in average Hindu audiences. It lays the ideological groundwork to justify retaliation against Muslims in the form of violence and discrimination. When it released seven years ago, it demonstrated a distinct shift in the Hindi film industry toward depicting Muslim kings as evil, barbaric, and destructive villains, in sharp contrast to noble Hindu heroes. This transition supports the BJP’s Hindutva agenda of persecuting Muslims, viewing them as outsiders, and creating a sense of victimhood among the Hindu majority. Did it really need a re-release today?(The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not reflect or represent his institution. Further, The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the author's views.)Rajput Pride, Historical Purism: What's Sukhdev Gogamedi's Karni Sena All About?

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Muslims vs Rajputs: How Padmaavat's Portrayal Perpetuates Hindutva Narratives

'Padmaavat' represented a distinct shift away from nuanced portrayal of Muslim characters in Indian cinema.

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Topics: Padmaavat Deepika Padukone Sanjay Leela Bhansali