Title:
The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen
Author:
Ramya Sreenivasan
Publisher:
Permanent Black, 2007 (First)
ISBN:
9788178241852
Pages:
276
For
about a thousand years, India was under Muslim rule. Sweeping changes took
place in the country as the invaders intruded into the closed chambers of
Indian polity, society and religious customs. The attackers wanted riches,
land, religious converts and women. For a multitude of reasons, not least among
them religious fanaticism, the Afghans and Turks rode roughshod over the heart
of India, subjugating one kingdom after the other and enslaving the men and
women of India. There were a few pockets of resistance where the Muslims reaped
victory only in the bitter end and that too, a Pyrrhic one. One such instance
is Chitor resisting Ala-ud-din Khilji. Enamoured by the beauty of Padmini, the
queen of Ratan Sen, the ruler of Mewar, Ala-ud-din wanted her to his harems.
Animal lust was the sole motive of the Delhi sultan, as we have already found
him to be a heinous bisexual pervert in a previous book review (see Khilji Dynasty, reviewed earlier in this blog). The sultan won the battle with his superior legions, but couldn’t
consummate his desire as the Chitor women including Padmini performed jauhar (ritual self-immolation) at the
death of their men folk. Ala-ud-din had to return to Delhi dejected and
empty-handed. This book presents an analysis of the numerous accounts of
Padmini and her valour written during the five centuries preceding the present.
Ramya Sreenivasan is a PhD from JNU, Delhi and is Assistant Professor of
History at the University of Buffalo,
New York. Three major streams of the legend is examined in the book – the
socio-political and cultural horizons of Sufi Islam in sixteenth century North
India; Rajput kingdoms in northwest India between 16th and 18th
centuries and the growing colonial power in the nineteenth century.
The
first known narrative of Padmini is found in the work by the Sufi poet Malik
Muhammed Jayasi of Avadh and titled ‘Padmavat’, compiled in the year 1540.
Avadh is located nearly 600 miles east of Rajasthan, and the narrative seeing
the light of the day after more than two centuries after the historical Ala-ud
Din Khilji’s invasion of Chitor, is intriguing for historians. Unfortunately,
or rather unbelievably, the author doesn’t make any attempt to hazard a guess
on the rationale of a Sufi poet writing a poem in Avadhi language in Persian
script that extols the virtues of a Hindu queen and her husband the king in
faraway Rajasthan. The poem almost laments the victory of Islam over Chitor,
which is incongruous from a Sufi author. This sad omission on the author’s part
is like the flaw of a detective who omits to state the motive of a crime before
the court, but instead treats the crime itself as the starting point of the
scheme of things. We know what awaits such a miserable detective! Ramya asserts
that the legend of Padmini was not seen in literary form prior to Jayasi’s
work. Amir Khusrau’s (who was a contemporary of Ala-ud Din) Khazainul Futuh
(Treasuries of Victories) penned in 1311-12, does not mention Padmavati or
Padmini. But what about oral traditions? Isn’t it possible that Jayasi was
influenced by one such Rajasthani tradition that prompted him to write
Padmavat? The author’s silence and reluctance to address this point borders on
indifference. She lends the weight of her commendable scholarship to give
credence to the silly idea that India first heard about the Padmini story only
in the sixteenth century CE through a Sufi!
The second set of narratives
originated in Rajasthan itself, appearing a few decades later than Jayasi’s
work, but going on for nearly two centuries thereafter. These come in two kinds
of traditions – memory and literary romances. The first poetic accounts of
Padmini in Rajasthan are Hemratan’s Gora
Badal Padmini Chaupai (1589), Jatmal Naher’s Gora Badal Ki Katha (1623) and others. These accounts differ much
from Jayasi’s. This adds to the earlier surmise that a strong wave of bardic
rendition of the Padmini legend was blasting across the arid sands of Rajputana
since Ala-ud Din’s invasion in 1303. These stories eulogize the valour of two
chiefs Gora and Badal, who strives bravely and futilely to save the honour of
their king, Queen Padmini and the land. The author’s handling of heroic
chronicles is not concerned with fidelity to historical fact, but entails
exploring how the Padmini narrative in the 17th and early 18th
century Rajasthan were shaped by the politics and values of their Rajput and
Jain courtly patrons. Ramya follows the dictum that if a poet writes at the
court of a local chief, his work is likely to include a chiefly protagonist in
the story so as to placate the concerns of the benefactor who himself belongs
to this group.
The author then jumps to the
nineteenth century, where James Tod’s Annals
and Antiquities of Rajasthan’ claims a prominent place on account of the
new methods of historiography employed by the British political agent of
Rajputana. Though a fiction, this account marked the transition to the modern.
An English-educated Hindu middleclass was growing up in Bengal. Ramya has
presented a very good description of its growth and tilt towards nationalism
with a tinge of Hindu pride. The British were abolishing the privileges and
language of the medieval Muslim aristocracy. The official language of the
government was Persian till 1837 and it was changed to English and Bengali.
Coupled thus with the loss of remunerative official positions, the alienation
in language as well helped turn many Muslim nobles towards extremist ideals and
a false sense of Islamic superiority. This period showed variations on the
acknowledged histories such as Abdul Karim’s Bharat barshe Musalman Rajatver Itihas
(1898), Muizuddin Ahmad’s Turashker
Itihas (1903) and Shaikh Abdul Jabbar’s Makka
Sharifer Itihas (1906) and Madina
Sharifer Itihas (1907), which extolled the glories of Muslim rule and
brought into focus the trans-regional and pan-Islamic community. With
hindsight, we can see in such innocuous attempts at glorification the seeds of
terrorism and militancy that has so vitiated the present-day world.
As the Muslim polity and literature
were diverging from the mainstream, the bhadralok
literature was assuming a stridently nationalistic posture. The author
alleges that historiography in the late-19th century, especially in Bengal,
was tacitly communal (p. 16). The assertive Hindu spirit can be detected in the
works of Rangalal Bandopadhyay’s Padmini
Upakhyan (1858), Jyotirindranath Tagore’s Sarojini ba Chitor Akraman (1875), Kshirodprasad Vidyavinod’s Padmini (1906) and Abanindranath Tagore’s
Rajkahini (1909). The rising Hindu
consciousness resisted attempts to reform religious customs by the colonial
power which they routinely indulged in, prior to the mutiny of 1857. This
extended even to gory rituals and customs. The practice of Sati was outlawed in
1829, but voluntary culpable homicide was re-legalized in 1839 and later
retained in the Indian Penal Code of 1860. Even though the author does not say
so in so many words, the birth of Hindu Nationalism can be traced back to
Bengal in this period. The writers made legends of a pan-Indian nature and made
heroes of them irrespective of their place of origin.
The book is not exactly a pleasure to
read. A notable drawback is its silence on the inspiration of Jayasi in the
sixteenth century to bring out a narrative on events occurred two centuries
before, in another corner of the country. This book includes summaries of the
various versions of the Padmini story as an appendix. However, this fact is
never mentioned in the main text, and readers are inconvenienced at the
prospect of reading the critical review of the author before getting
familiarized with the story. In some parts, the book looks like a doctoral
thesis, but this is compensated by the chapter on Bengali revival of the
ancient Hindu spirit in the half-century after 1857. The book includes another
appendix which lists all the versions and variations of the story evolved over
the centuries. An extensive bibliography is credited as also a good index.
Readers can be assured of one thing after fully reading the text in the context
of the controversy over attacks on Sanjay Leela Bansali and his Padmini film
shooting crew recently. There are many flavours of the Padmini story – Islamic,
Hindu and British – but not a single one among them tell about any emotion
other than lust on the part of Ala-ud-din Khilji and revulsion on the part of
Padmini towards the other. So much for Bansali’s idea of love between them!
The book is recommended.
Rating: 3 Star
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