prasad1
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Shikha Dalmia
COLUMNIST
Shikha Dalmia is a senior policy analyst at Reason Foundation, a nonprofit think tank advancing free minds and free markets. She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for Reason, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today,and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.
Many of the world's liberal democracies are reckoning with majoritarian gripes against minority appeasement. But India's might be the most dramatic case, with a cacophony of Hindu nationalists hell-bent on taking even compliments as insults. Meanwhile, the voices of the country's vulnerable Muslim minority, which has a genuine cause for complaint given the fresh indignities it suffers daily, barely register on the national consciousness.
For the last two weeks, groups associated with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have been protesting Padmaavati, a quasi-historical Bollywood extravaganza that tells the story of Rajput King Rana Singh, whose wife, Padmaavati, becomes the obsession of the Muslim emperor Alauddin Khilji after he hears about her legendary beauty.
Loosely based on an epic poem by a 16th century Muslim Sufi poet, the movie's cinematic sophistication — it is shot in 3-D with absolutely breathtaking scenes of courtly pomp set in medieval India — contrasts sharply with its crude and cartoonish characters. The film isn't a clash between mere good and evil, but utmost perfection and complete depravity as embodied by Singh, the Hindu hero, and Khilji, the Muslim villain.
The Hindu Singh, with his buff bod and kohl-smeared eyes, is a paragon of Rajput virtue who treats women like queens (of which he has two), moves with grace, deals with matters of state with flawless judgment, conducts himself with decorum, and fights with valor and integrity. Twice he foregoes the opportunity to kill the unarmed Khilji because that would have meant violating the Rajput code of honor.
The Muslim Khilji, by contrast, is not just dastardly, but a savage lech. He is a sadist who gets a sexual high from humiliating his minions. On the day of his wedding, he is off jumping other women. He is cruel toward family and friends and happily turns on them for the slightest advantage. He doesn't dine from shining utensils sitting serenely in the traditional lotus position like the cultured Rajputs. He hunches over a table grabbing large pieces of meat with his bare hands, tearing the flesh with his teeth.
And he believes that for victory in war, no tactic is too ignoble. After killing Singh on the battlefield through treachery, he races to claim his prize. But Padmaavati, herself a paragon of virtue, calmly leads 800 women into a fiery cauldron in an act of mass self-immolation that Rajput widows were expected to perform to protect their — and their husbands' — honor. (This dénouement has rightly incensed Indian feminists struggling against traditional attitudes that measure a woman's worth by her devotion to her husband.)
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COLUMNIST
Shikha Dalmia is a senior policy analyst at Reason Foundation, a nonprofit think tank advancing free minds and free markets. She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for Reason, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today,and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.
Many of the world's liberal democracies are reckoning with majoritarian gripes against minority appeasement. But India's might be the most dramatic case, with a cacophony of Hindu nationalists hell-bent on taking even compliments as insults. Meanwhile, the voices of the country's vulnerable Muslim minority, which has a genuine cause for complaint given the fresh indignities it suffers daily, barely register on the national consciousness.
For the last two weeks, groups associated with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have been protesting Padmaavati, a quasi-historical Bollywood extravaganza that tells the story of Rajput King Rana Singh, whose wife, Padmaavati, becomes the obsession of the Muslim emperor Alauddin Khilji after he hears about her legendary beauty.
Loosely based on an epic poem by a 16th century Muslim Sufi poet, the movie's cinematic sophistication — it is shot in 3-D with absolutely breathtaking scenes of courtly pomp set in medieval India — contrasts sharply with its crude and cartoonish characters. The film isn't a clash between mere good and evil, but utmost perfection and complete depravity as embodied by Singh, the Hindu hero, and Khilji, the Muslim villain.
The Hindu Singh, with his buff bod and kohl-smeared eyes, is a paragon of Rajput virtue who treats women like queens (of which he has two), moves with grace, deals with matters of state with flawless judgment, conducts himself with decorum, and fights with valor and integrity. Twice he foregoes the opportunity to kill the unarmed Khilji because that would have meant violating the Rajput code of honor.
The Muslim Khilji, by contrast, is not just dastardly, but a savage lech. He is a sadist who gets a sexual high from humiliating his minions. On the day of his wedding, he is off jumping other women. He is cruel toward family and friends and happily turns on them for the slightest advantage. He doesn't dine from shining utensils sitting serenely in the traditional lotus position like the cultured Rajputs. He hunches over a table grabbing large pieces of meat with his bare hands, tearing the flesh with his teeth.
And he believes that for victory in war, no tactic is too ignoble. After killing Singh on the battlefield through treachery, he races to claim his prize. But Padmaavati, herself a paragon of virtue, calmly leads 800 women into a fiery cauldron in an act of mass self-immolation that Rajput widows were expected to perform to protect their — and their husbands' — honor. (This dénouement has rightly incensed Indian feminists struggling against traditional attitudes that measure a woman's worth by her devotion to her husband.)
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