The Bollywood star threatened with beheading
They stalk couples on Valentine’s Day; they bully artists for “offending” Hindu culture. India has always had hotheads who set themselves up as moral police, said Sandipan Sharma in Firstpost (Mumbai). But until now, they would be called out for what they were: “goons operating on the margins”. Not any more. Last week, a member of the Shri Rajput Karni Sena, a group from the Rajput (warrior) caste, threatened to cut off the nose of the Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone. A senior official from the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party even offered a $1.5m bounty to have her and the film’s director, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, beheaded. True, his party then asked him to apologise, but the wind is in the bigots’ sails: across India a number of states have vowed to ban the new film in which Padukone stars. “India has degenerated so much that instead of acting as the custodian of law and order, the state has genuflected to the fringe.”
Violent protests have been raging over the film, and for good reason, said former BJP MP Tarun Vijay in The Indian Express (Mumbai). Padmavati, which had been due for release on 1 December, tells the story of Padmini, a legendary Rajput queen who, after her husband is killed by the Muslim ruler Alauddin Khilji, throws herself on a pyre to escape his advances. The story, taken from a 16th century poem based on a real siege, is fictional, but Hindus have long revered Padmini as a symbol of female honour. No wonder there has been fury at the claim that the film contains a dream sequence in which Khilji – “a hated bigot with animal instincts” – has a romantic liaison with Padmini. Playing with the facts in this way is like denigrating Joan of Arc. And glorifying Khilji can only instil in young minds the sense that “bad men are majestic”.
That kind of justification of violent intolerance is emblematic of the frightening new direction Indian politics has taken, said Sharmistha Mukherjee in the Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad). Indians who profess liberal secular values are coming under threat and being vilified as “sickulars”. Yet no action has been taken against the BJP official who called for Padukone to be executed. Thankfully, though, on social media, and in the “Not in My Name” protests against caste and religious intolerance, citizens show that they are waking up to the violence around them. It will take time for the humane voices to be heard above the cacophony, but there’s still cause for hope.