What is wrong with Padmavat-the movie?
To be more precise, is there anything wrong with Padmavat movie?
Of course it plays around with facts and history and even goes on to distort them. But doesn’t every work of art do, more or less, the same- readjust and reconfigure facts and (what we ostensibly call) reality into its own perspective and scheme of things to achieve its own desired end: artistic license as it is called. Even the eponymous ‘Padmavat’- the epic poem by Malik Mohammed Jayasi does the same: readjusts and reconfigures history (Kings, queens and wars) to create an allegoric sufi epic. Why then should one treat Padmavat movie differently from Jayasi’s Padmavat?
One may argue about the difference in ‘artistic quality’ of Jayasi’s Padmavat and Padmavat movie. But the lack (or otherwise) of artistic merit is not the point of argument here. The point rather is the basic premises of art. If all art uses facts (historical or contemporary or anticipatory; proved or otherwise) and actuality as building blocks and in the process distorts/modifies/readjusts them for its own purpose, then is it not hypocrisy if we object to the historical distortion in Padmavati movie when we don’t object to similar distortion in Art as whole?
Before we answer that we must first examine what is it that Art tries to do.
Much that it may sound agreeable to our ears that Art and Science are antithetical to each other, the fact remains that they are, at their roots, different means towards similar ends. A Scientist through observation, experimentation, verification etc tries to understand matter and phenomenon (abstract and material) in and around us. His objective is to get to the basic cause; the ‘Truth’ of the matter or phenomenon and if he does, he then conveys the truth that he has found to others through a language of reason and logic. He builds a staircase of causes and effects leading us to the ‘Truth’ that he has found out.
The Artist does something very similar. He too tries to get to the root of matter and phenomenon but through his senses (to use the term in its broadest sense) which include imagination and creativity (some may even include inspiration) and then he uses the language of senses to express what he has found. Since an artist uses ‘Senses’ to guide him in his exploration, his search ends at the Beauty which is the artistic equivalent of the scientific ‘Truth’. For when one approaches the Absolute through intellect it is called truth and when approaches the Absolute through senses it is called beauty. Beauty is the ultimate truth of senses and Truth is the ultimate beauty of reason. (As Keats put it so succinctly, Beauty is truth, truth beauty.)
But neither scientific truth nor artistic beauty gives you the whole Truth/Beauty; the absolute Truth/Beauty. They only reveal to you a part of it or a glimpse of it. To exemplify consider a man bouncing a ball in a train. For the man inside the train only the ball is moving. To a man outside train both the ball and the man inside the train are moving. To a man on a different planet all three of them- the man inside the train, the man outside the train and the ball- are moving. To a man on third planet all four of them are moving. To a man in a different universe all of them- the men watching each other from different planets- are moving. The only One who sees the whole picture is the one present outside all possible universes: outside all possible frames of reference. Only that One(God?!) sees the absolute truth and only he can expound it in absolute sense. Thus the men on planets(=scientists) can only get to know a part or only a glimpse of the absolute Truth, limited as they are by their own existence in time and space. Same is the case with the artist (the parable of the blind men and the elephant can be used to build a similar logic). The blind men(= artists) can only get to know a part or a glimpse of the absolute Beauty.
Owing to this handicap of artists/scientists we have ‘truths/beauties’ rather than ‘Truth/Beauty’. Thus we have an artistic truth standing side by side with a scientific truth and these ‘truths’ may or may not reconcile with one another. And since an artist, as already discussed, is reliant on the language of ‘senses’ rather than on the language of ‘fact’ and ‘logic’, he has the liberty or ‘license’ to distort facts, logic and or actuality as long as he arrives at or conveys the ‘artistic truth’. That is the true purpose of art- to bring fore the artistic truth. Such an art is of the noblest kind and of highest degree and deserves to be truly called Art. Malik Mohammed Jayasi’s Padmavat belongs to this category. The whole epic-poem is an allegory that seeks to illustrate Sufi wisdom. It seeks to annunciate the triumph of renunciation over desire; of love over lust; of divine over corporeal. Jayasi takes artistic licence with factual history to delineate the artistic truth of a sufi perspective. The end(artistic truth) justifies the means(the artistic license).
But not all art corresponds to such a normative end. The ‘license’ that an artist gives himself to deal with facts/reality is not always meant to further or arrive at the artistic truth. Thus there is art which, as Joyce put it, is pornographic or kinetic. It just panders to the immediate satiation of senses. It does not aspire (or lead anyone) to any greater truth or vision or intellectual/aesthetic exaltation. It is just an ostentation of skill and craft. It is the worst kind of art as it demeans the Art itself. Devoid of any artistic truth whatsoever, such art replaces facts and reality with falsehood and lies, thus serving as a vehicle of deceit and dishonesty. It no longer remains art it rather becomes slandering and propaganda masquerading as art. Does such an ‘art’ deserve same artistic license and liberty as the Art otherwise does?
The answer to that question shall determine what is wrong with Padmavat movie.
Shabir Ahmad can be reached at fahad18dupe@gmail.com
