Padmaavat: Much Ado About Nothing

Padmaavat: Much Ado About Nothing

CHENNAI, India — While America was debating whether Bruno Mars and his 2017 version of blue-eyed soul should have swept the Grammys, a more heated controversy has engulfed this side of the world. The target is director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Bollywood epic Padmaavat, the most expensive Hindi film ever made at roughly $34 million.

The movie, which dramatizes the 16th-century epic poem by Malik Muhammad Jayasi of the same name, has been caught between manufactured outrage from the Northern Indian Rajput community and a very real backlash over its depiction of the invading Muslim armies as lustful, dishonorable savages. A previously little-known Rajput caste group known as Karni Sen has led violent protests against the film since it began production, based largely on rumors that scenes in the film would feature scenes that violated the perceived honor and chastity of Padmaavati, a fictional character.

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