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Here comes Padmavat, the love of premiers and anathema to others

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23 January 2018 12:40 am - 1     - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

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Thursday January 25 is surely a much awaited day for the United National Party.   


The queen who mesmerized the UNP camp, Padmavati, is expected to hit the theatres on that day, of course sans the last letter in her name as per instructions of the Indian Censor Board. Surely the UNP would not bother about this small omission. After all it is not every day we have Prime Minister Ranil Wickremsinghe’s office  writing letters expressing premier’s keenness to watch a movie based on a queen. The request, which almost coincided with the UNP leader’s dance that went viral, has driven home the point that the PM who was always known for his sober ways had finally shed his inhibitions. With barely three weeks to the local polls the Prime Minister is certainly in his element.   


About a month before the communique from the premier’s office, Megapolis Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka wrote a long article for a weekend newspaper on Padmavati dubbed as one of India’s most beautiful queens ever.   


Surely never had there been such an interest on a movie, that too an Indian one, in the otherwise insipid UNP and it appears the royal lady with alleged Sri Lankan ancestry has cast a spell on the government.The Sri Lankan lineage of the queen was first hinted to the local masses by a Daily Mirror editorial titled “Politics of Padmavati, the Sinhala princess who broke records in India” published on October 18.   


Now that the UNP has its eye on queen Padmavati, chances are that the local electorate is in for an overdose of the queen in the weeks to come.The other decisive players in the fray the SLFP, the joint opposition’s SLPP or the JVP however are not so lucky. After all it’s not every day that movies like Hyman Jack Averback’s “Great Bank Robbery” are screened in Colombo theatres.   

 

The Sri Lankan lineage of the queen was first hinted to the local masses by a Daily Mirror editorial titled “Politics of Padmavati, the Sinhala princess who broke records in India” published on October 18


Prime Minister Wickremesinghe is not the only PM to get excited about the movie. His Indian counterpart too seems to have quietly joined the club. Yet unlike our PM’s office which made a request for a special screening in the run up to local polls, the office of Indian Premier Narendra Modi kept mum on the movie during the December Gujarat local polls campaign. Indian PM could not afford to earn the wrath of the Hindus of his home state and lose the crucial vote. Now that the elections are over, he appears to be taking a breather. A few days back Modi along with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu watched a dance performance of the famous Ghoomar song of Padmavat by a group of students, in the Gujarat capital, Ahmadabad. Interestingly Gujarat is among the four states that had banned the screening of the movie following protests by the Rajput community.   


Besides BJP strongman and India’s one-time Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani has objected to the summoning and questioning of Padmavat director Sanjay Leela Bhansali by a parliamentary panel.   


Adding another twist to the Padmavat story, the President of All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) Asaduddin Owaisi has now urged the country’s Muslims to boycott the movie. He alleges that Modi who has offered favourable treatment to the trouble-stricken Hindi movie has not been so fair with the Muslim population in his move to ban the triple talaq. “Mr Modi has formed a 12-member committee for that film. Nobody was consulted when law (to end triple talaq) was made against us,” Mr. Owaisi, a Lok Sabha member from Hyderabad has charged. The AIMIM is a moderate Muslim party, which has openly denounced Jihadist terrorism and both the father and grandfather of Owaisi had been the leaders of the party. Calling the movie both “mad and bad” the Muslim leader had asked his brethren to take a leaf from the Indian Rajputs who stood firmly against the movie and be resolute like them without being divided on petty parochial lines.   


While the authentic ancestry of queen Padmavati, the muse of Sufi poem Padmavat, is yet to be ascertained, our own history is abound with stories of greater queens, like Vihara Maha Devi and Soma Devi who were known for the valour and sense of sacrifice. The best tribute the UNP perhaps could pay to these honourable and exemplary ladies is refraining from repeating its recent mistakes which included the revoking of the regulations banning women from buying and selling alcohol. While the regulation is back in place thanks to President’s intervention, the Prime Minister’s party should keep a watchful eye on the players who are likely to take it down the garden path and get it to introduce policies that deal a lethal blow to the country’s social fabric.   


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  Comments - 1

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  • viraj Tuesday, 23 January 2018 09:48 AM

    deepika padukone is still single...


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