It is possible to say that the controversy around the impending release of the Hindi movie Padmavati, based on the legend of Rani Padmavati has all the ingredients which election-time controversies in India are made of. A movie that retells the popular tale of a medieval love-triangle between a Muslim ruler, a Rajput queen and her spouse provides the perfect foil for an obscure body (Karni Sena) of Rajput men from Rajasthan to create trouble.

The issue brews for a week in the side columns of newspapers and in the tickers of the news channels before it explodes on to prime time and the headlines. This controversy thus draws upon all the three real/imagined/ manufactured fault lines in Indian society: caste, gender and Hindu-Muslim relations. As it so often happens, here again, caste is hardly discussed though it remains vital. On the other hand, most of the participants on both sides confine the gender issue to a discussion of whether the ‘honour’ [sammān/izzat] of woman was (historically) and is (in the movie) threatened. In the context of the portrayal of the Rajput queen vis-à-vis the Sultan of Delhi, it is the pride of a community that is ostensibly endangered.

It is more interesting, however, to remove the scab of Hindu or Muslim pride, often seen to reside in their respective janānās, and look at the whole issue simply in terms of gender relations: how did women fare vis-à-vis men – in or outside the family, in or outside the community, then and now? What constituted an ideal woman for the medieval Rajasthani storytellers and their Rajput patrons?

Let’s begin with the truism that the premodern societies were even more patriarchal than the ones we see today. Among the Indic ruling clans, men at the helm freely used the women in their family, mostly daughters and sisters, as pawns in political negotiations and as trophies of war. Indeed the ‘ideal’ woman was seen to be the one who meekly submitted to these transactions and adapted happily to wherever her ‘fate’ took her. Royal men mostly ‘won’ their women either in real wars or symbolic contests euphemistically referred as svayamvars [literally, choosing one’s husband]. More ordinary families ritually replicated this ideal by making the bridegroom ride a horse, dress like a warrior, and lead a retinue of the extended family’s men in a symbolic attack [chaḍhāī] over the bride’s family territory. Indeed, in most north Indian Hindu marriages today, this ideal male fantasy continues to be relived.

Nowhere in the history of the subcontinent did the royal men use marriage networks as frequently and effectively to strike political deals as in the medieval Rajputana. The typical Rajput royal households were no different from the typical Turkish or Mughal royal households. It was the norm for the Rajput Rajas to have several Rajput wives and concubines mostly from ‘lower’ castes including Muslims. While it is almost certain that no character by the name of Rani Padmavati existed in historical reality, her depiction in the legends and in the myriad retellings across India does hint at ideals of womanhood among Rajputs and others. It is only in the allegorical tale of the Sufi saint Malik Mohammad Jayasi that Rani Padmavati is depicted as having married Ratan Sen after falling in love with him. In the Rajput retellings, she always figures as the princess who was ‘won over’, along with several thousand horses, elephants and female companions by Ratan Sen from her father, a king in Sri Lanka [Singhaldveep].

Like in most forms of medieval patriarchy, and many in modern ones, protecting the honour of women meant keeping her in the care, custody and control of men of the family: first the father and the brother and then the husband and in-laws. Those women who dared to challenge this set-up and move out on her own were seen to have disgraced herself. That is why it is not Meera Bai but Padmavati and Roop Kanwar who are often held aloft as the icon of woman’s honour.

In a Hindi commercial film a few years ago, the female lead (a potter) was allowed to spring a repartee against the hero who was pursuing her in the usual Bollywood style, i.e. by openly harassing her. When she refuses to accept money for replacing a damaged pitcher, the hero says in a condescending tone: pyar se de raha hoon rakh lo, varna thappar maar ke bhi de sakta hoon (I am giving it to you with love, otherwise I can also slap you and hand the money over). ‘Thappar se dar nahee lagta hai sahab, pyar se lagta hai (I am not afraid of a slap, rather I do fear love!), says she, underlining the fact that in the convoluted equations of gender relations it is a certain kind of love laced with claims to custodial care that creates the possibility of the worst kind of violence within most intimate relations.

It is true that the whole idea of Rajput [male] honour, as it stands today, depends heavily on the ideal of protecting the honour of ‘their’ women. It is also true that the child sex ratio (0-6 years) is one of the worst in Rajasthan, 808 girls (per 1000 boys) as per the 2011 census, down from 909 in 2001. Female literacy stands at a woeful 52.12 per cent and the maternal mortality ratio in the state is among the three worst in the country.

Medieval Rajput [read male] culture tried to ‘protect’ the woman from what it perceived to be her own folly and freedom. Every age defines its own ideals. It is up to us to decide what we mean when we call for a woman’s honour to be saved. In a country where a majority of the cases of sexual assault on women are committed by their friends and family members, is it the rights of her family’s men over her own self that we must protect? Or is it the freedom of the woman to be born and brought up healthy, to decide her own fate and to access all educational and professional opportunities that we must fight for?

The question is: do we need to talk about schools, colleges, jobs, familial violence, marital rape and social equity or should we try to save ‘our’ women from the ghosts of imagined excesses that, some people suspect, might be represented inappropriately by a commercial entertainer no one has seen?

(Pankaj Jha is an Associate Professor at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi. He holds a Ph.D. in History. Sanskrit and Hindi Literary corpus of Medieval India is his chief area of expertise.)