Controversy surrounding Padmavati lingers on

It is always tricky to make any movie that is related to historical figures in India because it inevitably gets politicised and all the lumpen elements of society try to profit from the controversy. In the case of Padmavati, there is not even much history available to distort. Her story became famous a few centuries after her life when a poet turned it into a fable. It is based on this that Sanjay Leela Bhansali made his movie. But he is now being accused of distortion and a case was even filed in the Supreme Court to halt the release of the movie. Thankfully, the court refused to do so last week. Meanwhile, Bhansali himself released a video message online saying that he had not made any distortions to the epic and sought to quell all the rumours that are swirling around about a dream sequence showing romance between Padmavati and the ruler Alauddin Khilji who invades her kingdom. He reiterated that there was no such scene in the movie. Meanwhile, local right wing political outfits are demanding that they be shown Padmavati before it is released so that they can be sure of there being nothing objectionable. That might be very impractical for Bhansali because if he agrees to one such party, then many more might crop up and how much such go-aheads can he get.