Easily hurt pride and Karni Sena

Shri Rajput Karni Sena aka Karni Sena (SRKS), a caste group, has been troublingly back in the news ever since Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmavati began to be shot. Spearheaded by Lokendra Singh Kalvi, Karni Sena has had a free run in Rajasthan for more than a decade.

He first shot to fame when he opposed Ashutosh Gowariker’s Jodha-Akbar in 2008, again for hurting Rajput pride. Karni Sena had then stated that Akbar had no Rajput queen named Jodhaa Bai. Kalvi is a man whose pride is easily hurt. But, that is national news now. The Rajput ‘pride’ was much in evidence during a brief telephonic chat with him. He claimed he was in a hurry to catch a flight from Jaipur to Ahmedabad but declared firmly, “Please address me as Kalvi and not by my first name.” Lokendra Ji would not do.

Neither Kalvi nor SRKS Rajasthan convenor Shakti Singh are willing to agree with historians who are of the view that there is no historical evidence of any queen by the name of Padmavati in Rajasthan. “The 37th generation of Padmavati continue to live in Mewar,” says Shakti Singh, “If a director seeks permission for making a film on Sachin Tendulkar and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, why should he not take permission and consult the family while producing a film on Padmavati,” Singh argued. For the fanatics of Karni Sena, they are defending a real-life character. “Recorded history does not matter for us as much as folklore,” concedes Shakti Singh grudgingly. The word “Jauhar”, he claims, was first mentioned in 1303 and name of Padmavati figured in Jain texts in 1392. “In 1480, a book Chitai Charit was written in Gwalior in which name of Padmavati was mentioned as a devoted, ideal woman,” repeats Singh.

The earliest mention of queen Padmini or Padmavati is found in Padmavat written in Avadhi 1540 CE by Malik Muhammad Jayasi. Politicians from the state, however, can barely conceal their contempt for the self-styled caste army composed, they say, of mostly unemployed men below the age of 40. “Rootless people looking for an identity,” is how one of them described the bunch. The organisation boasts to have 9.63 lakh ‘registered’ members but when asked about the details, Singh denied it saying that the formal registration of members is under process. But the controversy has given a fresh lease of life to the rag-tag Sena and an excited Shakti Singh exclaims, “You would be surprised to learn that after the Padmavati episode we have received requests from states like Nagaland and Kerala to form units.” The Sena had adopted an eleven-point agenda as its goal in 2006 and one of the key demands was reservation for Rajputs. But when they were asked about the Sena’s stand on eliminating social evils such as child marriages and caste discrimination, the spokesman, after a pause, claimed that child marriage did not prevail among Rajputs.

Explaining the phenomenon of a small caste group holding an industry to ransom and its ability to defy law and conventions, veteran Jaipur based commentator Narayan Bareth says, “When there is a vacuum in society and political parties are completely detached from the people and when the system fails to address real issues then it is not surprising for such fringe organisations to fill the void.