A naked midriff was demurely covered, an 'i' was dropped from 'Padmavati', all allusions to history were jettisoned and a fatuous disclaimer about not glorifying sati inserted. The honour of a 14th-century fictional queen was restored and the real business of the INR 200-crore (USD 29.7 million) film was back on track. Once Padmaavat – about the siege of Chittorgarh by Allauddin Khilji, the Turkic ruler of the Delhi sultanate – was finally released on 25 January 2018, it quickly became the first blockbuster of the year. This, despite it not being released in five states in India, a government ban in Haryana, and the Multiplex Association of India deciding not to screen the film in order to protect its assets in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Goa from the Shri Rajput Karni Sena, whose threats had only intensified after the film's clearance from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) following revisions.
The Karni Sena, an organisation of unemployed Rajput youth launched in 2006 under the leadership of one Lokendra Singh Kalvi, had, as its main aim, caste-based reservation for Rajputs in education and government jobs. In its spare time – which apparently was a lot – it agitated against what it perceived to be the "sidelining" of Rajput figures in history textbooks. Twelve years down the line, there are three factions of the group, with an ongoing legal battle over who owns the name, but all with the mandate of garnering more privileges for an already privileged upper-caste community. In 2008, they got busy agitating against the Hrithik Roshan-Aishwarya Rai starrer Jodhaa Akbar, claiming it had distorted history by showing Jodhaa as Akbar's wife and not his daughter-in-law; the latter, they claimed, was fact. At the heart of the protest, however, seemed to be an outrage over the depiction of a marriage between a Muslim emperor and a Hindu princess. At the time, director Ashutosh Gowarikar refused to apologise despite protests, road blocks and slogan shouting. Some burning of posters later, it was business as usual. The next opportunity for protest presented itself in 2010, with the Salman Khan film Veer (meaning brave), which they alleged depicted Rajputs in poor light, thus hurting their sentiments. Vehicles were damaged and movie theatres vandalised. That this substandard film didn't do well at the box office had more to do with its stale storyline and ham-fisted acting than the Rajput outcry.
Rajput valour was once again stirred in 2017-18, this time to protect the honour of the mythical queen Padmaavati. First, Rajput queens apparently didn't dance in public or in front of men. But the ghoomar dance – superbly performed by Deepika Padukone as Rani Padmaavati and released as a music video months before the film was cleared – takes place in a sheltered zenana, with only Padmaavati's husband Maharawal Ratan Singh (played by Shahid Kapoor) as a surreptitious onlooker. The CBFC ordered the offending midriff to be covered. This was easily accomplished through digital alteration, drawing the blouse a little lower. Their second objection, to 'their' queen being in a dream sequence with the Turkish invader Allauddin Khilji, was based solely on rumour. The Karni Sena leaders admitted that none of them had seen the film, but refused to preview it on director Sanjay Leela Bhansali's invitation: why allow fact to interfere with righteous indignation?
These perceived insults to the Rajput community led testosterone-pumped youth of the Karni Sena to attack the sets of Padmaavati and threaten the actors, despite Bhansali's repeated clarification that there was no such dream sequence, and in fact, Khilji and their Rani did not share a single scene. But everyone had an opinion, even the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, who demanded action against Bhansali. The valiant defenders of Rajput honour threatened to cut off Deepika Padukone's nose "like Surpanakha" (the demon In the epic Ramayana whose nose Laxman chopped off after she dared to make sexual advances towards his brother Ram). Padukone's family in Bangalore was intimidated and needed police protection; effigies of the star and the director were hung from a tree.