ABSTRACT
In the last two decades, the genre of the historical has had a resurgence in popular Bombay cinema. The Medieval era Rajput narrative in films like Panipat, Padmaavat, Bajirao Mastani, and most recently Prithviraj seems to ostensibly lend an increasing visibility and valorisation of a collective Hindu nationalist identity in Medieval Rajput history that displaces the “colonial other” with the “Muslim other”. However, have we simply moved from a secular representation of the Hind to a monolithic/Hindu nationalist one? In this chapter, I examine the turn of the fractured articulation of nationalism and generative historical multiplicities embedded in a controversy. I argue that the difference and claims to authenticity reveal complex counter-histories that intersect with politics of adaptation, intersecting socio-political networks that much like the hi(s)-stories, are multifarious. It is this multiplicity that in the event of the “controversy” reveals the inherent turbulence of building and claiming (national) identities.
