Protests against Jodhaa Akbar
Thursday, February 28, 2008 by Praveen
Hrithik Roshan's latest movie Jodha was protested across the country on its release date.The film was mired in contoversies from the start. It began early on with People For Animals (PFA) charging that the 'Akbar' makers were abusing innocent animals on the sets. It continued through to the warnings issued by Maharashtra's Kranti Sanstha, and saw major burning of its actors, Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai, posters and effigies last week amidst threats of violence in Rajasthan by the Karni Sena there. According to Karni , none of Mughal emperor Akbar's 34 wives were named Jodhabai. Akbar married the former maharaja of Ajmer, Bharmal's elder daughter Karkbai alias Heer Kumar in Fatehpur Sikri on Feburary 6, 1562. Prince Salim was born in 1569."Jodhabai was the daughter of Moteraja Udai Singh and she would have been three years younger than Salim and hence, in no way could she have been his mother," Kalvi claimed.According to these organisations, Jodha was the daughter of Udai Singh of Marwar and was married to Salim, Akbar's son."Thus, she was Akbar's daughter-in-law. So, depicting Jodha as Akbar's wife is not tolerable," Karni said.
It is now seeing the controversy reach a national and international scale after those Rajputs of Rajasthan have called for a nationwide counterattack on what they are calling Bollywood's propoganda against their and India's history of struggle against Mughals and Muslim invasions, ignoring the real Jihad based slaughters, depicting Mughals as heroes, and showing the rajputs as in the end vassals complicit with the mughals with their women in the harems; when they believe with few exceptions, they were largely defying, resisting and fighting them before, during, and after the death of Akbar as well as the Mughal empire.
They've raised the question why no big budget commercial scale movie on the Rajputs' continual struggle has been made, implying an Islamist bias and political charge against Mumbai's film industry.The opening week box office collections of Jodha Akbar in India are a shocking 50%, totaling out at around Rs. 23 crores net when at full houses expected of it, it should have done closer to a 50 crore opening week. The movie was made on an epic scale, budget, and starring premiere stars; it was expected to have shattered all opening records in every corner of the country.
However, the makers miscalculated the response and overestimated their welcome. Not only was the film literally forced out of Rajasthan, forcing it to be a loser acrss the north west from day 1, it now is going to be a loser in Madhya Pradesh also; effectively neutering it in the entire CPCI-Rajasthan territory. Even in a liberal center like Bombay where the film should have shown record opening close to 8 crores net, it failed to match even a Heyy Babyy.
To be fair however, in terms of week 2, the film is expected to see a reasonably good weekend in Mumbai multiplexes and a few other metros. But overall, the Hrithik Roshan - Aishwarya Rai starrer has been rejected in most of the country led by Eastern Maharashtra, Gujrat, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and of course Rajasthan.
Given its mammoth cost and scale, the film is the first commercial disappointment of the year.
