Padmavati, the film, has several lines of dialogue glorifying the high values and bravery of the Rajputs. Maharawal Ratan says, ‘A Rajput is someone who places his worries on the tip of his sword, someone who sits in a boat made of sand and then challenges the sea, someone whose torso keeps fighting even after his head has been severed.’ Padmini adds, ‘The bangles of Rajput women are as brave as the swords of Rajput men.’

Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s last two films (Bajirao Mastani, Padmavati) have been about armed conflicts between armies headed by Hindus and armies headed by Muslims. Muslims are the villains in both films.

Bhansali’s Guzaarish (2010) introduced a new genre to Hindi cinema: the modern Muslim villain. The Siddiquis, father and son, are neither terrorists nor mafia dons. They are slick professionals who try to murder the decent, trusting hero, Ethan, who had helped both enormously. In Bajirao Mastani the Nizam is a cheat. He invites Bajirao over for discussions but uses this ruse to try to imprison him instead.

After defeating the Muslims, Bajirao observes in the film that it is after a long time that the saffron flag has fluttered victorious. Most importantly, the first sentence that Bajirao speaks during the film’s credit titles is about the ‘dream of Hindu Swaraj’.

So, Bhansali is hardly a sickular, bleeding heart liberal. His films have always glorified Hindu martial communities like the Rajputs and Maratha-Chitpawans, and shown Muslim men as bad.

However, Muslim women are to be loved and won over. So are Christian women.

The Muslim Mastani woos the Hindu Bajirao, and they enter into a relationship. Mastani adopts Hindu ways and beliefs, applies sindoor, says Har Har Mahadev, cites Radha Krishn and calls her son Krishna. In Bhansali’s Saawariya (2007), Ranbir Raj falls in love with the Muslim Sakina.

In Black (2005) the 20-something Michelle McNally has the hots for her 60-something tutor Sahai, and their relationship touches at least the first base of physicality. In Khamoshi: The Musical (1996) Raj gets Annie.

Thus, through his films, Bhansali has been carrying out his own little Love Yudh. Bhansali is a cultural nationalist. The irony is that the attacks on him have come from those who are even more nationalistic than he. And those defending his right of artistic freedom are almost entirely from the rapidly dwindling tribe of sickular liberals.

There obviously is a Moral in all this somewhere. Perhaps several.

One: There is no such thing as controlled chauvinism (or controlled community pride). You cannot fan the pride of a community and then expect the Community Pride that you unleash to remain at the level at which it benefits your film commercially or your party politically. Movements in Kashmir and Punjab, and in Pakistan and Afghanistan, became far more radical than their leaders had envisioned.

Two: ‘The revolution … devours its own children,’ Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud (1753-93) is believed to have said. In the Indian context Community Pride movements do so. Peter St Onge added that revolutions eat their parents.

The national leader who is said to have fanned the Bhindranwale phenomenon and the leader who tried to manage the passions unleashed by Velupillai Prabhakaran, were both engulfed by those movements.

Rahul Rawail, the director of Jo Bole So Nihaal (2005) and a Sikh himself, had tried to glorify Sikh values and valour in the film. He thought that Community Pride would boost his film’s prospects. Instead, he wound up annoying several Sikh groups. At least two theatres that screened the film, Liberty and Satyam, both in Punjabi-dominated west Delhi, were bombed.

Bhansali experienced nationalist anger even before Padmavati. He gave his gangster film Ram Leela a religious title, with countless religious allusions in the film (including the song ‘Ram ji ki chaal’), hoping to benefit from the Community Pride associated with this venerable celebration, which was shown in the film’s climax. However, he was forced by Community Pride leaders, whose cultural nationalism exceeded even his, to change the title to Goliyon ki Raas Leela Ram-Leela (2013).

Three: In India we ban films without seeing them, though they might actually be upholding our cause. Prakash Jha’s Aarakshan (2011) supported the Scheduled Caste community and caste-based reservations unequivocally. However, before the film’s release Community Pride leaders, who had not seen the film, assumed that it would advocate the abolition of caste-based reservations. So BSP-ruled Uttar Pradesh banned it and Andhra Pradesh and Punjab followed suit, all without watching the film.

Kamal Haasan’s Vishwaroopam (2013) was similarly sought to be banned by 23 Muslim organisations in Tamil Nadu before its release and before they had seen the film, because they assumed that the film would show Muslims as terrorists. It turned out that the film’s hero was a brave, mosque-going, patriotic Indian Muslim who fought terrorists.

It is ironical – no, perhaps it was only to be expected – that Bhansali would be attacked (and so fiercely) by the very groups whose Community Pride he sought to stoke through Padmavati.