'Distorting the history': Padmaavat and the performative production of history in Indian popular culture

Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmaavat, a Bollywood period drama, engendered a variety of conversations about identity, history, etc. in India. This article examines the ways in which the reception of the film performatively produced a genre of history in the Indian public sphere. Such performative productions of history as a genre runs counter to the prevalent notion of history as pre-given with concrete referents and past incidents. The allegation of "distortion" (of "history") is mobilized as a psychoanalytic resource to demonstrate this point. In the process, I note how the existing approaches to Hindu nationalism are inadequate in their critical clarity.