Once again, I am going to mention it beforehand that this is my reaction to the old, VERY OLD posts made on this forum but considering those topics are locked so it's pretty obvious why I made a new topic for it 9 years later 😆. Also I'm well aware of the fact that not a soul right now is interested in the forum, nor the post and most likely neither the show, so I'm doing it mostly for my own self because the comments are just bubbling inside me. 😆
I had seen some things being repeatedly said here. So I'll just address them. Also most of these points are not THAT important. Once again, it's just a rant session. Also most of these points constitute things before Jalal and Jodha got married.
1) Paridhi isn't beautiful:
BLEH. It is objectively untrue. She's one of the most beautiful faces I've seen. Or most people have seen in fact. I'm much of a whiner so I did whine about this part on twitter and people were in fact shell shocked to find out that there are people who thought Paridhi is not good looking, including myself. I mean, how does one even form that opinion? I could only reach one conclusion that those comments brewed from the self hate we all women have been taught in India where we run behind eurocentric features. And the constant mentions of how women who are "fair skinned with light skin and skinny" are prettier just solidified my point. I hope all the girls who said this back in the day are now more accepting of their own ethnic features today. It would be a shame if they are still judging themselves and/or other women on standards the whites decided for us even today after almost a decade.
2) Rajat speaks too fast and low.
Now, unlike the above point, there's no objective opposition to this point because this is actually something that can be called an opinion. But personally, I absolutely loved his dialogue delivery most days. I was glad he wasn't speaking like some sort of Akbar-Birbal, Mughal-e-Azam Akbar with his voice louder than the drums and slower than a sloth all clueless or desperate to create fear. His dialogue delivery managed to create a feel of urgency and superiority which in my opinion was much needed for a young Jalal still in the process of finding a way to become a conqueror of the entire subcontinent. Jalal was arrogant, self centred, too prideful. He was a ruthless oppressor. He was feared, there was no need for him to scream his lungs out to make people fear him. His fast paced speaking also created a sense of, like I said, urgency for me. He's the emperor, he doesn't have much time for small talks so he is only used to speaking like that. And once again, he was the emperor that cut people's limbs for touching his shoes, who had the guts to tell him, "Shehenshah, speak slow be a good boy" 😆
3) Jodha was too fiery for a princess
Ahhhhh the take that has managed to annoy me the most. Reading all those discussions had me wanting to scream in the void. First of all, she was a rajputani princess. The community of women famous for jumping into the pits of fire to protect their honor from any invaders that wanted to have them. How do you say they were anything but fiery? It was established from the very beginning that she wasn't a rule follower. I do not understand why did people expect her to be princessy all the time, especially when she was getting married to her people's oppressor and her biggest enemy against her will. Calling what she did "tantrums" just felt very sexist to me, a dismissive way of reacting to female rage. She was allowed to be angry, in fact she was allowed to be furious. Anyone would be, all the graceful princesses included. And especially Jodha, who was not much a princess anyway as established from the first episode. She was no one interested in dolls and jewels, she had one goal in her mind. Jalal ka sar.
3) Oh, the infamous "Jalal ka sarr" 😆
I see it became quite a topic on the forum. People found it annoying. Now I don't know if it's just my own hate for that gender or my rage to imperialists, but it was one thing that attracted me to Jodha as a character. She was someone who couldn't see a bird hurt and would go running bare-headed out of the palace to tend to an injured pigeon, forgetting all the rules of a princess and a woman for that matter. That was her kindness. And in such a kind heart, there was a hate so big, so cruel for someone. That intrigued me. It was one of the highlights of that character for me. A woman who was capable enough to hate passionately, a rare specimen in ITV. And unlike how people said that her hate was unjustified, it wasn't. Another place where I wanted to scream. How is her hate unjustified for the invader of her land, who sends people to loot her subjects, her temples, her Devi maa? How's her hate unjustified for the oppressors who looked at her best friend like a piece of meat and abducted her, her poor best friend left with no option than try to immolate herself? How is her hate unjustified for the invaders that are killing her people, forcing them convert from their roots? All the "she's a princess, she shouldn't behave like this" sounded much hollow to me now when people forgot that being a princess does not only mean to be calm, poised and classy. It also means having a responsibility towards your people. It takes me 0.007 seconds to hate a man who thinks of women any less than their absolute equal, how could she not hate a man who treated her subjects worse than animals killed for meat? So, I was always cheering for Jodha's blood-thirst for Jalal. I mean, the m!sansdrist in me loved it hehe.
4) Why was Jodha scared of Jalal if she hated him so violently?
Ah, I'm gonna make a lot of pro-jodha points because the forum seemed to do all the excusing for Jalal itself, leaving nothing for me to say. Jodha being scared of the Mughals while also keeping the hate she felt for them has nothing to do with her being a hypocrite, or scaredy cat for that matter. It's okay to be scared. She knew the power they held. She wasn't scared to fight if it came to that but that didn't mean she wasn't scared of what they were capable of. People really do love to dismiss female emotions and looking at them single dimensionally. It's okay for women to have layers. It's a character, not a caricature.
5) And finally, the Mughals weren't that bad
Um.. I don't think you all understand how invasions work. There are documented works of what Mughals did to our people from themselves and from their victims. So unfortunately, they were actually that bad. While the show was highly fictionalized, it was one thing I appreciated in it. They showed a close to reality depiction of what the foreign invaders did in India. At least for the first few months.
These are not all the points that pissed me off, there are maaaanyyy more but I guess I will keep coming back to this as I keep reading more into the forum. smiley36 This post has become to big I see. Kaash itni mehnat apni job mein kar leti main. 😆