Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan might have ruled the charts and Hearts both but has now started a debate over the authenticity of some scenes. Read the following for details.
Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan – I is viewed as a historical account of the Chola Empire. In the movie is shown its grandeur and the Magnum Opus has hit the right cords of the people. Since then the politicians have taken to the social media and heaped praises on the movie. Also, they cited the efforts of the Raja Raja as a devotee of the Hindu religion who built temples and propagated the religion across South East Asia. Ponniyin Selvan controversy erupted when some leaders rated the Chola King as a Hindu King.
Also, they gave a reference of a few scenes from the movie and claimed that the king was a follower of Vedic traditions and Sanskrit worship. However, there are others who consider these claims as baseless and consider the ace film maker’s work purely based on fiction. While people of Tamil Nadu have praised the Chola’s as icons of Tamil culture and Pride.
Ponniyin Selvan Controversy Erupts, Movie based on Kalki’s famous Novel
Indians are extremely possessive of their history and take pride in it. Thus, it was no surprise that Mani’s movie likely depicting the Chola empire created a chaos in the state of Tamil Nadu where the Chola’s ruled. The film, which released in several Indian languages, cannot be termed as a historic movie. However, Ponniyin Selvan’s controversy was expected as Kalki himself described his work as fiction. The movie is set in the historic background of the tenth and eleventh century CE, when emperor Raja Raja Chola ruled parts of South India and Sri Lanaka.
Historians and Tamilians claim lead to Ponniyan Selvan’s Controversy
The outcry came mainly from Tamilians who claimed that portraying Rajarajan as Hindu King was an attempt to take his Tamilian ethnicity. Also, there is no mention either of Nandini (Aishwarya’s character), her mother Manthahini or the spy Alwarkadiyan Nambi in history. Historians such as KA Nilakanta Shastri, TV Sadasiva Pandarathar, have mentioned the power struggle had already started even before Raja Raja’s accession to the throne.
There are ample proofs of the same. One of the inscriptions at Udaiyarkudi (near Cuddalore, and 240 kilometres from Chennai) is an instruction by King Raja Raja to the heads of a village panchayat to seize the property of three persons (Soman, Ravidasan, and Parameswaran) involved in the murder of his elder brother Aditya Karikala. The first part of Ratnam’s movie does not delve into this aspect.
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