Most unpopular opinion: Bajirao Mastani
Mastani deserved a better movie.
PADMAVATI WAS ALSO SECOND WIFE BUT SHE IS’NT MADE TO LOOK LIKE A HOMEWRECKER.
the historical tradition strongly supports that Mastani faced serious hostility from Bajirao’s family.
It was a political settlement because of which Mastanis life became hell. she is actually a victim but is made to look like a desperate homewrecker and kashi her victim of the entire situation Kashi actually lived a more fulfilled life while Mastani had to face trials and tribulations how is Kashi a victim in all this?
I think Bajirao Mastani did justice to Mastani as a cinematic character, but probably not to Mastani as a historical woman. The movie’s Mastani speaks and behaves like a contemporary heroine who is essentially fighting for individual romantic freedom. Bajirao Mastani is marketed as a story about Bajirao and Mastani, but emotionally, the film is structured to make the audience deeply sympathize with Kashibai. And that changes how we perceive the whole situation. Bajirao was a powerful 18th-century aristocratic man. Polygynous relationships among elite men weren’t an extraordinary concept in that social world. So the existence of another wife/consort wasn’t, by itself, the shocking part.
So even though Kashibai is the wife who has to share her husband, the narrative frequently positions her as the person who deserves our greatest sympathy.
And that’s not necessarily historically unreasonable—she undoubtedly suffered emotionally. But the film makes her suffering the emotional centre of the story, while Mastani’s suffering becomes almost a consequence of the romance.
So the conflict wasn’t simply: “Kashibai is a wife and Mastani is stealing her husband.”
It was much more complicated.
And I think the movie sometimes makes it feel like Kashibai’s suffering is caused primarily by Mastani’s existence, rather than by the decisions of the man who chose to maintain both relationships. The title makes you expect Bajirao and Mastani to be the two central characters. But when you actually watch it, Mastani gets surprisingly little opportunity to exist as an independent character. Her character has screen time of only 10-12 minutes half of it which is songs!
The movie makes it look almost like Mastani enters Bajirao’s life as a romantic pursuit: she arrives, attracts him, and becomes the woman who enters an already-established marriage. That inevitably creates a “wife vs. other woman” framework.
There’s another problem with the movie’s romanticization
The film makes Mastani and Bajirao’s relationship look like this almost inevitable, overwhelming love story.
And yes, they may genuinely have loved each other.
But love doesn’t necessarily have to be the beginning of the relationship.
It is entirely possible for a relationship to begin through political circumstances and subsequently develop into genuine affection.
In fact, that’s arguably a much more interesting story.
Mastani could have started as part of a political settlement and eventually become the woman Bajirao genuinely loved while simultaneously becoming the woman his family desperately wanted removed.
The movie made audience hate a historical person who deserves respect sympathy and justice at least in death.
PS : I had many more points but I lost patience