Vidyāpati’s Kīrtilatā and the Forgotten Harmony: Reconsidering Hindu–Muslim Interactions in Mithila

Abstract

The portrayal of Muslims in the Mithila region of North Bihar politics and media has experienced a significant decline in recent years. Empirical research have shown a steady reduction in the number of Muslim Members of Parliament in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha across successive regimes marking a notable shrinking in the representation despite India’s commitment to political inclusion since Independence.. However, this is not merely a matter of numbers but a reflection of deeper socio-political gap in which nearly 200 million Indian Muslims are increaingly positioned as ‘outsider’ within a political arena. Contemporary narratives circulating through derogatory labels such as "Babar ki aulad" or "Aurangzeb ki aulad," the recurrence of communal violence, mob lynching cases and representations in social media and cinema reinforce this othering frequently. Often these exclusions are promoted with  a revised historical narrative that invokes the notion of  Muslim dominance in premodern India to rationalise contemporary marginalisation. Such discourses find exaggeration in popular culture, prominently in cinema setting revenge and ‘historical justice’ as its prime theme. This paper thus critically interrogates such contemporary portrayals by revisiting historical representations of Hindu-Muslim interactions, in the Mithila region through the lens of the fifteenth-century poet of Mithila named Vidyapati, a polymath writing in Sanskrit, Maithili and Avahatta and his celebrated text Kīrtilatā. Kīrtilatā offers valuable critical insights into medieval statecraft both regionally and at central levels, intercommunal relations, and cultural pluralism. By re-engaging with these historical narratives, this study seeks to challenge present-day communal frameworks and foreground inclusive political imaginations embedded in India’s past with Mithila as a case study.