<p>, the underage emperor of the is taught by to rule mercilessly, killing defeated opponents after a . Years later, after another battle, an adult Jalaluddin defies Bairam Khan for the first time, deciding that mercy, respect, and diplomacy will be his way forward. , daughter of of the , is betrothed to Prince Ratan Singh of Ajabgarh. Raja announces that his son Bhagwant Das would be his heir and Sujamal, Jodhaa’s cousin, whom she wants to be the king’s heir instead of Bhagwant Das, will have to work under him. Sujamal, who is deprived of his rightful throne, angrily leaves the kingdom to join Sharifuddin Hussain, Jalaluddin’s brother-in-law, who has his own ambition of becoming emperor. Raja Bharmal makes a peace offering to Jalaluddin, proposing to strengthen relations by his daughter’s marriage to the emperor himself. Jalaluddin agrees, but this breaks Bharmal’s alliance with the other kings of , including . Jodhaa resents being reduced to a political pawn. She writes a letter to Sujamal, requesting him to rescue her, but doesn’t send it. Jodhaa requests a meeting with Jalaluddin and demands that she be allowed to practice her religion even after her wedding, and that a Hindu temple be built for her at the . To her surprise, Jalaluddin agrees. After their marriage, Jodhaa acts reluctant with Jalaluddin and they do not consummate their marriage. He assures Jodhaa that they will let things fall into place. The emperor’s foster brother , the son of Jalaluddin’s nurse and nanny, , murders Jalaluddin’s prime minister to prevent his own war crimes from being exposed. In a fit of rage, Jalaluddin has Adham executed by throwing him down from the palace roof, unaware of Jodhaa watching. The scene has her torn between fearing Jalaluddin’s violence and respecting his passionate love for justice. Maham Anga despises Jodhaa. She conspires to destroy Jalaluddin’s marriage, humiliating Jodhaa in front of him. She finds the letter Jodhaa had written to Sujamal and has it sent, and when Sujamal comes to meet Jodhaa secretly, she insinuates to Jalaluddin that Jodhaa went to meet her lover. Jalaluddin sends his men to arrest Sujamal, who thinks Jodhaa has betrayed him, and flees. Jalaluddin sends Jodhaa back to Amber. Jodhaa does not give an explanation, indignant at her character being questioned. Later Jalaluddin finds out the truth and goes to Amber, apologises to Jodhaa, and asks her to come back, but she refuses. Instead, Jodhaa tells him to investigate the working of his relations and empire. Jalaluddin returns and travels through the common folk in disguise to understand the problems of his people better. That is when he realizes that the citizens are not happy with the Mughal rule because of on non Muslims. Jalaluddin abolishes it and announces that every religion has its rights in his empire.This impresses Jodhaa, who comes back to him. His citizens bestow him with the title of Akbar(the great one). During a celebration, an assassin sent by Sharifuddin Hussain shoots a poisoned arrow at Akbar. Jodhaa helps nurse Akbar back to health and the pair genuinely fall deeply in love. Sujamal, Sharifuddin Hussain, and his allies march to attack Amber. After Sujamal overhears Sharifuddin plotting an assassination attempt on the emperor, he quickly leaves to warn Akbar of this conspiracy. Sharifuddin’s soldiers chase Sujamal and shoot him with arrows. Before dying, he manages to warn the emperor of the attack. Akbar defeats Sharifuddin in hand-to-hand combat, and then spares his life for the sake of his half-sister , but not before stripping him of his title of of and . Eventually, Akbar proclaims that will be a peaceful and prosperous land if people respect and honour each other’s religions. The film ends with a voiceover saying that although their love is not given significant importance, Jodhaa and Akbar have silently created history together. Following the success of (2001), its director was approached by actor and screenwriter with the idea of making a film along the lines of ‘s , (1960). When Gowariker contemplated on whether he should make a sequel to or remake it, Ali suggested that he can do a prequel to it; Gowariker agreed and decided to create a screenplay that would cover the early years of Akbar’s life from 13 to 21 years of age. In an interview with Syed Firdaus Ashraf of , Ali said on his decision to work with Gowariker: Ashutosh is the only director who could do justice to a film of such a level. In , he touched on the issue of casteism, the oppressed class, Hindu-Muslim unity, communal harmony, team spirit, management and nationalism. He weaved all this beautifully to make a hit film without preaching or lecturing. In the same way, I told him he could make a beautiful film by touching on such issues without preaching. Gowariker had already finished his script for (2004) when Ali pitched the idea. As a result, he decided to start his work with Ali after completing it. In December 2001, Ali began research on the marriage of princess , daughter of the ruler of , with the , and prepared a basic story on the couple. One month after was released, Ali met Gowariker and handed to him the story. Gowariker subsequently announced his next project, terming it “a romantic musical”, titled . In March 2005, Gowariker started work on the screenplay with Ali while denying speculations that Firoz A. Nadiadwala and were producing the film. It was confirmed later in August 2006 that Gowariker would co-produce the film himself under his banner AGPPL productions with of , in addition to the latter distributing it. Ali and Gowariker completed the script in November 2005 and sought the help of , the of and his spouse, Maharani Padmini Devi to provide them with “creative inputs to make as realistic as possible.” was hired to write the film’s dialogues. and were the first choice of both Ali and Gowariker for portraying Akbar and Jodhabai respectively. Gowariker believed Roshan possessed the regal bearing and physique required to play the role of a king. According to Gowariker, Roshan immediately agreed after the former merely mentioned that he was doing a film on Akbar. Roshan learned as a means of preparing for his role. For casting Rai, Gowariker sent her an asking “Will U B My Jodha?” to which Rai sent a reply stating “Yes, I will” followed by a . was chosen to play Jodhabai’s cousin brother . Sood had rejected offers to feature in other projects as he wanted to fully involve himself in the film. The role of Akbar’s mother, , was first offered to , who declined citing family commitments as her reason. The role subsequently went to which marked a comeback for her to acting since her brief stint in the 1970s. Actress and singer had wanted to work with Gowariker and approached him for a role in the film; Gowariker cast her as Akbar’s nurse, . was selected to play Sharifuddin Hussain, the rebellious brother-in-law of Akbar, after impressing Gowariker during the auditions. portrayed while was cast as Jodhabai’s mother, Rani Padmavati. Actress Abir Abrar, niece of actress , was selected to play , Akbar’s sister and Hussain’s wife. Indrajeet Sarkar was cast in the role of , but his scenes were cut from the film’s final version to reduce its duration. , , and Ballu Saluja were signed up as the music composer, lyricist for the songs, art director and editor respectively, thereby collaborating with Gowariker for the third time after and . Visual Computing Labs (VCL), a division of , were in charge of the film’s special effects. Kiran Deohans, known for his work in (1988), (2001) and (2001), was the film’s cinematographer. Gowariker chose Ravi Dewan to be the stunt co-ordinator for based on the latter’s experience in handling historical films, such as (1994). and his wife Rekha, Raju Khan and Ash Kumar were the film’s choreographers. , who had earlier worked with Rai in ‘s (2002), was chosen to handle the film’s costume designing. Lulla found to be “one of the most challenging films” she had done. This was because she had to design costumes not only for the lead actress, but for every cast member involved in the film. Lulla did extensive research for a year and a half on the type of clothes people wore during the Mughal Empire. She went to to procure information on what type of fabrics were worn during that period. She schematically designed clothes by providing yellow, orange and red colours for the Rajputs and gold, brown and beige colours for the Mughals. Keeping in mind the grandeur of the during Akbar’s time, Lulla used the and types of embroidery for Roshan’s and Rai’s dresses. The fabrics for designing the costumes as well as the shoes were bought from , and , while authentic embroidered were used for footwear. Lulla designed clothes of dark brown, black and green colours for the character of Sharifuddin Hussain after taking the characters’ persona into consideration. The jewellery used for the costumes were purchased from the jewellery brand company . marked the company’s second venture into films after the (2005). A team of 200 craftsmen worked for 600 days to fashion and mould jewels made of gold gemstones. Around 300 kilograms of jewels were used. Rai and Roshan wore thirteen and eight sets of jewels respectively throughout the film. The set, which Aishwarya wore in the scene where Jodhabai is wedded to Akbar weighed 3.5 kilograms. Rai later mentioned in subsequent interviews that the toughest part of playing her character was to wear the jewellery as she found them quite heavy to bedeck. The jewels were designed using miniature paintings from Mughal literature and Akbar’s autobiography by , the as influences. The used by the lead actors in the film weighed two kilograms. Filming commenced in early November 2006 at with the climax sequence with Roshan and Dheer, and the . Palace scenes featuring Rai as Jodhabai before her marriage to Akbar were filmed at the in . The sequence featuring the Battle of Panipat was shot in the region located on the outskirts of Jaipur. To prepare for their fight sequences, Roshan and Rai learnt sword-fighting and horse-riding a month before filming began at and respectively. Rai had learnt sword-fighting and horse-riding while filming (2007) because of which she had little difficulty in her preparations. Dewan worked with Desai in designing the armour and ammunitions. The cannons were made of with iron inserted on the inner portions to make sure the cannonballs were fired smoothly. The swords were initially made of both wood and fibre but were later made of lightweight carbon fibre due to the actors not being able to manoeuvre them easily. All of the stunt sequences were rehearsed every day from 3 am to 7 am before they were filmed. A team of 250 stuntmen and 5,000 extras were used for all the battle scenes, which were filmed for 20–30 days at a stretch. Ashutosh wanted the climax to be perfect because of which the extras, who were people from nearby villages and were used for Akbar’s and Hussain’s armies, would often get tired standing in the same position for an entire day. Some of them would not be present the next day. As a result, Dewan placed the 250 stuntmen in the front rows of both armies so as not to show how exhausted the villagers were. Deohans employed six cameras to film the climax scene from different angles. He was influenced by films such as (2000) and (2004) as he found the “basic colour” of those films’ locations similar to that of Rajasthan’s arid surroundings. The was used depending on the scenes filmed. Further shooting took place at , and the forts of , and . The scene where Akbar prays to the for a successful conquest of India was filmed at the . After the completion of the first schedule of filming—which took in 60 days—by the end of December 2006, the second schedule began on 8 January 2007 at Desai’s based in . Desai took “lakhs of photographs” of Amer Fort and Agra fort. Using the photos as reference, he erected sets consisting of the inner portions of both places in his studio. Filming could not take place entirely at the forts due to heavy traffic of tourists coming there every day. Consequentially, only the outer portions of both the forts were filmed on the spot during the first schedule while the scenes featuring the inner portions were filmed at Karjat. The inner portions that were erected by Desai included the , DÄ«wān-e-Khās, Jodhaabai’s inner chambers and the fort’s gardens. The entire set measured 1,600 feet long, 600 feet wide and 68 feet high, which according to Desai was equivalent to “seven floors of a “. , and were the materials used to create the interiors of the forts. The cost of the entire set at Karjat was estimated to be around ₹120 million. The song “Azeem-O-Shaan Shahenshah”, which was choreographed by Prakash, featured about 12 assistant choreographers, 400 dancers and 2,000 extras acting as the citizens of Agra. Prakash used the dance steps featured in the songs of films such as (1961) and (1965) as reference. The song was planned to be finished within 10 days but took 15 days to complete as Prakash felt it was “difficult to stick to a deadline when you have a crowd this big.” He credited his team for finishing the song as he believed it would have taken “a month” to film without their co-operation. The music video for “Azeem-O-Shaan Shahenshah” had a production cost of ( ). It was the most expensive video at the time, matching ” ” from (2002). A total of 80 elephants, 100 horses and 55 camels were employed throughout the entire film. The battle scene featuring Roshan and Ulhas Barve, who plays the King of Mankeshwar, , was filmed in June 2007 at Jaipur. Shooting was completed in October–November 2007 at Karjat. Due to the amount of money spent on the costumes and sets, the budget of the film, which was initially ₹370 million, increased to ₹400 million. The score and soundtrack of the film was composed by , making his third collaboration with Ashutosh Gowariker after , and . The official soundtrack contains five songs and two instrumentals. Rahman scored the prewritten lyrics by , except for the songs “Khwaja Mere Khwaja” which was written by Kashif. The music was released on 9 January 2008 and the CDs were out by 18 January. According to the Indian trade website , with around 1,100,000 units sold, this film’s soundtrack album was the year’s fourteenth highest-selling. The film emerged out as the biggest winner in many music awards. However, in the best music direction category, it lost many mainly to , composed by Rahman himself. The fine background score won the film several awards including and . The soundtrack was also nominated in numerous categories. Many of the events portrayed in the movie are fictional. Certain groups revolted and claimed Jodhaa was married to Akbar’s son, and was a non-Rajput, born to a concubine of low caste. However that name of that wife of Jahangir is proposed as not . Several historians claim that none of Akbar’s wife was known as “Jodhaa Bai” during the Mughal period, she was referred to with her title of Mariam-uz-Zamani.<br /> According to Professor Shirin Moosvi, a historian of , neither the (a biography of Akbar commissioned by Akbar himself) nor any historical text from the period refer to her as Jodhaa Bai. Moosvi notes that the name “Jodhaa Bai” was first used to refer to Akbar’s wife in the 18th and 19th centuries in historical writings. In the (autobiography of Jahangir, c.1624), the author refers to her with no name, rather the . According to Ruby Lal (2008), “The only document that names the mother of Jahangir is a later edict issued by Mariam-uz-Zamani. The seal on the edict reads ‘Wali Nimat Begum, Walideh Nur al-Din Jahangir’, thus clearly identifying with Wali Nimat Begum and unequivocally declaring her to be Jahangir’s mother”. According to historian Imtiaz Ahmad, the director of the Khuda Baksh Oriental Public Library in , the name “Jodhaa” was used for Akbar’s wife for the first time by Lieutenant-Colonel , in his book . According to Ahmad, Tod was not a professional historian. N. R. Farooqi claims that Jodhaa Bai was not the name of Akbar’s queen; it was the name of Jahangir’s non-Rajput wife. ‘s reaction was: While making the film I did my best to go by the book. I consulted the best historians and went through the most rigorous research. There are different names used for Akbar’s wife, Jodhaa being one of them. In fact, there’s a disclaimer about the queen’s name and real caste at the beginning of the film. But to see that, the protesters have to see the film. The portrayal of ethnic people in the movie was criticised by members of the Rajput community as misleading, politically motivated that minimised Rajput history. The community’s protests against the film in some states led to the film being banned in the states of , Rajasthan, and . However, the producer went to the Supreme Court to challenge it. Later, the lifted the ban on screening the film in Uttar Pradesh and some towns of Uttarakhand and Haryana. The court scrapped the Uttar Pradesh government ban as well as similar orders by authorities in , Uttarakhand and , and , Haryana. Owing to the film’s success, the film was dubbed and released into and languages under the same title. As of June 2020 , the film holds a 75% approval rating on , based on 16 reviews with an average rating of 6.83/10. The film received a critics’ rating of 69 on based on 4 reviews. Anil Sinanan of gave the film four out of five stars, stating, “Oscar-nominated (2001) director Ashutosh Gowariker’s sumptuous period epic has all the ingredients of a entertainer […] The film ends with a passionate plea for tolerance of all religions in India, a resonant message for modern India.” of also gave the film four out of five stars, commenting: “I’ve never felt this way about any other film, but sitting there in my seat watching , I felt privileged as a moviegoer. Privileged that such a film had been made, and privileged that it had been made in our times so we can form our own opinions of the film rather than adopt the opinions of previous generations, which we invariably must when looking at older classics.” Tajpal Rathore of the gave the film four out of five stars, noting that, “although the 16th-century love story upon which it’s based might be long forgotten, this endearing treatment sears into the memory through sheer size and scale alone […] Don’t let the running time put you off watching this unashamedly epic tale.” Nikhat Kazmi of gave the film three stars, stating that, ” works only because its heart is in the right place. The film talks about a love that transcends all barriers – gender, religion, culture – and dreams of an India where secularism and tolerance are the twin towers that should never ever crumble. And Akbar and Jodhaa are the alluring exponents of this dream.” Kazmi also suggests that “if you are willing to shed off all the trappings of history, only then will work for you.” While suggesting that the film is “too long” and that it is “not a history lesson,” Rachel Saltz of also notes, “in choosing to tell the tale of this emperor and a Muslim-Hindu love story, Mr. Gowariker makes a clear point. As Akbar says, ‘Respect for each other’s religion will enrich Hindustan.'” The dubbed version also received mixed reviews. Reviewing the version, gave 4 out of 5 stars stating that “A visual feast and an intoxicating love story.” collected a of 77.85 ( 20.82 million) in India. declared it a hit at the domestic box office. Its domestic was 56.04 crore, equivalent to (US$10 million) adjusted for inflation. Overseas, it grossed US$7.56 million ( 49.92 crore), and was declared a blockbuster at the overseas box office. Its overseas gross included US$2.1 million in the , US$3.45 million in , US$450,000 in , and US$1.1 million in the region. The film ended its box office run with a worldwide lifetime gross of (equivalent to 312 crore or US$37 million in 2023), equivalent to US$28.37 million at the time.</p>