Bollywood actor Swara Bhasker reignited a social media debate with her comments on Deepika Padukone’s 2018 film Padmaavat. The actor, who spoke at the Woman Life Freedom talk at the India International Centre in Delhi on August 31, spoke against the Jauhar scene in the Sanjay Leela Bhansali film. After her comments sparked backlash, the actor reacted on her X account.
Swara’s response
Taking to X, Swara wrote a note which read, “It is WILD that so many people are triggered (women included) by the basic idea that rape survivors have a right to life after rape!”
What did Swara say?
Speaking at the event, Swara made a controversial statement about the Jauhar sequence shown towards the end of the film and said that it could send the wrong message to rape survivors. She said, “I was watching it, and I thought that if God forbid, I was a rape survivor, what is this film telling me? I would feel like a coward that I didn’t commit suicide to save my honour. Is that what you want to tell in a society like ours where I feel like anyway there is a rape epidemic. Is this what we want to tell our survivors that they don’t deserve to live, that if you actually would have be a honourable and brave women, you would have killed yourself. Are we saying that rape is end of a woman’s life? This scene was so problematic.”
She added, “Then there was this one shot, which made me so mad that I shouted ‘chii’ loudly, there is a close-up of a pregnant woman’s belly performing jauhar. So you are telling me that fetus, which might be a female, doesn’t deserve to be born because she might be raped by a Muslim ruler. I was so mad. I waited for five days to check if I still feel like that, and after five days, I wrote a letter.” She was referring to the open letter she wrote to Sanjay Leela Bhansali after Padmawat’s release in 2018.
What was the Jauhar scene in Padmaavat?
In Padmaavat, the Jauhar sequence comes towards the climax after Alauddin Khilji’s forces defeat the Rajputs and breach the fort of Chittor. Deepika Padukone’s Rani Padmavati leads the women of the fort into Jauhar, portrayed in the film as a collective act of self-immolation to avoid capture. The sequence follows the death of Shahid Kapoor’s Maharawal Ratan Singh and Khilji’s eventual victory over Chittor.
Directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Padmaavat is a 2018 Hindi epic period drama starring Deepika Padukone as Rani Padmavati, Shahid Kapoor as Maharawal Ratan Singh and Ranveer Singh as Sultan Alauddin Khilji.