Bollywood actor Swara Bhaskar’s remarks on movie Padmaavat and its climax scene showing women committing Jauhar have drawn the ire of political figures, several calling for her to respect the choice of other women.
It’s necessary that a woman should respect other women”, reported PTI. “If the choice was between death or becoming a sex slave for conquerors and a concubine in their harems, several women chose former. Some women may choose latter. However, they used their agency- whether one agrees or disagrees with can be debated but it was a choice. A choice that a woman made. The scene depicts women, led by queen Padmavati played by actor Deepika Padukone, committing Jauhar to avoid Sultan Allaudin Khilji, played by Ranveer Kapoor, and his army getting to them after a war. I understand that such kind of comments should not be made.
The actor said while speaking at ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ talk at the India International Centre in Delhi on Monday that she found the climax scene of the movie, which was released in 2018, “problematic”. Reacting to the remark, which is facing backlash across social media, Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi said the scene depicted choice of women which can be debated and that people should just “deal with it”. Deal with it,” Chaturvedi said. She added that she found that Jauhar scene “perhaps one of the most powerful part of the movie Padmavat”. Taking a jibe at Swara Bhaskar, BJP national spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia said, “You have taken the name of such an individual whose ‘swar’ (tone) has gone bad. It is said that her “swar” (tone) also matches with what is instructed to her.
“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 been an honourable and brave woman, you would have killed yourself. Are we saying that rape is the end of a woman’s life?
This scene was so problematic,” she had said.
