By Kumkum Chadha
Quite contrary to her name, Swara, which means striking a musical note and in one sense symbolizes a melody, Bollywood’s Swara Bhasker was perhaps doing just the opposite: striking a discordant note for moralists and the self-righteous.
At one level, she was questioning patriarchal mindsets; at another telling the world to be in sync with changing times. She was also asking the women to wake up and look beyond gender; to accept that there is much more to life than sexual violence and the outdated concept of honour. If anything, she was loud and clear.
Of course, one can argue that Bhasker was stuck in a time warp, juxtaposing events seeped in history with modern concepts and perhaps confusing tradition with a mindset that is contemporary.
But first the context and the story followed by the right and wrong, the logic and the necessity of it all.
It started as a letter that Bhasker had shot off some years ago: an open letter to filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali, questioning a scene in the film Padmaavat, which showcases women preparing to commit Jauhar.
For the record, Jauhar is an age-old practice of mass self-immolation practised by Rajput women when their honour was in danger.
A practice associated with war, women were known to commit self-immolation for fear of being raped by invading armies. History records Rajput women committing suicide, often with their children, in a massive fire in the face of a military defeat. According to the Hindu tradition, Jauhar is considered to be a heroic act.
In Bhansali’s film, 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.
It is this that Bhasker had called out little less than a decade ago. In the letter that she had written to Bhansali, she had questioned the glorification of Jauhar and traditional notion of honour. Her take: women should have a right to live even after rape.
But the letter as it read was scathing, sarcastic and unsparing. Bhasker wrote that she was stunned having watched the film.
Her argument or “basic points” to quote her: “Women are not only walking talking vaginas; their whole life need not be focussed on the vagina, controlling it, protecting it and maintaining its purity; there is a life outside the vagina so there can be life after rape; at the end of your magnum opus I felt like a vagina; reduced to a vagina-only”.
Bhasker did not stop here. She had more to say, much more: “Practices like Jauhar should not be glorified because they don’t deny women equality, they deny women personhood. They deny women humanity. They deny women the right to life. And that is wrong”, even as she pointed to Bhansali’s failure to offer some sort of a critique of the regressive practice of Jauhar and Sati in the film.
Years on, Bhasker rekindled the controversy at an event recently in New Delhi. Summing up her discomfort, she told a discerning audience: “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 if I didn’t commit suicide. Are we saying that rape is the end of a woman’s life? This scene was so problematic.”
Expectedly, there was a furore with Bhasker being trolled and also receiving threats from various quarters, including Rajput organizations and the Karni Sena, who asserted that her remarks disrespected historical Rajput sacrifices and Sanatan traditions.
On her part, Bhasker offered an explanation wherein she clarified that she had not called Rani Padmavati and other women “cowards”. She said that the broader point she was making was that rape victims have a right to both life and dignity.
Even while putting the remarks in the right context and claiming that the thrust was lost in translation, Bhasker refused to apologize even after a legal notice was slapped on her.
In this age of social media, reactions are not only instant, but also lethal. Just to quote one social media user: “If Swara were there during Khilji days, Alauddin would’ve committed Jauhar himself.”
Others have defended the Jauhar custom and said that “Jauhar was and remains an act of utmost bravery in the face of unimaginable brutality”.
There are allegations that Bhasker’s comparison between rape survivors and women choosing Jauhar in the face of an invasion is misplaced.
On the vagina issue, she said that one line has diluted the point she was making: that being that women are more than mere bodies.
All of what Bhasker has said makes sense and she should be applauded for having the courage to say it and call a spade a spade.
More importantly, in an industry she belongs to, namely the film industry, calling out is not the norm and that too well-known names who are reputed to ruin careers if checked.
A well-known director of rom-coms and promoter of nepotism is known to have ensured that actors who don’t fall in line, do not get work. The late Sushant Rajput had stated this on record without of course naming the producer-director.
Having said that Bhasker deserves a pat on the back for saying what should have been said and not backtracking or offering to apologize: also going ahead and taking on the likes of Bhansali and thereby ruining all chances of ever getting a role in any of his films.
Decoding what Bhasker said, one should find no fault with it. She was and is talking sense because there has to be an end to women being objectified. Or rape survivors being treated as outcastes. If anything they should be helped and their dignity restored.
Every liberated woman would agree with Bhasker’s take because a woman’s mind and her intellect is the centrepiece of her being and not her body. Rape is unfortunate, but life does not and should not end with it. There is much more beyond sexual violence and Bhasker had the guts to bring this out in the open rather than remain a mute spectator.
She could have, like many of her tribe, wilfully ignored what the likes of Bhansali were showcasing, but she chose not to do that. Instead, she took him on and reiterated her stand on a public platform. How can one dispute the problematic nature of the scene and the message it carries for women across the country? Defending it on it being history, tradition and perhaps fiction is a weak argument.
One must concede that films have a deepening and defining effect on minds and, therefore, every creative filmmaker has a responsibility to put things and convey them in the right perspective.
Therefore, this is not about whether Bhasker is wrong or Bhansali right or vice versa, but more about the impact and the larger message. Instead of giving women the grit and determination to stand up and speak against sexual violence it could hinge on pushing them to subjugation. And the plea of taking a leaf from history, is kind of a feeble excuse.
—The writer is an author, journalist and political commentator
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