Swara Bhasker reacts to criticism over Padmaavat Jauhar scene remark: ‘Rape survivors have a right to life’
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Swara Bhasker reacts to criticism over Padmaavat Jauhar scene remark: ‘Rape survivors have a right to life’")
Swara Bhasker reacts to criticism over Padmaavat remark Photograph: (X)
Swara Bhasker has reacted to the backlash she faced after criticising the jauhar sequence in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat. She discussed the climax of the film during an event in Delhi.
Swara Bhasker has addressed the 'wild' criticism surrounding her latest comments on the jauhar sequence in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat. The actor recalled her objections to the film’s climax during a recent event in New Delhi. She had questioned the message the film could give to rape survivors.
The discussion has once again brought attention to Bhasker’s longstanding criticism of the 2018 period drama. Following the circulation of a video from the event on social media, several users criticised her for "disrespecting Rajput women".
Swara Bhasker reacts to backlash
Addressing the backlash on X, she wrote, "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!!!"
Swara Bhasker questions Padmaavat
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During the event organised at the India International Centre in Delhi on August 31, Bhasker spoke about why the climax of Padmaavat had stayed with her.
In the SLB film, Deepika Padukone’s character Rani Padmavati joins hundreds of women in performing jauhar after the Rajput defeat at Chittor. "I'm watching this and it shows all these 800 women committing jauhar which is the story. Watching it I was thinking that 'God forbid, I was a rape survivor, what is this film telling me? I would feel like a coward. That I didn't kill myself to save my 'honour'," she said.
She further questioned, "Is that what you want to tell women in a society like ours where I feel like there's any way a rape epidemic. Is that what we want to tell our survivors that you don't deserve to live? That if you had actually been brave and honourable women, you would have killed yourself? Are we saying that rape is the end of a woman's life?"
The actor also recalled a particular visual from the sequence involving a pregnant woman.
"And then there was that one shot, it made me so mad, I was like, chiii, in the audience loudly. There is a close-up of a pregnant woman’s belly. And she is going, so you’re saying that a foetus that might be female doesn’t deserve to be born, because she might be raped by a Muslim ruler?"
This is not the first time she has criticised the film. Following the release of Padmaavat in 2018, she wrote an open letter addressed to Bhansali in which she strongly criticised what she viewed as the glorification of jauhar and sati.
About Padmaavat
Starring Padukone, Shahid Kapoor and Ranveer Singh in the lead, the film draws from Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s 16th-century epic poem Padmavat. Aditi Rao Hydari, Jim Sarbh, Raza Murad and Anupriya Goenka also play key roles in the period drama.
