Swara Bhasker Calls Padmaavat Jauhar Scene Cowardly
Indiadailyupdate.com – Swara Bhasker calls Jauhar scene in Deepika Padukone’s Padmaavat “cowardly,” a remark that quickly spiralled into one of Bollywood’s most heated online arguments. Speaking at the Woman Life Freedom talk at the India International Centre in Delhi on August 31, the veteran performer argued that the climactic self-immolation sequence risks telling survivors of sexual violence they should have ended their own lives to preserve honour. Within hours, social media erupted with pushback from historians, film fans, and ordinary viewers who called the critique “malicious” and historically illiterate.
What Bhasker Said on Stage
The actor recalled watching the 2018 Sanjay Leela Bhansali epic and questioning what narrative it embedded in viewers’ minds. Her remarks, delivered with visible emotion, centred on the idea that framing the act as the “honourable” response to impending capture could implicitly devalue the lives of those who survived rape.
“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 this what we want to tell our survivors that they don’t deserve to live? This scene was so problematic.”
Bhasker singled out a particular close-up for special criticism. She described reacting with audible disgust to a frame showing a pregnant woman’s abdomen during the sequence, interpreting the image as implying that an unborn child — potentially a girl — was deemed unworthy of life because of the threat posed by a Muslim ruler.
“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.”
The Backlash on Social Media
Commentators pushed back on multiple fronts. One framed the issue in stark terms: “According to Bhasker, Hindu women who committed jauhar or suicide were ‘COWARDS’ because they chose to die over the prospect of leading their lives as concubines of Muslim invaders.”
Another voice challenged what they saw as a false moral equivalence between medieval wartime atrocity and modern-day sexual assault, writing: “Jauhar was and remains an act of utmost bravery in the face of unimaginable brutality. Showing stunning ignorance she says that she is arguing that why shall a pregnant women commit jauhar just to protect her fetus. What a willful intellectual blindness.”
A third reply questioned whether the critique understood the historical context at all: “Does this lady even realise how Mughals kept Hindu women in captivity and treated them as sex slaves? IQ in Minus.”
A fourth comment, more measured in tone but firm in verdict, labelled the critique outright malicious: “Jauhar was a lot of things but, it certainly wasn’t a ‘cowardly act.’ You can debate mass immolation but, you can’t call it cowardice. That’s just being malicious.”
The Film and Its Historical Canvas
Padmaavat, released in 2018, is a Hindi-language epic period drama built around the legend of Rani Padmavati, the Rajput queen of Mewar. Deepika Padukone portrays the queen, Shahid Kapoor plays her husband Maharawal Ratan Singh, and Ranveer Singh embodies Sultan Alauddin Khilji. Supporting roles are filled by Aditi Rao Hydari, Jim Sarbh, Raza Murad, and Anupriya Goenka. The screenplay, co-written by Bhansali and Prakash Kapadia, draws on the 16th-century Sufi epic poem Padmavat composed by Malik Muhammad Jayasi.
In the film’s final act, Khilji’s army overpowers the Rajput defenders and breaches the walls of Chittor Fort. Following the death of Ratan Singh on the battlefield, Padmavati leads the women of the fort in collective self-immolation. The sequence, shot with Bhansali’s signature visual grandeur, has drawn both praise for its spectacle and criticism for its handling of female agency.
FAQ
When did Bhasker make these remarks? She spoke at the Woman Life Freedom talk held at the India International Centre, Delhi, on August 31.
What exactly did she call the scene? She described the Jauhar sequence as “cowardly” and “problematic,” arguing it sends a damaging message to rape survivors.
What was the main counter-argument online? Most pushback held that Jauhar was historically an act of desperate agency under conquest, not timidity, and that equating it with modern sexual assault was a category error.
Is Padmaavat based on a true historical event? The film adapts the 16th-century Sufi poem Padmavat by Malik Muhammad Jayasi. Historians debate whether Rani Padmavati and the Chittor siege occurred as depicted, but the legend has deep roots in Rajput and Sufi literary traditions.
