Swara Bhasker wrote her views on Padmaavat, movie that was published in a number of newspapers.
‘At The End of Your Magnum Opus… I Felt Reduced to a Vagina – Only', On 27/01/2018, in The Wire, The Times of India and in some other newspapers, in which she has criticised Sanjay Leela Bhansali's epic movie, Padmaavat, for its portrayal of Jauhar (or mass self-immolation) in the film's climax.
In the film's highlight, Deepika Padukone's Padmaavati is publicized walking towards an intense fire, along with numerous women, one of them even pregnant. The action of the sight is such that it makes the act look like a ritual of course or the ‘gracious' thing to do when faced with the risk of rape, slavery, abuse.
Sati, also known as "Suttee," was a tradition that was practised in ancient India from the early centuries BCE to the mid-1990's. In this tradition, widows were burned at the side of their deceased husbands. There were many reasons behind this tragic form of suicide, but the act was seen as heroic and courageous. The tradition originates with the goddess Sati, who burned herself to death in a fire that she created through her yogic powers, which she obtained after her father had insulted her husband. Sati became an option for women in India who were not "marriageable," according to social norms. Sati was first recognized in the Mahabharata, one of the two most well-known and important poems of India.1
(Kashgar, 2009, s.v. "Life in India: the practice of Sati or widow burning," by Linda Heaphy.)
"LAMP of my life, the lips of Death
Hath blown thee out with their sudden breath;
Naught shall revive thy vanished spark . . .
Love, must I dwell in the living dark?" -Suttee by Sarojini Naidu-2
(The Denson Journal of Religion, April 2015, s.v. "Interpreting Sati: the Complex Relationship Between Gender and Power in India," by Cheyenne Cierpial.)
She, in her letter, told, "At the end of the movie, you felt reduced to a vagina." "Women have the right to live, despite being raped, sir. Women have the right to live, despite the death of their husbands, male 'protectors', 'owners', 'controllers of their sexuality'. Whatever you understand the men to be," she wrote
After eight centuries, she is trolling and abusing the helpless, young widows. She wrote, "Rajasthan in the 13th century with its cruel practices is merely the historical setting of the ballad you have adapted into the film Padmaavat. The context of your film is India in the 21st century; where five years ago, a girl was gang-raped brutally in the country's capital inside a moving bus."
Instead of condemning the brutal rapist, slaughterer and invader, Swara Bhasker is trolling and abusing the women; worried about, their honour and to safeguard themselves of the brutalities, inflicted by a savage. jauhar existed as a compulsive-accepted social norm at one point in time is one thing. But it was not a glorious practice. However, ignorant historians and commentators have wrongly glorified and romanticized it as an act of essential sacrifice. The real-sound writing and correct handling should have by not letting it to trap into a celebratory terrain."
Sati, a reprehensible custom was not a custom of Hindu society. It started due to the fear of Mughal invaders. To see a 200-crore film which completely failed to question and introspection behind this evil – and in the process, confusing the helplessness and repression of women with honour. Actually, it was a freedom from Islamic invaders brutality. Here, Swara Bhasker, as well as Bhansali both, failed miserably.
It is just like the glorification of self-immolation due to the Khilji terror."Jauhar was a dreadful practice and the belief of Islamic invaders that if they invade a Hindu woman's vagina, by their pen@is, the sole property of their existence, it will be their highest achievement. Scary Bhansali has chosen to glamourise Jauhar but could not dare to project the evil mind od invader Khilji."
‘At The End of Your Magnum Opus… I Felt Reduced to a Vagina – Only'-Swara Bhasker
In her letter to Padmaavat director Sanjay Leela Bhansali, little-known actress Swara Bhaskar decries glorification of Sati and Jauhar that deny women the right to live but could not dare to speak the real villain Alauddin Khilji.
In a very vulgar manner she has mocked woman's beauty ‘minus the gorgeous Deepika Padukone's uncovered slender waist',--- Even she is critical of her own nation's ‘tolerant' like a truly secular and communist bhakt. ‘ And in this ‘tolerant' India of today, where people are being murdered over meat, and school children are targets for avenging some archaic notion of male pride,---.' She could have also written few words about the lives of animals being slaughtered for a dish in somebody's plate, slaughtered soldiers by Jihadis in Kashmir, or the miserable lives of Kashmir Hindus in refugee camps in their own country.
Like a creeping quite communist journalist, she has very shrewdly flattered Bhansali, almost pleading for roles:
"…By the way Sir, we know each other, after a fashion. I don't know if you remember, but I played a tiny role in your film Guzaarish. A two-scene -long role, to be precise. I remember having a brief chat with you about my lines, and you asking me what I thought about the lines. I remember feeling proud for a whole month that Sanjay Leela Bhansali had asked me my opinion. I watched you agitatedly explaining to junior artists in one scene, and to the jimmy jib operator in the second scene; some minutiae of the particular shot you were taking. And I remember thinking to myself, "Wow! This man really cares about every little detail in his film." I was impressed with you Sir."
She further flatters;
"An avid watcher of your films, I marvelled at how you pushed boundaries with every film you made and how stars turned into fierce and deep performers under your able direction. You moulded my idea of what epic love must be like and I fantasised about the day I will be directed by you in a protagonist part. I was and remain a fan….."
She has mentioned ‘the Karni Sena terrorists and their ilk' but no courage to say the slaughtering and rapist clan of Alauddin Khilji as a terrorist and failed to say:
Women have the right to live; they are not made for being raped by criminals and slaughterers.
Women are not only walking talking vaginas which are not made to serve the pen@is of slaughterers and butchers.
Yes, women have vaginas, but they have more to them as well. So their whole life need not be focused on to serve the pen@is of invaders.
Protecting and maintaining its purity is very important to them.
Rapist should not be glorified, as the Indian historians have been doing, glorifying invaders-slaughterers and rapist.
"You may be wondering why the hell I am going on and on thus about vaginas. Because Sir, that's what I felt like at the end of your magnum opus. I felt like a vagina for the brute. Alauddin Khilji. I felt reduced to a vagina–only to serve the brute Alauddin Khilji and his clan." - Swara Bhasker
Hindu men and system have great regard for women's respect and equality. They have supported and given so much to women – like the right to vote, the right to own property, the right to education, equal pay for equal work, maternity leave, childcare leave, the Vishakha judgement, the right to adopt children…… all of it was pointless to Mughal invaders because for the women are made to serve their filthy pen@is.
The film ignored and well as Swara Bhasker, the basic question — of the right to life. The film, felt to project as a brutal invader, slaughterer, rapist, homosexual demon, had brought us back to that question from the Dark Ages – do women – they have the right to live?
"Surely Sir, you agree that Sati and Jauhar are not practised to be glorified. Surely, you agree that notwithstanding whatever archaic idea of honour, sacrifice, purity propels women and men to participate in and condone such practices; that basically Sati and Jauhar, like the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and Honour Killings, are steeped in deeply patriarchal, misogynist and problematic ideas. A mentality that believes that the worth of women lies in their vaginas, that female lives are worthless if the women are no longer controlled by male owners or if their bodies have been ‘desecrated' by the touch of ; or even the gaze of a male who doesn't by social sanction ‘own' or ‘control' the female."
At times she is very right;
"Practices like Sati, Jauhar, FGM, Honour Killings should not be glorified because they don't merely deny women equality, they deny women personhood. They deny women humanity. They deny women the right to life. And that is wrong. One would have assumed that in 2018, this is not a point that even needs to be made; but apparently, it does. Surely, you wouldn't consider making a film glorifying FGM or Honour Killings!"
Sir, you will say to me that I am over-reacting and that I must see the film in its context. That it's a story about people in the 13th Century. And in the 13th century, that's what life was– polygamy was accepted, Muslims were beasts who devoured meat and women alike. A Sati-Jauhar is an attempt to protect the chastity and honour.
The real meaning of women empowerment is to make them well educated and leave them free so that they are capable to take their own decisions in any field.In all, we are in dire need to empower women so that they can be independent and not rely on men of our country to support them and take care of them. The women of our country should be strong broad-minded and mature in taking their own decisions.Decision making in national topics or any other topics of our society should also encourage participation of women.- (The Importance of Women Empowerment in India and How to Achieve It, Google.)
She has very sarcastically and in a very caustic manner, commented on the concept of female honour, patriotism, and Rajput honour:
Sure Sir, but you followed that up with a two-hour-45-minute-long paean on Rajput honour, and the bravery of honourable Rajput women who chose happily to sacrifice their lives in raging flames, than to be touched by enemy men who were not their husbands but were incidentally Muslim.
According to for the phenomenon of the world becoming a .naked body', Jameson says that "…..our society begun to offer us the world—now mostly a collection of products of our own making—as just such a body, that you can possess visually, and collect the images of." (Fredric Jameson, Signatures of the Visibles, (New York, Routledge, 1992), p-1.)
She is also very critical and caustic about the Hindu concept of Satya, Asatya, Dharm and Adharma:
There were more than three instances of the ‘good' characters of your story speaking of Sati/Jauhar as the honourable choice, your female protagonist – epitome of both beauty, brains and virtue sought permission from her husband to commit Jauhar, because she could not even die without his permission; soon after she delivered a long speech about the war between Satya and Asatya, Dharm and Adharm and presented collective Sati to be the path of Truth and Dharm.
Then in the climax, breathtakingly shot of course – hundreds of women bedecked in red like Goddess Durga as bride rushed into the Jauhar fire while a raving Muslim psychopathic villain loomed over them and a pulsating musical track – that had the power of an anthem; seduced the audience into being awestruck and admiring of this act. Sir, if this is not glorification and support of Sati and Jauhar, I really do not know what is.
The first reason is that very few movies are made about Muslim society in India in general. Look at the list of highest-grossing Bollywood films. Of the top 25 grossing films, only two (Dhoom 3 and My Name Is Khan) have the main star portraying Muslim characters. I bet that you can do a similar analysis with the list of Bollywood films of 2014 and find that barely 10% of all reasonable-budget films are made centred on the Muslim society (Muslims do get a lot of representation in Bollywood films as antagonists). The "Muslim social" has pretty much died. When only one in ten of films are made about Muslims, isn't it only fair that only one in ten of films criticising religion is about Islam? (http://www.sanskritimagazine.com/india/open-letter-bollywood/#, Google)
Like a true secularist, communist and feminist, she felt very uncomfortable, when the ‘monster like Khilji' failed to rape the queen Padmavati:
I felt very uncomfortable watching your climax, watching that pregnant woman and little girl walk into the fire. I felt my existence was illegitimate because God forbid anything untoward happened to me, I would do everything in my power to sneak out of that fiery pit– even if that meant being enslaved to a monster like Khilji forever. I felt in that moment that it was wrong of me to choose life over death. It was wrong to have the desire to live. This Sir is the power of cinema.Repeatedly, she has been trying to link this Sati system with Hindus and Hinduism but failed in her point. She did this only to come in limelight.
It is hard to fathom how slow moving the cultural exchange of the world is when you find out that there are several places across the country where harmful customs of the ancient world coexist with modern appliances and thought. However that may come as hardly any surprise to anyone who has lived in India – the dichotomy of society is something that can only be explained by a refrain from an old Bollywood song: "It happens only in India!" -(Women Empowerment in India – A Burning Issue, Google.)
‘At The End of Your Magnum Opus… I Felt Reduced to a Vagina – Only', On 27/01/2018, in The Wire, The Times of India and in some other newspapers, in which she has criticised Sanjay Leela Bhansali's epic movie, Padmaavat, for its portrayal of Jauhar (or mass self-immolation) in the film's climax.
In the film's highlight, Deepika Padukone's Padmaavati is publicized walking towards an intense fire, along with numerous women, one of them even pregnant. The action of the sight is such that it makes the act look like a ritual of course or the ‘gracious' thing to do when faced with the risk of rape, slavery, abuse.
Sati, also known as "Suttee," was a tradition that was practised in ancient India from the early centuries BCE to the mid-1990's. In this tradition, widows were burned at the side of their deceased husbands. There were many reasons behind this tragic form of suicide, but the act was seen as heroic and courageous. The tradition originates with the goddess Sati, who burned herself to death in a fire that she created through her yogic powers, which she obtained after her father had insulted her husband. Sati became an option for women in India who were not "marriageable," according to social norms. Sati was first recognized in the Mahabharata, one of the two most well-known and important poems of India.1
(Kashgar, 2009, s.v. "Life in India: the practice of Sati or widow burning," by Linda Heaphy.)
"LAMP of my life, the lips of Death
Hath blown thee out with their sudden breath;
Naught shall revive thy vanished spark . . .
Love, must I dwell in the living dark?" -Suttee by Sarojini Naidu-2
(The Denson Journal of Religion, April 2015, s.v. "Interpreting Sati: the Complex Relationship Between Gender and Power in India," by Cheyenne Cierpial.)
She, in her letter, told, "At the end of the movie, you felt reduced to a vagina." "Women have the right to live, despite being raped, sir. Women have the right to live, despite the death of their husbands, male 'protectors', 'owners', 'controllers of their sexuality'. Whatever you understand the men to be," she wrote
After eight centuries, she is trolling and abusing the helpless, young widows. She wrote, "Rajasthan in the 13th century with its cruel practices is merely the historical setting of the ballad you have adapted into the film Padmaavat. The context of your film is India in the 21st century; where five years ago, a girl was gang-raped brutally in the country's capital inside a moving bus."
Instead of condemning the brutal rapist, slaughterer and invader, Swara Bhasker is trolling and abusing the women; worried about, their honour and to safeguard themselves of the brutalities, inflicted by a savage. jauhar existed as a compulsive-accepted social norm at one point in time is one thing. But it was not a glorious practice. However, ignorant historians and commentators have wrongly glorified and romanticized it as an act of essential sacrifice. The real-sound writing and correct handling should have by not letting it to trap into a celebratory terrain."
Sati, a reprehensible custom was not a custom of Hindu society. It started due to the fear of Mughal invaders. To see a 200-crore film which completely failed to question and introspection behind this evil – and in the process, confusing the helplessness and repression of women with honour. Actually, it was a freedom from Islamic invaders brutality. Here, Swara Bhasker, as well as Bhansali both, failed miserably.
It is just like the glorification of self-immolation due to the Khilji terror."Jauhar was a dreadful practice and the belief of Islamic invaders that if they invade a Hindu woman's vagina, by their pen@is, the sole property of their existence, it will be their highest achievement. Scary Bhansali has chosen to glamourise Jauhar but could not dare to project the evil mind od invader Khilji."
‘At The End of Your Magnum Opus… I Felt Reduced to a Vagina – Only'-Swara Bhasker
In her letter to Padmaavat director Sanjay Leela Bhansali, little-known actress Swara Bhaskar decries glorification of Sati and Jauhar that deny women the right to live but could not dare to speak the real villain Alauddin Khilji.
In a very vulgar manner she has mocked woman's beauty ‘minus the gorgeous Deepika Padukone's uncovered slender waist',--- Even she is critical of her own nation's ‘tolerant' like a truly secular and communist bhakt. ‘ And in this ‘tolerant' India of today, where people are being murdered over meat, and school children are targets for avenging some archaic notion of male pride,---.' She could have also written few words about the lives of animals being slaughtered for a dish in somebody's plate, slaughtered soldiers by Jihadis in Kashmir, or the miserable lives of Kashmir Hindus in refugee camps in their own country.
Like a creeping quite communist journalist, she has very shrewdly flattered Bhansali, almost pleading for roles:
"…By the way Sir, we know each other, after a fashion. I don't know if you remember, but I played a tiny role in your film Guzaarish. A two-scene -long role, to be precise. I remember having a brief chat with you about my lines, and you asking me what I thought about the lines. I remember feeling proud for a whole month that Sanjay Leela Bhansali had asked me my opinion. I watched you agitatedly explaining to junior artists in one scene, and to the jimmy jib operator in the second scene; some minutiae of the particular shot you were taking. And I remember thinking to myself, "Wow! This man really cares about every little detail in his film." I was impressed with you Sir."
She further flatters;
"An avid watcher of your films, I marvelled at how you pushed boundaries with every film you made and how stars turned into fierce and deep performers under your able direction. You moulded my idea of what epic love must be like and I fantasised about the day I will be directed by you in a protagonist part. I was and remain a fan….."
She has mentioned ‘the Karni Sena terrorists and their ilk' but no courage to say the slaughtering and rapist clan of Alauddin Khilji as a terrorist and failed to say:
Women have the right to live; they are not made for being raped by criminals and slaughterers.
Women are not only walking talking vaginas which are not made to serve the pen@is of slaughterers and butchers.
Yes, women have vaginas, but they have more to them as well. So their whole life need not be focused on to serve the pen@is of invaders.
Protecting and maintaining its purity is very important to them.
Rapist should not be glorified, as the Indian historians have been doing, glorifying invaders-slaughterers and rapist.
"You may be wondering why the hell I am going on and on thus about vaginas. Because Sir, that's what I felt like at the end of your magnum opus. I felt like a vagina for the brute. Alauddin Khilji. I felt reduced to a vagina–only to serve the brute Alauddin Khilji and his clan." - Swara Bhasker
Hindu men and system have great regard for women's respect and equality. They have supported and given so much to women – like the right to vote, the right to own property, the right to education, equal pay for equal work, maternity leave, childcare leave, the Vishakha judgement, the right to adopt children…… all of it was pointless to Mughal invaders because for the women are made to serve their filthy pen@is.
The film ignored and well as Swara Bhasker, the basic question — of the right to life. The film, felt to project as a brutal invader, slaughterer, rapist, homosexual demon, had brought us back to that question from the Dark Ages – do women – they have the right to live?
"Surely Sir, you agree that Sati and Jauhar are not practised to be glorified. Surely, you agree that notwithstanding whatever archaic idea of honour, sacrifice, purity propels women and men to participate in and condone such practices; that basically Sati and Jauhar, like the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and Honour Killings, are steeped in deeply patriarchal, misogynist and problematic ideas. A mentality that believes that the worth of women lies in their vaginas, that female lives are worthless if the women are no longer controlled by male owners or if their bodies have been ‘desecrated' by the touch of ; or even the gaze of a male who doesn't by social sanction ‘own' or ‘control' the female."
At times she is very right;
"Practices like Sati, Jauhar, FGM, Honour Killings should not be glorified because they don't merely deny women equality, they deny women personhood. They deny women humanity. They deny women the right to life. And that is wrong. One would have assumed that in 2018, this is not a point that even needs to be made; but apparently, it does. Surely, you wouldn't consider making a film glorifying FGM or Honour Killings!"
Sir, you will say to me that I am over-reacting and that I must see the film in its context. That it's a story about people in the 13th Century. And in the 13th century, that's what life was– polygamy was accepted, Muslims were beasts who devoured meat and women alike. A Sati-Jauhar is an attempt to protect the chastity and honour.
The real meaning of women empowerment is to make them well educated and leave them free so that they are capable to take their own decisions in any field.In all, we are in dire need to empower women so that they can be independent and not rely on men of our country to support them and take care of them. The women of our country should be strong broad-minded and mature in taking their own decisions.Decision making in national topics or any other topics of our society should also encourage participation of women.- (The Importance of Women Empowerment in India and How to Achieve It, Google.)
She has very sarcastically and in a very caustic manner, commented on the concept of female honour, patriotism, and Rajput honour:
Sure Sir, but you followed that up with a two-hour-45-minute-long paean on Rajput honour, and the bravery of honourable Rajput women who chose happily to sacrifice their lives in raging flames, than to be touched by enemy men who were not their husbands but were incidentally Muslim.
According to for the phenomenon of the world becoming a .naked body', Jameson says that "…..our society begun to offer us the world—now mostly a collection of products of our own making—as just such a body, that you can possess visually, and collect the images of." (Fredric Jameson, Signatures of the Visibles, (New York, Routledge, 1992), p-1.)
She is also very critical and caustic about the Hindu concept of Satya, Asatya, Dharm and Adharma:
There were more than three instances of the ‘good' characters of your story speaking of Sati/Jauhar as the honourable choice, your female protagonist – epitome of both beauty, brains and virtue sought permission from her husband to commit Jauhar, because she could not even die without his permission; soon after she delivered a long speech about the war between Satya and Asatya, Dharm and Adharm and presented collective Sati to be the path of Truth and Dharm.
Then in the climax, breathtakingly shot of course – hundreds of women bedecked in red like Goddess Durga as bride rushed into the Jauhar fire while a raving Muslim psychopathic villain loomed over them and a pulsating musical track – that had the power of an anthem; seduced the audience into being awestruck and admiring of this act. Sir, if this is not glorification and support of Sati and Jauhar, I really do not know what is.
The first reason is that very few movies are made about Muslim society in India in general. Look at the list of highest-grossing Bollywood films. Of the top 25 grossing films, only two (Dhoom 3 and My Name Is Khan) have the main star portraying Muslim characters. I bet that you can do a similar analysis with the list of Bollywood films of 2014 and find that barely 10% of all reasonable-budget films are made centred on the Muslim society (Muslims do get a lot of representation in Bollywood films as antagonists). The "Muslim social" has pretty much died. When only one in ten of films are made about Muslims, isn't it only fair that only one in ten of films criticising religion is about Islam? (http://www.sanskritimagazine.com/india/open-letter-bollywood/#, Google)
Like a true secularist, communist and feminist, she felt very uncomfortable, when the ‘monster like Khilji' failed to rape the queen Padmavati:
I felt very uncomfortable watching your climax, watching that pregnant woman and little girl walk into the fire. I felt my existence was illegitimate because God forbid anything untoward happened to me, I would do everything in my power to sneak out of that fiery pit– even if that meant being enslaved to a monster like Khilji forever. I felt in that moment that it was wrong of me to choose life over death. It was wrong to have the desire to live. This Sir is the power of cinema.Repeatedly, she has been trying to link this Sati system with Hindus and Hinduism but failed in her point. She did this only to come in limelight.
It is hard to fathom how slow moving the cultural exchange of the world is when you find out that there are several places across the country where harmful customs of the ancient world coexist with modern appliances and thought. However that may come as hardly any surprise to anyone who has lived in India – the dichotomy of society is something that can only be explained by a refrain from an old Bollywood song: "It happens only in India!" -(Women Empowerment in India – A Burning Issue, Google.)
