Swara dislikes ‘being reduced to a vagina’ in Padmaavat

Actress Swara Bhaskar wrote a letter to Sanjay Leela Bhansali and expressed what she felt after watching the movie:

After such a controversial release of the movie “Padmavati”, now some members from the film industry are calling it a “Feminist debate” and Bollywood actress Sawara Bhasker also commented something like this- she said felt like a “vagina only”, Swara thinks that the movie has brought up the question whether women- raped, young, widowed, old, pregnant have the right to live.

Swara posted an open letter on The Wire on Saturday; she started the letter by congratulating Sanjay Leela Bhansali for getting the film released despite so many hurdles. Then, she calls the director for glorifying the acts of self-immolation act like Sati and Jauhar. She further writes “women have the right to live despite being raped, sir. They have the right to live, despite the death of their husbands, male “protectors”, “owners”, “controllers of their sexuality’.

Later in her piece, she adds: “It would be nice if the vaginas are respected; but in the unfortunate case that they are not, a woman can continue to live. She need not be punished with death because another person disrespected her vagina without her consent.”

The actress then wrote: That’s what I felt like at the end of your magnum opus. I felt like a vagina. I felt reduced to a vagina-only.

“I felt like all the ‘minor’ achievements that women and women’s movements have made over the years – like the right to vote, the right to own property, the right to education, equal pay for equal work, maternity leave, the Vishakha judgment, the right to adopt children… All of it was pointless; because we were back to basics.

“Women have the right to live. Period. It’s actually pretty basic,” she wrote, referring to the “very sore” climax scene in which actress Deepika Padukone (Rani Padmavati in the movie) leads thousands of women to commit self-immolation after attackers killed her husband and other men.

She ended the article by signing – “Sawara Bhaskar, Desirous of life”.

But it seems like; her lengthy post didn’t go well for many people, as Twitter was flooded by dismissive comments:

Twitter is filled up with negative reactions to Swara’s letter :

Padmaavat has Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh and Shahid Kapoor in the lead roles.