Did ‘Padmaavat’ Glorify Jauhar?
A revived debate is forcing India to confront the history — and meaning — behind one of Bollywood’s most controversial climaxes.
On August 31, actor Swara Bhasker found herself in the news. At an event in Delhi, she resurfaced her thoughts on Padmaavat, a 2018 Sanjay Leela Bhansali film about 14th-century India. In the finale (yes, spoilers ahead), Deepika Padukone’s character, a Rajput queen, walks decidedly toward a large pyre as other women in her court follow her. They are about to die by jauhar, collective self-immolation typically in the context of military defeat.
“If 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 honor,” Bhasker said at the event.
Bhasker had been vocal before, writing a letter to Bhansali when Padmaavat had first come out. But now, a whole new generation of onlookers has reentered the chat. Was Padmaavat’s climactic scene far-fetched or rooted in reality? What message was Bhansali sending? We dove into the archives to separate fact from fiction and history from controversy.