New Delhi: On August 31, when actor Swara Bhasker spoke at the “Woman, Life, Freedom” talk, held at the India International Centre (IIC) in New Delhi, she revisited her 2018 open letter to Sanjay Leela Bhansali after Padmaavat, and she was asked why she had written it.Bhasker shared what the portrayal of jauhar in Bhansali’s Padmaavat meant to her, but instead of her comments provoking a discussion about cinema and sexual violence, they triggered protests, accusations of insulting Rajput women and misplaced demands for an apology.Bhasker’s remarks during the recent public discussion, centred on the film’s climactic depiction of jauhar, in which women walk into a fire rather than face capture by an invading army. Recalling the sequence, Bhasker asked what it might communicate to a survivor of sexual violence watching the film. “If I am a rape survivor and I watch Padmaavat, I will think, ‘Am I a coward because I didn’t kill myself? Should I have killed myself to save my honour?’” she can be seen saying in a video of the day.Her recent comments quickly circulated online, massively accompanied by the claim that Bhasker had called Rani Padmavati or Rajput women who committed jauhar ‘cowards’. BJP workers protested against her in Patna, while the Karni Sena’s women’s wing accused her of disrespecting the sacrifice of Rajput women. Its national president, Kirti Rathore, argued that jauhar needed to be understood as the sacrifice of Rajput women made within the historical circumstances of the period.Bhasker later, in a video she put out, denied calling Padmavati a coward, saying her remarks had been distorted. Her criticism, she has said, was directed at the idea that a woman’s death could be presented as preferable to surviving sexual violence.This so-called misunderstanding draws focus on how regressive the debate on women’s rights, in fact even her right to life, is today. There are people openly citing faith and religion as a defence of the abhorrent and unlawful practice of Sati.For groups such as the Karni Sena, the practice is inseparable from the historical circumstances in which it is believed to have occurred: sieges, military conquest and the prospect of capture and sexual violence. Reducing women who entered the flames to victims of patriarchy, they argue, ignores the historical context and their agency [to choose self-immolation]. The backlash also took a threatening turn when controversial baba, Dhirendra Krishna Shastri, the head of Bageshwar Dham, defended jauhar following the controversy, describing it as an act of courage and sacrifice.A firefighter tries to douse flames after Karni Sena activists torched a car during a demonstration against the release of Padmaavat in 2018. Credit: PTIEarlier, in Agra, where Kunwar Ajay Tomar, the Uttar Pradesh state president of the Yogi Youth Brigade, announced a reward of Rs 1.51 lakh for anyone who “cut Bhasker’s tongue”. The announcement was made during a protest against her remarks, at which demonstrators also burned and trampled posters of the actor.Historian Ruchika Sharma digs into the past to place what self-immolation meant back in time. “Sati is way older than jauhar, it goes back to Greek historical records. Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian, recorded an incident from 317 BCE. After a general named Keteus died fighting, his two wives fiercely competed for the honour of going into his funeral pyre. The wife who was not pregnant was chosen, and the Greek soldiers watched the event, with many describing that her screams filled the air with horror,” she told The Wire.Adding to her observations, she said, “The practice travelled, there are even eye witness accounts. Ibn Battuta saw it. So this argument that sati came into being when Turks entered India, is rubbish. As early as 8th century, India saw sati being recorded as a practice. Historical texts such as the Angirasa Samhita advocate for the spiritual benefits of Sati. Several time women even ran away from being burnt, even while being burnt when women ran away, people would push them back to the pyre.“Jauhar too has long history and was also undertaken even when Rajput versus Rajput battles happened. History shows us that if victor kings would abduct women from a fallen fortress, women would ultimately be conditioned to jump into fire. They had no agency. Both Sati and Jauhar existed to preserve male honour,” she said.Sharma says that showing this in a film is bizarre because the film also has a ten-minute sequence of Deepika Padukone as Padmavati being trained in the finest martial arts of that time. “So when the time comes to fight the enemy, she jumps in the fire. She doesn’t put up a fight. The act was glorified on screen. It puts the onus of a woman being violated on the woman, not the man,” Sharma said.For Bhasker, however, the question is not confined to how jauhar should be understood in the past. Her criticism concerns what happens when a historical act is recreated for a contemporary audience. That distinction lies at the centre of the controversy. Padmaavat is not a historical record but a modern film, and its jauhar sequence presents the women’s deaths through elaborate choreography, music and imagery of collective sacrifice. Bhasker’s question is about the meaning such a portrayal can acquire in a society where survivors of sexual violence continue to face stigma.Massive protests against Bhansali’s film Padmaavat (originally titled Padmavati) began in late 2016 during the film’s production and escalated into nationwide unrest leading up to its theatrical release in January 2018. The protests were led by the Shri Rajput Karni Sena, a right-wing group, along with various Hindu outfits and former Rajasthani royals. Protesters alleged that Bhansali distorted historical facts and insulted the honor of the legendary 14th-century Rajput queen, Rani Padmini (Padmavati).The debate also touches on a longstanding tension around the idea of women’s “honour”. Feminist movements and survivor-rights advocates have challenged the notion that sexual violence can take away a woman’s dignity, arguing that framing rape as a loss of honour places an additional burden on survivors. Nearly a decade after Padmaavat first sparked protests over its depiction of Rajput history, the film has once again become the site of a dispute over what that history means, this time centred not on how Padmavati lived, but on what it means to celebrate the way women died.It was as recently as 2024, 37 years after India‘s last recorded case of a teenaged widow burning herself at her husband’s pyre that eight persons accused in the matter, were acquitted by a court of law. This month marks the horrific event’s 39th anniversary.