The controversy over Swara Bhaskar’s remarks on Rani Padmavati and Jauhar has escalated, with a Supreme Court lawyer filing a complaint seeking an FIR against her
New Delhi: The controversy surrounding actor Swara Bhaskar’s remarks on the Jauhar sequence in Padmaavat has now moved from social media to the legal arena, with Supreme Court lawyer Amita Sachdev filing a criminal complaint before the Cyber Police in Delhi and seeking registration of an FIR against the actor.
The complaint comes days after Swara Bhaskar’s remarks at an event organised at the India International Centre in New Delhi triggered widespread criticism. The actor had revisited her long-standing criticism of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat and questioned the portrayal of Jauhar by Rani Padmavati and the women of Chittor.
Swara Bhaskar subsequently issued a clarification, maintaining that she had not called Rani Padmavati or the women who performed Jauhar “cowards” and arguing that her remarks had been mistranslated and taken out of context. However, the clarification has failed to end the controversy. Sachdev has now approached the Delhi Cyber Police, arguing that the remarks were not simply an expression of opinion about a film but were offensive to the historical memory and sacrifice associated with Rani Padmavati and the women of Chittor.
According to the complaint shared by Sachdev, she has sought registration of an FIR against Bhaskar over comments allegedly made at the August 31 event. Sachdev described herself as a practising lawyer and a follower of Sanatan Dharma and alleged that Bhaskar’s remarks concerning Rani Padmavati and the Hindu women of Chittor amounted to an insult to their sacrifice and had hurt religious and community sentiments. The complainant has specifically rejected the argument that the controversy can simply be attributed to a misunderstanding or translation issue. Her contention is that Bhaskar was already familiar with Padmaavat and had publicly discussed the film in the past.
That point is significant because Bhaskar herself referred to her earlier criticism of the film during the August 31 event. Reports also confirm that she had written an open letter to director Sanjay Leela Bhansali following the release of Padmaavat, criticising its treatment of Jauhar and the themes of honour and sexual violence. Sachdev has therefore argued that Bhaskar cannot plausibly claim complete unfamiliarity with the historical and cultural context surrounding the sequence.
The controversy began after a video from Bhaskar’s August 31 appearance at the India International Centre circulated widely on social media. While discussing the Jauhar sequence in Padmaavat, Bhaskar said that watching hundreds of women commit Jauhar made her wonder what message the scene could convey to a rape survivor. She said that, if she were a rape survivor, she might feel like a “coward” for not having killed herself to preserve her honour. She then questioned whether society should communicate to survivors that they did not deserve to live after sexual violence.
Swara also criticised a shot involving a pregnant woman in the Jauhar sequence and questioned the implications of portraying a woman and her unborn child entering the fire. Her broader argument was that a woman’s life should not be considered over because she has suffered sexual violence. On this particular point, Bhaskar’s underlying argument about the dignity and right to life of rape survivors is distinct from the separate question of whether her description of Jauhar and the historical women who performed it was appropriate. It is precisely this latter aspect that has generated the sharpest criticism.
Sachdev has strongly disputed Bhaskar’s explanation that the controversy was created by mistranslation. In her earlier social-media post, the lawyer accused Swara Bhaskar of knowing precisely what Padmaavat depicted and argued that her previous public engagement with the film demonstrated her familiarity with its themes.
The lawyer’s position is essentially that Bhaskar was not commenting on an unfamiliar historical episode in passing. Rather, she was revisiting an issue she had already discussed publicly years ago.
Swara Bhaskar’s 2018 open letter to Bhansali itself shows that Jauhar was central to her criticism of Padmaavat. In that letter, she argued that women should have the right to live even after rape and objected to what she perceived as the film’s glorification of Jauhar and traditional notions of honour. This history makes the present controversy more complicated than a simple mistranslation dispute.
Following the backlash, Swara Bhaskar released a clarification video in which she translated her original remarks into Hindi sentence by sentence. She insisted that she had not called Rani Padmavati or the women who committed Jauhar cowards. According to Bhaskar, her use of the word “coward” was part of a hypothetical argument about how a rape survivor might feel when confronted with a narrative that links a woman’s honour to her death. She further argued that the real issue she was raising was rape culture and the need to affirm that survivors of sexual violence have a right to continue living. That clarification, however, has not satisfied her critics. For them, the central problem is not merely whether the word “coward” was grammatically or contextually attached to Padmavati herself. It is whether a modern political and social framework was being imposed upon a historical act of resistance without adequately acknowledging the circumstances in which Jauhar is remembered by the Rajput community.
After asking Swara Bhaskar to apologise, Sachdev has now escalated the matter legally. Sharing details of the complaint on social media, Sachdev said that Bhaskar had been given an opportunity to apologise but instead chose to defend her remarks and attribute the controversy to translation. She said the issue was no longer about continuing an argument on social media and that she would pursue the matter through the legal process. The lawyer also said she intended to take the complaint to its “logical conclusion”, signalling that the matter could continue beyond the initial complaint.
The controversy has therefore moved beyond the familiar cycle of social-media outrage, clarification and counter-clarification. Sachdev has chosen to pursue the matter through the police and has asked for criminal action against Swara Bhaskar.
