Former Bollywood actress Swara Bhasker has once again triggered a debate over the depiction of Jauhar in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s 2018 film Padmaavat. Speaking at a recent event, Bhasker questioned the portrayal of women choosing death rather than facing sexual slavery, arguing that rape survivors have a right to live and that presenting Jauhar as heroic can send a troubling message.
Her concern about the dignity and survival of rape survivors is entirely legitimate; however, she is missing the entire point about why those women preferred Jauhar when faced with the Islamic invaders of the time. Lack of understanding is one thing, but she has since doubled down on her opinion and is still arguing on social media that her comments about Jauhar are right.
First of all, Ms Bhasker, a woman in India facing the imminent fall of a besieged fort to Islamic invaders was not making the same choice as a rape survivor living in a society where the perpetrator can potentially be prosecuted and where medical, legal and social support may exist. Jauhar belonged to an extraordinarily violent wartime context in which capture could mean slavery, sexual exploitation, mass rapes for years on end, and then eventual death. Jauhar was especially to avoid capture by the invaders and then the sexual abuse at the hands of those invaders.
A rape survivor today is a victim of a crime and must never be made to feel that her life has lost its value. They have a right to life, and a life of dignity. The only one that needs to be punished is the perpetrator of such a heinous crime. But the Rajput women’s options were not necessarily “survive rape and rebuild your life” versus “choose death.” Their only options were a life of sexual enslavement, being treated like a plaything among the opposition army’s soldiers, get raped multiple times a day, or commit Jauhar. Most women chose Jauhar, and who can blame them for it. We have seen in modern times what happened to Yazidi women after ISIS took over their lands a decade or so back.
Therefore, using the modern experience of rape survivors to judge every historical decision surrounding Jauhar risks removing the central element of the story, the sex slavery practised by the Islamic invaders of the time.
Who are you to judge those women for their choice? Those women were placed in a situation where their only options were becoming a sex slave and then dying or going out on their own terms. Most of those women chose to go out on their own terms instead of becoming slaves to violent sexual predators and committed Jauhar.
Maybe think a little about why that practice was followed at the time instead of opening your mouth about things you either don’t understand or pretend not to.
So the sensible position lies somewhere between glorification and dismissal.
Nobody in the world commits Jauhar today, maybe because those centuries of Islamic invasion are in the past, but we can’t just forget why this practice was followed. After all, those who forget history are bound to repeat the same mistakes. Women who faced the terrifying prospect of wartime captivity are now being judged as though they were living under modern circumstances, and had some legal recourse if those invaders took them as sex slaves.
The tragedy of Jauhar was precisely that these women were placed in a situation where death could appear preferable to the forms of captivity and sexual violence that were coming, one should always remember that.
