Does Padmaavat really reduce women to their vaginas?

It is not just the right wing groups who are all riled up about the release of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmaavat. If the Karni Sena is baying for blood over the perceived slight to the honour of Rani Padmini, actor Swara Bhaskar's open letter has opened a can of worms among the elite, middle class. Bhaskar, who starred in the critically acclaimed Anarakali of Aarah, said that after watching the movie she felt reduced to a mere vagina. “Surely sir, you agree that Sati and Jauhar are not practices to be glorified. Surely, you agree that notwithstanding whatever archaic idea of honour, sacrifice, purity propels women and men to participate in and condone such practices; that basically Sati and Jauhar, like the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and Honour Killings, are steeped in deeply patriarchal, misogynist and problematic ideas,” she wrote in The Wire. 

The article was met with equal parts bouquets and brickbats. Singer Suchitra Krishnamoorthi fired the first salvo. In a scathing reply, she tweeted, "Funny that an actress who can play an erotic dancer/ prostitute with such elan should feel like a vagina after watching a story of a pious queen . What standards are these ...tch tch."

She had earlier tweeted, "Aren't these feminist debates on Padmaavat rather dumb? It’s a story ladies - not an advocacy of Jauhar for God’s sake. Find another battle for your cause—a real one at all. Not historical fiction.”

Bhaskar hit back, writing, “Funny that people cannot get over the fact that a woman said Vagina! Funny that in a 2440 word article making fairly comprehensible arguments they only remember the word Vagina So... Vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina..vagina vagina VAGINA!”

Film critic Baradwaj Rangan weighed in on the debate, tweeting: "I disagree that all art has to COMMENT, that mere DEPICTION isn’t enough. There's space for filmmakers who see art through a socio-political prism AND those who only see it as a story. Is the Ramayana unfair to Sita? YES. But should someone be allowed to tell that story? YES."

But the issue did not end there. Padmaavat and Garima, who wrote Padmaavat, had a stinging rejoinder in store for Bhaskar's arguments. Would Bhaskar's sensibilities be hurt when they watch world-renowned epics like Gladiator? "There are some film-makers, artists, actors who feel they are the torch-bearers of ‘feminism’ in the new-age cinema," they wrote. "Did they feel like a ‘vagina’ when Rani Padmaavati goes to ‘rescue’ her husband who had been abducted? Again, a decision against the system, as a vagina. They must have felt like a ‘vagina’ when she chose ‘fire’ over ‘rape’? It was her ‘call’, her ‘decision’ as a vagina. Right, wrong, strong, weak is up to you to interpret as a ‘penis’ or as a ‘vagina’. The word feminism is so misused and so mis-interpreted off late that it feels like an abuse. To women, to the ‘vagina’… to the great feminine power. To the only gender that has the power to procure life."

"Then don’t watch historicals, here or abroad. A ‘gladiator’ would perhaps shake your sensibilities of a slave in today’s context! Or a Troy might again make you feel like some other body part… A squishy liver perhaps. Since we cant appreciate art, lets violate it. With karni sena on one side and the vaginas on the other. Lets demand jauhar from the makers and feel victorious with sensationalising it with our judgements and parameters," they wrote.