Telling it like it is

Why Swara Bhasker's straight talk online often compels us to review our relationship with the world of glitter

In an industry where measured words can often be the measure of one's success, being Swara Bhasker isn't easy, even though she makes it seem effortless. 2018, thus far, has been the year of Swara for reasons that go beyond glitter and box office numbers.
Right at the beginning of 2018, as Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmaavat released amid protests from the fringe group Shri Rajput Karni Sena, the 30-year-old actress penned a thoughtful note on the film's depiction of jauhar (the ritual of mass immolation by women in anticipation of the enemy's onslaught was a common practice in India during the medieval age and was the basis of 16th century poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi's epic poem on which the film was based).
Closer to the release of her own film, Veere Di Wedding, in June, Bhasker and her colleagues registered their protest against the gruesome rape of a child in Kathua by holding placards that read: "I am Hindustan. I am ashamed. #JusticeForOurChild. 8 years old. Gangraped. Murdered. In 'Devi'-sthaan temple." Once again, the actresses were trolled, with Photoshopped tweets of Bhasker doing the rounds. The actress refused to be coerced into silence and stood up to her trolls. She took them head on once again when a self-pleasuring scene from the film drew criticism.
Social media is the modern-day battlefield. And if you happen to be a public figure, you are the sum total of every sentence, picture and video posted online. It is in this climate that Swara Bhasker's refusal to sugarcoat her opinions feels refreshing. Hers is an important voice - one you may vehemently agree or disagree with, and yet it is difficult to deny its courage of conviction. A voice that almost makes you believe that Bollywood might just be really, really close to having its Meryl Streep moment on stage. "Well, Meryl Streep stood on a stage and was able to call out the most powerful man in her country - the democratically elected President of the United States - in a scathing and accurate critique. Can you imagine anyone in India doing that? Would we leave them alone?" she asks. "Actors are vulnerable because we are high profile, everybody knows us, it's easy to spot us - you know the kind of threats Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Deepika Padukone had to face for Padmaavat?"
The Sanjay Leela Bhansali film is etched in collective imagination as much for the actors who acted in it as for Bhasker, whose open letter opened up a brand new chapter, a new perspective on the portrayal of jauhar. Perhaps the essence of her criticism can be best summed up in these lines from the letter: "The context of art, any art, is the time and place when it was created and consumed. And that's why this gang-rape-infested India, this rape-condoning mindset, this victim-blaming society is the actual context of your film, Sir. Surely in this context, you could have offered some sort of a critique of sati and jauhar in your film?" Take her back to the letter and she says that she did make it a point to speak to the actors of the film and Bhansali himself, and while they disagreed with her points of view, they agreed to her right to write the letter. The real backlash, she says, came from online trolls. "They are so-anti-minority that they are unable to see anything outside of their hateful lens. Just because the legend of Padmavati is about Rani Padmini committing jauhar to escape Khilji, who is a Muslim ruler, they felt the need to justify jauhar and sati. It's a reductive logic. These practices are steeped in patriarchal mindsets that reduce a woman's life and personhood to whoever the rightful owner of her body is."
There is considerable truth in what Bhasker wrote in her letter - art operates in context, recording the realities of its time. Could a Bollywood film, despite its commercial aspirations, attempt a realistic portrayal of today's India? "I think Bollywood is changing," says Bhasker on a rare optimistic note. "But films come under the Censor Board. Now the Censor, traditionally, has not been liberal or progressive. There have been times when police cases have been filed against artists who are critical of the forces of majority. You see, in India, we are facing a sort of an unfortunate attitude in our political culture as well as political discourse where any criticism of the government or what is happening in our society is branded as 'dissent'. That, for any society, is unhealthy. A whole culture of censorship has been created."
Bhasker is not unaware of the weight of her words. However, at a time when news is broken, dissected and, sometimes, even manipulated on social media, can Twitter accurately reflect the social reality of a country? "No," she says, "However, it tells you something about the kind of people who create public discourse. What media, in general, says may not reflect the sentiments of entire public, but it does contribute to forming a public opinion. What we are seeing on Twitter now acts as a mirror for incidents that are happening to common people. For example, the incidents of lynching around issues as idiotic as beef-eating to rumours of someone being a trafficker. These are not things Twitter is cooking up. These are actual events that are being reported on social media in a certain way. It is a scary picture."
Today, Bhasker's friendship with her Raanjhanaa colleague Sonam Kapoor often receives attention from the glossies, with the commentary sometimes veering towards her own journey to fame as the proverbial outsider. There is no anxiety about privilege or lack thereof in Bhasker, whose mother is an eminent film scholar while father is former Indian Navy officer. "Privilege exists in any industry which is so heavily relationships-dominated. If I am born into a family of academics and if I want to be an academic, I will have an advantage. I think in case of Bollywood, it looks a bit more glaring because the industry is so glamorous, and is almost always the centre of attention." However, she adds, the real game-changer has been the entry of the corporates. "Film industries, in general, did not get bank loans till, I think, late 90s or early 2000s. Obviously, if people were mortgaging their houses to make films, they would cast their sons and daughters rather than a random struggler from a small town in India. Ever since corporates have entered the industry, and bank loans have begun to be issued, films have changed. Think about Bollywood from 2005 onwards. Why do you suddenly see people like me, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Rajkummar Rao, etc. on the screens? In fact, there are more outsiders who are now making films and writing scripts."
Last year, the socio-cultural tsunami that came in the form of the #metoo movement originating from Hollywood has made its presence felt in the glamour industries across the world. A staple question then is - why has #metoo escaped Bollywood? It's here that Bhasker draws our attention to the #metoo movement happening in the Malayalam film industry where some actresses have taken a definite stand against a leading actor accused of harassment. "Let's also remember that it took Hollywood a long time to acknowledge the horrifying things that were going on. Bollywood, I think, will also begin to talk about it when the actresses begin to feel our society is ready to listen to them. There are certain people who deny that the Kathua rape ever happened. When people are willing to deny something so heinous, is that an atmosphere where women in film industry will feel confident about their stories being heard? We should ask ourselves whether we are ready to give victims a sympathetic or empathetic hearing!"
As she basks in the success of Veere Di Wedding and prepares for the release of her web series Rasbhari, her Twitter timeline continues to be flooded with harshly-worded tweets. Bhasker, however, knows how to slay her trolls. "It's a delicate balance of indifference and being undaunted. I don't feel ashamed of namecalling. That's the way to go about it."