Mumbai: Swara Bhasker has recalled her reaction to the Supreme Court’s 2019 Ayodhya verdict, revealing that she reached out to Muslim friends, including Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Salman Khan, to apologise.
Speaking on The Midnight Hour podcast, the actor said she felt “really ashamed” as a Hindu and disagreed with the verdict.
Swara said, “I was so upset when the Ram Janmabhoomi verdict came out. I was like what is this country, and what is this verdict. I was upset because I felt it was unfair.”
She added, “So, I messaged all the Muslims in my phonebook. Like from Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan sir to Fahad. I wanted to reach out to all the Muslims I know. I wanted to tell them, as a Hindu, I just wanted to let you know that I am really sorry and that I am ashamed and I don’t agree with this.”
The Supreme Court delivered its unanimous verdict in the Ayodhya title dispute on November 9, 2019.
The five-judge Constitution Bench ruled that the disputed 2.77-acre site be handed over for the construction of a Ram temple and directed the government to allot five acres of alternate land to the Sunni Central Waqf Board for a mosque.
Prior to her latest remarks, Swara had also courted controversy over her criticism of the jauhar sequence in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat.
Speaking about the scene at the Woman Life Freedom talk at Delhi’s India International Centre, Swara said, “I was watching it, and I thought that if God forbid, I was a rape survivor, what is this film telling me? I would feel like a coward that I didn’t commit suicide to save my honour. Is that what you want to tell in a society like ours where I feel like, anyway, there is a rape epidemic? Is this what we want to tell our survivors that they don’t deserve to live, that if you actually would have been an honourable and brave woman, you would have killed yourself. Are we saying that rape is the end of a woman’s life? This scene was so problematic.”
She added, “Then there was this one shot, which made me so mad that I shouted ‘chii’ loudly; there is a close-up of a pregnant woman’s belly performing jauhar. So you are telling me that fetus, which might be a female, doesn’t deserve to be born because she might be raped by a Muslim ruler. I was so mad. I waited for five days to check if I still feel like that, and after five days, I wrote a letter.”
Swara later clarified that her remarks had been misunderstood and denied calling Rani Padmaavati or the women who performed jauhar “cowards.”
On the work front, Swara recently appeared as a contestant on Pati Patni Aur Panga. She previously headlined the film Jahaan Chaar Yaar.
