Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat has been marred by controversy ever since its inception. While the entire film fraternity has supported Padmaavat’s release throughout, actor Swara Bhaskar has slammed director Sanjay Leela Bhansali for glorifying sati and jauhar in his film.

In an open letter published in The Wire on Saturday, The Anaarkali of Aarah star started off by praising SLB for his wonderful work and how she has come out in support of his film when Karni Sena and other fringe groups demanded a ban on Padmaavat (formerly Padmavati). But as she looks up to Bhansali’s body of work, she concludes the letter by suggesting that Padmaavat reduces women to ‘talking vaginas’. In fact, Swara has herself worked with the ace filmmaker in a small role in Guzaarish but still feels necessary to shed light on some decisions he made in Padmaavat.

Clearly, Swara took offence to the film’s final scene where Deepika Padukone’s Rani Padmavati commits herself to jauhar in order to protect her honour from the barbaric Muslim ruler Allaudin Khilji (played by Ranveer Singh). Not to forget her husband Maharawal Ratan Singh, played by Shahid Kapoor, had already succumbed to injuries after a battle with Khilji. Here are the points she raised:

Women have the right to live, despite being raped sir.Women have the right to live, despite the death of their husbands, male ‘protectors’, ‘owners’, ‘controllers of their sexuality’.. whatever you understand the men to be.

Women have the right to live — independent of whether men are living or not.

Women have the right to live. Period.

Women are not only walking talking vaginas.

Yes, women have vaginas, but they have more to them as well. So their whole life need not be focused on the vagina, and controlling it, protecting it, maintaining it’s purity. (Maybe in the 13th century that was the case, but in the 21st century we do not need to subscribe to these limiting ideas. We certainly do not need to glorify them. )

It would be nice if the vaginas are respected; but in the unfortunate case that they are not, a woman can continue to live. She need not be punished with death, because another person disrespected her vagina without her consent.

There is life outside the vagina, and so there can be life after rape. (I know I repeat, but this point can never be stressed enough.)

In general there is more to life than the vagina.

Swara further wrote that she understands that sati and jauhar were a part of the society but wondered if that means women - ‘widowed, raped, young, old, pregnant, pre-pubescent’ - have the right to live, as according to her the movie depicts that women have no control over their right to live. She also compared Bhansali’s mere depiction of the final scene without any comment or condemn to making a film that glorifies lynchings and honour killings. “Does that mean one should make a film about it with no perspective on racism? Or, without a comment on racial hatred?”, she wrote.

While she acknowledged that the movie is historical in nature and is based in the 13th century, she countered it by saying that the film’s context is in the present. “The context of your film is India in the 21st century; where five years ago, a girl was gang-raped brutally in the country’s capital inside a moving bus.”, she wrote.

She further added that the disclaimer played at the beginning of the film condemning the acts of sati and jauhar meant nothing because what followed was three hours of sheer Rajput worship where the “female protagonist – epitome of both beauty, brains and virtue sought permission from her husband to commit Jauhar, because she could not even die without his permission; soon after she delivered a long speech about the war between Satya and Asatya, Dharm and Adharm and presented collective Sati to be the path of Truth and Dharm.”

Earlier slated to release on December 1 last year, Padmaavat finally hit the theatres on January 25, 2018.