Rape is forced. Jauhar doesn't shame survivors: The fatal flaw in Swara's argument

Swara Bhasker has a perfectly valid point when she says that rape does not end a woman's life. Of course, it doesn't. A woman who survives sexual assault does not lose her right to live, love, work, marry, have children, or simply exist. Her dignity does not disappear because someone violated her.But that is also exactly why comparing rape survivors with women who chose jauhar in the context depicted in the 2018 film Padmaavat does not quite work.Swara has now clarified that her comments were not meant to call Rani Padmavati or the women who performed jauhar "cowards". Her argument, she says, was about what the film's treatment of jauhar could communicate to a rape survivor: that if she had been "honourable" or "brave", she would have killed herself rather than live after sexual assault.That is an important conversation. But is that actually what the jauhar sequence is saying? Or has she, once again, taken a centuries-old historical-cultural practice, placed it inside a completely different modern context and then asked it to answer a question it was never asking? Let's separate two very different situations.A woman is sexually assaulted. She did not choose it. She did not anticipate it. She did not consent to it. She survives it. And then someone tells her that her life is over because her "honour" has been taken away. That is abhorrent. There should be absolutely no debate about it. But now consider the situation that jauhar, as depicted in the Padmaavat narrative, is supposed to represent: women facing imminent capture after the defeat of their kingdom, with the fear of sexual violence, enslavement and being treated as spoils of war. The act is presented as a decision to die rather than fall into captivity.You may find that decision tragic. Horrifying, in fact. You may question a social order in which women were placed in such an impossible position in the first place. In fact, we absolutely should. But why are we putting that choice in the same moral box as rape?Because there is a very basic difference between what Swara has been comparing for over seven years now: the right to life after surviving rape and the idea of jauhar are not the same thing.One is an act of sexual violence imposed on a woman. The other is a desperate act undertaken in anticipation of captivity and violence.And no, saying this does not mean jauhar was "good". It does not mean women should have died. It does not mean their lives were somehow worth less than their chastity. The opposite, in fact. Because the tragedy of jauhar can be understood through a far more uncomfortable question: what kind of society leaves women with death as their only possible escape from sexual violence, enslavement and the loss of agency?That is the question worth sitting with. But that's not the discussion right now.Swara argues that the idea that a woman's chastity is more important than her life is the same idea behind honour killings. Fair enough. Honour killings are indefensible because someone else decides that a woman's life is less valuable than a supposedly "pure" reputation.But is a woman choosing death rather than facing anticipated captivity and sexual violence during the fall of a medieval kingdom the same thing as her family murdering her because they believe she has brought dishonour?If we are talking about consent and agency, surely the difference matters. Or does historical nuance become inconvenient once we have found a neat modern analogy?There is another problem with the comparison. A rape survivor is not being asked to choose between rape and death at the moment of the assault. She is being subjected to a crime. The battle context represented by jauhar is different: the women are portrayed as anticipating what could happen if they were captured.So when Swara asks whether Padmaavat is telling rape survivors, "You don't deserve to live", the obvious question is: where exactly is the film saying that? Is Padmaavat addressing rape survivors? No. Is it telling women who survive sexual assault that they have lost their honour? No. Is it making a contemporary argument that a rape survivor should die? No.It is depicting a specific historical-cultural idea of women facing defeat, captivity and sexual violence during war. Whether one agrees with that idea, condemns it, or finds it tragic is a separate debate. Those situations are not interchangeable. And simply putting the words "rape", "honour" and "jauhar" in the same argument does not magically make them so.The easiest way to test the argument is this: if a woman survives rape, should she live? Absolutely. If a woman is forced into an honour killing, should she live? Absolutely. If a woman today is told to kill herself because she was sexually assaulted, is that regressive? Absolutely. But does that automatically make every historical depiction of women choosing death in the face of anticipated sexual violence an attack on rape survivors? That leap, that argument, that question needs more scrutiny.There is also a rather convenient modern assumption hidden in this debate: that depicting an act is the same as endorsing it. It isn't.Films depict war, slavery, torture, suicide and sexual violence all the time without asking audiences to approve of them. The question should be how something is depicted, what context surrounds it, and what the film ultimately communicates. And yes, Padmaavat is a glossy Bollywood film. And that jauhar scene at the end of the film looks majestic. But making something glossy does not magically rewrite its subject into a contemporary social prescription. A film showing a historical practice is not necessarily handing today's women a handbook titled 'How To Live'.If anything, the more interesting feminist criticism of jauhar would be this: why did women have so few choices when kingdoms fell? Why was female sexuality treated as something that could be possessed, traded, violated or used to humiliate an enemy? Why was a woman's body made to carry the "honour" of an entire community?Those questions are more uncomfortable than simply declaring jauhar regressive and moving on. Because the point isn't that death is preferable to rape. It isn't. The point is that jauhar and rape are not two versions of the same choice.A rape survivor did not choose the assault. A woman contemplating jauhar, at least within the narrative being depicted, is being presented with a choice under catastrophic and coercive circumstances.That difference does not glorify jauhar. It does something simpler: it refuses to flatten history to make a modern argument fit.A woman’s life doesn’t end after rape. Her dignity is not destroyed, and her future does not belong to the person who assaulted her. But defending that truth does not require us to pretend that a woman facing capture, enslavement and anticipated sexual violence in a medieval war was confronting the same choice as a rape survivor today.Because feminism should be about giving women more choices, not scoffing at or berating a choice women once made under radically different circumstances simply because it makes us uncomfortable today.- EndsThe views expressed in this piece are those of the author.Published By: Vineeta KumarPublished On: Sep 2, 2026 12:43 IST