Bollywood actor Swara Bhasker recently faced backlash for her remarks about the Jauhar scene in Deepika Padukone’s 2018 film Padmaavat. While speaking at the Woman, Life, Freedom talk at the India International Centre in Delhi on August 31, Swara spoke against the Jauhar scene in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film, calling it problematic.

Now, the actor has shared a video clarifying her remarks, explaining that she did not call Padmaavati a “coward” and urging everyone not to spread false narratives about her speech. Swara took to Instagram on Tuesday and shared a video explaining her comments about Padmaavat’s Jauhar scene.

"this morning, clip mine has

"This morning, a clip of mine has been going viral on social media," she said in Hindi. "It was from an event yesterday, where I was asked why I had sent an open letter to Sanjay Leela Bhansali after watching Padmaavat.

While explaining what my issue was, I said something that is now being completely mistranslated and spread falsely, claiming that I had said that Rani Padmaavati and the other women who committed Jauhar were cowards."

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"I want to make it absolutely clear that I did not say that Rani Padmaavati was a coward or that the other women in the palace were cowards," she added. "Those who want to abuse me, go ahead, but at least abuse me for the right thing.

What I had said was that while watching the climax, I thought, God forbid, if I were a rape survivor, I would feel like a coward for not having taken my own life — that if I had survived after being raped, I would feel like a coward."

"Rape has become so widespread in society that it resembles an epidemic," she explained. "Society lives amid a thriving rape culture, pointing to a recent horrific gang-rape incident in Delhi in which a girl was allegedly assaulted for 36 kilometres inside a vehicle.

"This is the reality of our country," she said. "Should we be making films that send the message that a woman’s purity is more valuable than her life? Should we be telling a rape survivor that it would have been better if she had died, and that surviving the assault was a bad thing?"

"One should never forget the brave girl who fought against her six rapists until her last breath," she added. "Nirbhaya had a strong will to live and one should never underestimate a woman’s will to live."

Swara made a controversial remark about the Jauhar scene in Padmaavat, saying, "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.

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Is that what you want to tell in a society like ours where I feel like, anyway, there is a rape epidemic?"

"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," she said.

"I waited for five days to check if I still feel like that, and after five days, I wrote a letter," Swara explained. "I faced backlash for my remarks, with many criticising her interpretation of the Jauhar sequence and arguing that the historical practice should not be described as cowardice, but was an act of bravery