Vibrators to Hindu twitter trolls, Indian film star Swara Bhasker not afraid of shaking things up
Long a target of online lynch groups for her stand against religious bigotry, the Indian actress has got social media astir again with her new film, ‘Veere di Wedding’
An Indian actress who introduced the vibrator to Hindi cinema has become the latest target for the country’s notorious Twitter trolls. And she is loving it.
Swara Bhasker’s own bio on Twitter describes her as “an armchair activist, Twitter warrior, troll destroyer, right-wing baiter, liberal hysteric”. The candour is admirable – and the bio is accurate.
Consider a recent instance involving her latest film, Veere di Wedding. Though it is a commercial movie with star power (the actresses Kareena Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor play major roles), it is distinguished by the absence of a male lead and its focus on women’s concerns.
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Bhasker plays a spoilt, rich girl married to a man unable to sexually satisfy her. She turns to a vibrator and in one of the film’s most talked about sequences, pleasures herself. (This is Hindi cinema so there is no actual nudity; only the suggestion of self-gratification.)
Shortly before the film was released, right-wing activists urged viewers to boycott it. The call for the boycott was not prompted by the vibrator scene but by another controversy. Some months ago, after a rape was reported inside a temple, Bhasker and other stars took part in a campaign to protest against rapes. Hindu activists treated this as an insult to Hinduism and some denied that any rape had taken place in the temple.