Swara Bhasker on being a fearless creative, “I hope that we develop into a society that doesn’t punish people for their opinion”

“Who says I’m fearless? Me? I’m a stubborn jackass!” Swara Bhasker yells from her Zoom square on my screen. I’m trying to compliment her but she will have none of it. “I am not fearless. I’m often anxious and worried because I tend to get into so much trouble and all kinds of drama,” she shares. But in these tumultuous times, she has time and again made it a point to have her voice heard and her opinion shared. Does she get massively criticised for it? Yes. Will that shut her up? No. Between her off-screen activities and on-screen choices, Bhasker is undeniably fearless.

“Someone once told me that I’m developing a ‘nuisance value’, that I’m getting too controversial. But what do I have to be ashamed of? I don’t take ethically wrong position, I’m not propagating murder or hate,” she says, visibly passionate. ‘Nuisance value’ or not, even in the midst of the pandemic, Bhasker has had four massive releases across four different streaming platforms—Bhaag Beanie Bhaag on Netflix, Flesh on Eros Now, Rasbhari on Amazon Prime Video and Aapkey Kamre Mein Koi Rehta Hai on MX Player. All this and she wrote the foreword for the anthology Inquilab: A Decade Of Protest (HarperCollins India). It’s a feat not many can boast of, but for Bhasker, it’s all in a day’s work—where she simply does what she loves, while being true to herself.

Walking The Talk

Bhasker’s activism isn’t limited to tweeting 280 characters and dealing with the backlash—it’s consistently reflected in the big and small actions that make up her life and work. Be it adopting Godot, her rescue indie dog, who I spy darting across her Mumbai apartment as we chat, or shaking up mainstream Bollywood, where she refuses to shy away from playing provocative characters even if it’s a big-budget multi-starrer blockbuster. Veere Di Wedding (2018), her Twitter bio reminds us, is the film that made her the actor who ‘introduced the vibrator to the Indian silver screen’. Almost dismissed as a chick flick, on its release it became a powerful narrative about female solidarity, and one controversial masturbation scene later, entered the 100-crore club. Bhasker doesn’t pick her roles nonchalantly. “Your choices in terms of the work you do depends on your understanding of the world, what your belief system is, what your ambition is and how you want to see yourself out there. In my case, it‘s what legacy I want to leave,” she says. 

But what makes this 32-year-old self-made actor legacy-conscious already? Bhasker rewinds to her growing-up years in suburban Delhi and the conversations around current affairs and cinema, which she grew up around, thanks to her father, naval commodore C Uday Bhaskar, who now heads an independent think tank, and her mother Ira, a professor of film studies at JNU. It was her mother, who pursued her PhD well after having her, who shaped her cinematic vision: “As a film studies scholar, I’d watch her go into the archives in Pune [National Film Archive of India] and pull out films from the 1930 and ’40s. I realised early that films live forever—content lives forever—and I don’t want to ever be ashamed in my grave,” she says. 

Going Off-Script

Naturally, her filmography is considered, thought-out and statement-making. “I’m particularly interested in the world around me: politics, power dynamics and how they influence the world we live in. In my creative expression, you will see that. It doesn’t have to be in a jhanda-parcha-morcha way,” she says. And she has seamlessly accomplished that via gems, such as her first solo hit Nil Battey Sannata (2015), where she plays a single mum who works as a house help and does everything in her power to educate her daughter, and the cult hit Anaarkali Of Aarah (2017), in which she plays a small-town erotic folk performer who takes on the system when she fights her harasser. “The former asks why education should be the repository of the privileged. The latter talks about the idea of consent, the idea that women have a right to access justice, whoever they might be. These aren’t political stories but they ask the kind of questions I’d be interested in, in the activism space. And that is how I marry my creativity and my choice of work along with the issues I want to talk about,” she says.

While she tries to make a positive difference in the world as she fights the good fight, Bhasker has had to pay the price, even as she powers through it. She says, “My work has been affected, so that isn’t a worry anymore. I’m discussing the values of the Indian Constitution...Work does suffer... I received a termination letter mentioning how I brought disrepute to a brand. But I understand. I don’t blame people. I wish certain people had a bit more spine, but it’s alright. However, when people tell me I’m bringing controversy, I tell them that it isn’t always that bad.”

And it isn’t. Between her box-office successes and well-received web shows, her star is on the rise. She continues, “I always tell producers to judge me on the numbers. That’s the approach I take and I’m not alone in this... I hope that we develop into a society that doesn’t punish people for their opinion. You cannot criminalise opinion, you know. That’s a very worrying sign for any society.” Bhasker is a prime example of the fact that expressions of creativity often express the things one cares about. And she seamlessly coalesces her creativity, her causes and her career to ensure that she isn’t just another brick in the wall.

Read the story in Vogue India's March 2021 issue that hits stands soon. Subscribe here

Photographed by Ashish Shah. Styled by Priyanka Kapadia

On Swara: Ikat dress, De Castro. Earrings, Silver House. Ring, Moi. Shoes, Christian Louboutin

Hair: Mike Desir/Anima Creatives. Makeup: Mitesh Rajani/Feat.Artists. Photographer’s assistants: Rajarshi Verma. Fashion assistant: Naheed Driver. Assistant stylist: Ria Kamat. Production: Imran Khatri Productions. Bookings editor: Prachiti Parakh. Bookings assistant: Jay Modi

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