There are debates which catch your attention, and you want to respond, but the argument is not worth responding to. But then, in the age of social media, if you don’t counter that statement, it becomes a tool for shaping the narrative. In the last two weeks, there have been two statements by two so-called influencers. Both are on different issues, but the method is the same, and the target is also the same i.e Hindu traditions.
The first debate is about an old comment by Swara Bhasker that was presented at a new venue. She raised questions about the Jauhar sequence in the movie Padmaavat and said, “If I were a rape survivor, what is this film telling me? It would make me feel like a coward for not killing myself to save my honour.” On the sequence involving a pregnant woman in the Jauhar scene, she said that “the film seemed to suggest that a fetus, if female, does not deserve to be born because she might one day be raped by a Muslim ruler.”
The second debate is about a viral clip made for engagement farming by an influencer on Raksha Bandhan, where she calls the festival funny and then calls it patriarchal, saying that a sister ties a Rakhi and asks for protection, but protection from whom?
Both statements are not of the same kind, but they follow the same pattern. Both have a similar target and modus operandi: first, take an example of a tradition, separate it from its historical context, paraphrase it in simplistic language, and then criticise and demonise that translation as if it were the fact rather than an interpretation.
Historians call the deliberate misrepresentation of the past through present-day assumptions “presentism.” David Hackett Fischer referred to a similar error as the “nunc pro tunc” fallacy- imposing the present on the past.
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, however, presentism is primarily an ontological doctrine: it is the view that only the present exists, absolutely and unrestrictedly. The view is the subject of extensive discussion in the literature on time and change, with much of it focused on the problems that presentism allegedly faces.
Jauhar: The Question Asked vs. What It Was Made Out to Be
About Jauhar first we need to understand why it was taken up by women of the Rajput rulers. Not that anyone wants to willingly go to self immolate in a pyre of fire. The women of that time knew something about the raiders that, if they were alive, what they could be subjected to from Sexual exploitation to slavery for lifetime. The Rajput women who chose Jauhar may have understood, from the earlier invasions of Muhammad bin Qasim, Mahmud of Ghazni and Muhammad Ghori, what defeat could mean for women- enslavement, sexual exploitation, captivity and being treated as spoils of war, with captives entering the slave markets of the Islamic world.
According to historian K.S. Lal’s Muslim Slave System in Medieval India, the Arab conquest of Sindh was accompanied by large-scale enslavement of women and children. Lal writes that after the fall of Debal, the male population above the age of seventeen was put to the sword, while women and children were taken captive. He further records that 700 women who had taken refuge in the temple were captured, with a portion of the female captives being sent to Hajjaj as part of the conquerors’ share of the spoils, while the rest were distributed among the soldiers. After the capture of Rawar, Lal records that thousands of men were massacred and that women, children and dependants were taken prisoner; he gives the number of captives as around 60,000, including women of royal families who were sent onward as slaves. Lal also describes instructions attributed to Hajjaj ordering Muhammad bin Qasim to give no quarter to the conquered population and to take women and children as captives. In the final stages of the conquest, he records that 20,000 prisoners from prominent families were set aside as the ruler’s share, while the remainder were distributed among the soldiers. Lal therefore concludes that “a few lakh women were enslaved” during the Arab invasion of Sindh.
Men would perform Saka- a final, suicidal charge. This history is not a figment of one side’s imagination. Muslim historians themselves recorded it during the Sultanate and Mughal eras. The book “The Campaigns of Alauddin Khilji”, translated with notes by Muhammad Habib, states that “a more horrid act of tyranny was committed by Nusrat Khan, the Wazir of Khilji and the author of many acts of violence in the city. In revenge for his brother’s death, he dishonoured and disgraced the wives of those who had struck his brother with their axes; he gave them to sweepers to be used as prostitutes and ordered their suckling children to be broken to pieces on their heads. His actions filled people with horror and dismay. A shiver went through the hearts of men.”
Even Akbar’s own records following the fall of Chittor in 1568 document the enslavement and massacre of the surviving women and children. In other words, the reason for lighting the pyre was not imaginary; the fear was real.
Now, think of Swara Bhasker’s argument. She seeks a different kind of “objective” or, rather, an object to degrade the tradition of that time and its circumstances. So she picks up rape survivors and creates an alternate theory, replacing the Rajput women with them. This allows the audience to be asked whether the right to live ceases to exist after rape. The straightforward part of this argument that a survivor has every right to live- is absolutely correct, and there can be no ifs or buts about it. But the problem is that Jauhar was not the answer to that question.
The women who performed Jauhar were not “rape survivors.” They were rejecting the future that awaited them after defeat- namely, becoming sex slaves, used as sexual and domestic “resources” within the hierarchical order of the Sultanate, and seeing their children enslaved and reduced to spoils of war, to be sold in slave markets for a few tankas.
Equating the two is not an act of empathy; it is a failure of translation.
Rakhi: When did the thread become a “protection contract”?
Now lets move on Raksha Bandhan. The argument regarding Raksha Bandhan is often simplified as follows: a sister ties a thread around her brother’s wrist and the brother pledges protection therefore, the festival implies that women are weak and men are their protectors. Hence, the tradition is patriarchal.
However, this line of reasoning overlooks the entire significance associated with the raksha-sutra.
When a sister ties a rakhi on her brother, she is not asking him for “protection”; rather, she is invoking protection FOR him.
The rakhi tradition was not limited to the contemporary sibling dynamic; references to pratisara and kautuka appear in early Vedic and Grihya texts.
In the Atharvaveda Parishishta, a priest ties a protective thread around the king on Shravan Purnima. In the Bhavishya Purana, Shachi ties a raksha-bandhan on Indra before a battle—meaning the protection is bestowed upon the wearer of the thread, rather than the act serving to prove the superiority of the person tying it.
Consider a historical example that upends this entire argument: during the anti-Partition movement in Bengal in 1905, Rabindranath Tagore used the Rakhi as a symbol of Hindu-Muslim brotherhood, urging people to tie the thread across communal lines. A symbol that once served as an instrument of communal unity has today been reduced to a “signifier of a woman’s helplessness.”
This is not to say that criticizing contemporary advertisements or social media messages—which portray the brother merely as a “bodyguard”—is wrong; such criticism of modern portrayals is valid. However, concluding from this that the festival itself is inherently misogynistic is a different matter altogether.
The Three Tricks Behind the Distortion of Tradition
First: Synecdoche- where a single popular interpretation is made to stand in for the entire tradition. Jauhar is reduced to “honour suicide following rape”; Rakhi becomes merely “a sister seeking protection from her brother.” Anything that does not fit this mould- the harem, Islamic slavery, children on the funeral pyre, the thread tied by a queen to a warrior or by a priest to a king is discarded.
Second: Moral inversion- once the synecdoche is established, the critic can position themselves as the protector of the victims. Historians, proponents of the tradition, and even the sister who is happy to celebrate her festival are all portrayed as if they desire women to die or remain dependent.
Third: Deliberate disregard for the alternative- in today’s city, “living after rape” is the humane imperative. In today’s world, there are constitutional rights, laws, police, and institutions designed to protect people’s rights.
In a falling fortress, however, “living” signified a specific future: becoming a captive, being forced into domestic servitude, or ending up in a harem. There was no Constitution, no modern legal framework, no IPC or BNS at that time to protect the rights of the enslaved. Any argument that fails to mention this third factor- being bought and sold like a commodity- pretends that there are only two values at play: honour versus life. Yet it is this third factor that drives the historical reality, and it is the very first thing to be erased.
This is not merely the tactic of a single ideology. The question is: what becomes of a politics that champions criticism when criticism itself is reduced to this?
An Honest Critique: Neither Worship the Past nor Demonise It
An honest critique of Padmaavat might have gone something like this: Jauhar was a horrific choice made under horrific circumstances. Glorifying it through cinematic aesthetics in a society that already equates a woman’s worth with her sexuality- raises valid questions. Critique the scene, certainly but do so without labeling the deceased as “survivors,” a status they never actually held.
An honest argument regarding Rakhi could have been: popular culture often markets the day solely around the concept of male protection. Protection that does not include a share in property, or safety and dignity within the family, is an incomplete deal- that is what needs fixing. But this does not require fabricating a narrative that a patriarchy- which somehow escaped Shachi’s notice when she tied the thread to Indra has existed since the Vedic era.
Honest arguments ultimately leave something behind- film criticism, the politics of property rights, and the demand that living women not be shamed. Dishonest versions leave behind only a headline and contempt- whether for Rajput memory or domestic tradition while real issues, such as the rights of rape survivors or daughters’ property rights, remain buried beneath that very scorn.
In the End: Before Judging a Tradition, Understand What It Meant
Jauhar meant that Rajput women had a choice, and they chose death over constant sexual exploitation. Rakhi means that the one who wears the sacred thread is protected by the prayers of the person tying it. So, you can start from here. Feminism still has something left to offer. You can start by calling out and denying both presentism and engagement-farming. Because explaining is never enough, and the next festival or tradition will have to face the same kind of distortion.
People should not make it a binary choice between worshipping the past and demonising the past. There is a third way that can be defended. What can be defended should be defended, but what can be rejected must be rejected. What is being demonised also needs to be stopped and corrected. And, most importantly, do not congratulate yourself on defeating a caricature of Indian civilisation that you have conjured up.
There is no need to demonise Jauhar to defend the right to life of a rape survivor. This is also an injustice to rape survivors when they are used for engagement farming. There is no need to make fun of Raksha Bandhan in the name of women’s rights. And feminism need not assume that women of the past lacked agency simply because they did not behave the way women do today.
The fundamental question remains the same: before labelling a tradition as good or bad, can we first understand what it truly meant?