Bollywood actress Swara Bhaskar is predominantly known for voicing her opinions bravely on any happening situations in the world. The actress often receives flak over her straightforwardness but she never feels threatened.
In fact, her campaigning for Kanhaiya Kumar in Begusarai, AAP candidates Atishi Marlena and Raghav Chadha in Delhi and CPM’s candidate Amra Ram during Lok Sabha elections 2019, has also made her alienated by a few companies. Or say, campaigning against the BJP with a political discourse must have perhaps caused unintended negative consequences.
Yesterday, Swara, who was speaking at the India Film Project, has launched the poster of her upcoming film Sheer Qorma. After that, along with her co-actor Divya Dutta and director Faraz Arif Ansari, Swara said that as a public figure, she became more vulnerable to a lot of destructive negativity.
“I lost four brands the day I campaigned for candidates for Lok Sabha elections lost three events. The hit that my work took at the end of that experience—I am not saying, ‘Oh, I am so great’– but if you’re going to make the stakes so high, that a superstar can talk about a dinner conversation and then face so much flak or another superstar can give his opinion and his car can be stoned on a shoot, then how can we expect people with legacies or public profiles to actually risk their lives, families, careers? Why should they? We need to ask ourselves questions as a society.”
Probably, the alleged angry division over personal and petty political opinions, especially in Swara’ case, of campaigning for AAP and not for BJP, could be a reason for losing endorsing offers. A sad victim of political bias. Swara also said Bollywood has a huge responsibility towards what they wield through movies in the society as popular culture.
“It is high time Bollywood and other language industries should begin to take responsibility for how they represent the issues. Just because an experience is not my own doesn’t mean it’s not legitimate. And, this is true for religious identity, caste identity as well as gender identity,” said the actress.
