You'll never get good cinema with so much surveillance: Swara

From being told that Nil Battey Santa would be career suicide, to dealing with regular brickbats on social media, Swara Bhaskar has risen above it all, much to the rhyme of Maya Angelou's poem. Having recently introduced audiences to a strong female role that's seldom seen in mainstream cinema, Swara indulges in an exclusive chat with us, one that's honest and unabashed, on her thoughts about where India's democracy is heading, dealing with trolls, and why the

CBFC

needs to mind its own business...

With the current state of events in India, what are your thoughts om violence being likened to nationalism?
The manner in which nationalism is being used to condone inhuman crimes is wrong. We are witnessing a problematic turn of events in India. There's always been a huge debate: whether India is becoming more intolerant or not. I say, ask yourself. Intolerance is actually putting it softly.

You've spoken about receiving abuses regularly, and death threats too. How do you deal with such negativity?
I'm a hardened troll handler! While people wake up to devotional songs, I wake up to trolls and abuses on Twitter, specially to posts that take a political stand. Actually, you can be trolled for anything today, specially if you're a woman or a public figure.
The first time it happened, was during 2014's general election results. Someone provoked me, and in response, I wrote a generic post, putting up the picture of Qutubuddin Ansari that became the face of the Gujarat riots. For the next two months, I was trolled and abused no end. I was extremely upset and nervous back then, but I've learnt to handle such situations better now.
Trolls are capable of real implications on society. I don't see them as just Twitter eggs. Those nameless and faceless accounts online aren't really anonymous. They have the agency to go out onto the streets and terrorise people.

Before the release of

Anaarkali of Aarah

, KRK had slammed Karan Johar after he shared the first poster. What're your thoughts about self-styled film critics?
I just considered that post another troll. I didn't even think it would become such a big issue. In the industry, a book IS judged by its cover, so we worked really hard on the poster. It was looking nice and did generate a positive first impression. We were feeling happy and thankful to Karan for tweeting about the poster, and then came from out of nowhere came this senseless comment that actually didn't mean a thing. It was like someone coming to a nice party and taking a dump in the middle of the room!
Keeping track of numbers that decide a film's success, is not my job. My job is to better my work, find more exciting roles and stories to feature in, and bring something credible to my audience. I know, that people watching our film might have a view, but they won't see it as a waste of time. It's an important film that evokes a world one rarely sees in Bollywood.

The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) first denied certifying

Lipstick Under My Burkha

, then Malayalam film

Ka Bodyscapes

, and then demanded 11 cuts in Anaarkali of Aarah...
I hate to say this, but the CBFC is increasingly proving its own redundancy. Its job is to suggest what age group can watch a film, not advise cuts! It's ridiculous how the board has even asked to mute the names of Amitabh Bachchan and Amrish Puri from a dialogue. How are audiences going to understand dialogues at such a rate? The truth is, you're never going to get good, credible art in an atmosphere that's governed by archaic morality rules, and is constantly under surveillance. Why don't we get an Oscar? Well, you won't, because you've created an atmosphere of fear among your artistes! And a week before the release, nobody is going to be interested in picking up a fight with the CBFC. Producers and filmmakers will just toe the line.

With films getting leaked, as is in the case of a scene from your film, is piracy detrimental to film business?
It's definitely detrimental, and it is unjustifiable. It is not right to want to watch for free what people have worked so hard on. Producers pay a huge entertainment tax on the earnings they make. They invest a lots of money to get this piece of work out there, and if one everyone watches this work for free, how are artistes and producers going to survive?
But, I also feel that flip side of piracy is that you can't make entertainment so expensive, such that daily-waged people can't afford it. Today the price of a film ticket is anywhere between Rs 270 and Rs 2000; which is the per day earning of so many people. We have to think of making entertainment and leisure available to everyone equally, not just to the already leisured class. That's not ethically right on our part as a society.

"I rarely block people, unless they are really disgusting. Otherwise, I like reading what they write. As a celebrity, it's easy to live in your bubble of films and surround yourself with like-minded people. But it's important to know what's going on in your country." - Swara, on being active on Twitter, despite receiving threats

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