In Bhansali’s Padmaavat, both women make suicidal decisions. One walks to her death and the other shows a generosity that she knows may get her killed. Padmavati’s ‘jauhar’ is sanctioned by society while Mehr-un-Nisa’s call is wholly and unexpectedly her own. Whose life choices, then, are more sovereign? In picture, the climax where the Hindu queen kills herself by immolation. Photo courtesy Viacom18 Motion Pictures. As Muslim women occupied the country’s streets at the close of spring this year, leading the largest, most sustained democratic protests in independent India, Bollywood was busy representing them as misguided suicide bombers. In Special Ops (2020), the web series by Bollywood director-producer Neeraj Pandey, there are two such Muslim women characters with speaking roles among a dashboard of bloodthirsty Muslim men, who are invariably accompanied by ominous music. The younger suicide bomber, played by Revathi Pillai, is a schizophrenic triggered by violence she has…

---