Post the Harvey Weinstein scandal, Bollywood actresses from Priyanka Chopra to Richa Chadha have been speaking up against sexual harassment. Now Kalki Koechlin gives us one of the finest analyses of the problem as she sees it in the Hindi film industry. Koechlin, who is also a gender activist, got talking on a UK-based news channel about what hinders women in Bollywood from speaking out about sexual harassment like their counterparts in Hollywood did.
Kalki nailed it with her opinion that “No one listens to you when you’re a nobody. If you’re a celebrity and you talk about it, it only becomes a shocking headline.” She pointed out a key reason that compels women in Bollywood to keep silent… “It is a very difficult step to take. Because it's their career on the line. You are dealing with hundreds of people throwing their opinions at you. It can really shake a person emotionally.”
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Kalki further revealed, “I know several girls who are newcomers in Bollywood – struggling, going for auditions, who are constantly being discriminated because of the way they look. People say you are too fat or comments being made or being hit on. Having phone calls at two in the morning from your casting director. Things that no one is reporting and nobody is researching because there is no famous person to headline it. Men have been pretty clueless about the fact that almost every woman had been harassed in some way or the other. We are just so numb to it. If you get touched in a bus, we don't even think any more about it.”
She added that it was important for women to have a support group. “It can be online, a therapist, family or friends. Both men and women need to be having a dialogue with each other, not against each other. That's really important.”
With no platform of support, a lone woman could be “condemned for being crazy or lying,” she summed up.
