Bollywood actress Swara Bhasker is one of those women who never shy away from talking their minds. The actress recalled her #MeToo experience when she revealed how a director harassed her at a workplace.
Swara was present at a panel discussion on the life of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein at &PriveHD’s Prive Soiree where actors Dia Mirza and Anand Patwardhan were also part of the discussion. The Veere Di Wedding actor is known for her outspoken nature and taking a stand against society’s stereotypes like discrimination, gender pay gap, racism, and #MeToo.
She revealed that she was sexually harassed by a director and it took her nearly six to eight years to realise what had happened. Swara Bhasker, without taking any names, said the harassment happened at the workplace and the director was being “predatory.”
The Anaarkali of Aarah actor said, “It took me 6-8 years to realise when I heard someone else talk about their experience of harassment at a panel discussion like this. I was like “God, what happened to me 3 years ago was actually sexual harassment at workplace! I never realised it because like you said, I escaped. Because the person did not touch me and I managed to ward it off.”
“I would just tell myself that this director is being… whatever, but that is not the full truth. The director was not being an idiot or an a**, he was being a predator,” she added.
“There is so much of culture of silence, around sexuality in India, around the issue of sexual harassment, actually not just In India, everywhere around the world, that we are just going through our lives without recognising it properly. We just recognise the discomfort.”
The actress also talked about women avoiding taking the legal route because they face a hostile society. The Tanu Weds Manu actress said, “First of these things are completely inhospitable and a hostile society and a culture actively or subconsciously enable predators… We should use this moment to not just talk about the one predator that got caught.”
“We should also talk about the culture that enables these predators to reach the position of power they do. So, it’s also a question of making ourselves aware of many things that go into legitimising predatory behaviour,” she added.
On the other hand, recently, filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani has been accused of sexual harassment by a woman “assistant” alleging that he sexually abused her more than once between March and September 2018 while working on the film Sanju.