Bollywood Baatein: The other side of MeToo

An unmarried director who is very fond of--how do I put this politely -- sleeping around, told me has “reformed” since the MeToo movement.

“I’ve CCTV cameras in every room of my house and office. And when a girl comes home I bring the conversation around to sex and very clearly asks if she wants it. Only then do we proceed.”

But sometimes CCTV cameras are not enough.You will be targeted with accusations of sexual crimes because you are powerful and privileged enough to make/break careers. It happened to Anurag Kashyap some months ago when a lady accused him of some embarrassing transgressions. Those who know Anurag, and even those who dislike him (including me) defended him stoutly with one line of thought:he doesn’t need to do this.

Now it’s the T-Series head honcho Bhushan Kumar. His crime seems to be his powerful position. While this makes him an enviable career-maker and a movie-music mogul at the age of 43, it also puts him in a position of tremendous risk.

This Bhushan realised the hard way. He has in his possession evidence of extortion bids and threats of being charged with sexual offences if he doesn’t comply.

Filmmakers in Bollywood are frequent targets of extortion bids. I’ve seen it happen to some of my best friends.It isn’t a pleasant situation.Every time the phone rings everyone in the family jumps out of their collective skin. I remember when my friend Rakesh Roshan was being threatened. He is a brave man. He didn’t give in. But he paid for his valour with a bulletin his chest. Luckily, he was saved from death.

Bhushan has been hit with something worse than a bullet. It takes years, if not a lifetime to clear one’s name in such a case. And even if the law clears your name (which is very hard to do when accused of sexual crimes) what’s there to stop people from believing you are a bloody pervert who just got lucky with his legalese?

Let the law decide who is guilty or not. But when Bhushan Kumar is targeted it’s not just his reputation, it is his family and his sprawling business that’s under threat. If as he claims, he has been punished for not paying up extortion money, and if his allegation is proved, shouldn’t the accuser be given the strictest punishment possible?

Sadly,the accuser in cases of sexual offences is hardly ever punished when proven to be lying. In show business the ratio of empowered producers who are threatened for not paying up or not keeping their promise of giving work to people they have presumably had sex with,is very high.

Producers live under constant threat of being violated by accusations of violation. They no longer meet aspiring actors and technicians. The assistants and the casting directors are tasked with the job. But who protects these second-row decision makers? And what preventive laws are there to discourage false litigations?

If an accused is proven innocent,let the accusers be given the same punishment that the accused would have got if proven guilty. Because being usurped of your fundamental rights is no different from being raped.