75ReportIn an anonymous building in Mumbai, the home
of India’s mammoth film industry affectionately
known as Bollywood, a teenage girl stands in front of
two film executives in suits. ‘Take your clothes off. We
need to see if you’re right for the role,’ says one, barely
maintaining the pretence of an audition. She hesitates.
Although she is pretty, in an industry where even former
Miss World contestants struggle to land big roles, being
pretty isn’t enough. ‘If you want to get into films, you
know what you have to do,’ says the other exec.
‘In the end, I did what I had to do,’ says Sangeeta*,
a 22-year-old aspiring actress. ‘The door was locked,
so I didn’t have a choice. I felt dirty afterwards, but
everyone knows that if you want to get into Bollywood,
you have to get in with the people who can open
doors. You just numb yourself to it. Trust me, I’m not
the first, and I won’t be the last.’
With its colourful costumes and OTT romantic plots,
the Bollywood film industry has always been perceived as
an exotic, fun alternative to the Hollywood fare we are
used to. But for some, the
glamour hides a dark side,
which critics say was exposed in
June when one of its most well-
known actors, Aditya Pancholi,
54, was accused of rape by
a famous Bollywood actress.
While she can’t be named
for legal reasons, she has been
described in the Indian media
as an A-list star on par with
Jennifer Lawrence in terms of
profile and success. The case
relates to an incident that
allegedly took place ten years ago,
when the victim was a struggling
young actress trying to get a foothold
in the industry. In a police report, she
claims she was raped by Pancholi
after he offered to drop her home
after a party. She also claims that he
took compromising images of her
without her consent. ‘We have filed a case against
Pancholi for rape and defamation,’ said her lawyer,
Rizwan Siddique. ‘There are lots of reasons why she
came forward now, which we have submitted to the
court.’ Pancholi has strongly denied the allegations and
said the complaint was ‘pre-planned as I had filed a
defamation case.’ Pancholi also says the truth will out,
but for now the case has certainly prompted debate
about whether Bollywood is having its own #MeToo
moment, and if it will lead to a seismic shift in cultural
attitudes to women and sexual harassment.
Bollywood is a dream factory in a country where
22 per cent of the population lives below the poverty
line. The lure of instant fame and fortune is
intoxicating, as thousands of young men and women
flock to India’s most populated city, Mumbai, to try their
luck at landing a film role that could transform
their lives. But, in reality, the industry has its very own
set of rules akin to the Hollywood star system of the 50s.
The majority of today’s actors and actresses are either
theoffspring of famous Bollywood stars, or have come
viaTV or the beauty pageant route, such as former
Miss World, Priyanka Chopra Jonas. For those young
hopefulswithout the backing of a celebrity surname or
already high-profile media career, the lure of false
promisesmade on the casting couch is a powerful one.
Yet few women will dare to speak out about it for fear of
destroyingtheir careers.
‘I grew up in Delhi and it saddens me to say I don’t
know a single woman who hasn’t faced sexual
harassment or abuse,’ says actress Richa Chadda,
who starred in the hit movieLove Sonia. ‘The film
industryis a microcosm of the patriarchal society
that we live in. It’s magnified here because people
are competing for fame and their livelihoods.
I had several occasions when I experienced sexual
harassmentand predatory behaviour. In retrospect,
saying “no” has cost me a lot of good roles.’
‘The casting couch has always been associated with
Bollywood; it’s just an unspoken truth,’ agrees Banita
Sandhu, an actress and model
from Wales who made her
Bollywood debut in the film
October last year. ‘I’ve heard
about lots of seedy directors in
the industry, and it’s not just
girls− boys are vulnerable, too.
Manyyoung people who are
starting out just assume that’s
theway it works.’
What commentators cite as
fundamentallyproblematic is
the sexually liberated image
that Bollywood films portray,
versus the contrasting socially
conservative attitudes that prevail in
Indian society − particularly when it
comes to the subject of rape. This
year,the biggest hit at the box office
in India was the movieKabir Singh,
where the main character assaults his
girlfriend. Rape is regularly seen as a
dramatic vehicle on screen, with the forceful ‘taking’ of
a woman by a man who is ‘deeply in love’ with her
highly romanticised, rather than criminalised. But for
ordinary Indian women, the stigma attached to being a
rape victim is so strong that many women avoid
reportingit at all. In fact, last year, the Thomson Reuters
Foundation named India the most dangerous nation for
sexual violence against women. And The National
CrimeRecords Bureau estimates that a rape is now
taking place there every 22 minutes.Thankfully,things
arechanging. The brutal gang rape and murder of a
student, 23-year-old Jyoti Singh on a bus in 2012, had a
dramatic effect on public consciousness. Many people
lambasted Bollywood for its double standards; an
industry where one of its most successful stars, Sunny
Leone,is a former porn star, but where the plot line
almostalways leads to the male actor ending up in the
arms of a virginal girl in traditional sari dress.
‘Social media has also worked effectively to galvanise
#MeToo campaigners, but it has been an uphill‘I EXPERIENCED
A LOT OF SEXUAL
HARASSMENT.
SAYING “NO”
HAS COST ME
GOOD ROLES’AdityaPancholi
(right) addresses
the media during
Jiah Khan’s funeral
in Mumbai, 2013