Swara Bhasker has always been voicing her strong opinions on every social issue happening in India. On the MeToo movement as well, Swara Bhasker expressed herself openly in an interview with Zoom TV. She elaborates on naming and shaming of these stories and how it affects the work atmosphere when it comes to being professional.
While raising support to sexual harassment survivors, Swara pointed out the incidents happen at the work places. Swara said, “For me, the biggest realisation has been that amid all these discussions have been happening is that oh, jo mere saath 8 saal pehle hua toh wo sexual harassment at work place tha. We ourselves don’t recognise the incidents that have happened to us – hum usse naam nahi de pa rahe hai kyuki hume kabhi bhi train nahi kia gaya iske baare mei sochne ke liye, samajhne ke liye.”
Speaking about Vinita Nanda’s allegations on Alok Nath, she said, “That is a heart wrenching, absolutely shocking, as almost unbelievable that can happen to someone. She was the director of the show and if that is the state of the director of the show I don’t even want to think about what’s happening to a junior artist and dancers and people who are not even in that position of authority.”
“I met everyone – I came from outside and no one was there to warn me. For actresses, who have come from outside and have no family backing, they will have a lot of such experiences – someone might have said something inappropriate, someone might have suggested something bad – but it’s that same thing that you took it as a part of ki yehi hota hai. So there’s a normalisation – haan ho sakta hai maine wo nahi kia jo unhone kaha lekin par ye bhi nahi hai ki mai chanta maarke aayi – I nicely handled them and women have been handling all this for ages. Some of them I have talked about, some of them I now realise they were sexual harassment at workplace,” the outsider Swara added.
About initial lack of awareness about harassment, Swara said, “Of course, I have had those experiences – I also didn’t call it out. I was young, alone and scared. Everyone wants to work at the end of the day. Already you are an outsider, then you don’t have any one’s backing and upar se, inn pachdo mei kaun padega. If ever there was a problematic figure on the sets – especially the director – so we dealt with it. Taking someone else in confidence. But now the time has come that men and women are collectively saying ki hume nahi karna hai handle. Aap yehi sab karte rahoge toh kaam kab karoge. The saddest thing in the whole thing is ki naukri karna itna mushkil hai…”
On being shamed in public for coming out, Swara said, “Shame, laaj, sharam, haya – inn saare concepts ko toh humko khaarij kar lena chaiye hume. Then you are leaving men to be completely irresponsible for any of their actions because all the weight of the shame and the honour of the woman is lying on her and her body and then the victims feel humiliated. Shame is a very debilitating thing – you are killing yourself with that burden – you are not telling the people what has happened to you and you are letting the perpetrator get away and you are bearing the brunt and punishment of not just trauma that has happened to you but also of the fact that the man gets to go scot free. So it’s double the trauma and double the injustice.”