A lot of actors from Bollywood have spoken about Tanushree Dutta’s allegations against Nana Patekar. While some like Sonam Kapoor, Farhan Akhtar, Priyanka Chopra have supported her, some like Rakhi Sawant have stood against her. Actress Richa Chadha also opened up about her views on the matter to The Indian Express.
Richa told the daily that we need to evaluate where we went wrong as a society that women weren’t comfortable enough to speak about harassment openly. She said, “We all have to look within ourselves and figure out how is it that we normalised the culture that women didn’t feel safe to come forward and report any kind of verbal or physical assault. We all have to answer that. A person can be a nice guy but there might be a side to him which we do not know about. All of us are complicit in this space.”
She furthur added, “We all need to go back to the drawing board and check where did we go wrong and correct it from there on otherwise it is not going to change. I can give you some false advice on how this will be beneficial but it’s not going to change until there is a drastic reframing of our culture. We all need to be in this together. If you see someone in your fraternity calling a victim and saying she wants attention or wants an entry in Bigg Boss, you need to call them out too.”
She also said that stories like these are not just restricted to Bollywood but will come out of every space. The daily quoted her saying, “It’s very easy to take an easy target which will get you TRPs like Bollywood and say Bollywood is a fallen industry and women have to go through casting couch and such other kind of tacky nomenclature. You can’t say what is Bollywood doing. Bollywood is doing what it is doing and it will take time. People like me have come out and spoken up time and again. Why don’t you ask other people what are they doing? What is the press doing? What is the judiciary doing? These stories of sexual harassment will tumble out of every sort of space in the society. It’s not going to end. We all, as women, have to support each other. Asking what your industry is doing, that is just whataboutery and I am sick of it.”
Recently, there were allegations on a comedian Utsav Chakraborty as well for sending pictures of his genitals to a woman, to which she replied saying, “Today, people have come out against harassment and sexism at the workplace in comedy, that is the real shocker for me because these are the men who are making feminist jokes and riding the wave of feminism. But what are they really doing behind the closed doors?”
The Masaan actress concluded by saying, “So, we need to evaluate this doublespeak that happens from politicians, judges, media persons and actors. It has to stop and it will stop if all of us come together. ”
Also read: Ex-AIB Comic Utsav Chakraborty accused of sexual harassment2018