One year of #MeToo: Time to break the silence, say women

It has been a year since New York Times published its expose on Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, taking the lid off sexual exploitation in the showbiz capital and marking that defining moment when women across the world, and in India too, came forward to say #MeToo.

That the debate in the Hindi film industry around Tanushree Dutta's allegation that veteran actor Nana Patekar harassed her during a 2008 film shoot should be gathering steam a year after the NYT story on October 5, 2017 is coincidence perhaps. But the shout out to the powerful that the silence on the issue must be broken is not.

The Weinstein saga of sexual intimidation and harassment created a seismic shift in Hollywood's gender politics and altered the landscape the world over, albeit in varying degrees.

It is tempting to conclude that Dutta's allegation has heralded Bollywood's #MeToo moment but that may be presumptuous, say industry insiders.

"While it is great that women are speaking up, it is also showing us how hard it is to actually break that silence and how and why so many women do not report cases of sexual harassment at the workplace or their experiences of sexual violence because they know that reporting is not only the means to relive the trauma but also face the new trauma of deniers who will slut shame you," actor Swara Bhaskar told PTI
Emboldened by the many women who have shared their experiences over the years, a journalist, who did not want to be named, recently filed a harassment complaint against a colleague,