What’s B-Town’s problem with working women?

Veteran actor Mukesh Khanna, best known for playing Bhishma Pitamah in television’s Mahabharat by BR Chopra and the role of Shaktimaan, stirred up controversy recently when he made remarks proposing that the #MeToo campaign began when women started stepping out to work.

Bhishma Pitamah was shy of women but that is not being offered as an excuse for Mukesh Khanna, and allegations of his sexism are apparently justified. But my own sense is that it does not mean what it is taken to be, i.e. women should not demand equality in the workplace. In many of the most basic occupations, women have already taken over from men, though often invisibly.

Some years ago, a friend of mine who was conducting a survey in rural North India told me that women were doing many of the things that were traditionally considered male work, like working in the fields. Another feature was that when traditionally feminine work — like drawing water from wells — had become redundant because of the wide use of inventions like the electric motor, women had adjusted by becoming handy with repairing motors and were also doing that. Rural men, my friend told me, were to be found squatting in public places, drawing on beedis.

After receiving this information, I used to busy myself on long train journeys counting the women outside in the fields and the corresponding number of men and I found that the former outnumbered the latter by a ratio of almost ten to one. There are no statistics pertaining to the work done by men and women in rural India but whatever Mukesh Khanna said apparently pertains to urban educated middle-class women. Men don’t usually have issues with women doing their work.

One’s first response to Mukesh Khanna’s remark might be to decry him for sexism but, more specifically, it is unmindful of the rights of women at the workplace — significant considering the industry he is associated with. The #MeToo movement came into being because of sexual harassment in the workplace, men using their power to coerce women into granting sexual favours and, although the movement started outside India, one may be sure that the condition of women is bad here, although in recent times incidences of false complaints have also started emerging.

Mukesh Khanna is not a spokesperson for the film industry but one could take his words to reflect on it. While sexual harassment is seen in all kinds of workplaces, the film industry is a chief one where the sexual allure of a woman is the attribute fetching her work. As part of demonstrating her suitability for a role, a woman actor would need to underscore such allure and it would be naïve to believe that once the business of ‘acting’ is completed, the allure can be put aside; a woman actor might not be allowed to be coldly ‘professional’. It is known that married women do not do well as actors and it could be because a family attachment might sit uncomfortably on a woman required to demonstrate her appeal outside her screen performance.

Taking all these factors into consideration, I would suggest that Mukesh Khanna’s remarks are not simply those of an individual sexist but reflect on the film industry.

He is not talking about rural India. He is not even talking of the new economy in which men and women work side by side with few instances of such scandal emerging, or of women government servants harassed by their superiors.

He is specifically talking about the film industry — the industry he knows best. If one takes his statement as it appeared, it is that the #MeToo movement happened because women tried “walking shoulder to shoulder with men,” and it is not a decrial of “walking shoulder to shoulder” as much as a decrial of the #MeToo movement; and it is not surprising that someone from the film industry should decry it now!

The film industry in India is among the opaquest, in terms of their inward workings, and without checks and balances; if women are among its voiceless victims, there are also other categories like extras and stuntmen, who are often grievously injured or even killed because of inadequate safety measures.

There are unions within the industry but these are, by all accounts, ineffective and incapable of serving the interests of the powerless.

The industry is now in turmoil because of some whistleblowers, and the sexual abuse of women has rightly caught public attention. Mukesh Khanna’s utterance is hence an expression of regret, but perhaps more at the remedy than the illness!

(The writer is a well-known film critic)