Recently Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) raised an important question in its talk show, ‘Is Bollywood Sexist?’. The discussion happened after the Tata Institute of Social Sciences released a report that stated that in most successful Hindi films, the story was driven by male characters and many hit movies portrayed women in a sexist manner.
In this new series, KiaGia.com will be asking various celebrities, media personalities and journalists about whether they, too, believe that Bollywood is sexist.
Akash Choudhary is a model-turned-actor, who won the Mr. India pageant in 2016. Later he rose to fame after participating in MTV’s ‘Splitsvilla Season 10’ (2017). Akash has currently took the internet by storm as Viraj Singhania in the Zee TV show ‘Bhagya Lashmi’ (2021).
Here’s what Akash Choudhary has to say on this topic:
“I have always been very vocal about this topic. Bollywood has always been sexist. All these years, we have seen songs and interpretations objectifying women. Their consent has never been considered.
I think this entertainment industry influences a lot of people. Although there’s a segment of people who are quite educated and they might not take it seriously, there are a lot of people who are not well versed and very young to understand. Hence while watching these kind of films, they can think that it’s acceptable to slap or abuse a girl. Not only in Bollywood, even in various TV shows or reality shows, male chauvinism has been shown proudly.
So according to me, we need to make more women-centric films in order to be progressive. For example ‘Mili’ (2021) is so powerful and it also fetched quite good ratings as well. ‘Mardaani’ (2014) and ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ (2022) are the women-centric films which also received much love from people.
I have no issues in men being the leads in Bollywood films. But then again we need to show women are also strong enough. We need to show their progress as well. We need to stop showing that men have the authority over women and that men can trash women for anything. It’s very sad and hurtful to watch women be treated in an inferior manner.”
