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Akshara Centre's 'Gaana (Song) Rewrite' competition, launched
earlier this month, invites people to change the lyrics to any
Bollywood film song they find sexist. The group said it may then
engage with the film industry to push for change.
"In our gender awareness work, one of the issues that's been
raised repeatedly by young women is being harassed by men
singing inappropriate Bollywood songs," said Snehal Velkar, a
coordinator at Akshara Centre in Mumbai, the Bollywood hub.
"Bollywood songs are great to sing and dance to, but when you
pay attention, you realize that many of them objectify and
demean women. This leads to normalizing sexual harassment and
violence against women," she told the Thomson Reuters
Foundation.
The Hindi film industry, also called Bollywood, is one of the
world's most prolific, churning out hundreds of movies every
year. They are generally syrupy romances, family dramas or
action movies peppered with elaborate song and dance routines.
Many movies also have so-called item numbers or songs, which
often have little to do with the subject of the film, and
typically feature skimpily clad women.
In recent years, as violent crimes against women have made the
headlines, women activists and some movie stars have taken
Bollywood to task for its sexist themes and for glorifying
violence against women.
Nearly four out of five women in India have faced public
harassment ranging from staring, insults and wolf-whistling to
being followed, groped or raped, according to a recent survey by
charity ActionAid UK.
Well-known Hindi film songwriters including Javed Akhtar and
Prasoon Joshi have criticized their peers for writing vulgar and
irresponsible lyrics, while also blaming moviegoers who
encourage such music.
Earlier this year, activists urged the Tamil film industry to
stop portraying stalking as cool, and instead see it as a crime
that has resulted in violent deaths in southern Tamil Nadu
state.
The Indian government has brought in tougher penalties for
gender crimes, including criminalizing stalking and voyeurism.
Yet popular culture, including Bollywood, must be accountable
for the enormous influence it wields and help ensure a more
responsible portrayal of women, said Velkar, who is spreading
word of the competition using hashtag #BollywoodCanChange.
"We want to send a message to the industry that we can have
popular music without it being sexist or humiliating to women,"
Velkar said.
(Reporting by Rina Chandran @rinachandran, Editing by Belinda
Goldsmith; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the
charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian
news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate
change. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories.)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
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