Tanushree Dutta breaks her silence on sexual harassment laws

Bollywood actress Tanushree Dutta broke her silence on the issue of sexual harassment. She also urged the women politicians of our country to take up this issue seriously. She concluded her statement by saying, "If these measures are implemented then that would be an active step towards reforming the Midset of a nation that is reeling under the influence of a very negative kind of oppression, one that is surely affecting future generations in many ways."

Sona Mohapatra's post after receiving Tanushree Dutta's support proves 'It's Time Up'

FULL STATEMENT

Many people in our country do not understand the meaning of sexual harassment or for that matter the meaning of the word "harassment" or perhaps they just pretend not to. Harassment means mentally torturing someone on the premise or pretext of asking sexual favours, trying to pressure a woman to do something against her will or out of her comfort zone by using underhanded tactics, by force, by manipulation or by threats. Outraging her modesty by Uncomfortable advances, sleazy comments, verbal abuse and uncomfortable physical touch where the woman is not willing is also in the purview of sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is qualified as a separate category in law apart from abuse, assault, rape and molestation and is also a punishable offence as serious as the other offences.

This kind of information needs to be taught in schools, colleges, in companies, hiring departments of various industries as well as part of a public service initiative so that people can be aware of their rights and responsibilities. Also the Police force, law and judiciary need to be given a master class on harassment laws as those guys are the primary investigative agencies and very often they mix harassment with abuse, assault and rape and hence unable to correlate the evidence when its provided to them. Very often a harassment complainant is not taken seriously in India although eve-teasing and unwarranted misbehaviour towards women/feminity has been rampant across the country according to several psychological studies and reports. This needs to be taken note of too.

 Also, the use of terminology callously without understanding the meaning and ascribing more heinous offences to it makes it plausible for it to be denied and thus dismissed. This is the sad and sorry state of awareness about harassment laws in our country and hence clever creepy people continue to thrive despite rising protests as they always pretend indifference, ignorance or twist words to dismiss matters when confronted. So the key is to verbalize accurately with clarity the nature of the offence while confronting these people. Therefore a mass initiative on creating awareness on harassment laws will curb the incidence of crimes against women and children in our country. They say when you throw light on darkness the darkness slowly dissolves. The police force, as well as the judiciary, needs to be schooled and sensitized on this.

I suggest the women politicians of our time take up this issue seriously with the powers that be and actively enforce some educative and corrective measures en masse. In layman's terms teach the public what kind of behaviour tantamount to misbehaviour and harassment since clearly most of these guys who indulge in this kind of behaviour have not been brought up well by their parents and need extra schooling on the concept of consent, personal space and civilized behaviour. Also, there should be a legal blanket ban on the glorification of such behaviour in popular media.

Tanushree Dutta desires to work with filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali