Open Letter to Sona Mohapatra

There is no right or wrong time for women to speak up if they have been victimized and you have no right to ask a woman shut up!

Dear Sona,

I used to be a big fan of yours. Your openness to talk about super-stars and call them out if you find their behavior unacceptable. Your personal experiences of struggle as a woman that you have shared with the public. But your recent letter maligning Kangana and calling her freedom to speak about the harassment and intimidation she has gone through publicly a PR stunt is in extremely poor taste. It is you, not she, who needs to shut up and take several seats!

Sona, we live in a country where women are routinely asked to hush it up! ‘This is not the right time’, they are told, even when they are raped or harassed or bullied.

‘This is not the right platform,’ they are advised. ‘This will ruin your reputation,’ they are warned. All these rules are put in place for women to censor their freedom of speech and make them fearful of speaking up. Then comes a woman like Kangana, who does not care about such rules. She chooses to speak her mind when she wants, where she wants and she doesn’t hold back with the truth. The whole ugly truth! So then why do you, a so called feminist, try to censor another woman’s freedom of speech?

What gives you the moral high ground and what proof do you have that this is a PR stunt?

This is no publicity stunt, these are facts. She had been wrongfully slapped with a legal notice and if she has been given the opportunity to clarify what happened, why should she refrain from talking about it!

And why should you be the judge of good and bad timing? So, are you really trying to say Sona that when a woman is raped and if she happens to be running for a very public election, then talking about her rape and exposing her perpetrators is bad timing? If a woman has been the victim of domestic violence and is a public figure and then gets asked by reporters to talk about it, and after years of abuse she decides to talk about it publicly before her films’ release, then that nullifies her harrowing experience and whatever she says must be judged a PR stunt! Even if the facts and the truth support her story! Why should she be asked to hush it up?

Why not ask those men who have harassed her to hush it up?

What you are doing Sonal is nothing short of victim shaming. Its because of women like you, that other women in our country, be it in the media profession or elsewhere, who have gone through something terrible are afraid to speak up because the timing is not right, this is not the right platform, what will people say? If they speak before their films, then it must be a publicity stunt right? Who comes up with these rules as to when and where a woman is allowed to speak her heart out. Who gets to decide when she should shut up, even if she is being asked and it is her right to talk about it!

I’m sorry to say Sona that your freedom of speech and your slogans of women empowerment is something that only applies to you. You are no feminist. In fact, yourthoughts and your way of attacking Kangana was tasteless and shows how regressive your thoughts are. You are not helping your fellow Indian woman, you are trying to hold her back.

I would liken you to the Indian woman who gets married and then undergoes abuse at the hands of her mother-in-law. You would think such a woman would learn to treat other women better from her own horrific experiences. Instead this very woman, then turns around and abuses her daughter-in-law when she becomes a mother-in-law.You are that mother-in-law Sona. Please see the light. And don’t ask women in our country to shut up! Let them speak! Let them speak!

Sincerely,
A Working Indian woman

By:Rima.