Amid #MeToo row, Anurag Kashyap steps down as MAMI’s board member

Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap on Wednesday, October 10 said he has decided to step down as the board member of Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI).

Kashyap has been a member of the MAMI board ever since it was set up. Kashyap, who has been accused of shielding director Vikas Bahl in an alleged sexual harassment case, said he will come back only after clearing his name.

"In the light of the current events, I have decided to step back from my duties as a board member from MAMI until the shadow of doubt of our alleged complicitness in silence and not doing anything about it, is cleared," he said in a series of tweets.

Last year, a woman employee at Phantom Films, which had Bahl as one of the partners along side Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane and Madhu Mantena, had alleged that Bahl behaved inappropriately with her during a trip to Goa in 2015.

In another tweet, Kashyap denied that he remained in the case and said that he will keep on fighting the "accusations" that come his way.

"The accused was named and shamed a long time back. For people who don't read the details & only the headlines, I have no response. A lot of women work with me and have been around, I am answerable to them & they stand witness to our actions &our struggle to do the right thing," he said.

"Let the purging continue .. it's as good a time as any for all of us to introspect, look into ourselves and see how we all have been complicit in so much, with our silence, forced by fear of consequence or by choice," he added.

The filmmaker, however, said he has begun to question himself about the interactions he had with opposite sex for a while now.

"And my greatest and simplest learning is that the line of consent is not just defined by 'No', most times it's before that 'No' is uttered. And the line of consent depends on the person that owns the consent. It varies from person to person.

"It's our conditioning, even for the most woke people. Most of us are still learning, everyone who claims to know what it means, and I talk about us men, we really don't know. None of us knows. It can't and should not be defined so simply," he wrote.

With PTI inputs