#MeToo: Soni Razdan recounts her own experience

Veteran actress Soni Razdan, also the mother of Bollywood actress Alia Bhatt, says while the #MeToo movement is a positive change against sexual harassment, women who don't speak up should not be judged for their silence. She also revealed an incident that happened with her and her reasons for not talking about it openly then.

In an interview with The Quint, she said that women in the industry often suffered at the hands of powerful men. She stated that she was grateful that she hadn’t faced any sexual harassment when she approached people for work but she does say that she faced it in other ways. She spoke about an incident when she was almost raped by someone but he failed in his attempts. She said, “Like there was an incident that happened to me when I was on a film shoot and somebody tried to rape me, for example that kind of thing. Luckily they didn’t succeed.

She said that she had never reported the incident because she didn’t want the person’s family to know about what he had tried to do and have to go through the trauma of knowing about his actions. “You know the only reason I never said anything at that time and it sounds really odd maybe but I realised if I would have opened my mouth that person would have gone through a lot of problems. He had a family, small children. And at that time I said, ok, nothing really happened, I managed to control it but obviously I never spoke to that person again. I did not, not talk about it because of any shame or anything like that. I felt that I would be hurting his family, whom I knew,” she added.

Soni told IANS : "Living in a patriarchal society I know that such thing is horrifying for any girl and that is why the movement is a positive sign, where people are coming up with their stories.

"It is easy to say that if such harassment happens, walk out of your job. But people depend on that job, it is about their livelihood, a question of survival. So while we must encourage victims for coming up with their #MeToo stories, we should not judge women for not sharing their stories."

Asked why sexual harassment happens at workplace, she said: "When someone is humiliating and harassing a woman, he must be knowing that the victim is needy and left with no option but to tolerate such harassment to save the job. It is about livelihood."

The actress, who recently travelled to Busan International Film Festival for her film "Yours Truly", said: "Every company should have zero tolerance on sexual harassment so that victims feel secure while taking a stand."