Not just Last Tango in Paris, what about Bollywood's silence when Rekha was sexually assaulted?

It often goes by the useful euphemism – casting couch – in Indian movie circles, but sexual assault has a long, pernicious history, pages of which are unearthed every now and then, only to be quickly buried.

As the world comes to terms with the rape scene in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, in which a 19-year-old Maria Schneider was assaulted by a 48-year-old Marlon Brando, of course, egged on and in full facilitation by the Italian “auteur”, we also realise how easily we forget the murky chapters of our own insidious past.

While we outrage about the rape in #LastTangoinParis here's a story of on-screen sexual assault in our own backyard. (Yasser Usman's #Rekha) pic.twitter.com/YYklg71Nze

— Nikita Deshpande (@deepblueruin) December 7, 2016

She wasn't even 15.

— Nikita Deshpande (@deepblueruin) December 7, 2016

That past involves a 14-year-old Rekha and a thirty-something Biswajeet shooting for the 1969 film Anjana Safar, when she was forcibly kissed for over five minutes by her co-star, and as usual, with considerable help from the director. Rekha’s biographer Yasser Usman mentions this episode detailing the gross violation of the underaged actor’s sexual integrity when he says that whistlings and cat-calls from the entire film crew filled the air, as Biswajeet kept his lips pressed on to Rekha’s, while she was caught completely off guard.

That this was subsequently paraded as a “bold scene” by the film tabloids and heralded the emergence of a “sex kitten” in Rekha only bespeaks how the history of glamourisation of the film industry hides umpteen and violently suppressed cases of sexual assault, repression and exploitation – all for the sake of sexualising the silver screen.

In stark contrast with this history of violation, and its inevitable jazzing up in the cinematic ecosystem including the gossip columns, the trailers and the parties, was the utter and shamefully negligent silence of everyone involved.   

As Usman writes: “In a film called Anjana Safar, a 14-year-old Rekha and 30-something Biswajeet were filmed kissing. This was way back when a kiss on the mouth was taboo (one wonders if the industry has changed much!) and lovers romanced by singing songs drenched in double entendre, flowers swaying to signify any sort of sexual contact. The kiss immediately headlined Rekha as a “sex kitten” and an actor ready to perform “bold scenes”.

The layered conflict of the scene, however, lay in the fact that a minor was made to perform without prior consent (her producers insisted otherwise, and in the classic he-said-she-said, Rekha’s silence was overwritten as consent). But what becomes surprising about this incident is that the teenager refused to let it knock her down, instead she carried on, undeterred because she had a family to support. The long forgotten story becomes pivotal to understanding the sort of discrimination and abuse faced by the young actor, and the image that she went on to appropriate, which created the star we know her as.”

Comparing Rekha to Kangana Ranaut, Usman draws parallels between the two actors’ outspoken honesty about sexual relationships and body image, while inviting both media attention and public censure. Moreover, not just Usman, but journalists too have observed how both Rekha and Kangana have broken the good Indian girl image to experiment with a variety of roles in which they have played women who are societal outcasts, or those with unconventional lifestyles.

However, it is the linked history of sexual violence and the film industry’s disgusting, dehumanising silence around it, not naming and shaming the big male star while ceaselessly feeding off the raunchy gossip from the female actor’s confessional honesty that must be called out; because, already it’s too late. 

Also read - How a 12th century saint of soul put female sexuality in words