During the third season of the Tamil Bigg Boss TV show that was aired on Saturday night, a contestant casually admitted to molesting women on the bus. The revelation was met with a cheer from the audience. Actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan, who hosts the show, normalized rape culture as he failed to condemn the brazen admission.
Singer Chinmayi Sripaada retweeted a video clip showing this. The video soon went viral as Twitter users expressed their outrage.
A Tamil channel aired a man proudly proclaiming he used the Public Bus Transport system to molest/grope women – to cheers from the audience.
And this is a joke. To the audience. To the women clapping. To the molester.
Damn. https://t.co/kaL7PMDw4u
— Chinmayi Sripaada (@Chinmayi) July 27, 2019
Kamal Haasan was trying to resolve a fight between two contestants Cheran and Meera. Meera had earlier accused him of manhandling and using violence during a task.
As seen in the video clip, Kamal later went on to explain the trouble involved in boarding a busy public bus. He said, “To travel on a busy bus is a big hassle. While there are people who are rushing to reach office on time, there are those who get in just to touch women inappropriately.”
Listening to this one of the contestants, Saravanan, raised his hands up and admitted to doing the same. Haasan initially thought that Saravanan meant that he used to beat up such molesters. Saravanan quickly interrupted him and admitted that during his college days he used to board the public bus just inorder to molest women.
This was received by a round of applause from the audience. To which Kamal Haasan says in Tamil, “He (Saravanan) has gone beyond all that and is now become pure and holy”.
As reported by India Today, Saravanan justified his actions by saying “It was long back, when I was in college”. Kamal Haasan’s spokesperson has said that the actor was being sarcastic.
Kamal Haasan is also the chief of the political party Makkal Needhi Maiam. He was caught in a controversy earlier for saying that “Independent India’s first terrorist was a Hindu and it was Nathuram Godse”.
