Why Bollywood Loves The 'Abused' Woman

Using women characters as objects/props to further the hero's journey, evaluating women characters based on their sexual purity, treating them as property, using rape and violence on women as a plot device none of these are new in Bollywood. But it's time to stop sacrificing women on the altar of heroism and machismo

- Ananya Ghosh

As I sit to write this article, the world is celebrating Diwali - a festival that, in North India, is about Lord Ram's return to Ayodhya after retrieving his wife, Sita, by killing her abductor, Ravan. Ramayan is essentially a story of the victory of good over evil that has, over time, yielded many interpretations, some even as controversial as it being a tale of subjugation of the Dravidians by the Aryans and an attempt to propagate north supremacy over south. Reading the text through the lens of your personal politics or faith can give you multiple versions, and one such is that it reflects a society deeply entrenched in patriarchy, for Ramayan can also be read as a story where a woman's chastity can be the deciding factor of her place in society, where a woman is abducted and has to go through physical and mental torture and then be pushed to suicide so that the man can become a hero, a god.