SRK's speech at Crystal Awards 2018: 10 things he said about power, sexism and consent
The Bollywood superstar received the award for his Meer Foundation, which supports acid attack survivors.
Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan requesting Australian actor Cate Blanchett for a selfie from the stage of the World Economic Forum may have amused the audience, but it also conveyed how he valued the significance of “asking” a woman for permission, which he claimed to have learnt in his journey with the Meer Foundation that brought him the Crystal Award, 2018.
Honoured to receive the @wef’s 24th Crystal Award, together with @eltonofficial and Cate Blanchett. My fan moment!!Watch the #crystalawards via https://t.co/rILPgHRgtL at the #wef18 meeting in Davos.
— Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) January 22, 2018
The actor received the award, along with musician Elton John and actor Cate Blanchett, for “his leadership in championing children’s and women’s rights in India”. Meer Foundation, named after his late father, was set up in 2013 to provide medical treatment, legal aid, vocational training and rehabilitation to acid attack survivors. The Crystal Award is given by the WEF to artists who make a difference.
Here are 10 things the superstar said which encompassed a wide array of issues, including sexism, consent, and the concept of power.
‘Actors are renowned narcissists’
Describing his tryst with the cause for which he was awarded, he said how it was a juxtaposition that he, belonging to the glamour industry, picked up the cause of the “scarred” women. “Actors are renowned narcissists. No matter how much we pretend not to believe in external beauty, we tend to be obsessed by it one way or another,” he said.
How working with Meer changed his perspective
“And perhaps being surrounded by this obsession of beauty a few years ago I came across a lady who had been brutalised by an acid attack. And it kind of changed my life, or the perspective of it, at least,” he said.
Acid attacks demean women in more than one way
Throwing acid on the face of a woman doesn’t only target the external appearance of a woman; it belittles her scope of exercising her choice, too. “To disfigure a woman by throwing acid on her face is to me one of the basest, crudest acts of subjugation imaginable. At the source of it lies the view that a woman does not have the right to assert her choice, to say no to the advances of a man or a group of people,” he said.
They were no victims
Sharing his experience with acid attack “victims”, he said none of the women could be called victims. They had within them the courage to move on with their lives and “to reject the idea of victimhood”.
What made them stronger?
What was supposed to have crushed the women actually made them stronger, the actor said marvelling at the fact that they became more “able to free themselves, to make the choices everyone around them was telling them they could not or should not make”. It was from them that the actor learnt how to catalyse victimhood into heroism.
‘Equality is not a concept’
“Equality is not a concept but a truth that encompasses all living beings,” he said, explaining how, on his journey with the Meer Foundation, he imbibed that the service of others is not a choice anymore for any of us. It is a duty that all of us must fulfil in the name of humankind.
‘I am resourceful, by accident’
There is just a vast pool of resources – natural, spiritual, economic and technological – that everyone is equally entitled to. Hammering home the fact that there should not be any benefactors and beneficiaries among these natural resources, he said, “Some have gained by more access to it (the resources) either by accident, as in my case, or by design, talent and hard word, as in the case of all of you present here.”
‘Power actually needs a complete reversal’
Urging the “powerful” to get out of the way and to “break open access for each and every one with a true sense of ourselves not as more powerful or less privileged, but genuinely as equals”, SRK said that power needs a complete reversal more than any other thing in the world today, though it is one of those perspectives “we like to maintain a certain way”.
‘Can you get my eye out of my hair?’
Here he shared an anecdote of babysitting his five-year-old son, who was perturbed by a strand of hair falling on his eyes. “...Papa, Papa my eye went into my hair. Can you get my eye out of my hair? He didn’t say get my hair out of my eye, like we all believe we do. And it is a bit like that when you have power, you think things get in its way but it is actually power that is getting in the way,” he said.
People who taught SRK how to persevere for a ‘yes’
Concluding his speech, he thanked his sister, wife and daughter for “bringing him up well and teaching him the value of requesting, sometimes imploring and begging a ‘yes’ from a woman, instead of forcing it upon her”.