By Sharanya Gopinathan
Haven’t you had it up to here with sexist lyrics in Bollywood songs? I feel like a lot of us have reached some collective breaking point, not that Bollywood cares much. I remember early last year Buzzfeed‘s awesome Imaan Sheikh did this hilarious bunch of memes that re-imagined Bollywood songs with feminist lyrics. Last month, we also noticed this feminist remake of the song Urvasi Urvasi, which was released by Breakthrough India to inspire women to question patriarchy.
Recently, the Akshara Centre launched a nation-wide competition, asking people to send in non-sexist versions of Bollywood songs. Their website describes the competition quite nicely, calling it an opportunity for you to “use your creativity without offending anyone”, which, considering their love for lyrics that objectify women, bodies and fair skin, Bollywood could do well to start using as some sort of guiding principle.
Here’s a compilation of five different songs re-worked by the Akshara Centre.