Shruti Haasan: The hate culture online is a representation of society

Shruti Haasan is not one to mince any words

Shruti Haasan is not one to mince any words. Ask her about criticism, marriage, anything, and she will speka her mind. So it doesn’t come as a surprise when she yet again does the same when we ask her about the Boycott Bollywood campaign and the cancel culture running on social media time and again whenever any major Hindi film release is round the corner. “It’s not just films... I am trying to understand where is this coming from, why this is happening. There are many layers to it. We all need to take a step back and understand why those people are losing it. Nothing what we see is what it appears to be.”

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Overall, she continues and says that the people who bully, they were bullied by someone who was bullied, and so on. “This is bullying, which is happening. The cancel culture is an extension of bullying, exposing or attacking with a group of people, and exposing or digging up words from the past, whatever. We are seeing it because of the film industry, but people need to realise that the culture online is a representation of what’s happening in the society,” says the 36-year-old, who recently came out with her latest single, She is a Hero.

Elaborating on the kind of hate she herself has to face personally, she says she is called names such as ‘chudail’ (witch). She feels that the world overall has become “an unnecessarily negative space”. “I know we will overcome that. I have, in my own way, represented myself. Everyone is like ‘tu chudail jaise kapde kyun pehenti hai?’ And I respond ‘oh my God, I am a chudail? Appearing like a witch is like the coolest thing for a goth on this planet. To turn it around and make it positive for yourself is important,” says Haasan.