Bollywood Actor Launches Social Campaign Against Rape

Bollywood director and actor Farhan Akhtar has launched a social campaign in India against rape and discrimination of women.

The campaign is called MARD – Men Against Rape and Discrimination. Akhtar said the campaign was prompted by his employee’s assault and rape last year. He has often spoken about women’s safety and had even written a poem on women-related issues after a young girl was gang-raped in the capital on December 16 last year.

The campaign is announced as a social campaign, for now it’s mainly initiated on social media, as Akhtar is tweeting the MARD message to its 1,5 million Twitter followers and on a brand new Facebook page.

Farhan has especially urged school authorities to start teaching boys about gender awareness at a very young age. “Teach them at the age when self-awareness begins that being a man involves compassion, gender sensitivity and respect for women,” he wrote.

Some tweets that kicked off the campaign:

If you are a man who respects women… her rights, her dignity, her independence, her mind, her body, her life… you are a #MARD.

— Farhan Akhtar (@FarOutAkhtar) March 10, 2013

 

Take the #MARD message to your schools, your colleges, your offices, your homes. Each of YOU must become catalysts for Change.

— Farhan Akhtar (@FarOutAkhtar) March 11, 2013

 

Akhtar’s initiative has been garnering massive response on the micro-blogging site Twitter with celebrities like Shabana Azmi, Priyanka Chopra, Arjun Rampal and Sonam Kapoor, actively retweeting his posts that talk about the real meaning of men.

This helped the MARD message to become trending topi in just a few hours:

#mard is now trending in #NewDelhi trendsmap.com/in/new+delhi

— Trendsmap New Delhi (@TrendsNewDelhi) March 10, 2013

Farhan Akhtar (@FarOutAkhtar) is encouraging his fans and followers to support the MARD campaign and use the logo on their clothes and other accessories to generate awareness and support the idea.

My opinion?
My Stomach twists each time when I read the horrible news that women and children are being raped in India. Every year, hundreds of thousands of girls are trafficked from rural India to work as domestic servants in middle-class homes in India’s fast-growing urban areas.

They are expected to work at least 15 hours a day for food, lodging and salaries well below the legal minimum monthly wage of about $125.

Many end up cut off from their families, abused and treated like slaves. And even worse, some are being raped and abused on a regular base.

Therefore I support Farhan Akhtar’s MARD campaign and I’m asking you to do this as well:

Tweet the MARD message, the hash tag for this campaign is #MARD. Join the facebook page here and let’s help Akthar to fight women and child abuse!

What about you?
Do you think Farhan Akhtar can make a difference, spreading his message using social media?

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About the author
Laurens Bianchi is an online marketing professional from the Netherlands and has been blogging on ViralBlog since 2008. Currently Laurens is a Managing Partner and Commercial Director at ICON&CO and Social Media Consultant for the Royal Dutch Football Association.