Renowned screenwriter and director Khalilur Rehman Qamar has come under fire for saying that “women should rape men if they want equality”, while netizens call him out over misogyny, which they say, has always been key to his characters and stories.
“A few weeks ago, a feminist group had a conversation with me regarding equality. I asked them if they’ve ever heard about a gang of men kidnapping a woman? They assured me they have. I asked them then why don’t women do the same?” Qamar, whose recent offering “Mere Pass Tum Ho” revolves around a woman who’s willing to overlook her affectionate husband for a man who’s richer, said in a recent interview.
“If you wish to strive for equality then kidnap men as well. Rob a bus, gang rape a man, so that I can understand what you [women] mean by equality.”
Defending his ideas and “philosophy” around how he sees society, Qamar said that “Mere Pass Tum Ho” was “the story of several men, not just one”.
“I have come across multiple married couples who go through the same ordeal. I’ve observed when a married woman cheats, she doesn’t feel ashamed at all. The reason behind her not feeling guilty is because she has been backed by another man. When an unmarried woman cheats, she feels guilty.”
“But when a married man betrays his wife, he feels guilty. He feels embarrassed.” Qamar then also asserted that women should not criticise “Mere Pass Tum Ho” because women themselves have ridiculed men.
“I’m only narrating this story in your [women’s] favour. Like it or not, I don’t call every woman a woman. To me, the only beautiful trait a woman can possess is her loyalty and her modesty. If a woman isn’t loyal then she is not a woman. Register an FIR against me for if you don’t subscribe to my point of view but I won’t budge.”
“Get someone to try me under #MeToo, I won’t care about that either. But I won’t be able to call every woman a woman. That simply isn’t true for me,” he said.
“A man leaves all his honour, his self-esteem with his wife when he goes out to earn a living. And I curse those women who violate that trust. That was the concept behind Mere Pass Tum Ho and so I’m fighting for the ‘good women’. It would be unfair to these [good] women to be classified along with those who aren’t loyal.”
He then mockingly said that men have hijacked women’s rights so cleverly that women don’t really understand what their actual rights are. “Rather than figuring out your own rights, you’re only asking your part from men’s rights. That’s never going to happen!” he said. “The most one of these feminist groups can do is chant slogans against me, tweet a few thousand tweets but that’s it! Women can’t do anything else.”
Qamar believed that if women were to challenge men, the whole society will collapse.
“I was once in conversation with Sultana Siddiqui, and she asked me, ‘Khalil, why don’t you write anything against men?’ I asked her what should I write about men? Should I abuse him? I would, but then what? She said, ‘What do you mean? Even men remarry and indulge in extramarital affairs. Why do you choose to be so selective?’ I just had one question in response, ‘But with whom? A woman, right?’”
According to Qamar, if a woman learns to say no to men, then men won’t be tempted to have an extramarital affair.
When the host finally intervened and made a point about how loyalty should be exercise by both the man and the woman, Qamar replied, “You have to understand this philosophy. A wife is worried about what? Another woman. That other woman isn’t a man. So riddle me this: you are destroying a man and you’re the one who’s complaining about it as well.”
He concluded by saying, “A man cannot say no. He just can’t. A good woman can.”
