Author Yashica Dutt has expressed disappointment over an alleged lack of acknowledgement for her contributions in an episode in the second season of Amazon Prime Video India’s Made in Heaven 2. For the unversed, in the fifth episode of the series, Radhika Apte plays the character of a Dalit woman.
In a statement on social media, Dutt said that she was “deeply disappointed” that the makers of the show had not allegedly given her any credit for her work. She claimed that she had met with the makers of the show and had shared her experiences as a Dalit woman and that she had also given them access to her book, “Coming Out As Dalit”.
Dutt said that she felt that the makers of the show had “appropriated” her work and her experiences. She said that she was “not asking for money or fame”, but that she wanted the makers of the show to “acknowledge my contribution”.
The makers of Made in Heaven have denied appropriating Dutt’s work. In a statement, they claimed that the episode in question is a fictional story about a Dalit woman named Pallavi Menke. They clay that the character is not based on Dutt’s life or her book.
The statement said that the term “coming out” was first used in the Indian caste identity context in 2007, a decade before it was used by Dutt in her book. The statement also said that the narrative of Pallavi Menke’s grandmother cleaning toilets is a common history that came up recurrently in the makers’ research of the community.
The statement concluded by saying that the makers have immense respect for Dutt and her work, and that they made the show with sincerity, passion, and a beating heart.
