Musician Anoushka Shankar, daughter of the legendary Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar, has admitted she was abused as a child.
In a video to support a global campaign to end violence against women – One Billion Rising – Anoushka Shankar said the abuse had been by “a man my parents trusted”.
Anoushka Shankar said she had suffered “groping, touching and verbal abuse”.
There has been growing outrage in India at the treatment of women after the fatal gang rape of a woman in December.
The One Billion Rising movement was started by American playwright and feminist Eve Ensler to mark the 15th anniversary of the V-day campaign to end violence against women.
A number of events have been organized in India on 14 February – the day the campaign is calling for one billion people around the world to rise up against gender-based crimes.
In the video, recorded in her London home, Anoushka Shankar, 31, appealed for people to support the campaign in memory of the 23-year-old gang rape victim.
The brutal attack on the physiotherapy student on a Delhi bus led to weeks of protests by thousands of people across India and the world.
“As a child I suffered sexual and emotional abuse for several years at the hands of a man my parents trusted implicitly,” she said.
Anoushka Shankar added that she was taking part in the One Billion Rising movement “for the child in me who I don’t think will recover from what happened”.
Anoushka Shankar grew up in London, Delhi and California and began learning to play the sitar from her father at the age of nine. Ravi Shankar, 92, died in a hospital in California in December after an illness.
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