Podcast | Digging Deeper – India’s own #MeToo Mo(ve)ment

Reema Moudgil | Rakesh Sharma

“Women aren’t responsible for men’s bad behaviour. We’re not the sex police,” Heidi Stevens wrote in the Chicago Tribune after the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke in 2017 and questions began to erupt about how for so long, the trails of abuse could continue and why the victims had not come out before and why the heroines who had worked with the disgraced studio mogul had never let their misgivings, if any public.

This is Rakesh and in today’s Money Control podcast, we explore India’s brush with the #MeToo movement and its possibly far reaching impact on multiple industries and those who run them and work within them.

Why did not she speak before?

This question is the biggest defence that abuse apologists offer to protect the accused, putting the onus squarely on the survivor to prove her credibility rather than following up on the accusations via checks and due process that should be in place in every work place but often isn’t.

In December 2017, a guerrilla artist in Los Angeles claimed responsibility for posters depicting actor Meryl Streep as an enabler of Harvey Weinstein, calling them revenge for the actor’s criticism of Donald Trump.

The posters showed Streep with a red stripe across her face and the text “She knew”.

Though the artist was doing this self-confessedly to avenge Streep's criticism of Donald Trump, it did bring to attention the fact that while supposedly complicit female figures like Streep are called out for their silence, male colleagues escape similar scrutiny even though as director Peter Jackson confirmed in retrospect in 2017 that he had known about Harvey Weinstein’ s tendency to blacklist uncooperative heroines like Mira Sorvino and Ashley Judd. Italian-American actress Annabella Sciorra, who starred in US TV series The Sopranos was also one of the many victims whose lives and careers were interrupted by Weinstein.

Peter Jackson had chosen to keep quiet. The same rule of Omertà or code of silence has operated for far too long in Bollywood.

Victim blaming is rampant and it had worked in Weinstein's favour in the past in the context of actress Rose McGowan who had been a rising star in the nineties but went on to become a tabloid headline after she alleged rape by Weinstein at the Sundance Film Festival .

Ten years ago, former Miss Indian and actor Tanushree Datta after a traumatic incident involving Nana Patekar had to leave films in the absence of any tangible support from any quarter. While Weinstein made his employees sign a confidentiality agreement, there seems to be an unwritten bro code that successfully ousted Tansuhree from the industry even though the attack on her car on the sets of "Horn OK" in 2008 was filmed and a journalist was witness to the harassment she allegedly suffered.

As many articles post Weinstein’s fall pointed out, the culture of silence around abuse thrives with the help of a well-oiled machinery of enablers and facilitators who work behind the scenes to empower and protect predatory figures and to clean up after them because everything in the end is justified by the bottomline.

The economic subtext of abuse 

So yes, the economic subtext of abuse cannot be denied because when  studio heads, actors or directors bring  in the money that jingles all the way from the box office to the bank, they are accorded creative control and immense power over livelihoods and careers that they then can go on to make or destroy.  Weinstein remained the toast of Hollywood despite his openly abusive tendencies because he pulled off dazzling creative collaborations and turned Miramax into a dream independent studio and a money making and award winning machine.

Regardless of where the abuser presides, a media house, a cinema studio, a set, a corporate office or an academic nerve center, one thing is common to all  #MeToo stories.

The abuser almost always happened to occupy a more powerful position than the survivor and almost always had the clout to affect her career or livelihood or her life in some big or small way.

That alone should tell us something about the lopsided power structures that facilitate abuse within their secretive walls.

The question is how are the abusers able to persist with their pattern of misbehaviour for so long?

Are complicit forces at play?

Actor Rose McGowan has pretty much maintained the same view that Hollywood while pretending to speak for victims and wearing black dresses and shining pins to make its support for victims and survivors known at glittering events, goes back to work the next day with the same abusers.

It is only when the tide turns irrevocably and irrefutably, as in the case of Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein that those who had worked and socialised with them, suddenly feign surprise and refuse to associate with them any further.

Streep, who worked on several films produced by Weinstein, and once jokingly referred to him as “God”, went on to deny any knowledge of his alleged assaults.

But as a news story in The Guardian reported, Harvey openly abused his power  and we quote, "Senior executives who worked for Harvey Weinstein at Miramax Films have described an atmosphere of psychological abuse and bullying at his film studio, enabling his behaviour at the firm to go unchallenged for decades.” Unquote.

The exact same pattern can be seen unfolding in India.

Sexism and abuse of power is not a new occurrence in Indian film studios. A superstar accused of breaking into a film set  to disrupt a shoot and intimidate his ex-girlfriend, continues to work with adoring heroines and deferential directors till date.

Well-connected actors have bounced back from court cases, from legal troubles and continue to call the shots while the heroines remain on the fringes and only occasionally become powerful enough in their own right to be able to walk out of a big film without the fear of offending anyone, like Priyanka Chopra did recently.

Years ago a beauty queen said on record that she was dropped from big projects after her personal life became disruptive due to another individual , and she had to take a break from Bollywood and work in Hollywood for a while.

Women who come from film families are relatively well-protected but for outsiders like Radhika Apte, Richa Chaddha, Tanushree Dutta and legions of others, the industry can be a minefield they must learn to walk into with their guard up at all times.

Just as Harvey Weinstein’s success inhibited those who knew about his behaviour from speaking out, in India too women who are not as successful as their abusers are often described as “publicity hungry”.

In India, it has taken a long time for the tide to turn in the favour of the survivors though it is too early to say, if it will achieve far reaching changes.

But at least, a tentative safe space for narratives to come out has been created.

Kangna Ranaut who enthusiastically promoted Queen along with the film's director Vikas Bahl a few years ago now says that he had made her uncomfortable during the shoot.

After director Sajid Khan was accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct across a varied time line,  his famous family members and  the larger-than-life actors who have worked with him are now giving incredulous statements to the media and saying that they are appalled by the accusations and do not condone such behaviour.

Paul Webster, who was head of production at Miramax between 1995 and 1997, told The guardian just how the reign of silence empowers abusers and we quote, “Miramax was absolutely a cult, the cult of Harvey, and that’s how he got away with his behaviour for so long. It was crude but very effective. People became brainwashed, some people had nervous breakdowns. People would be hired and then destroyed for no apparent reason, and then their careers and lives would be in tatters. Everything Harvey did was all about manipulation and fear. He was a massive bully. He would flatter people, get the best out of them and then dump on them really, really hard to destroy them. It was this whole thing of breaking people down so you could build them up in your own image.” Unquote.

Webster admitted to The Guardian that Weinstein’s predatory behaviour towards young women was common knowledge but that the culture of Miramax led them to “compartmentalise it”.

It is always the same story 

Similar parallels can be drawn from the accounts narrated by survivors in India where powerful editors like MJ Akbar and CP Surendran, directors like Subhash Ghai and Sajid Khan and even smaller players like Rajat Kapoor and Alok Nath continued to work uninterrupted while allegedly playing psychological games with their victims and demeaning them verbally to chip at their self-belief. In Alok Nath's case, the warfare that began on the sets of cult serial Tara ended with the alleged rape of director Vinta Nanda whose fault was that she had stood up and called out his behaviour on her sets. Her career was derailed too and she was ostracised by the television industry till now of course when as we said before, the tide seems to be turning in the favour of survivors.

The power of a cumulative momentum is beginning to show with Akshay Kumar stalling the shoot of Sajid Khan's Housefull 4 and Nana Patekar and Sajid himself walking out of the film as well. Aamir Khan has decided to not work in Subhash Kapoor's latest. Kapoor was accused of sexual misconduct in 2014 by actress Geetika Tyagi and not one actor had then come in her support.

Even Amitabh Bachchan who writes open letters about female agency while working in a feminist film like Pink and who refused to make any comment on the Tanushree Dutta and Nana Patekar controversy has recently made some noise about the importance of protecting vulnerable women and children.

Screenwriters Association India has now formed an anti-sexual harassment committee to protect writers at the workplace .

Multiple accounts are coming out to implicate Alok Nath, once known for his squeaky clean public image post director Vinta Nanda's wrenching post about him. In an interview to The Week, Vinta said in response to a question as to why so many dated  #Me Too accounts were tumbling out now and we quote, "It gives me more confidence. It is informing the men that what they did and were not punished for will not be forgotten. It will come out 10, 20, 30 years later. It can even come out 50 years later. Times have changed. We should applaud all the older stories that are coming out. The men should understand that they were not spoken of during that time because it was not an enabling time for women. I have waited for this moment for 19 years, and it was a now or never moment for me." Unquote.

The fallout

In another significant news, 11 female directors in Bollywood have formed a collective and asked the film industry to show support towards victims of sexual harassment. They have shared a note on social media  to say that they will no longer work with ‘proven sexual offenders’.

The note, signed by Alankrita Shrivastava, Gauri Shinde, Kiran Rao, Konkona Sen Sharma, Meghna Gulzar, Nandita Das, Nitya Mehra, Reema Kagti, Ruchi Narain, Shonali Bose and Zoya Akhtar, reads and we quote: “As women and filmmakers, we come together to support the #MeToolndia movement. We are in complete solidarity with the women who have come forward with honest accounts of harassment and assault. Our respect and admiration to them as their courage has started a revolution of welcome change.

We are here to spread awareness to help create a safe and equal atmosphere for all in the workplace. We have also taken a stand to not work with proven offenders. We urge all our peers in the industry to do the same.” Unquote.

Aftershocks continue to rattle big names and comic collective All India Bakchod's (AIB) most prominent figure Tanmay Bhatt has had to step away after accusations that he knew about co-founder Gursimran Khamba's predatory behaviour but remained silent. Hotstar has cancelled an AIB show as well.

The independent success story of Phantom Films came to an end when founders Anurag Kashyap, director Vikramaditya Motwane and producer Madhu Mantena could no longer look the other way as accusations against another co-founder Vikas Bahl continued to mount. The company was dissolved recently.

The ripples continue to grow

The #Me Too movement also caught up with powerful men in the media too with journalist Prashant Jha stepping down recently as chief of bureau and political editor of Hindustan Times. Times of India's (TOI) Hyderabad Resident Editor K.R. Sreenivas has also had to step down.

Meanwhile as multiple media outlets reported, the Network of Women in Media in India (NWMI), an organisation comprising women journalists, condemned and we quote,"The rampant sexism and misogyny in Indian newsrooms" and demanded media organisations probe allegations and take appropriate actions." Unquote.

Author Chetan Bhagat has withdrawn from the Bangalore Literature Festival in the wake of multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.

How powerful can the combined voice of women was evident last year when Weinstein was fired from his own company by the board  following horrific allegations of harassment spanning several decades.

The issue of sexual misconduct and sexism is however not case specific and Weinstein and the men being accused in India are symptomatic of a systemic illness that festers deep.

The knee-jerk reaction to discredit accusers and question their motives is still common.  Post the  #MeToo outpouring in the West in 2017, 24-year-old law student Raya Sarkar and her fellow students made an infamous list to name names of habitual abusers of power in the academic circles.

The fallout was instant with many accusing her of playing with the careers of respected academicians without proof and recently actor Kriti Sanon who was part of Sajid Khan's Housefull 4, took to Twitter to say and we quote, "What happens when a #MeToo story of an ‘anonymous’ girl comes out against someone? Do we simply believe it without even knowing who the girl is or if she even exists? How does one inspect such an incident in order to come to any conclusion? Is it fair to consider the accused ‘guilty’ when the MeToo story does not come with the victim’s name? Should the media carry such stories?" Unquote.

According to her, anonymous accounts can "spoil someone’s name and career."

Not taking into consideration that Tanushree Dutta's open defiance in the face of sexist behaviour ten years ago resulted in her career getting spoilt and in her ouster from the industry. And that Vinta Nanda had to struggle for over 19 years after being sidelined by the industry for her interview to a paper after her assault all those years back.

Kriti also asked everyone to “handle the #MeToo movement responsibly and find out a lawful way forward.”

The statement is ironical in the wake of what happened in the US recently when Christine Blasey Ford, a research psychologist at Palo Alto University in Northern California took a stand in the United States senate to accuse Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of a brutal assaualt in 1982.

He went on to be appointed to the highest court in the United States and the President of United States mocked her testimony at a loud and raucous rally. Not just that, death threats and online trolling have tormented Doctor Ford ever since she made her accusations public. Geetika Tyagi's on camera confrontation with Subhash Kapoor in 2014 did not affect his career even marginally then though she has disappeared from public eye.

Kriti's insistence that all women/men who want to share their #MeToo stories should either come out in open with their names and faces or file a FIR or a legal case also puts the onus of due process on survivors when it is entrenched power hegemonies that not only create abuse of power but also protects the abusers.

And not surprisingly for every sheepish apologist, there are the  likes of Subhash Ghai and MJ Akbar threatening accusers with legal action. CP Surendran has compared 11 of his accusers as a “lynch mob.”

And Alok Nath, who may be expelled from CINTAA, the Cinema and Television Artist’s Association of India has filed a defamation case against Vinta Nanda.

The culture of mockery

Be it Dr Ford who was mocked by President Trunp or sexist jokes that are part of the banter on chat shows like Koffee with Karan, there has been a wide-spread tendency to laugh at contentious issues.

A memorable line from a Guardian once quipped and we quote, "In the Hollywood dream factory, trauma surfaces as light entertainment. In 2013, introducing the list of best supporting actress nominees at a pre-Oscars event, comedian Seth MacFarlane quipped: “Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.” Unquote.

Even a word like ‘casting couch,’  as the Guardian article said,  has been reduced to a soothing  euphemism and a comic punch line  even though and we quote, " even though historic horror stories abound of executives taking advantage of starlets. Shirley Temple recalled that Arthur Freed, a producer at MGM, exposed himself to her when she was 12 years old. Louis B Mayer insisted that his protege Judy Garland sit on his lap – she was one of a number of “juvenile stars” at the MGM studio, whose punishing schedule, she said, required amphetamines to get through the day, and sleeping pills to rest at night.

Ginger Rogers said that Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia, chased her around a desk making passes. Marilyn Monroe compared Hollywood to an “overcrowded brothel”. Joan Collins, who was warned about “wolves” by no less than Monroe, says she missed out on the lead in Cleopatra because she refused to be “nice” to the head of 20th Century Fox, Buddy Adler, who also reportedly harassed a 19-year-old Rita Moreno." Unquote.

Proving that the blanket of silence around serial abusers is often studied, intentional and continues to treat victims as collateral damage.  Be it in film studios or media circles, the ramifications of speaking out against a powerful abuser are both economic and social.

Most film studios in India are headed by men and the number of women in influential positions in corporate, media, academic positions is still woefully negligible in comparison.

And that is why women and their stories are often not important enough. Years ago, Madhur Bhadharkar accused of the casting couch syndrome went on to make a film about the film industry called Heroine without openly even openly broaching the topic.

In 2011, according to a report in Bengaluru Chronicle, actor Sayali Bhagat made allegations against Amitabh Bachchan and Sajid Khan but ended up withdrawing her statements.

Nana Patekar happily joined the shoot of Housefull 4 even after Tanushree  Dutta's allegations and things began to disintegrate only when the director of the film was accused by multiple women of inexcusable conduct. It was then that Akshay Kumar took the decision to stall the shoot and another director walked in.

Beyond paper thin feminist stories

On paper, feminism is becoming an increasingly lucrative trope as was proven by recent films like Pink, Queen and Naam Shabana but as multiple victim testimonies have proven, even seemingly ‘woke’ men like Rajat Kapoor and Vikas Behl have allegedly misused their position to target young women.

Actor Saloni Chopra who accused Sajid Khan of horrific abuse in a blog post also said this about Vikas Bahl who made Queen, arguably the definitive feminist film of our time and we quote, "People need to realise that sexism and this kind of an abuse is not just physical but also verbal, emotional and always an abuse of power. It is shocking that we choose to live with such behaviour every day and accept it as normal in our industry.

A few years ago, at Anurag Kashyap’s Holi party, I bumped into Vikas. It was a very overwhelming moment for me because he was one of my favourite directors. Anyone that’s watched Queen and is a woman would say the same. It was an empowering film that an industry like ours desperately needed and I had so much respect for the man for making it. We started talking and I told him more about myself when he turns and says ‘You’re in the wrong profession. Go become an activist or something if you want to save women, why try to become an actress? I wouldn’t hire an actress with so many opinions and things to say. Like shut up and just smile’ I was shocked that I was hearing these words from a man I considered wonderful. I asked him why make a movie like Queen if this is what you really think? And he laughed and continued ‘because you make the movies the world wants to see. It was all empowering and shit. But no one is going to hire you if you talk about Women's rights and have so many opinions. Who cares? Stand and look pretty, or do something else with your life. You don’t need brains to be an actress!’ He continued to get extremely drunk that day and ended up in a fight with the girl he arrived with inside a locked room where they broke things and I heard him yelling and abusing and I left soon after. The way I looked at him had changed, forever." Unquote.

Saloni also made an important point when she said that it’s exhausting how much the system insults and abuses a woman’s right to work in this industry. No wonder then, she said, in a lot of the biggest hits, the only job the actress has is to stand around and to play the ‘love interest’ of every hero. That’s her character description — and no one seems to have a problem with that.

Not enough female representation 

A similar point was made by writer Ishan Mahendru in an article in The Print where the rampant sexism on screen was sampled based on a study conducted at the Centre for Studies in Gender and Sexuality over a course of 10 months. The study was based on 30 landmark Bollywood films and it was found that among the total number of scenes displaying sexual relations, 74 percent translate into near sexual harassment.

We quote the article, "Such acts of harassment, however, are not singular instances of a skewed male-female dynamic. Once we analysed gender and sexuality through a host of different parameters, we saw how we systemically discourage women representation.

Take something as basic as the number of credited characters at the beginning of any film: Male characters account for nearly twice as many as female characters in the credits. Try looking at the number of dialogues between the male and female protagonists and the latter only manages to cross one-third of the total figure.

More than the statistics itself, it was the very masculine nature of the dialogue itself that forced us to repeatedly pause and reflect. In 3 Idiots, for instance, the word “balaatkar” (literally meaning rape) is turned into a joke, trivialising the act itself.

In Dabangg (2010) as well, the lecherous tone of Sonu Sood’s character is used to characterise him as the archetypical villain of this film—but a mere change of background score tries to romanticise similar behaviour for the ‘hero’ of the film, played by Salman Khan." Unquote.

Also do you notice how sexist films like Kya Kool Hain Hum are considered normal, films exploring female sexuality in a nuanced way like ‘Lipstick Under My Burkha’ and ‘Fire’ almost run into trouble.

The Print article reports that the data for 20 of the 30 films in the study  made it clear that the expression of any form of sexuality has historically made the state a tad bit uncomfortable. We quote, “Almost one-third of the cuts ordered by the CBFC were on sexual expression. While in Taal (1999), they objected to ‘visuals of women wearing bras’, in both Parineeta (2005) and Rang De Basanti (2006), the Board ordered omission of scenes portraying consensual sexual relations altogether.” Unquote.

It is no different in Hollywood and The Guardian quoted a machine-learning study by Google.org and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media also found that in the 100 highest-grossing live-action films of 2014 and 2015, men appeared on screen for twice as long as women and spoke for twice as long. We quote, " If the dynamic of older men and younger, submissive women that greases the wheels of Hollywood production offices repeats itself on screen, it is not an accident, but the desires of the producers and directors who create these films played out on the biggest stage of all: Hollywood cinema, the world’s most effective propaganda machine. Who is Hollywood trying to kid? The 52 percent female cinema audience, or executives who stalk starlets in their bathrobes, while threatening to demolish their careers?" Unquote.

The account of actress Kate Sharma about Subhash Ghai allegedly asking her for a massage is no less disturbing.

And we are just scratching the surface of this story because as Firstpost reported and we quote,

”As a second wave of #MeToo allegations have taken over social media timelines in India over the past couple of weeks, a wide range of accusations — from inappropriate behaviour to rape — have been levelled against public personalities from the fields of (mainly) the media and entertainment." Unquote.

Here's Firstpost's list of the allegations reported on social media so far.

Actor Alok Nath,

Rapper, Babu Habbi

Comedian Gursimran Khamba

Writer and actor Utsav Chakraborty

Comedian Kanan Gill,

Writer Chetan Bhagat,

lyricist Vairamuthu

Singer Kailash Kher

Actor Rajat Kapoor

Comedian Jeeveshu Ahluwalia

Director Vikas Bahl,

Actor Zulfi Syed

Singer Abhijeet Bhattacharya

Musician Raghu Dixit

Director Sajid Khan

Writer , actor Piyush Mishra

Writer Varun Grover,

Comedian Aditi Mittal

Actor Zain Durrani

Event manager Vibhu Sharma

Writer Sachin Garg

Writer Kiran Nagarkar

Photographer Pablo Bartholomew

Editor KR Sreenivas

Retired journalist Gautam Adhikari

Journalist Meghnad Bose

Journalist Rameez Shaikh

Journalist Manoj Ramachandran

Journalist Prashant Jha

Journalist Sidharth Bhatia

Journalist Mayank Jain

Journalist Aayush Soni

Journalist Satadru Ojha,

Editor and minister MJ Akbar

Marketing expert and writer Suhel Seth.

And this is just the beginning as more stories continue to unspool to mainstream an important conversation whose time has finally come.