Vinesh Phogat to Tanushree Dutta: What will happen to #MeToo if accusers suffer for going public?

Vinesh Phogat (left) and Tanushree Dutta.

May 23 marked a month since Vinesh Phogat, Bajrang Punia, Sakshi Malik and a group of Indian wrestlers began their protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. Instead of training for the upcoming World Championships and Asian Games, three of India’s most accomplished wrestlers sat in protest demanding justice, after they saw little movement in their case against the Wrestlers Federation of India chief, who they had accused of sexual harassment and abuse of seven female wrestlers in January.

Days after the wrestlers’ protest began, an actress, who had been part of the cast of the wildly popular Hindi language sitcom Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah for 15 years, accused the show’s producer Asit Kumar Modi of sexually harassing her. This came after she left the show, reported The Economic Times, which she did after being humiliated and insulted by project head Sohail Ramani and executive producer Jatin Bajaj.

Earlier in April, rumbles of sexual abuse and harassment intensified at Kalakshetra, the Chennai institute for Bharatnatyam, Carnatic classical music and visual arts. It had started in December 2022 with Bharatnatyam dancer and former centre director Leela Samson putting up a social media post (deleted soon after). A “haven of the highest art and contemplation—now turning a blind eye to how young girls are treated”, she’d written.

By April 2023, at least 100 women from Kalakshetra had lodged petitions with the Tamil Nadu Women’s Commission, complaining of verbal abuse and sexual harassment by four faculty members. These included one Hari Padman, a celebrated dancer and teacher, who had been booked in March, under the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Women Act after a complaint from a former student that he had sent her obscene text messages, reported Firstpost.

A month before that, there was an outpouring of sexual harassment accusations on social media from the conservation industry. Ten former women employees of the Turtle Survival Alliance came out against TSA-India’s director Dr Shailendra Singh, an award-winning wildlife biologist who had been with the organisation since 2008.

Stadium, stage, sanctuary and beyond

Five and a half years after the #MeToo movement began to spread online, women all over the world continue to reckon with sexual harassment and abuse at workplaces of all form. It began in October 2017, soon after Hollywood actresses went public with accusations of sexual misconduct against the powerful producer Harvey Weinstein.

Around the same time, using American activist Tarana Burke’s prompt from over a decade prior, actress Alyssa Milano tweeted to her followers: “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” The results were overwhelming, as we know. Milano later said that her goal was to “give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.” But beyond a more real assessment of how endemic sexual harassment is in workplaces and beyond, and just how pervasive gender inequality continues to be — how far have we really come?

Within the first year of the MeToo storm, in the US, The New York Times reported that at least 201 high-profile men had been accused of sexual misconduct and lost their jobs or been otherwise adversely affected. Vox counted up to 262 men till 2019.

Things were somewhat similar in India too. Here, MeToo first sprung out (a tad belatedly) when actress Tanushree Dutta accused Nana Patekar of unwelcome overtures on the set of Horn Ok Please in 2008. The movement then rooted through academia, film, media and art. Powerful men such as former Asian Age editor and BJP MP MJ Akbar, Kochi Muziris Biennale co-director Riyas Komu, artist Subodh Gupta and director-TV personality Sajid Khan all found themselves embroiled in court cases, removed from their positions and retreating from the media glare.

Legal assurances such as the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act of 2003 and the PoSH Act of 2013 began to be read and understood more deeply; while workplaces made workshops on improper conduct mandatory. Perhaps, one of the more positive effects of MeToo was, as feminist scholar Kimberly Hamlin put it to NPR. "The generations-long culture of silence is over,” said the Miami University professor.

“The tide has turned from giving abusers a free pass, to listening to and believing survivors and silence breakers,” she said in an interview last year. “I really feel that we cannot overestimate how big of a shift this is culturally, psychologically, legally. For generations, women have been told, 'Suck it up. Keep it to yourself. That's just how things are. It's your fault.'"

Yet, think pieces around the world note how some of the most high-profile men who were called out have returned to form. The Washington Post reported last October that Al Franken, a Saturday Night Live veteran and US senator for Minnesota, who had resigned from the post under pressure from the Democratic Party in December 2017, after eight women said that he had inappropriately touched or kissed them, had by 2022 rebuilt much of his career.

Sajid Khan was one of the more popular participants on Bigg Boss’ last season and is back to making movies. Subodh Gupta is showing art at prestigious international events again. Tarun Tejpal, former editor of Tehelka, who had been acquitted in a case of sexually assaulting his colleague in 2013 (but whose acquittal had been challenged in 2021 for a Goa bench of the high court), had published a new novel in 2022.

The current conversations on MeToo raise the question of retributive vs restorative justice. Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson, who sued network chairman and co-founder Roger Ailes in 2016, said to Washington Post that the fascination with these men’s fate is misplaced. “We all talk about rehabilitating the men, but the real question is, ‘Where are all the women, why aren’t they working again?’”

The question of how going public affects the livelihoods of the women who have is perhaps going to hold some importance as the movement evolves further in time and space. Priya Ramani was hailed a hero for her indefatigable fight in courts in her case against MJ Akbar. But there is also Tanushree Dutta who revealed, last year, that she had been getting death threats, while pleading for work.

At the Cannes Film Festival some weeks ago, over 100 French actors and feminist groups protested Johnny Depp’s appearance. The Hollywood actor, who won a savage legal fight on libel and defamation against his ex-wife Amber Heard who had accused him of violent abuse, has also been given a record $20 million deal by Dior to advertise its men’s fragrance Dior Sauvage.

As MeToo erupts in Germany’s film industry, the group of 123 French film industry workers put out an open letter in the Liberation newspaper: “By rolling out the red carpet to men and women who commit assaults, the festival demonstrates that violence in creative circles can be exercised with complete impunity.” Amber Heard, meanwhile, has reportedly “quit Hollywood”, according to The Daily Mail, relocating to Spain with her daughter.

Elsewhere at Cannes, French star Marion Cotillard weighed in on the progress made by the #MeToo movement, on a panel at the American Pavilion to chat about her latest film, Little Girl Blue. “I’ve been an actress for a long time; I was [put] in situations that I shouldn’t have been in…There still are some sick men, and women sometimes, who will take advantage of the youth, who will take advantage of the passion that we have as an actor, the fact that we depend on the desire of directors, producers.”

We still have a long way to go!” She added, according to a report in Deadline. “I always have in mind this woman who goes to another march, another walk with her sign saying ‘I can’t believe I’m still here dealing with this sh*t’.”

Vinesh Phogat, Sakshi Malik and the Indian wrestlers sitting at Jantar Mantar must resonate with that last line. Phogat, a two time World Championships medal winner, could have been hard at work inside a training camp preparing for this year’s event in September — which would have also affected her qualification for the Paris Olympics next year. Instead, Phogat, Malik and Punia are living on the street in a bizarre summer. Earlier today, they were detained ahead of their “Mahila Samman Mahapanchayat” at the new Parliament House building today.

In their call for the resignation and arrest of WFI president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, they have faced the ordeal of having to relay the same testimony to different parties, have reportedly been asked by the Sports Minister to provide proof, and reckoned with their own dispensability—with the fight against justice in the very limited time they have left in their careers as athletes.

"Because we could've done it, won that medal," Phogat told BBC about the upcoming World Championships. "We were at our best and not getting to play at our peak will leave us all a little dead inside."