When #MeToo arrived in India and I had to revise my stance

It’s not easy to stand corrected… least of all when you’re a writer. After all, the real capital we pride ourselves in is our astute and incisive observations of our life and times. When that observation turns out to be not-so-astute, the writerly vanity stands deflated. This year had one such moment for me. That moment came in the form of a movement called #MeToo.

In November 2017, I had found #MeToo a tad problematic. It was a time when, in the wake of sexual harassment charges against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, actress Alyssa Milano called for women to share their experiences of abuse, stacking them under the hashtag #MeToo.

In no time, thousands of women across the world had a cathartic moment where they revisited their memories of violation. As journalists, we remain committed to not only reporting the truth, but also presenting a more nuanced side of discourses that often easily get bracketed as black or white. The trial-by-social-media nature of #MeToo had seemed too simplistic an answer to address the monster that was sexual harassment.

Can a hashtag ensure justice, I asked myself. My concerns led me to pen a piece titled ‘Why I didn’t join #MeToo movement’. I listed out many reasons for my apprehensions — why the big Hollywood celebrities, who advocate human rights, had remained quiet, why the evidence-proof nature of naming and shaming on social media could claim collateral damage, how it was the victim who had to constantly prove her pain ultimately and not the perpetrator. “For many survivors, revisiting these stories is painful, even if they have — in their own way — protested it. The problem is even if they do, the perpetrators remain spectators. So, a #MeToo then becomes more about the very experience itself rather than the redressal,” I wrote. In 2018, my words stood corrected.

‘Why do you think #MeToo has not come to India’ was a staple question I posed to every female public figure I interviewed for this publication’s weekend magazine over the past 12 months. What was the fear? What was at stake? What could be the repercussions? The responses were measured and often evasive. The answer that stared at my face was the Malayalam film industry whose actresses, in the wake of molestation of one of their colleagues, had formed the Women in Cinema Collective to address issues that female actors face.

For those with a Bollywood myopia, the jolt came in the form of actress Tanushree Dutta, who, when asked why #MeToo hadn’t entered India, showed a mirror to the Indian media’s collective amnesia on her own experience of alleged harassment at the hands of a senior actor. The repercussions of her refusal to concede were well-reported and documented 10 years ago; however, it wasn’t until #MeToo gained currency that her story, like many others, were truly heard. What it also led to was a nationwide conversation on sexual harassment that eventually put the spotlight on an industry that often finds itself at the forefront of reporting abuse in all its forms — the media.

The women journalists who I thought were protected weren’t so protected after all. Many claimed to have been violated at some point by their superiors or colleagues. The allegations led to resignations, but largely they shook a status quo. The hashtag became an emblem of accountability.

So, what is it about the Indian chapter of #MeToo that led me to change my mind? Too close to home? Nope. Perhaps it had more to do with the deep introspection #MeToo enabled on the kinds of behaviour I had subconsciously ‘normalised’ as being part of an occupational hazard. Reading one of the accounts of a journalist’s interview process also made me wonder what the big deal was because I had gone through something similar in my formative years in Indian journalism. Therein lay my undoing and #MeToo’s triumph.

I was 18 when I first started interning for a publication in New Delhi while simultaneously pursuing my Bachelor’s degree in English literature. Being an intern meant there would be no salary, but advice came aplenty. One of them was offered by a well-intentioned senior colleague who warned me against a superior who was believed to have a glad eye. Her two cents were that I had to be ‘careful’ around that time (one of those rare moments when self-preservation is heartily proposed to women). Being taught feminism simultaneously in college, I asked her why his ‘glad eye’ remained ‘unchecked’. “That’s the way it is,” she told me. In the three subsequent newsrooms I was a part of in India, I internalised this selfpreservation in workplaces I was a part of.

For professionals in the media, #MeToo’s India chapter came as a wake-up call to rationalise that power need not only be worshipped, it could also be negotiated with and held accountable. The spate of allegations also led to simplistic conjecturing: are all men potential harassers? Are all women victims? Why are women speaking up now? Is it just the cultural elites who are waging a war?

If you have arrived at a definitive answer, then know that your understanding of #MeToo is as simplistic as those you’re challenging. The answers are far too complex and layered than we’d like to believe. However, what any allegation of abuse — whether on a film set, a classroom, a newsroom or in your office — offers is an opportunity to reflect on the conditions under which such behaviour is normalised. The first example, irrespective of whether or not the law takes its course, needs to be set in these spaces.

Till that happens, new converts like me can raise a toast to #MeToo, not for the catharsis, but for its demand of accountability.

#MeToo’s India chapter came as a wake-up call to rationalise that with power comes accountability...

It led to a nationwide conversation on sexual harrassment that eventually put the spotlight on the media