India’s ‘#MeToo’ suddenly takes off
The New York Times
MUMBAI, India — After a year of fits and starts, India’s #MeToo movement has leaped forward over the several weeks, getting concrete action in two of the country’s most powerful industries: entertainment and the news media.
Phantom Films, a major Bollywood production house that made “Sacred Games” for Netflix, was suddenly dissolved on Oct. 6, with two of four partners publicly apologizing for mishandling an employee’s complaint that she was sexually assaulted in 2015 by a third partner, Vikas Bahl.
One of the country’s premier comedy troupes, All India Bakchod, edged to the brink of collapse with accusations by a comedian, Mahima Kukreja, that a former member of the group had sent her lewd messages and a picture of his genitals. After other women chimed in, the accused comic, Utsav Chakraborty, apologized, and the company’s co-founders were forced to step away.
Bollywood actress Tanushree Dutta filed a new complaint with the police, reviving her 10-year-old case against a prominent actor, Nana Patekar, for allegedly ordering changes to a movie dance sequence so he could grope her.
Inspired by Ms. Dutta and Ms. Kukreja, as well as by the Senate testimony of Christine Blasey Ford in the United States, dozens of women in journalism began coming forward Oct. 5, describing a range of inappropriate behavior by male reporters and editors at some of India’s biggest news organizations.
“It almost felt like the women were waiting,” Ms. Kukreja said in an interview. “‘Am I allowed to share my trauma? Am I allowed to share my story?’”
By Oct. 8, the influential political editor of The Hindustan Times, Prashant Jha, had been stripped of his management role as the company investigated a former reporter’s complaint that he had sexually harassed her. On the same day, seven women sent a letter to The Times of India, the flagship paper of the country’s most powerful media company, accusing a top editor of years of unwanted touching, explicit messages and sexual propositions. The editor, K. R. Sreenivas, was put on leave amid promises of “a speedy and fair inquiry.”
Other journalists are under investigation by their employers or have apologized for inappropriate behavior, and #MeToo accusations have begun spreading to other industries, including advertising and politics. At least four women have accused a government minister for external affairs, former newspaper editor M.J. Akbar, of sexually harassing them when he was a journalist. Mr. Akbar has not made any comment about the allegations.
On Oct. 8, Bollywood writer and producer Vinta Nanda posted a searing account on Facebook accusing a prominent actor, whom she later identified as Alok Nath, of raping her in her home in the 1990s. Mr. Nath — best known for playing father figures, much as Bill Cosby did in the United States — told the Indian news channel ABP on Oct. 9, “It must have happened, but someone else would have done it.”
Also, last month Indian police arrested the bishop of the city of Jalandhar, Franco Mulakkal, who was accused by a Missionary of Jesus nun of repeatedly raping her 13 times from 2014 to 2016.
When the leaders failed to act and the bishop filed police reports in an apparent bid to silence the accuser, her fellow nuns led an unprecedented public protest that has sharply divided the country’s 20 million Catholics.
After a two-week sit-in that drew thousands of supporters, police in the southern state of Kerala made the 54-year-old bishop the first high-ranking Indian clergyman to face charges of sexual misconduct. On Oct. 3, a court denied the bishop bail, ruling that the evidence against him was credible.
“It’s a watershed in the history of the Indian church,” said Jose Kavi, editor of Matters India, a website that covers religious issues.
Some have gone so far as to label that incident India’s #MeToo moment, a long-overdue reckoning with sexual abuse by powerful men in the workplace — and all the more significant because it emanated from the cloistered church in Kerala, a socially conservative state and home to one of the country’s largest Christian communities.
But the six nuns of the Missionaries of Jesus order said they knew nothing of the social currents and hashtags roiling the United States when they stood up to challenge Bishop Mulakkal, the head of their diocese, controller of its purse strings and a man they were ordained to regard as a father.
The flurry of activity has created a commotion among the educated elite here, but it has had little immediate effect on the vast majority of women in India, a deeply patriarchal and traditional society in which women and girls often have little control over their lives and are frequently abused.
Earlier this month, for example, more than 30 girls at a rural school in northern India were beaten up by local boys and some of their parents after trying to stop months of harassment and lewd graffiti. Taking note of the attack during a hearing Oct. 8 on an unrelated abuse case, a Supreme Court justice asked: “A girl is not supposed to protect herself? If somebody tries to molest them, they must agree?”
Women’s rights advocates said that for India, these events have been stunning, with the movement in the country gathering momentum.
“It’s almost like a wave has come,” said Vrinda Grover, a New Delhi lawyer and human rights activist who helped draft some of India’s laws on sexual harassment and child abuse. “Until now, we have seen consequences only on the women who complained. This time, the consequences are for those who have committed the misconduct.”