A Wake-up Call for All Indian Film Industries

In the days since the publication of the Justice Hema Committee Report on the position of women in the Malayalam film industry, there has been a deafening silence about it from India’s other film industries, barring stray voices. 

The committee’s observations and findings – widespread sexual harassment in the Malayalam industry, abysmal working conditions especially for junior artistes, and unjustified pay disparities – should normally have provoked outrage from film professionals across India and expressions of solidarity with their colleagues in Kerala, just as the rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata this month has led to nationwide protests by doctors. Yet it has not. 

The reason is simple. Unlike the medical profession, India’s biggest film industries are insular, incestuous units that have long operated on the same principle that induces traditional families to silence women and children who are targeted by predatory uncles, cousins and fathers: what happens in the family must stay within the family. 

Public statements from other film industries will automatically make the Hema Committee a national talking point, which will lead to questions on discrimination and violence in their own industries. It is in their interests to ensure that the conversation remains Kerala-focused. The media must not play along, because the release of the Hema Committee Report – a document that is pathbreaking and flawed in equal measure – is a watershed moment not just for one part of India, but for India as a whole.  

The Report Really is Astonishing

The constitution of the Hema Committee by the Government of Kerala was a direct result of a seminal women’s rights movement spearheaded by the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC), a pioneering organisation headquartered in the state. This is a first-of-its-kind exercise to be conducted by any state in India, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan stressed last week. Indeed true and admirable.

What is just as true though is that despite avidly backing WCC when it was formed in 2017, his government sat on the Hema Committee Report for five years after it was submitted in end-2019, prompting speculation that it was protecting powerful film personalities. WCC members have suffered consequences for incessantly demanding that it be made public. 

The report is astonishing, possibly even for those who have closely tracked the plight of daily-wage earners in the unorganised sector – astonishing because film industries are glamourous, high-profile arenas. According to testimonies recorded by the committee, demands for sexual favours in exchange for employment, and retribution for women who refuse, are rampant in the Malayalam industry. The code words used while seeking a quid pro quo are “adjustment” and “compromise”.

Certain women spoke of midnight knocks on their hotel room doors by intoxicated colleagues – knocks so forceful that they feared “the door would collapse and men would make an entry into the room by force”. 

The committee met both women and men. Most testified that facilities on sets and outdoor shoot locations are appalling, with toilets unavailable for almost everyone except lead stars who are given vanity vans. This has led to women in particular developing health issues because they skip drinking water so as to avoid the risk to their security and the indignity involved in relieving themselves under the open skies.

The industry’s informal style of functioning, which often means no signed contracts, has created a fertile ground for exploitation, including payments lower than what is promised at the time of hire and more working days/hours than agreed upon.

Certain witnesses, mostly men, provided evidence to the committee that a power group of about 10-15 top-ranking men – yes, all men – control the Malayalam film industry and “ban” others, including well-known actors, at will.

Those who deposed before the committee came from all departments of filmmaking, not actors alone, and all levels of the industry hierarchy, ranging from the juniormost to prominent persons. No accusers or accused have been named on the pages of the report that are in the public realm. About 50 pages have been held back – pages presumably containing specifics of crimes – to preserve the confidentiality that was assured to women who shared their experiences with the committee. However, Kerala’s media has reported that apart from pages removed for this purpose on the State Information Commission’s recommendation, another 11 paragraphs were unilaterally redacted by the Kerala government itself without an explanation.   

Denialists Can't Continue Brushing Aside Their Accusers

The state government had first said it would act on sexual crimes cited in the Hema Committee Report if the women in question filed police complaints. This stance ignored a fundamental point made by the committee, that women are afraid to come forward. The reality in India at large is that women hesitate to report sexual crimes due to the social stigma and an unsympathetic justice system that mentally tortures them every step of the way. The government has since backtracked and announced a Special Investigation Team, including senior women police officers, for a preliminary probe into the sexual abuse described by the Hema Committee. 

Some background for those coming in late on this discussion: In February 2017, a woman star was abducted and sexually assaulted in a car in Kerala. In an unprecedented move, she immediately reported the attack to the police. WCC was founded by women of the Malayalam film industry in the aftermath of that assault, many months before the global MeToo movement was sparked off by media exposés on the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

In the beginning, the Malayalam film industry stood rock-solid behind the survivor. That unity gradually dissipated after the police investigation found that the superstar Dileep had conspired to orchestrate the assault due to a personal enmity with her. Dileep was chargesheeted in 2017, arrested, and released on bail after 85 days in jail. The case has been dragging on in Kerala courts since then. 

Dileep is a stupendously successful actor, producer, exhibitor and restaurateur with enough clout to seriously damage careers. So, when news came of his role in the attack, the industry first made the right noises, but it has been split ever since. WCC and the survivor, however, have not budged.

From the start, WCC has determinedly sought to address the root causes of sexual crimes: an enabling environment thriving on gender discrimination, unequal pay and a power imbalance. Towards this end, they met the Chief Minister in May 2017, and petitioned him to form an expert committee to examine the situation of women in their industry. The government soon set up a committee chaired by Justice K. Hema, a retired Kerala High Court judge, with the actor T. Sarada and the retired IAS officer K.B. Valsalakumari as members. 

Notwithstanding some negativity (actor and BJP leader Krishna Kumar mocked the Hema Committee in a video on social media, and trolls have slut-shamed senior women actors), the report and WCC have got large-scale support in Kerala. This is a huge opportunity for the Malayalam industry to introspect, course correct and set an example for India’s other film industries.

By spelling out in black and white what most insiders and observers already knew, the Hema Committee Report has made it difficult for denialists to continue brushing aside their accusers. 

Days after reflexively rubbishing accounts of men in power demanding sexual favours, the actor Siddique quit his post as General Secretary of the Association of Malayalam Movie Artistes (AMMA) when a woman actor reiterated a rape allegation she had made against him in 2019. When another actor publicly accused the director Ranjith of molestation, Kerala’s Culture Minister initially defended him, but public and media pressure along with criticism from the minister’s own party, CPI(M), led to Ranjith’s resignation from the chairpersonship of the Kerala Chalachitra Academy. 

Tempting though it is to exult over big heads rolling, celebrations would be premature. Because, as any activist knows, patriarchy usually reinstates those who lose or leave their jobs in the midst of a storm, especially if they are as influential as Siddique and Ranjith. Look no further than post-MeToo Hollywood. Marking the very first anniversary of the movement, America’s Atlantic magazine carried an article in October 2018 tellingly headlined “The Men of #MeToo Go Back To Work”. Last month, the documentary Sorry/Not Sorry directed by Caroline Suh and Cara Mones reached US theatres, chronicling the fall in 2017 and the quick return to grace of the stand-up comedian Louis C.K. who was accused by several women of sexual misconduct that he even admitted to at the time.   

How the Media Should Approach an Issue as Sensitive as This

As newsbreaks related to the Hema Committee Report fly thick and fast, the worst thing that the media and public could do right now is fixate on its most sensational aspects – read: sexual crimes and famous names. The worst thing the media outside Kerala could do is marginalise this news or turn it into a Kerala-shaming exercise.

After the 2012 Delhi gangrape, condescending coverage from sections of the Western press and click-bait headlines like “Is Delhi India’s rape capital?” in the Indian media served no purpose beyond providing fuel for remarks like this one in 2014 from the late Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley: “One small incident of rape in Delhi advertised world over is enough to cost us billions of dollars in terms of lower tourism.”

The last thing that WCC and those who spoke to the Hema Committee need is media coverage that gives vested interests in Kerala a chance to claim that women ruined the community’s reputation when they “advertised” its worst elements.

In a prescient interview in 2018, the acclaimed actor and WCC founder member Parvathy Thiruvothu told me that while most of the national media did not bother to report on the movement in Kerala, it troubled her that “when they did cover it, the headline was, ‘the dark underbelly of Mollywood’,” Mollywood being a nickname for the Malayalam film industry.

She added: “I was like, what? If anything I’m proud of Mollywood because we are creating noise. The fact that everybody else is silent means they are a bit more scared... We have created this noise and now change is inevitable because we’ve made this happen.”

Six years later, she and other WCC members are again cautioning against Kerala bashing. 

In this context, it is useful to address the surprise that many in north India may feel on reading of pervasive discrimination and sexual harassment in Kerala, a state closely associated with its remarkable socio-economic indicators including the highest literacy rate in India, highest sex ratio and lowest maternal mortality rate.  

A Moment of Reckoning for the Malayalam Film Industry

Like all film industries worldwide, the Malayalam industry is a microcosm of the society from which it has emerged. Extreme progressiveness and extreme patriarchy co-exist in Kerala. This is reflected in Malayalam cinema too. Some of India’s best cinematic takedowns of patriarchy are made in Malayalam, but the industry also produces highly regressive films.

Amidst this confluence of contradictions, misogynists take advantage of the subjectivity involved in recruitments to a creative field like cinema, and use it to exploit women. Yet from this same industry and society has also emerged a survivor whose incredible courage birthed a ground-breaking campaign for equality that no other profession – film or otherwise – has seen anywhere in India. 

Many women told the Hema Committee that the very existence of WCC has made a difference to their lives – they now have a safe space to discuss their worst experiences. Awareness-building by WCC has also already influenced some filmmakers to improve their film sets. The dual challenge before the Malayalam film industry now is to professionalise itself without destroying its cottage industry nature, which is the backbone of its ability to constantly churn out rooted, naturalistic, anti-establishment cinema that has won hearts across India. 

“It is a very feudal industry, unfortunately. That has to change,” WCC founder member Bina Paul, an award-winning veteran film editor, told the media this week. “I’m not a person for corporatisation at all but I feel that it has to be more formalised.” 

The Hema Committee Report is a wake-up call, she added, “not only for Kerala but for the whole of India. I’m telling you, everybody is a little bit shaken by this.”

(Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She can be reached at @annavetticad on Twitter, at @annammvetticad on Instagram, and at AnnaMMVetticadOfficial on Facebook.)