A Kerala Story Shows How Sexual Violence Plays Out In India

Every few years, the reports of rape and violence against women that are usually relegated to the deepest recesses of daily news, pour out like lava onto the front pages of mainstream newspapers and air non-stop on prime-time television. We are living through one such moment and, since the subject has your attention, here's a sordid saga of assault and long-running sexual violence that involves the judiciary, the government, the workplace and a group of women who united against a powerful man supported by a toxic system. Seven years and a 5,000-page report later, they are still waiting for gender justice. This story from Kerala clearly illustrates why our response to Kolkata's rape horror will not get us anywhere.

It began in 2017, when a famous Malayalam actor was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by seven men allegedly on the behest of superstar Dileep. The actor filed a police complaint and subjected herself to the process that followed.

Last month, independent website The News Minute released a 14,000-word investigative report about the case and earlier this week, the Hema Committee Report, formed shortly after the incident, was finally made public. The three-member committee found rampant sexual harassment in the Malayalam film industry. The supposedly progressive Kerala government has been chillingly unresponsive, sitting on the 5,000-page report since 2019.

The Hema Committee, chaired by former High Court judge K Hema, found that women faced sexual demands from the moment they joined the Malayalam film industry. "'Compromise' and 'adjustment' are two terms which are very familiar among women in the Malayalam film industry," the report said, adding that countless women are asked to "make themselves available for sex on demand". They said what many women had gone through was "really shocking" and of "such gravity that they had not disclosed those details even to close family members".

The report outlined how women routinely face abuse, assault and even torture if they refuse to give in to these demands. Movie sets don't have basic facilities such as changing rooms, toilets and even water for junior artistes. Among the other things women faced were unauthorised bans, misbehaviour, demeaning and vulgar comments, failure to pay up, online harassment and, of course, zero grievance redressal.

The Kerala chief minister set up the Hema Committee a few months after the 2017 assault when a group of women from the industry met him to demand gender justice. They were members of the Women in Cinema Collective, newly created to track the welfare and safety concerns of women in the industry. Pinarayi Vijayan may have constituted the committee, but he did zilch after he received the report two years later.

Nidhi Suresh, a reporter for The News Minute—an organisation that has covered the case since the assault—combed through nearly 900 pages of publicly available court documents, interviewed 30 people over six months and pieced together the impact of that incident on the Malayalam film industry. She even had her own scary encounter with a senior Tamil actor who has worked in over 100 films in languages such as Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, and Hindi.

As politicians and the judiciary respond to the Kolkata rape with stricter laws and tired tropes about 'protecting' women, the Kerala story illustrates how using words like 'sister' or 'daughter' in slogans and the public posturing of our politicians and judges are meaningless in the face of the everyday war against Indian women. Even a sustained public battle led by well-known women of the film industry at great cost to themselves hasn't changed things dramatically on the ground for women. In an interview, WCC founder member and actor Parvathy Thiruvothu said: "When we talk about survivors’ choices and whether they should participate in this process, we have to ask: When was the last time a survivor actually received justice?"

According to News Minute, some of the things Dileep did when faced with the accusation:

Isolated the survivor and many of those supporting her.

Played victim.

Questioned the survivor's credibility and wondered how she had gotten back to work so swiftly.

Got gag orders to prevent reporting on the case.

"During the 85 days that Dileep spent in jail, he had 78 visitors — family members, colleagues, and politicians," Suresh wrote in News Minute. When he was released, "Even the policemen trying to control the crowd couldn't stop grinning." News Minute reported that witnesses turned hostile saying they couldn't remember things, two public prosecutors resigned, one after noting that the judge had "reprimanded the prosecution team by asking whether it was 'prosecution or prostitution'." AMMA, the apex Association of Malayalam Movie Artists, run by the who's who of Malayalam cinema, that had removed Dileep a day after he was arrested, reinstated him a year after the incident.

Every few years, we discuss sexual violence as if it has surprised us. No more, we rage. But the same people who conjure up the slogans are the ones who are guilty of crimes against us. The Association for Democratic Reforms has calculated that 151 sitting MPs and MLAs face cases of crimes against women, 16 have been charged with rape.

Most of us enjoy the feminist films of independent Malayalam cinema. They unabashedly tackle subjects such as the patriarchy, single mothers, acid attack survivors, rape, abortion, human trafficking and casual sexism. But the misogyny in mainstream Malayalam cinema is legendary. At the Kerala State Film Awards last year, when actor Alencier Ley Lopez received an award shaped like a woman, he said, "I have a request. Do not tempt us by presenting statuettes modelled on women. We have a chief minister who is the epitome of masculine strength. So, we should be awarded with figurines that reflect the strength of a man."

Clearly, it's time we looked past Fahadh Faasil's limpid orbs and learnt a lesson or two from women in Malayalam cinema.

Priya Ramani is a Bengaluru-based journalist and is on the editorial board of Article-14.com.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of NDTV Profit or its editorial team.