[Entertainers, newspaper editors and prominent
authors are among those facing accusations of sexual misconduct.]
By Vidhi Doshi
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Bollywood actor Nana
Patekar is mobbed by reporters outside his home in Mumbai
after making a statement
Monday regarding a formal complaint against him by
Indian actress Tanushree
Dutta. (AFP/Getty Images) (-/AFP/Getty Images)
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NEW
DELHI — A cascade of
allegations of sexual assault and misconduct involving prominent Indian men
flooded social media over the weekend, spurring resignations, the closing of a
movie production company and public apologies.
More than a year after allegations of rape
and sexual assault against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein first shook the
world, female journalists and writers in India are naming and shaming Indian
entertainers, newspaper editors and authors on social media.
Some say India’s #MeToo moment is here — at
last.
“We’ve faced violence, including verbal
violence, all our lives,” said Rituparna Chatterjee, a journalist who is
documenting and compiling accusations against prominent men. “Somewhere, I
think, we’ve snapped.”
The latest allegations began to appear on
social media last week, then turned into a torrent. They began after a former
actress, Tanushree Dutta, retold the story of how on a movie set a decade ago,
her co-star Nana Patekar, a prolific, award-winning actor, had tried to change
a dance sequence at the last minute so he could touch her inappropriately. A
handful of Bollywood stars spoke out in support of Dutta, triggering a huge
backlash on social media, with many challenging and trivializing her account of
the incident.
Dutta’s allegations coincided with Brett M.
Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing in Washington and the testimony against him by
California professor Christine Blasey Ford. “Of course, everyone was discussing
that,” Chatterjee said. “The thing in my mind was, I know this guy. I’ve met
this guy. I’ve met this guy over and over again.”
To Chatterjee, Ford and Dutta have become
symbols of the way women’s stories are stifled or ignored. “You can have the
evidence,” she said. “But she’ll never have the power to counter the hate that
men have for women who speak up and threaten the status quo.”
And then, Chatterjee said, “The floodgates
opened.”
A number of Indian women started naming and
shaming well-known men. Among the first accused was a comedian, Utsav
Chakraborty, who allegedly sent lewd messages to women and asked a 17-year-old
girl for nude photographs. The accusation, made on Twitter on Thursday,
prompted a flurry of denials from the comedian, followed by an apology Friday.
“It’s a little too late now but I am sorry. I
really am. The past 24 hours were a crucible,” Chakraborty tweeted. “I faced a
very scary personal truth. I can’t think of myself as a victim anymore. Please
tell me what to do now. How to make things right? I don’t want anyone to be
hurt anymore.”
A comedy group that Chakraborty worked with,
All India Bakchod, issued a statement severing ties with him. On Monday, the
group said two other comedians embroiled in #MeToo allegations too would be out
“until further notice.”
On Twitter, the accusations snowballed.
HuffPost revealed that a famous movie director, Vikas Bahl, had been accused of
masturbating on a woman without her consent after pretending to pass out on her
bed. Bahl’s partners issued a statement saying they had previously been made
aware of the allegations against him and were “ill-advised” by lawyers to
continue working with him. Their production company was closed.
Allegations poured out to female journalists
in private messages and via online groups — many women were still too afraid to
speak up. “What you’re seeing online is only a third of what’s happening in the
groups and DMs,” said Chatterjee, referring to Twitter’s “direct messages”
feature in which people can talk privately.
Authors Chetan Bhagat and Kiran Nagarkar were
accused of misconduct. Bhagat issued an apology on his Facebook page to the
woman who accused him, saying he had “felt a strong connection” at the time.
Nagarkar did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The political editor of the Hindustan Times,
Prashant Jha, was accused of aggressively pursuing a co-worker who had turned
down his advances. On Monday, Jha resigned. He did not respond to requests for
comment. Gautam Adhikari, a former newspaper editor, was accused of forcefully
kissing women without their consent. He too, did not reply immediately to a
request for comment.
“There was a sense of unfinished business,”
said Sandhya Menon, a journalist and author who accused Adhikari and others.
“We were primed for a leap.”
India has been hyper-aware of rape and sexual
abuse since a student was gang raped and murdered in New Delhi in 2012. The
incident triggered nationwide protests and calls to make the country safer for
women.
The Weinstein allegations led to a trickle of
allegations from India. In 2017, a student, Raya Sarkar, compiled and
circulated a list of South Asian-origin academics working in universities
around the world who had been accused of misconduct by women.
Sarkar’s list caused an uproar and divided
feminist groups in India. Some argued that because the allegations were
anonymous and unverifiable, they jeopardized the #MeToo movement because they
could not be scrutinized.
Over the past weekend, a new list of more
than 70 powerful men accused of misconduct began making the rounds on social
media.
Menon referred to a string of highly
publicized cases of rape and sexual assault that have dragged on in India’s
courts, pointing out how difficult it is for women here to get justice through
the courts, despite the existence of fast-track courts for sexual violence.
“Due process is completely broken,” she said.
