In a span of two days, all the office-bearers of one of the biggest organisations of actors in India – the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA) – have quit. They had to, for in the days following the release of the Hema Committee report – containing disclosures of abuse by women actors and technicians – skeletons of sexual exploitation began to tumble out of the closet. Woman after woman came out to speak before the extended microphones of news channels and pointed fingers at prominent male actors, alleging sexual harassment, abuse and assault. 

This time, AMMA had little choice but to act. The whole line of taking “moral responsibility“ is hogwash; it seems more like a hurried act to evade an explanation they owed the public. Sexual harassment allegations were levelled against several male actors, including three of the executive members — Siddique, Baburaj, and Jayan R. The AMMA could no longer play the delay tactics it is accustomed to, no longer stay indifferent to the accusations, when the world outside was receiving breaking news after breaking news against its “precious children.“ 

The AMMA had hardly blinked an eye when the biggest case of sexual assault broke out in the industry seven years ago. A woman actor was abducted, sexually assaulted, and video-taped in her car while travelling for work in Kochi in February 2017. Her unexpected move of filing a police complaint had shaken the industry, which had hitherto maintained an image of one big happy family. 

Few had bought into that image though, for stories of sexual harassment, of casting couch (euphemism for demand of sexual favours in the film industry) and ‘adjustments’, have always floated around, even as the top guns denied it and brushed it off as nasty rumours. They’d sound believable, for they were, admittedly, really good at their job, as actors.

The first to go this time was Siddique, a senior actor known for his comedy, villainy, and a plethora of supporting characters. He had held the coveted position of AMMA general secretary since June, and has even before been the face of the Association for public meetings and press conferences. Even on August 23, four days after the Hema Committee report came out, it was Siddique who told the media that AMMA. welcomed the report, as he sat with four other, mostly-quiet, co-actors. 

Stopping just short of raising a toast, he hailed the report in every other way, promising support for the aggrieved women who’d want to raise complaints. But perhaps it was premonition that made him say that the AMMA. would not ‘avoid an actor’ against whom a complaint is made. 

Shortly after the press meet, a woman actor who had previously alleged sexual assault by Siddique came out in public and repeated her accusations. When he resigned on the morning of August 25, owning moral responsibility, he quite inadvertently set the ball rolling. By August 27, all the committee members – there were 17 in all, including the six in the executive – would follow suit. AMMA’s president, the superstar Mohanlal, would resign and dissolve the rest of the committee. 

AMMA’s problematic positions

When the actor assault case of 2017 gained attention, questions were raised of the AMMA regarding what it would do about it. Dileep, a celebrated actor who rose from a mimicry artist to a hero of comedies, was by then named an accused in the case and alleged to be the mastermind behind the attack. 

Mammootty, veteran superstar, made a short announcement at the time, of expelling Dileep from the AMMA following his arrest. A year later though, when even the trial of the case had not begun, a gathering of the AMMA. decided to reinstate Dileep. The survivor and three of her friends – Rima Kallingal, Remya Nambeesan, and Geetu Mohandas – quit the organisation in protest and in pain. 

“I am resigning not just because the accused actor has been taken back into AMMA. Even before, this actor had scuttled many of my acting opportunities. When I complained about this, AMMA had taken no action. Now, when such an unfortunate incident happened in my life, the organisation has again tried to protect the accused. I resign from the organisation having understood that there is no purpose in being part of it,” the survivor said in a statement. 

The three actors who quit with her had a year earlier formed the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) with several other women, in the aftermath of her assault. The WCC has since been pressing for rights of women in the industry, including safety, wage parity, basic working conditions such as toilet-availability, among others. Their meetings with the AMMA have not been fruitful and the back-and-forth, the WCC would say, was simply disappointing. 

A few particularly dramatic months passed when the AMMA sat on its decision to revoke Dileep’s membership even after a lot of criticism, including from the Kannada film industry, came to it. Finally Dileep had to bring an end to it, by “graciously” resigning, letting the AMMA president Mohanlal say, “we don’t have to expel him, he resigned.“

In defence of Mohanlal, Siddique and the late actor KPAC Lalitha held a press conference in 2018, during which they batted for Dileep and slammed the WCC. In this meeting, Siddique ridiculed the need for an Internal Committee on film sets, apparently unaware of the law and the POSH Act that mandated it. 

The press conference inadvertently triggered two women to act against alleged instances of abuse they faced from men in the industry. One woman wrote an email to the AMMA, detailing the sexual harassment she faced in 2006, which would not be answered for six years. The other woman is the complainant of Siddique’s case, who decided to come out in 2019, after watching a rerun of the press meet.

In the years between 2017 and 2019, members of the WCC spoke to the Hema Committee, formed as a result of their plea to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to look into the issues of women in cinema. While the trial of the actor assault case went on, the Hema Committee prepared its report with interviews of people in cinema and submitted it to the government. and the world waited for word from the ministry. The wait lasted four-and-a-half years before the redacted report was released without any names or identifiers of the accused or the survivors. 

The AMMA had several more chances to redeem itself in these years. A case of sexual assault was filed against actor-producer Vijay Babu in 2022. Vijay was at the time holding a position in its executive committee but the Association, as has been its practice, did not act against him, even after its newly constituted Internal Committee advised it. Finally the members of the IC, one after the other, quit, dissolving the only IC the organisation ever had. Vijay Babu too, like Dileep, ‘had to initiate his resignation’ because the AMMA wouldn’t act.

Beginning from its early years – the AMMA was formed in 1994 – the organisation has little favoured its women. In a magazine report of 1994 that is now being circulated, the news of the AMMA’s formation also carried the names of its office-bearers, with only two women in the list of 40. In the years that followed, controversies erupted over informal bans and dictats from the organisation – even a veteran like Thilakan was not spared when he warred with the members and lost many chances. 

In 2018, when the protest of Catholic nuns alleging rape against Bishop Franco was raging on, Mohanlal had brushed off a question about them, rebuking the reporter for asking it when he was speaking of his charity initiative. On another occasion, when a reporter asked him about the #MeToo movement, Mohanlal commented that men should have one too. He was holding the post of AMMA president on both these occasions. 

Their casual denouncements of women’s movements in public show that they could not be bothered to even put on a facade of caring about women’s issues. 

However, after the publishing of the Hema Committee report, change began to show in the attitudes of the men in power. Their tones shifted from sarcastic to patient, anger dissipated to surprising calmness in the replies they gave to ‘pestering journos’. Siddique was on August 23, gentle as a lamb, when he spoke to the media about the Hema Committee report. Edavela Babu, the general secretary before him, was all too polite in his answers to the media’s questions about AMMA, a world away from his previous superior airs. 

But the nail on the coffin came soon after the Hema Committee report was published, when the floodgates of allegations opened. Politeness or “politically correct behaviour” were no longer enough. The old hands, which wielded power and ruled uncrowned, had to go.

This report was republished from The News Minute as part of The News Minute-Newslaundry alliance. Read about our partnership here and become a subscriber here.

By the way, the formation of the Hema Commission was triggered by the shocking abduction and sexual assault of a top female actor in Kerala in February 2017. The crime was executed by a gang of men who were allegedly hired by superstar Dileep. Read in detail about the case here.