Hema Committee report: Kerala government cannot ignore mounting discursive evidence

Nearly a week after the Hema Committee report unleashed what can only be called the second coming of the MeToo movement in the Malayalam film industry, many debates are still pitting ‘formal complaints’ as a binary opposite to women’s ‘informal’ narratives of their experiences of sexual harassment. “Let the women come forward and file complaints, let them name their harassers, let them provide details like when, how, and where so that proper investigation can be carried out” – this has been the stand taken by the Kerala government as well as organisations like the Association of Malayalam Movie Artistes (AMMA) and several social and political commentators who appear, sometimes simultaneously, on TV channels. But what does this mean for the mountain of discursive evidence that the report and several women film workers have revealed?

Discursive evidence is a term that I borrow from academics Tarishi Verma and Radhika Gajjala from their article ‘The Evidence of Rape: Legitimacy of Legitimate Processes’ from the book Contemporary Gender Formations in India, edited by Nandini Dhar. Discursive evidence, in simple terms, refers to the kind of evidence that gets collected when multiple people make allegations of similar nature against an individual or group of perpetrators. And it is the revelation of this kind of evidence that often leads women to speak up even though years may have passed since the experience of harassment.

Within the existing system, seeking written complaints based on which an FIR can be filed might appear as the only logical stance. After all, no one would advocate crucifying a person based on mob justice or false allegations. But there is evidence galore, historical and current, to show that the system has not been working ideally, especially when it comes to women and marginalised communities. Can one then rely solely on this malfunctioning system and its processes to provide justice to survivors of sexual harassment? How do we bridge the gap between a section of people loudly proclaiming that the system has not worked for them and the section of people in positions of power who are hesitant to make changes to the system that has empowered them?

To understand this ‘deadlock’ better, one must examine closely some of the arguments being made after Justice Hema’s report was released. One major argument is that women who face sexual harassment in the film industry must react on the spot or file a complaint with the relevant authorities as soon as possible in spite of the risk of losing work. However, it is not merely the fear of losing work opportunities that keeps women silent. It is also the onus of having to prove their allegations in front of adjudicators, who may be unsympathetic or, worse, on good terms with the perpetrator. Sexual harassment is not always violent as in rape or physical harm that leaves visible traces on the survivor’s body. It can be mental, verbal, through non-consensual touch, sexual innuendos, spreading of rumours, or denial of work for not ‘adjusting’ enough. These are notoriously hard to prove unless women walk around with a camera constantly recording the behaviour of the people they interact with.

What complicates it further is that the definition of workplace and the ambit of various associations and unions within an informal industry like that of Malayalam cinema is loose and perpetually shifting. Should a film or its shooting set be considered as defining the workplace? What happens if the survivor gains courage to file a complaint only after the film is released, does that workplace still exist conceptually? How can a newcomer approach an organisation like AMMA or the Film Employees Federation of Kerala (FEFKA) before they get the experience and eligibility required to be part of these organisations? And what if the perpetrator himself is not part of any of these organisations and thus not answerable to them?

This makes the film industry different from the case of, say, media organisations like newspapers and TV channels that saw its own MeToo shake-up in 2018, and higher education institutions that found itself reeling when Raya Sarkar released the List of Sexual Harassers in Academia (LoSHA). These organisations continued to exist even though the women who faced harassment might have moved on. The Internal Committees (ICs) that were hurriedly set up when allegations emerged against several male journalists became more or less fixed systems of due process within these formal media companies. A woman could approach these ICs and then choose to take the next legal recourse. This is a crucial difference because there is no fixed system of redressal as far as the Malayalam film industry is concerned. There is no recourse for a woman to approach an IC where she can hope for a sense of closure without having to involve herself in a long-winding legal process that could get stuck in court for years.

Even in the case of the media industry MeToo and LoSHA, what set the due processes in motion was the mounting discursive evidence.

For example, I was part of a group of five women who filed an official complaint against the then editor of a newspaper in 2018. This came about because after I wrote a social media post against this harasser, I was shocked to see other women narrating similar experiences with him. It was only at this point that we understood that what we had faced was not an isolated incident. It was the strength of this discursive evidence that prompted us to file a complaint with the IC. However, no police action was sought because of the near impossibility of proving incidents of inappropriate remarks and unsolicited touching that had happened years earlier. But the IC hearing gave me the option of feeling like I had taken some action without forcing me to opt for convoluted legal measures.

What we are seeing currently in the Hema Committee report as well as in the multiple revelations made by female actors and technicians from the Malayalam film industry is the formation of a mountain of discursive evidence. The report itself hints that there could also be a caucus of powerful men who might be repeat offenders. The similarity in the nature of the allegations being made also adds strength to this discursive evidence that the film industry has for long normalised multiple practices of sexual harassment. But the state government and film bodies seem to continue to insist only upon traditional evidence such as witnesses and digital records such as saved chats, screenshots or phone calls, and puts the onus on individual women to prove that they are not indulging in mere defamation.

“For the social media posts and similar accounts to be admitted as discursive evidence, then, they must be recognised as an important first step of the due process itself,” write Verma and Gajjala. But currently, the discursive evidence being provided by multiple women in the Malayalam film industry are being seen as entirely different from ‘actual complaints’. Those in power are refusing to see the connections between this discursive evidence and reality. Even though the government formed a seven-member special investigation team on August 25 to look into the discursive evidence, it remains to be seen whether this team will also focus on encouraging survivors to lodge ‘official complaints’.

It is very clear that in the case of the Malayalam film industry – which lacks well-defined boundaries and self-regulatory mechanisms – only the government can provide lasting mechanisms of redressal. AMMA has been varyingly called a charitable organisation or a club or a private entity that cannot be held accountable for actions of non-members. It did not even bother to reconstitute its IC using the justification that it is not a workplace. The trade union FEFKA, which has a more extensive membership and represents a huge chunk of film technicians, has been strangely silent. It is also not clear if its women’s wing, which was set up in 2018, is currently active since the union’s official centralised site, launched only this year, does not go into its details. In such a scenario, does it not become the duty of the state government to provide women a redressal mechanism without forcing them to flounder in a legal maze?

Deepti Komalam is a doctoral researcher at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Her research looks into gender, caste, and class in the production cultures of the Malayalam film industry.

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.

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.