Finding their voice: Why the Hema Committee report on Malayalam film industry is a wake-up call

Madeleine Albright, in an interview, recalled a meeting at the White House with US President Bill Clinton and several senior officials. Albright had just been appointed the Secretary of State, the first woman in American history to hold the post. She said that during the meeting, she tried several times to make a point but couldn’t edge in a word. And she thought to herself, “My goodness, how powerful a woman does one need to be in order to get heard?” But that was a lesson. Albright would later famously say, “It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.”

No loos, no equal pay

• “The stars do not twinkle, nor does the moon look beautiful… Do not trust what you see: even salt looks like sugar.” These are some of the opening lines of the Justice K Hema Committee report. These lines capture the double-faced nature of an industry known for its cutting-edge cinema but also, in many ways, the regressive treatment of its women workforce.
• The committee, headed by retired Justice K Hema, also comprised retired IAS officer KB Valsala Kumari and veteran South Indian actor Sarada.
• The report highlights the inequities, power games and unsafe working conditions skewed mostly against women in the cinema space. “Compromises” and “adjustments” — two euphemisms for sexual favours for work opportunities — stand out in this report. Women who enter the industry are made to believe that this is a requirement to get ahead in their career and face the inevitable “midnight knocks on hotel doors”.
• Another damning revelation follows:“It has come out in evidence that 10-15 individuals in cinema who are in the forefront of the Malayalam film industry constitute a power group and they
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  are controlling the industry.”

• Highlighting the rather misogynistic attitude of this male preserve, the report also says that the industry ostracised outspoken members of the Women in Cinema Collective because producers are “afraid of women who make complaints” and would rather cast those who “don’t create problems”.

  n Then comes the rather depressing issue of working conditions. All the women who spoke before the committee underlined the absence of toilet facilities or changing rooms on the set, especially while shooting in remote outdoor locations. Many would go without water till the shooting schedule ended to curb the urge to relieve themselves in the open. This has caused many ailments for women, the report reveals.

• In one instance, a junior artiste was refused permission by the production unit to take a loo break as that would have meant walking 10 minutes to reach the nearest toilet facility. The report also mentions that when queried about such problems, a prominent actor was dismissive
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  and said it was only a question of adjustment and not a serious issue.

• The document calls attention to 17 major issues that point to the insidious ways in which the industry operates and how some of these impact men too. Informal bans against an artist or technician by power groups over “silly reasons”, non-execution of contracts, online harassment, pay disparity and the absence of a legally-constituted authority to redress grievances are some of the pressing issues highlighted in the report.

Something similar is happening in the Malayalam film industry. Women professionals, who have long faced sexual discrimination and unfair treatment, have found their voice. And that voice of unison is getting louder, angrier and clamouring for justice. At the heart of this churn is the Justice K Hema Committee report.

The 232-page report, based on testimonies from 51 movie professionals, is a damning indictment of an industry where illegal bans by power groups, casting couch culture, pay disparity, drug and alcohol abuse and unsafe working conditions make it hard for women to survive. The report has not been made fully public, with 63 pages redacted to protect the privacy of the respondents.

The three-member Hema Committee was formed in the aftermath of the 2017 abduction and sexual assault of a young female actor by a group of men in a moving car in Kochi. The perpetrators also filmed her harrowing experience. The incident sent shockwaves across the nation, coming as it did from an industry that is celebrated for its boundary-pushing and genre-bending cinema. An industry don, actor-producer Dileep, was alleged to be the mastermind behind this sordid episode. Though he was indicted by court, there has been no closure in the case yet. The survivor was able to garner support largely through the pressure exerted by the WCC, or Women in Cinema Collective, a band of feisty women film professionals from Kerala, who came together following the assault.

Women take the lead

Again, it was Albright who said, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” The WCC, however, went through a hellish experience when it tried to be that voice of dissent in a largely acquiescent industry. Film critic and researcher Aswathy Gopalakrishnan says the emergence of the WCC, initially backed by the leftist government, is a radical event in a space long dominated by patriarchal, feudal and strong capitalist forces. “Although the government later remained passive and even back-pedalled during the sexual assault trial, its initial welcoming of WCC and establishment of the Hema Committee crystallised the collective as a pivotal entity in Kerala’s socio-cultural sphere. It set an imitable model for women in other Indian film industries on how to organise and press for structural reforms,” says Gopalakrishnan.

The WCC, she adds, made it plain that women actors are not merely subjugated, second-class members of the film industry but artistes with independent minds.

This backing spurred Bhavana, the actor who was assaulted, to waive her anonymity in an Instagram post even as she faced an undeclared ban for some years — an indication of the immense clout that a powerful male lobby within the industry enjoys. The persistent efforts of the WCC forced the state government to form the Hema Committee. Though the report was filed in 2019, it took another five years for it to see the light of day.

After the report was made public, many women from the industry came forward to share their accounts of mental and physical abuse. Some of the accusations were levelled against cinema stalwarts and key functionaries of film bodies, including one that is ironically called AMMA, or the Association of Malayalam Movie Actors.

Showing the way

What has also been disappointing but not surprising is the rather belated and bland response to the whole issue by the two superstars who rule the industry — Mohanlal and Mammootty. Mohanlal, who is president of AMMA, simply chose to resign from the post, along with all office-bearers, and cried hoarse about the Malayalam industry being crucified. Mammootty, too, signed off his statement saying, “Ultimately, the industry must survive.” Both the actors also denied the existence of any power group, which the Hema Committee report repeatedly mentions.

However, what is heartening is that the report has served as a wake-up call.

“We saw a handful of young actors speaking out, albeit hesitantly, against the AMMA leadership. The weakening of the old order is discernible, and it will have an impact on how the industry will go ahead from here,” says Gopalakrishnan. For better or worse, the Malayalam film industry has shown the way.

Women professionals from other movie industries too have demanded a similar clean-up within their fraternities. Actor Samantha Ruth Prabhu urged the Telangana government to urgently publish a “sub-committee report on sexual harassment, which can help frame government and industry policies, to establish a safe working environment for women in the Telugu film industry”. In West Bengal, film organisations have together launched the Suraksha Bandhu Committee that aims to take on and resolve complaints of sexual misconduct on film sets. The Women’s Forum for Screen Workers in the Bengali film industry has issued a charter of demands, signed by 50 actors and technicians, seeking safe working conditions.

Will there be change?

A civil society group, comprising over 70 eminent personalities like Arundhati Roy, Indira Jaising, Vinta Nanda, Aparna Sen and others, has made an appeal to the Kerala government seeking a “360-degree approach” to the issues of women safety. “The state government’s reaction to the Hema Committee’s findings, as well as media coverage, have both placed an inordinate focus on the sexual misdemeanours and crimes described in the report, to the virtual exclusion of the considerable space devoted in its pages to discussing working conditions in the industry, lack of contracts, pay disparities and so on,” says its letter.

Cautioning the media against “selective” coverage and the government for its visible inaction, the group has called for a “systemic reform of the industry”.

The WCC, which saw many of its members sidelined in the Malayalam industry for daring to fight back and question the entrenched patriarchy, is firm in its resolve for actionable change in the industry. Actor Parvathy Thiruvothu, one of the outspoken members of the WCC, has cautioned against sensationalising the report and bringing the focus back on safe working conditions for women in cinema.

Thiruvothu, who has headlined many women-centric films like the Tanuja Chandra-helmed ‘Qarib Qarib Singlle’ and the more recent acclaimed Malayalam movie ‘Ullozhukku’ (Undercurrent), has asserted that the issue is not endemic to Malayalam cinema.

New consciousness

Women actors from Bengali, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and other film industries are calling out the rampant sexism that exists in their fraternity. They are speaking out about better working conditions, more professionalism and pay parity. Priyanka Chopra once revealed that she received 90 per cent less pay than her male co-stars in Bollywood. That changed when she starred in an international web-series, where she received an equal pay cheque as her co-lead. Chopra said she didn’t know she had the power to ask for more until her agents in Hollywood said she could. In other words, it shows the power of having a voice and using it.

It’s a similar sentiment shared by actor Salma Hayek, who opened up about the blitz of sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of the now jailed movie producer Harvey Weinstein. “Men sexually harassed because they could. Women are talking today because, in this new era, we finally can,” Hayek wrote in The New York Times.

While it’s much more than a Harvey Weinstein moment in the Malayalam film industry, one wonders whether the ramifications of the Hema Committee report will have a pan-India effect. Gopalakrishnan puts it rather eloquently, “WCC has succeeded in creating a new consciousness among women in cinema, to organise against a system that uses shame and fear as weapons of oppression. While it’s too early to say what the report will engender, this novel consciousness is sure to reorder the filmmaking space.”