Voices from the Indian Feminist Movement
Suhasini Raj
“Once it is not shameful for you to come out and say that something like [sexual assault] happened with me, that day I think #MeToo would have arrived in India,” says Suhasini Raj, a journalist for the South Asia Bureau of the New York Times. Within two months, her prediction has come true. In the second week of October 2018, journalist Priya Ramani accused the Union minister and former editor of Asian Age MJ Akbar of sexual harassment. Since then, 20 women journalists have come forward and corroborated her accusation with their experiences of Akbar. Some include leering and inappropriate messages, while others range from molestation to sexual assault. Similar to Harvey Weinstein, the accusations against Akbar have led to a storm of survivors coming forward with accusations. But the storm has circled around rich, English-speaking, Delhi based survivors.
Suhasini Raj is an investigative journalist with the New York Times, who reports on gender in India. Her recent coverage includes a horrific rape of an 11-year-old girl in Chennai, who was raped by the security guard and 16 other staff members, at her well-to-do apartment complex. When reporting on the Chennai rape case, Raj says she noted a disturbing shift in blame when talking to the victim’s sister. “The conversation here on social media and otherwise is on how the parents missed this whole thing,” she says. In a classic case of victim-blaming, “society had turned the table, [making the case] less about the crime and the criminals, and more about the family.” People started to shun questions about women’s safety, and
instead, tried to justify the unjustifiable. And, within a week, coverage of this case had died down. The case was indicative of the rape culture of which India still suffers. Yet, four months later,. #MeToo landed in India. Society turned the tables again.
It's changing. But it's going to take generations for men to believe that women are their equals, if not above them.”
Another case reported by Raj, was the sexual exploitation of underage girls in shelter homes in Bihar. The NGO running the home was government-funded, and the Social Welfare minister’s husband frequented the brothel-like shelter. Similar to the Chennai rape, the media hubbub ceased after a week. Cases like these are often neglected by the growing #MeToo movement, because the victims are from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. I ask her who the heroes are, in these situations, when it seems like there are none. “The biggest hero here is the cops.You know, local level police women.” Bihar has set up ‘Mahila Thanas’, or all-women police stations to deal with crimes against women. Them, along with “local women [and] local movements… actually help get anything done.” It’s reflective of the inefficiency of bureaucracy in India: the only way to affect real change is to get on the ground and do it yourself.
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Barack Obama once said that “sometimes slow, steady effort is rewarded with justice that arrives like a thunderbolt.” The #MeToo movement is that thunderbolt, but it needs to do more to serve justice to victims like the Bihari girls. It needs to change the conversation around sexual violence, so that the blame is not placed on victims and their families, like it was in Chennai. I ask Suhasini how long it will take the “thunderbolt” to arrive with every victim of sexual assault in India. “It's changing”, she says. “But it's going to take generations for men to believe that women are their equals, if not above them.”