SHAKTI STORIES

Interviewer: In your opinion, what impact has the Indian media had on the feminist movement, both good and bad?

 

Shoma Chaudhury: Recently or over the years?

 

Interviewer: In the last decade.

 

Shoma Chaudhury: In the last decade. So the media has had a massive amount of impact, particularly in the last decade. It started for grounding feminist issues a lot, focusing on women a lot and it's had a lot of positive impacts in two, three ways. One is that… let's take the extreme end, which is rape or violence around women. In the past, there was a great amount of shame attached to the whole idea of rape. What the media has definitely done is to help take away the sense of shame from a victim and to really relocate the shame on the perpetrator and created the space to speak up.

 

Definitely taken over the idea of shame, created a great awareness around violence around women, especially the Nirbhaya case. It had some negative outcomes which we'll talk of. But I think the positive thing is that it really put it on the map. So I think today you will see that that hitting up of issues of sensitivity around women, gender sensitivity, all of that, has definitely… the media has played a big role of. I think the negative thing is that it's made it a very shrill debate.

 

So what should have been extremely positive, very sustainable outcome of foregrounding this conversation, has made it… it's typically been done in such a black and white, such a non-nuanced way. Then there's bound to be a swing back the pendulum. And I hope that it ends up coming somewhere to the center but at the moment… for instance after the Nirbhaya rape, it just became not about justice. It didn't become about due process. It became about solving the conscience of society. So there's a kind of medieval vengeance at play now.

 

Interviewer: Like a witch-hunt?

 

Shoma Chaudhury: Yeah, it's like a witch-hunt. It's like… hang the rapist. You don't want process of law. You don't want lawyers to stand up for rapists. So you want to completely short circuit the process of justice so that that's a very negative outcome. That's one negative outcome. And the second negative outcome is that in some ways I think it's really set back the whole feminist discourse because many decades of fighting has gone and very thoughtful fighting has gone into the feminist movement to bring women, not just at per with men, but to move the discourse to a place where the whole idea of…

 

I would say for me, feminism is about having the feminine principle and it doesn't have to be that a woman is a feminist. A man can be a feminist as well. And it's about having the feminine principle, which I think is very much located in the idea of consensus, dialog, conversation, complexity, justice, a democratic conversation. Not having a desire for dominance. I think those are feminist’s movements. I have… underlying the idea of feminist movements but now the conversation has become, like I said, very black and white. So it's almost as if women want to wear the boot now and the media has played a big role in that, of not allowing anyone to have a nuanced position. So that's been a negative.

 

Interviewer: Could you tell me more about that whole concept of women wanting to wear the boot?

 

Shoma Chaudhury: So part of this whole Me Too movement, I think what's been quite worrying about it and I think… like I said, what should have been a very sustainable outcome or good outcome that women's issues are being fore-grounded. I think we'll have a blowback because the way the Me Too movement has been constructed or this whole idea of justice has been constructed, is that there's a kind of out flowing of men going on, where the moment… there's an accusation. Like I said, it's a very medieval age where just the accusation is enough and all the rights you fought for, all the process you fought for, which you should put in no matter what, that is all being cast aside.

 

And the thing is that… for instance, what I would say is that in a social situation, the moment a woman says something has happened to her, there should be empathy. There should be acknowledgement. There should be a desire to believe. But in the criminal justice process, there has to be the principal of fair, natural justice, which is that you're presumed innocent until proven guilty. But today women don't want that at all. It's just to say "I've accused you" means you're guilty and if anybody wants to have a complex position about it, you're immediately… you're with us or against us.

 

And there's a great amount of pleasure in shaming men, to a point where, as I said, the nuance and the position is completely lost. So my problem with that is that I think thousands of years of injustice needed to be corrected, but what you needed was for the nature of power to change, not just the location of power. And what women are doing today is really, like I said, saying that "Now we want to wear the boot on our foot and what you have done to us, we will do to you." So there's a great amount of dominance now that women are desiring. It's kind of untouchable agenda. What we are saying is right, and I think that's a real setback for the movement.

 

Interviewer: So do you think that that phenomenon is just happening in India or is it happening in the US as well and all over the world?

 

Shoma Chaudhury: No, everywhere in the world. I don't know if you remember that letter Catherine Deneuve wrote. She's this French actress and she wrote a very reasoned piece saying just as there's a difference between sexual violence and the ambiguity of male-female relationships. And that that can often be ambiguous and problematic, but it cannot be set on the same scale as sexual violence. And she had… it was very adult, nice letter and she was absolutely pilloried because like I'm saying, it's now this… you are with us or against us. There's no possibility of anyone having a middle position or even having an incident by incident position and I find that very disappointing, where the feminist movement is concerned.

 

Interviewer: So in the last decade, what do you think the Indian feminist movement has accomplished?

 

Shoma Chaudhury: There I would say many things because the biggest, again to reiterate, is to take shame away from being subjected to sexual violence is huge. The capacity to speak up even about a range of violence, from verbal abuse to this discomfort, to many ambiguous situations, sometimes naming your own family, all of that. So again like I'm saying, the fact that the articulation of this is happening is fantastic. It really needed to happen. But I hope that after this first flush there will be space for reflection. The fact that there's no reflection is problematic.

 

But the other thing the feminist movement has achieved in the last… whatever decade, is a lot of stepping out. In the past the women's movement was always about equating yourself with men. You wanted to have equal rights with men. I think what's beautiful is that it has now moved to the idea of individuality. That you don't have to be bravo. You don't have to be a militant, almost androgynous person to be a feminist. You can take pleasure in your body. You can take pleasure in being feminine. And I think there's now that idea that… of individual choice.

 

Interviewer: That you don't have to be a man to be equal to men.

 

Shoma Chaudhury: Yeah and not only that. There is no one description of what a feminist is. It's just about living to your potential and your own individuality. So I think that's a really positive thing.

 

Interviewer: So you have covered some haunting stories of the abuse that women face in India. Have the… Has there ever been one or more than one story that has been the most impactful?

 

Shoma Chaudhury: Yeah. Let me think which ones. I mean, I think personally for me where violence on women is concerned, for me the most impactful one I did was on Soni Sori. This tribal woman teacher because it had many layers to it and her personal bravery and also a response to violence was really, really ennobling and enlightening because she was a tribal school teacher and she was in a conflict zone in Chattisgarh with the Maoist uprising. And she basically got accused of being a Maoist and she was jailed but she was someone who had worked with the state as a state school teacher for many years, but she was jailed on race charges. There were eight cases on her.

 

And I covered that story and I basically proved how… looking at the prosecution's case, I proved how all those accusations were really false and how manufactured it was. But anyway, she ended up spending three and a half years in jail and she was quite brutally raped in jail. And her… the craziest part of her story is that her father was shot at by the Maoists, as being an informer of the police. And her husband was jailed also as being a Maoist leader and her husband died while he was in jail. And her father got shot by the Maoist.

 

I mean he survived, but they basically shot him in the leg as a warning. So it was a kind of story that really encapsulated the entire conflict zone and then how people get sandwiched in that conflict. So she was really badly raped by the government structure. I think they were SPOs or police who raped her. But what is fascinating when she told me her story was that she felt intense anger, rage, disgust because they had filled her vagina with pebbles. And she got a terrible infection and she was telling me that apart from the pain, the smell and all of that and she was in jail and it was just horrifying.

 

And she had three kids, so she was separated from the kids. So she went through this whole cycle of rage and desiring revenge. And then what was beautiful was that she said, "Why do I want to…?" She thought of taking up the gun. She thought of joining the Maoist movement. And then as she progressed through that arc of pain and anger, she said that "Why would I want to go out and kill a whole lot of people who did not do this to me?" And she said, "The better we have really living out my rage would be to get out of jail and stand up for other women who are languishing in jail falsely like this" and that's what she's been doing. And she said, "Each time I help free a woman or I help them fight a case, some anger in me recedes and I feel healed." So she was a really inspiring story.

 

Interviewer: So you mentioned briefly that in the Me Too movement that women can sometimes victimize themselves. In this day and age, what can women do to empower themselves? How can they claim greater agency for themselves?

 

Shoma Chaudhury: So again, my response to that would be nuanced, which is to say that one, we have to remember context. I think what's again problematic about the whole Me Too movement is that it's become absolutely like a biological movement, rather than a sociological moment. What do I mean by that? Is that to see that it's now as… just by virtue of being a woman in a biological sense, you are claiming that you are the location of truth. I'm a woman. I tell the truth. Whatever I say is right. It's devoid of any sociological context. It's devoid of any leering at all. So I find that problematic. That if we keep that idea of context alive, then agency for women who are educated, who are of the same class as the perpetrators are, in whatever way, that you have great agency just because you're educated and you're articulate and you can push back.

 

Within that there's of course the idea of individual temperament. That you may not have a temperament where you feel able to speak up and you may, despite your education and class, feel that you're victimized in the most casual settings. But it's problematic to see that in the same story as I just shared with you. For instance, people who are upset because a man asked them out for dinner or a man sent a slightly lured text. You can't place that in the same spectrum as [???] [0:16:08] and his daughter, where they're really fighting massive structures of power. That level of power equation is not as clear.

 

So when women are collectively occupying this kind of herd mentality, we are women, we are oppressed, we are suffering, that loss of context has become a problem. So what they can do to get agency is to remember context, is to also create a dialogue of empowerment that will push back by speaking up at that moment, by seeking help, solidarity. But not equating it and losing a sense of proportion in it because in that I think what you're doing is… what's problematic is that many women in these social settings of sexual harassment, they are not having the courage to own up to what that setting was. And I think that's a real problem because what they're doing is giving up on their sexual agency.

 

I'd be very proud if women said that, "Yes, I was attracted up to this point and beyond that I became uncomfortable." What they're doing is repressing their own sexuality, not even owning up to that sexuality. In that sense, I think… I'm forgetting now. There's been so many stories, but I think there was a woman who accused Dustin Hoffman and it's a very interesting story because she said that in the beginning, even though he would be quite sexual in his commentary, she said, "I was quite chuffed. I was just a young girl on the set and someone like Dustin Hoffman was noticing me."

 

She said "I was quite flattered by it" and then she said, "And then it went just that one degree too far and I started to feel uncomfortable." Now that I respect, because you're saying that "Yes, I played along. I was part of it and then I became uncomfortable." What women are doing now, and to answer your question about agency, is to give up your agency where you have to repress the truth. You repress your own sexuality. You repress the fact that you were part of that setting and still upset. To lose all that is to turn yourself into a Victorian China doll. That, oh if you touch me, I'll find. I think that's a real loss of agency.

 

Interviewer: And you mentioned that context and keeping everything in context. Do you think that the feminist movement in India… and forget Me Too, but just the feminist movement as a whole, do you think that is inclusive enough of marginalized women like [???] [0:18:49] women, trans women, poor women, etcetera?

 

Interviewer: It used to be and that's the other slightly disappointing aspect of Me Too, that it's become an extremely urban, upper middle class sort of conversation. And you don't see women actually newly sensitive outside of their own social menu. I'm not seeing acts of solidarity, say with… let another test come but for instance… it's a very interesting thing that the… why did the Nirbhaya rape get attention like that? I'll give you an example of two stories where there was… there were 19 women in Chattisgarh, tribal women who were raped by police officers. And it's really difficult over there, one to own up to your identity and second to name perpetrators.

 

Imagine you're naming police or SPO with whom you have to still interact and you live in that zone. It's a conflict zone. It's a highly difficult thing to do, but these women had gone on record and in fact when I was at Tehelka, we did a cover story on them. It did not create a ripple. Nobody spoke up. Nobody was interested. Nobody did anything about it. Similarly in the northeast, there've been some terrible rapes and the locally people stood up, but you'll see Dalit women, Dalit women media, Dalit women's groups. Nobody really paid attention to those, did not make common cause at all.

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Interviewer: So what do you think that may…. do you think that the media has a role in that at all? Or do you think that it's just activists as a whole that need to try and be more inclusive?

 

Shoma Chaudhury: I think partly the idea of being a feminist is a little blurred right now. I think the sheer political potency of what feminism meant has lost some of its strength. The word feminist now is almost bandied about… I think those who call themselves feminists now are not as political as they need to be. So it's like I'm saying it's become a very social media phenomenon and it's just become…

 

Interviewer: Define political.

 

Shoma Chaudhury: When I say "Political," I mean in its deepest sense of understanding the operation of power, the structure of power, structures of society. You're remolding society. That's to have a political consciousness. Whereas right now feminism is a very social media consciousness. It's just like press a button. It's not about putting your body on the firing line and when I say "Body" it means that women have really fought with their bodies, put themselves on the field, on the battlefield. And so then you're very political because you understand how power operates and you understand the consequences of taking on power. So right now it's… like I said, it's become a fairly frothy phenomenon, which is a bit sad.

 

Interviewer: You talked about political self-criticality and power. Do you think that the reason why the Me Too movement in India has taken off so quickly is because it resides with… it's perpetrated by women with power?

 

Shoma Chaudhury: Yeah. There is a… I mean, I don't want to be harsh about it because like I said, I think it's serving many purposes and it needs to happen but there is a slightly collegiate air to it which is bothering me. It's really like become a trend rather than a phenomenon and there's an absence of dialogue. I think what's very, very problematic in it is it's outlawing even women. it's almost like hunting in a pack and that's why it's spreading so fast because it's a very pack mentality. People making very easy, synaptic connections with someone else's experience and stuff like that but it's really bothering me because it is not…

 

The feminist movement has always been very self-critical. It's been very self-aware. It's had space for dialogue. It's had space for a process of nuancing. It's been very consultative. Like I said, the idea of being a feminine principal versus a masculine principal is the masculine principal is a desire for association, dominance, X, Y, Z. I would say a feminine principal is consultative, arriving through process at a position. Now the Me Too movement is not allowing for that. There's no space for self-reflection and self-criticality at all. Forget about from men, not even from women so that's why that phenomenon is spreading because it's like a pack mentality.

 

Interviewer: One last question. You mentioned a pack mentality and not having any room for debate. Again, do you think that this is just an Indian phenomenon because I mean it's like it literally just exploded one week ago or do you also see this in the US feminist movement? Because you mentioned Dustin Hoffman's accuser and how she narrated her story. So do you think that there's that difference in nuance between the two?

Shoma Chaudhury: Not at this moment. Not substantively. It's like an Arab spring sweeping through the world right now but it's a very upper class movement, If you really look at it. I mean there is no voices from the working classes. No one's going to seek that or… there's no space for that. It's a very social media phenomenon and that's why I'm saying… and because of that, the denunciations, public denunciations is really like… I keep thinking it's like a medieval stoning mob.