India’s Harassers Caught in the Net

In October, India was an island of light in a dark world… on one of Google’s visualizations. The search engine recently introduced a new visualization tool, “Me Too Rising,” which shows searches with a #MeToo tag as sparks on the dark contours of a revolving globe. Find it, try it, and these days you will see pocket of lights mainly in big cities across the world. But as of mid-October, all of India was seemingly engulfed with brightness, standing in contrast to its dark neighbors.

These are, of course, visualized searches, nothing more. Still, the comparison between India and the rest of the world is stunning and the flood of sparks flowing through the country does reflect a sudden, steep rise of #MeToo allegations there.

Why has the #MeToo spark now caught India ablaze when earlier campaigns struggled to ignite public conversation?

The fire was ignited at the end of September when an actress, Tanushree Dutta, accused an actor, Nana Patekar, of sexual harassment. Dutta also claimed that a film producer, Vivek Agnihotri, had once asked her to take off her clothes and dance in front of him and other men present in the room. Following the earlier #MeToo template in the United States, Dutta’s claims set off a chain of accusations toward dozens of men, conveyed by a flurry of posts marked with the #MeToo hashtag. The minister of state for external affairs, M.J. Akbar was accused by 17 women and on October 17 resigned from office.

Dutta’s allegations against Patekar are not new, however. She first raised the allegation back in 2008, soon after it occured. But only now has that spark turned into a flame.

Certain factors may explain why the flames did not rise up in 2008, but the fact that #MeToo in India started in September 2018 rather than in, say, July 2018, may rather be the result of a knot of random events. The dry hay has been ready for a much longer time; it was only that the spark, with its chaotic movement in the air, had to fall in the right place at the right time.

There are people that do smell a conspiracy, however. With India slowly gearing up for elections, scheduled for May 2019, some claim that the #MeToo storm was kicked up to shake the ruling party’s ratings. #MeToo, however, is a campaign anybody can join (for good and for ill), and it has not only implicated the already mentioned minister and a few men praising the ruling party but also journalists known for their anti-government writings. The list of accusations is growing each day.

It is not difficult to perceive that the ground for a #MeToo-like movement has grown fertile in India over the last few years. While the country is still clearly male-dominated (like most of the world), there has been growing assertiveness among women raising awareness of women’s issues in society. The gruesome gang rape that took place in Delhi in 2012 caused mammoth protests. Such an incredible outcry has perhaps not been witnessed since then, but later similar cases did bring people to the street.

In some areas – such as the university campuses of Delhi – recent years saw a steep rise in the numbers of reported sexual harassment cases. This can be interpreted in two ways: Either violence against women is rising or women’s readiness to report such crimes is growing (or perhaps both). India did witness a number of high-profile court cases years before #MeToo took off in the United States. Among the most prominent cases were the 2002 accusation against one of the directors at Infosys by his secretary and the 2013 rape allegation leveled against journalist Tarun Tejpal. It may be that those reporting such crimes are women that feel more empowered to speak up but even so, it is clear that the number of unearthed molestation cases is also growing, both in and outside of the courts of law. #MeToo was also not the first women-empowering initiative that gained a following in India: the Slutwalk of 2011 and Reclaim the Night of 2017 were transplanted as well.

One factor that has greatly strengthened the #MeToo revolution at this moment, however, with all its pitfalls and advantages, is its backbone: the virtual revolution. There was already a vibrant online ecosystem in India in 2008, when Tanushree Dutta leveled her allegation against Nana Patekar the first time. But in the decade since, the number of Indian netizens has grown immensely.

In 2017, India overtook the United States as the country with the highest number of Facebook users globally. By mid-2018, the reported number of Indian users of Facebook was 270 million. Indians similarly top the global ranks when it comes to monthly activity on WhatsApp. Somewhat surprisingly, the numbers are not so amazing when it comes to Twitter: India now ranks seventh in the number of global users, but that statistic is on the rise as well.

The internet obviously not only allows one to share information quickly and widely but also creates a platform that partially allows people to circumvent established institutions or to outright challenge them. Before the internet era, a harassment victim seeking justice had to go to court or – if that was impossible or the effort proved abortive – to the media. The internet offers a form of media without necessitating a journalist, though it does not offer justice outside the court. This is the known double-edged sword of the global web in general, and #MeToo in particular: While standing against the harassers is welcome, anybody can claim anything on the internet. An illustration of that reality is most acute in WhatsApp, which some in India have used to peddle fake news, hate, and propaganda.

When it comes to #MeToo, the positive side of the internet is that it gave women a tool and a platform to fight against their molesters outside of courts, traditional media, and politics, all of which are dominated by men (though a spillover to traditional media is inevitable, a political reaction is possible, and the continuation of the legal battle in court is expected). Most enter this struggle shedding their anonymity.

Social media is something that most big institutions, public and private, cannot ignore and it is no different in India. Companies, for example, will often respond more quickly to complaints aired via social media than through traditional channels. In the political sphere, a deft handling of social media – the use of social media to connect to voters and to identify issues that need addressing – is a marker of a modern politician. Politicians follows the hashtags.

At this moment, the most tagged problem in Indian society is the issue of sexual harassment. Like pre-internet movements, this one will pass sooner or later. Internet movements may share this fate more quickly as the hivemind moves on. Real change may not be radical; it more likely will be gradual. But at the same time, the internet is no longer just virtual reality – it has proven its power to influence reality via virtual means.