In her address at the Goa Arts and Literature Festival, journalist Priya Ramani elaborated on the relevance of #MeToo campaign in India and why it needs popular support
Aliya Abreu
Journalist Priya Ramani, who was one of the keynote speakers at the inaugural of the Goa Arts and Literature Festival (GALF), and one of the women who spoke out against former Union Minister MJ Akbar, used the GALF platform to highlight why it was so important to speak out.
“Think of #MeToo as our latest response to rape culture. Think about that the next time it so much as crosses your mind that #MeToo is a plot against men by vindictive women,” urged Ramani, who has already attended 24 court hearings in Delhi in the ongoing sexual harassment case against Akbar, and will attend a 25th after GALF.
Ramani said that a campaign like #MeToo, where 159 women in India spoke out against incidents of sexual harassment, simply scratched the surface of sexual violence in the country, and that as a society we were so inured to violence against women, that we now only reacted to the most heinous stories of rape, like the one in Delhi six years ago, or the recent one in Hyderabad.
“Their stories were so brutal, that they had the power to jolt us even in our bubbles. Both these crimes happened in big cities. They both involve young women who were serious about being in the workforce. They both had multiple perpetrators, horrific mutilation, and murder. Each time it takes something worse to elicit a reaction from us,” she lamented, urging women to speak up about cases of sexual harassment in their daily lives so that it does not continue as the norm.
“#MeToo has raised pertinent questions about how we can handle sexual violence. It puts pressure on courts and workplaces to implement laws that already exist. This free pass to treat women as non-sentient beings starts when we bring up our daughters on the blame-shame diet and when we keep telling them “You are less than this, or that,” said Ramani, adding that all the stories we hear and don’t hear about sexual harassment at the workplace are one big reason why so many women are opting out of the workplace. “Only 9 countries have a lesser proportion of working women than India. And many of them are countries at war,” she said.
“You should support #MeToo, because it’s not just some unnecessary drama by a bunch of privileged women about how men behave. It’s our latest attempt to make you respond to a national crisis that must be addressed. No country can be a super power, if half of its potential workforce feels unsafe at work,” she continued, adding that speaking out had come at a great cost to her.
Ramani also stressed on the need for everyone to speak up. “Let’s not make it something special, something praiseworthy,” she said, referring to the uproar that was caused last week when industrialist Rahul Bajaj had some tough questions for the government. “When Rahul Bajaj spoke up, what a furour it caused. Imagine if 10 more industrialists had spoken up with Rahul Bajaj,” she said.
She asked the audience of writers and literature lovers what could be the consequences of speaking up. “Do you think you’ll be charged with sedition? Lose your job as an editor? Face raids? a defamation case? Do you think they’ll question your motives and timing for speaking up? Do you think they’ll analyse the words you used when you spoke up? Do you think they’ll shame you for speaking up? Do you think you’ll get rape threats on Twitter? All of these things have happened to people, which is precisely why more of us need to speak up,” she urged.
On the concluding note, Ramani encouraged people to speak up because, “In this new sharply divided India, there is so much to speak up about.” “Don’t let the bullies take over the public discourse. Don’t relinquish the sane spaces,” she said, and talking about her own experiences, said that speaking up could be addictive, also liberating and that she highly recommended it.
