December is the follow-up month at TNM where we go back to headlines of the past for a status update. In this series, we strive to bring the focus back to promises made by governments, revisit official investigations that should have been completed by now and exhume issues of public interest that lost steam over time.
Following the #MeToo movement in October 2018, Chinne Gowda, the then president of Kannada Film Chamber of Commerce (KFCC) had said that a Gender Sensitisation and Internal Complaints Committee would be set up by the first week of December 2018 for the chamber.
Has it been set up? And have things changed since? TNM did a follow up.
Four years have passed and the president of KFCC has also changed, but there is no sign of an Internal Committee against sexual harassment as per the Sexual Harassment at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act. The law mandates that all organisations with 10 or more employees must have a sexual harassment committee. Whether the law applies to associations and professional bodies is contested.
However, the Kannada film industry has another organisation to address the rights and grievances of its members, including sexual harassment, called the Film Industry for Rights & Equality (FIRE). The organisation was set up in March 2017, founded by actor Chetan Kumar, and also has an Internal Committee. FIRE was formed by a group of people including actors, directors and technicians, who have been vocal about the need to address sexual harassment of women in the industry. The members of the IC include Kavita Lankesh, Sruthi Hariharan, and Supreme Court lawyer Jayna Kothari.
While KFCC was initially welcoming of FIRE, it later turned hostile when women in the film industry began openly speaking about their experiences of sexual harrassment. “Before #MeToo exploded in Karnataka, we had asked KFCC to refer cases of sexual harrassment to us and they had supported it. However, they became hesitant after the movement gained lots of traction,” actor Chetan told TNM.
“Even if the film chamber has an IC, none of us know who is on the board or if it even functions. Therefore, what’s the point of having an IC when people do not even know about it?’ asked actor Sruthi Hariharan. Sruthi is a Sandalwood actor who had accused actor Arjun Sarja of sexual misconduct. In a Facebook post on October 19, 2018, Sruthi had alleged that Arjun had touched her inappropriately on the pretext of a rehearsal during the shoot of their Kannada movie Vismaya. Following the allegation, Sruthi had also filed a police complaint against Arjun, who is also a popular star in Tamil films. In December 2021, police had given a clean chit to Arjun citing lack of evidence.
“While it does not have an IC, the film chamber still handled sexual harrassment issues. But the film chamber caters to producers, distributors and exhibitors and is a bunch of old, rich men. They are not sensitive to the causes of women, they are not looking to provide justice and sometimes also humiliate victims,” Chetan said on why they had asked the KFCC to transfer their cases to FIRE. KFCC currently has a 42 member governing body consisting of producers, distributors and exhibitors. Out of 42 members, only one member is a woman.
However, Chetan also admitted that FIRE itself is not as active as it used to be in handling cases of sexual harrassment. “The #MeToo movement gave courage to many women to come out and share their stories. As a result of this, initially, we received lots of cases and we were doing considerable work in providing justice and legal aid to these women,” he said. "After the movement started to lose momentum, women were afraid again, especially after they had seen the harassment other survivors went through after sharing their stories," Chetan added, and said this led to FIRE slowing their pace.
TNM reached out to KFCC’s current president, Ba Ma Harish, who said that there is no plan to bring in a specific IC for sexual harassment complaints. “All matters related to sexual harassment that are brought to the KFCC and then before the Dispute Resolution Board. This includes cases of sexual harassment as well. The Board consists of the president and office bearers of KFCC as well as two members each from actors, directors, producers, camera persons associations, etc. There is no plan to bring in a specific IC group for sexual harassment complaints. We are sure that the Dispute Resolution Board can handle these complaints as well,” he said.