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The actor was abducted and assaulted in a moving car by a group of men in February 2017; the violation was allegedly at the behest of a powerful male actor of the industry. Breaking a five-year-long silence, Malayalam actor Bhavana has spoken in an interview about her journey from being a “victim” of sexual assault to a “survivor”. The actor was abducted and assaulted in a moving car by a group of men in February 2017; the violation was allegedly at the behest of a powerful male actor of the industry. To many women, Bhavana’s story reprises painfully similar details. She spoke about her anger at the fuss-free, low-cost rehabilitation of men accused of sexual violence, about her “name and identity” being buried under the weight of the assault; of being shamed and abused on social media, of being put in the dock, just as any other victim of sexual violence. She spoke about how she drew strength by turning up in the courtroom to defend herself, and how she realised that standing up for herself, speaking her truth, would empower all the women who came after her.
That has also been the promise of the #MeToo movement — that women’s voices would expand to break the silence and shame around sexual violence — even if it is a promise fleetingly realised. It is important to remember, though, that the assault on the actor predated Hollywood’s #MeToo reckoning — the flood of sexual assault allegations by multiple women against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein — by a few months. The case cleaved the Malayalam film industry into two, as the investigation led to super-star Dileep being named as an accused. It led to the formation of the Women in Cinema Collective, an organisation for women film professionals, that continues to lobby against sexual exploitation in Malayalam cinema. But the lack of an institutional response, the eagerness to show solidarity with powerful men, and silence women victims, has been as much a feature of this case as much as others. In the larger entertainment industry, for instance, women like filmmaker Leena Manimekalai, singer Chinmayi Sripada and actor Tanushree Dutta have faced a backlash for speaking up.
“We must normalise the idea of the person who has gone through a trauma coming out in public and voicing it out,” Bhavana said in the interview. That, indeed, is the minimum that societies owe victims of sexual violence. The truth is that for every Bhavana and Priya Ramani, who find the courage and support to hold sexual predators to account, there are countless other women who are easily silenced. It is for the rest — from institutions and workplaces, to judiciary and police — to enable their courage, to empower their quest for justice.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on March 8, 2022 under the title ‘Speaking her truth’.
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