Pushing feminism’s frontiers in Kerala

From movie sets to courtrooms, educated women are transforming gender norms in Kerala, bringing to light the limits of institutional or state feminism.

A protest by Mahila Congress workers against actors Mukesh and Siddique in Thiruvananthapuram on August 30. FIRs have been registered against many Malayalam film personalities after the Justice Hema Committee report revealed instances of sexual harassment of women in the industry.  | Photo Credit: PTI

One of the most remarkable things about Kerala in the 21st century is the recurrence of feminist revolts that are sometimes without a feminist.

No, I do not mean state feminism. State feminism in Kerala, at least from the 1990s, has by now had three major effects. First, it has brought into local-level public life a large number of elected women members into the panchayati raj institutions.

Second, it has created an enormous network of lower-middle-class women—nearly 45 lakh—through self-help groups. The Kudumbashree network, as it is called, now offers a default local-level public life for women who are otherwise likely to lead a life restricted to kin and community networks. However, these forms of public life rarely challenge patriarchy directly, even at the local level. In other words, these two manifestations of state feminism result from the state using (and usually under-reading) feminist insights to craft development interventions for reform that might stave off social implosion caused by patriarchy.

The third effect of state feminism has been the spread of the vocabulary of 1990s gender mainstreaming to understand gender relations, especially the idea of “women’s empowerment”, plucked out of its radical Afro-American feminist roots and transplanted in the largely apolitical and developmentalist soil of Kerala. Indeed, in the 1990s, when feminist groups were becoming more strident and vocal in Kerala, for many powerful elements of the dominant Left “women’s empowerment” felt like the perfect antidote to “women’s liberation”—it could potentially control the energies released through women questioning patriarchy and direct them into livelihoods and support for the family. The name given to the State-supported women’s self-help group network in Kerala, “Kudumbashree” (prosperity/auspiciousness of the family), was not a coincidence.

I do not mean to say that state feminism in Kerala simply reinforced patriarchy; indeed, the tensions between these three effects and the unintended anti-patriarchal consequences flowing from them are worth close examination. My only claim is that state feminism in Kerala has not revolutionised Malayali social life, and nor can it do so. This is important at a time when women in Kerala seem to be desperately seeking a social revolution against patriarchy.

And so it becomes important to pay attention to “feminist revolts without feminists”. By these, I mean minor earthquakes that shake the foundations of patriarchy triggered by women who may not, at first, be even partially identified with feminism but whose acts seem to earn them the name “feminist”, sometimes as a derisive sobriquet. In the past 10 years, we have seen young women who did not identify themselves as feminist at the time of their revolts throwing the most intrepid challenges to the combined power of their families, immensely powerful caste-community institutions, major political parties mostly shorn of their ideological commitments, and the deeply conservative state institutions.

The more successful of these are the struggles of Hadiya Asokan, an Ezhava-born student, who chose Islam as her faith and sought to find a partner who shared her new faith; and of Anupama Chandran, who fought a gallant battle to recover her infant son who had been trafficked by her parents through the State’s child welfare machinery. Both were in their early 20s when they openly sought to free themselves from the social shackles that bound them, rendered almost invisible by the discourse of progressive Kerala about literate women and “women’s empowerment” through self-help groups. Both revolts led to minor social and political earthquakes that shook the pillars of Malayali society and public life—asserting a woman’s right to choose her faith, family, and partner in defiance of the will of her family and community that implicitly claimed “ownership” of her body, and the government and State which implicitly acquiesced to this claim.

Women in Cinema Collective: a revolt by women

The formation of the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) is yet another of these revolts. It was a direct response to the shocking kidnapping and sexual assault in February 2017 of a female actor in the middle of the city of Kochi, allegedly at the behest of a powerful male actor, Dileep. The assault and the filming of it was allegedly an act of “revenge”, meant to teach the young woman “a lesson”. In short, it reeked of feudal power, of the will to subjugate through violence a woman who ostensibly gave offence.

A group of women actors and senior technicians came together to protest against this, openly breaking with the Association of Malayalam Movie Artistes (A.M.M.A.), which was extremely slow and ultimately reluctant to act against Dileep. Not all of these women were identified with feminism in the same way or to the same degree. Some of them were close to the powerful ruling party, the CPI(M) and its women’s wing, and to feminist groups close to the CPI(M). Others were not. What brought them together was the desperation about the intensely feudal and misogynist work culture in the Malayalam cinema industry, which made it a hell for self-respecting women.

Highlights

• State feminism in Kerala has not produced revolutionary change in Malayali social life.
• Recent years have seen revolts against patriarchy in Kerala by women who did not initially identify themselves as feminists.
• The gap between reality and expectation for highly educated women drives this aspiration for social change and autonomy.

The women’s move was greeted with a great deal of booing and jeering by the leadership of A.M.M.A.; the representatives of the progressive government declared that they would not condone a split in A.M.M.A. Although the government later withdrew from this position, Minister for Culture A.K. Balan continued to claim in 2018 that the WCC’s differences with A.M.M.A. were an “internal matter” that the latter should “look into and sort out”. It is perplexing that the Left government’s cultural machinery should take this position, for A.M.M.A. was never a trade union. It claimed to be a “welfare organisation” for actors. In effect, however, it almost totally controlled work opportunities in the cinema industry for actors. Its procedures have been completely non-transparent and non-democratic, and deeply, nakedly patriarchal, until the recent mass resignation of its executive committee.

The actors and artistes who threw themselves into the battle—actors Parvathy Thiruvothu, Rima Kallingal, and Ramya Nambeesan, director Anjali Menon, film editor Bina Paul, director and actor Geetu Mohandas, and others—initially found little support from either the establishment or the industry, but drew considerable sympathy from the public, which both the ruling CPI(M) and the Kerala government had to consider before long. Members of the WCC met the Chief Minister of Kerala in May 2017 demanding redress, and the government responded, promising to commission a report to study the issues faced by women in Malayalam cinema. Thus, the Hema Committee was set up in July 2017.

However, the going was not easy. The formidable “superstar” driven industry–controlled by a handful of powerful male actors, directors, producers, and distributors–was not to be easily messed with. What followed was a series of shadow attacks on social media against the WCC and its individual members, led by deeply misogynist men who ranged from blind fans of the male stars to insecure males threatened by these young women’s political views, to involuntary celibates and other psychologically twisted men who were out to lynch the visibly defiant women in cyberspace. Thus was born the moniker feminichi, the Malayalam translation of “feminazi” that was hurled at WCC members and all women who openly supported them. As a result, the Hema Committee faced almost insurmountable hurdles in its effort to collect testimonies and evidence.

WCC pushed back against misogynist attacks

The WCC fought back with its own campaigns, garnering the support of feminists and other women on social media. It also placed itself close to the ruling CPI(M), actively supporting many of its campaigns, even allowing the CPI(M) to use the space it had created for the party’s political ends. For example, members of the WCC openly campaigned with the CPI(M) during the standoff with the BJP in the Sabarimala controversy.

Anupama Chandran leaving a family court in Thiruvananthapuram in November 2021 with her child. Anupama won her son back after a long battle, after he was given up for adoption by her parents without her consent.  | Photo Credit: S. MAHINSHA

The CPI(M), however, was in no mood to displease the cinema industry’s patriarchs. An actor named Innocent, a former president of A.M.M.A. who had been openly criticised by the WCC for claiming that the casting couch issue in Kerala was because of “bad women”, was chosen as the CPI(M)’s candidate for a byelection to the Chalakkudy constituency in early 2019. Later, the Kerala State Film Development Corporation (KSFDC) announced financial grants for new women filmmakers, clearly a move to placate the WCC. In other words, the ruling party in its eagerness to both protect its progressive image and pander to powerful movie moguls ran with the hares and hunted with the hounds.

The WCC persisted. It continued its support to the Left, thus projecting itself as a leftist public entity that the CPI(M) could not abandon without jeopardising its moral standing. Through this means, the WCC garnered the sympathies of the other cultural elements allied with the CPI(M). This bore fruit: the Hema Committee report had to be finally released, though heavy edits concealed the names of men accused of severe sexual harassment or assault.

The government had found excuses to stall the release of the report for four whole years, until finally the State Information Commission ordered its release. With this, everything that could once be dismissed as gossip and whispers came to be seen as knowledge: the dam could not but burst. A series of tremors continues to shake the industry as I write this, including the resignation of the director and scriptwriter Ranjith (who is being accused of reinstating feudal misogyny and whitewashing alpha-male violence in Malayalam cinema) as chairman of the Kerala Chalachitra Academy, the mass resignation of the A.M.M.A. executive committee, the filing of a number of cases against several leading actors, including the CPI(M) legislator Mukesh, and the continuing avalanche of complaints by junior artistes, formal and informal, which threatens to erase the space of masculine hubris that was Malayalam cinema as effectively as a landslide in fragile terrain.

The gap between reality and expectation

So, what kind of feminism does the WCC represent? Despite the many positives in Kerala’s 20th century social development story, Malayali society lacks some crucial elements considered vital for the democratisation of social life, especially for women, such as the absence of opportunities for decent work that could generate a sufficient income. It is precisely this gap that seems to have generated feminism “without feminists”.

In other words, the gap—or the contradiction perhaps—between highly-educated, individuated women, and the grievous lack of employment and income-generating activities seem to produce a certain anti-patriarchal political energy that is now growing.

In the 1980s, after college education began to spread from district centres and urban areas into the more interior and rural places, a spurt was evident in Malayali women accessing higher education, a trend that continued through the late 20th century and into the present. Fewer girls drop out of school in Kerala, and brides now tend to be more educated than grooms. Women are highly exposed to the expanding media and digital spaces, and the home-public divide is being bridged steadily through technology.

Not surprisingly, we have today the “angry young woman”—the educated young woman denied jobs and independence by patriarchal authorities—resisting the social violence that seems to grow ever more feudal, and defiant in the face of her “structural worthlessness” to the family given that even the most educated woman cannot avoid dowry payments if she seeks to marry.

The gap between reality and expectations in women’s lives has been the persistent fault line through which the underground river of anger against patriarchy among Malayali women has surged up above the ground—and it is, rightly, perceived as feminist, even in the absence of feminist political mobilisation. The gap between the existence of widespread and powerful workers unions in the plantation sector and the pathetic condition of women workers in the tea plantations fuelled the anger that produced the spontaneous women workers’ strike in Munnar in 2015 under the banner of Pengal Otrumai (a woman’s collective). Our research on women workers in the retail sector revealed the manner in which they have to adopt the manners and dressing codes of elite women even as they continue to be subject to brutal exploitation as workers, a fault-line through which anger against the patriarchal establishment bubbled up as struggles.

Members of the Women Justice Movement at a march in Palakkad on August 27, 2024, calling for an investigation into the findings of the Hema Committee report.   | Photo Credit: K.K. Mustafah

Nevertheless, it is evident that success in these struggles is highly dependent on the caste capital the women possess. Malayalam cinema has been historically structured by feudal funding and practices, and women artistes were inevitably taken to be sexually available to the big male names, a reason why acting continued to be a stigmatised profession for women until the 1990s. In the 1990s, a new generation of educated, privileged-caste, upper- and middle-class women entered the field, and their values began to clash with the dominant feudal alpha-male worship culture.

It is not a coincidence that young women began to stop using screen names and retained their surnames indicative of privileged-caste or privileged family moorings. While this did not protect WCC members from cyber-bullying, it definitely protected them from abjection and physical violence. See, for instance, the contrast between the experience of the WCC and the sex workers’ movement in Kerala. While the WCC was able to draw considerable public sympathy and remain both visible and audible despite the many egregious attempts to shame its women, the sex workers’ movement, which enjoyed significant presence in public discourse for some years, has disappeared from view completely.

The WCC, then, represents a wellspring of anti-patriarchal anger that gushed out through the gap between the expectations of educated young women and their understanding of self-respect, and the utterly unreconstructed feudal alpha-male culture of the Malayalam cinema industry. But what has made it successful, besides the women’s admirable persistence, careful strategising, and great willingness to sacrifice careers, is also their social privilege. We now need to think of a feminism that will not need that bulwark, a feminism that will empower the junior artistes and the general workers on the sets as well. A feminism that will extend beyond this industry and voice the rights of domestic workers, retail sector workers, women fish-sellers, and all women who step outside patriarchal respectability to build their lives.

J. Devika is a feminist scholar focussed on Kerala who teaches and researches at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.