#MeToo has occupied centre stage at the Jaipur Literature Festival, for reasons more than one. While the festival this year is also host to a series of forward looking opinion and ideas on gender particularly post #MeToo, at the same time, it has also been accused of giving space to panelists whose names have cropped up during the Me Too wave in October last year.
#MeToo Single Most Important Political Movement In The World
Author Shobhaa De, while speaking to The Quint’s correspondent Garvita Khybri, called #MeToo “the single most important political movement in the world”.
Feminist author Urvashi Butalia, too, opined that women should not be discouraged from speaking.
However, she also added that she hoped the known offenders will not be ‘socially or professionally rehabilitated’.
Famous Crowd-Pullers Stay Away
The aftereffects of #MeToo were evidently seen as the latest edition of #JLF distanced itself from two of its biggest crowd-puller celebrity authors who were named in the #MeToo movement – Suhel Seth and Chetan Bhagat.
Three months back, a petition too was addressed to JLF about giving its support to the #MeToo movement in India.
However, some still think the festival has been unable to avoid showing its own double standards regarding the #MeToo movement. Famous for his or her snarky observations and one liners about the goings on at the panels the @JLF insider this time pointed out that all panels may not be free of people who may have been named in the movement. Not even the panel on gender.
They also made a snarky observation about the sheer number of men who may have been accused of MeToo and are still part of the festival.
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