Surely you have heard by now that a former junior court assistant has alleged sexual harassment by Chief Justice Gogoi? The affidavit filed by the complainant addressed to all judges of the Supreme Court describes the victimisation undergone by her and her family since the incident. The immediate response of the Bar Council of India was to issue a statement backing the CJI; the SC secretary-general responded ‘completely and absolutely false and scurrilous and are totally denied’; the CJI himself presided over an emergency hearing on the matter drawing criticism from many, and activists have called for ‘an independent inquiry by a high-level independent committee’.
Here are other similar cases from the recent past: Central University of Tamil Nadu students protested against the dismissal of faculty members who were speaking up against sexism on campus, students of the Madras Christian College’s Zoology department have alleged that they were threatened for demanding action against a predatory professor, a student of Dewan Law College in Meerut was pressurised to withdraw her sexual harassment complaint and then suspended, Symbiosis Law School students Apoorva and Snigdha have been intimidated and penalised for whistle-blowing sexual harassment on their campus, Priya Ramani is facing defamation charges for speaking up about MJ Akbar, and a former AIR employee has resolved to sit on a fast unto death till justice is served.
All of the above bring disturbing patterns to the foray — complaints are dismissed, complainants are penalised, and a public debate on the credibility of the case, character of the victim carries on till the victim is silenced into oblivion or loses the will to keep fighting. Here’s a number of things one can do instead of playing devil’s advocate or armchair conspiracy theorist:
Understand harassment, power, consent and the many ways in which consent is forcefully sought and unwillingly given.
Read The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013.
Check if your workplace should have an internal complaints committee, and do what it takes to constitute it.
Keep the committee active, and your workplace proactive with frequent trainings and discussions around these subjects.
See naming and shaming as an excuse to fix the ‘due process’ that has failed the victim instead of as one to dismiss the case.
The committee is to be constituted according to the law, but it may function as deigned by the institution and go ‘beyond procedure’ if need be - lord knows that the law has many a loophole.
Organise a screening of filmmaker Vaishnavi Sundar’s But what was she wearing?
Sign every petition that comes to your inbox seeking support for victims, if it all that you can do. Online petitions count, just as votes do.
Believe the victim and insist on a fair investigation for every case. If someone is ‘doing it for publicity’ or ‘to malign the reputation of the accused’ the inquiry will tell us. As I have said in an interview on the case of culture critic Sadanand Menon, “The idea that only the survivor gets to define what they went through, and the narrative should be owned by them without speculation from the outside might be hard to grasp as a concept. But we are either kidding ourselves or blinded by loyalty to think that young persons would stake all they’ve got to take on a person so powerful in a world so unkind.”
Leave your family behind at home and work behind at the workplace. No colleague or employee needs to be treated as a daughter, mother or wife.