Aug 30, 2024 09:25 PM IST
From Kolkata to Kerala, a deluge of sexual harassment complaints exposes the plight of women in India, highlighting political indifference and systemic failures.
From Kolkata to Kerala, where the underbelly of the Malayalam film industry has been exposed with a deluge of sexual harassment complaints, what a terrible, telling week it has been for India’s women. It has been emotionally depleting even to report on it, whilst feeling rage, anguish and exasperation over and over again. So, think of the women actually living these moments — and in the Kolkata case, the helpless family she leaves behind — and the unfathomable intensity of pain they are all grappling with.
The worst part? Wondering whether there is a single political party or politician that is actually, genuinely moved by the principle of equality, dignity, freedom and security for India’s women. A friend, who is a politician, said to me wryly, “There’s no Right or Left when it comes to these issues. It’s every party for itself, saving its own skin.”
Even women politicians, from whom we expect more because they have all been at the receiving end of terrible misogyny (and many of us have stood in solidarity with them when this has happened), are woefully shackled and silenced by their party leadership and its impulse to protect its interests instead of protecting survivors and victims.
It’s been crushingly disappointing to document. I am losing hope that the young doctor raped and killed in the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata will get justice. Or that we will ever truly discover the entirety of the horror that unfolded there. Details of three phone calls made by college officials to the parents, widely reported across media, reveal the absence of transparency from the moment the crime was discovered. While not much was revealed in the first two calls, except urging the parents to come fast, it was in the third call that the parents were told their daughter had died. But even then, the parents were lied to and told their daughter died by suicide. The details emerging about the power wielded by the college principal Sandip Ghosh are surreal. Two medical interns at the college spoke to us about considering suicide after consistent harassment by him. One said he slit his wrist. A former official of the college, Akhtar Ali, says Ghosh ran an illegal cadaver and organ racket. He has also documented complaints of alleged sexual harassment.
The question that will continue to haunt Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal is this: Why were they shielding this man? Why was a government lawyer sent to defend him in court? Why were two party leaders sent to convince protesting students to accept him as principal when he got a new gig hours after his resignation from RG Kar Medical College? What explains his power? And what is the connection between the prime accused — Sanjoy Roy — and the principal?
Of course, there has been politicisation of the protests. And as we saw with the case of Debashish Chakraborty, a policeman whose eyesight is in peril after stones were hurled at him, an element of lumpenisation as well. The daily squabbles between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) are probably why Bengal’s protesting doctors made sure their rally was not affiliated with any group. Between the suspicions of evidence tampering, the mystery power of the despotic principal on whose watch the rape happened, and the shrill noise of party politics, there is scepticism about justice for the victim.
The TMC could have started from a place of regret and humility in its public utterances after the crime. Instead, it was silent for the first few days, and then, oddly aggressive. A couple of the spokesmen are full of tone-deaf smirks and gotcha one-upmanship. I had to ask a Member of Parliament to leave my show, something I haven’t done in 30 years after he tried to talk over me through the programme.
And if the TMC has a lot to account for in West Bengal, the mounting sexual harassment complaints in Kerala raise grave questions for the Left Front government there. It has taken nearly five years for the report of the Justice K Hema committee, set up to examine the issues of women in the Malayalam film industry, to see the light of day. And now, as the skeletons come tumbling out and more and more women come forward to register complaints with the police’s task force, among those booked for sexual violence is Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) Member of Legislative Assembly and actor Mukesh. Revathy and Parvathy, two actors at the frontline of the fight, told me about the powerful forces that tried to stop the truth from coming out. There is likely a clear convergence between superstars and political powers. And there has been no lucid explanation yet for why the Kerala government redacted 11 paragraphs of the report.
Bilkis Bano’s rapists walked out to garlands, thanks to a decision by a BJP-led government in Gujarat. The Delhi Police did not oppose bail for the BJP’s Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who is accused by multiple female wrestlers of sexual abuse. Mamata Banerjee’s government has swung between arrogance and aggression on the Kolkata horror. Before this, we have seen the Congress flub its response to the 2012 Delhi gangrape.
What does this tell us? Women need to mobilise as a vote bank to be treated seriously by politicians.
Barkha Dutt is an award-winning journalist and author. The views expressed are personal
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