A lone woman employee of the forest department posted in a remote wooded corner of western Tamil Nadu moved the Madras High Court for a CCTV at her workplace. This was the protection the woman sought in the hope of exposing the mental and physical abuse she has been enduring at that secluded spot in the forest. That is how far the insidious practice of sexual abuse by men in power over women in workplaces has got to around the world.
Cinema and its secrets
The media and entertainment industries were the first to be hit as secrets tumbled out, so too skeletons from cupboards as big names rolled. Sexual harassment may be gender neutral in the sense that women in power could also be guilty of such misconduct. But, as events unfolded, the truth that dominant men were far guiltier in leveraging their power over subordinates became apparent as lists were curated of culprits.
The singer took on the very powerful and politically well-connected lyricist Vairamuthu.
Cinema and media were just the start. As the hashtag #MeToo swept through the world and came to India a year later, it was to help wronged women bring out their horror stories from myriad workplaces. In an essentially conservative society like India, thought to be in the sexually repressed category when compared to the more liberal West, such sexual harassment may actually begin at home with young girls as the victims of lecherous kin. As a majority of rape cases have shown, the assailants were most probably people known to the victim, from among relatives, neighbours and friends.
Sexual predators have been found to be just about everywhere, thriving in the office environment in private firms, in the IT industry, in government departments and banks, in the fine arts and sports, even in classrooms of schools, colleges and universities. The guru-sishya parampara has also made for a fertile hunting ground. The supplicant status of acolytes training under their masters and coaches in fine arts, sports, in offices as interns, apprentices and juniors, make it easy for the person in the superior position to exploit his standing with word, gesture and physical harassment. This has led sometimes to rape, as consent may have been dubiously obtained, with the line blurred by a patriarchal tradition.
The ace badminton player spoke up about her #MeToo instance of emotional harassment by a senior coach. Though she did not name her harasser, the finger was pointed at a very obvious name in the sports fraternity.
Music of shame
The fine arts were home to the worst of sexual harassment as #MeToo stories came gushing out of the most conservative of places —classical Carnatic music in Chennai. As many as seven renowned singers were left out of the Margazhi season concerts by the Music Academy, among whom Chitravina Ravikiran was the most prominent as he was also the previous year’s winner of the top Sangita Kalanidhi award.
All prominent artistes take music classes and their wards had taken to social media to narrate credible accounts of sexual harassment or abuse. The Academy president Mr Murali explained the exemplary action taken, “This is not legal action. We’ve looked at detailed incidents of serious nature coming to light about these artistes. We had unbiased people enquiring into the charges. We are setting an example in leaving them out but without passing judgment.”
Chinmayi left high & dry
No one lost more from being bold in coming out with complaints of sexual harassment against famous men than the singer Chinmayi Sripada. From helping those who had narrated the sexual harassment suffered at the hands of the famous lyricist Vairamuthu, Chinmayi came out with her own experience with the politically well-connected film personality.
Apart from facing libel law suits by him, Chinmayi also lost almost all the work she used to get singing in Tamil films as a playback singer and performer and was also removed illegally from membership of the dubbing union by Radha Ravi.
Chinmayi had waded into the #MeToo movement wailing that “Society has enabled predators with our silence.” She had gone on to say, “For one of me there are a 1000 others that haven’t spoken up,” as she waged a campaign against the likes of Vairamuthu and others. The Tamil film industry is the only one that was stoic in the face of many of its men facing such allegations. It did nothing but look on as legal battles were begun, refusing to take any action against predators, unlike Bollywood which acted in many instances.
Sports, a muddy field
Surprisingly, there have been very few allegations arising from the world of Indian sport although US pro sport was rocked by allegations against owners and coaches, and from within the US Gymnastics national team.
Long before #MeToo, the secretary of the Andhra Cricket Association, Chamundeswarnath, was named by a few women cricketers while an official of the Badminton Association of India and his son — Vijay Sinha and Nishant — were arrested for sexually abusing minor girls.
As an extreme case, the treatment of Mithali Raj at the World Cup by coach Romesh Powar could be seen as emotional harassment. The badminton star Jwala Gutta was the only one to come out formally in the #MeToo movement to complain of the mental harassment she faced from a coach, but she did not name anyone even if the needle of suspicion pointed to a major figure in coaching and selection of the Indian team.
“Maybe I should talk about the mental harassment I had to go through…#MeToo. Since 2006, since this person became the chief, he threw me out of the national team inspite of my being a national champion. The latest was when I returned from Rio. I was out of the national team again. One of the reasons I stopped playing! When this person couldn’t get through to me…he threatened my partners, harassed them, made sure to isolate me in every manner. Even after Rio, the one who I was gonna play mixed with was threatened. And I was just thrown out of the team,” Jwala had recounted.
The lack of more major allegations is thought to be owed to the fact that there is no formal place to complain about harassment in the playground, which is as good as a workplace these days. Very few sports federations in the country have a complaints committee to handle allegations though some national federations have complied with Visakha guidelines as gleaned from their websites. It is at the junior coaching levels that sexual abuse has been thought to prevail.
The IT-word for harassment
Sexism is thought to be most rampant in all workplaces. The crowded Indian IT industry, which has been spawning software parks, BPO call centres and giant companies in e-commerce and back offices while copying management practices of the west for well over 20 years, could legitimately be thought of as beehives where sexual harassment is high. The biggest name to fall out of the IT industry was the new billionaire — Binny Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart that was acquired by Walmart. He strenuously denied the allegations of personal misconduct, but “a lapse of judgement” found during the probe was sufficient to see him step down.
The Bansal incident showed sexual misconduct could happen in any setting and at the highest level of management, too. But the industry itself has been somewhat slow to tackle the menace as we saw in Google tarrying on a global scale and admitting belatedly that it had paid off several predators with settlements of millions of dollars to leave. With thousands of techies working under team leaders and in groups, the IT industry itself has been an incubator of male dominance and deviant sexual harassment behaviour. There have been many unpublicised events of managers walking out of IT jobs after probes showed probable cause in harassment claims in internal probes.
The ‘Boss’ could be the biggest villain in the Indian scenario and it was brave of many women to have come forward with their stories despite societal constraints.
A poll of global experts released in June 2018 showed India to be the most dangerous country, rife with sexual violence. But, we have not heard the last of #MeToo yet as we swing into the New Year.
‘My #MeToo moment...
with the Church’
Sister Jesme was vilified as insane and mentally unstable when she spoke out about the rampant abuse in the Christian religious order; she simply quit the nunnery and told the world her story
Oishani mojumder
Sister Jesme is an academician and author from Kerala. She resigned from her post as Principal of St. Mary’s College in Trichy in 2008 following administrative harassment. Sister Jesme was a member of the Congregation of the Mother Carmelite (CMC), but was forced to quit following emotional torment, after 33 years as a nun. She has authored the book, Amen - The Autobiography of a Nun, that details the humiliation, sexual abuse and mental torture she faced at the seminary (Congregation of the Mother of Carmelites). She was tagged insane, mentally unstable and Lucifer or fallen angel when she spoke up. “As I was branded insane by the Church, and this was published in the papers, I had to tell the world that I was sane. Hence, my autobiography and to be sincere to the core, I even wrote about my #Me too experience,” she says.
So, why is it more difficult for victims to speak up about sexual harassment and assault when the perpetrator is from a religious sect? Sister Jesme says it is because religious institutions are currently run like the underworld, with a large number of thugs in top positions. “This is not to say that all religious leaders are thugs. In such a scenario, who will dare speak against them? The vow of obedience is a hammer in the hands of the authorities to suppress those they rule over,” she says.
She says the Church does not have sexual assault committees such as ICC or POSH. There are only nominal committees that are completely ineffectual. On the backlash she faced following the revelations, Sister Jesme says, “A victim should shun religiosity to embrace spirituality. They should liberate themselves from the shackles of superstition. You are stronger with God on your side. You have nothing to lose by shunning blind faith as God is within you.”
Did she ever feel her faith wavering? Sister Jesme says she continues to go to church and feels a particular place or prayer is not needed to relate to God. “I never regretted a single minute that I quit the nunnery. Jesus is in me every second, stronger, nearer.”
