Sexual Harassment – in Society or at School – Law Alone Is Insufficient

 Sexual Harassment – in Society or at School – Law Alone Is Insufficient

Sexual harassment has no age limits (for the victims), no geographical limits (across the globe), no class or caste limits (if one is hierarchically above, harassment of anyone below is fair game; yes, I am using “game” most advisedly) and if at all has any limits, it can only be in one’s own mind.

The two column-inch news item says that an assistant school teacher in a Government Upper Primary School (meaning, 3rd-5thstandard?) beat a number of students for not giving her the expected respect from the students, get this, by touching her feet. This is harassment, pure and simple. This touching one’s feet as a mark of showing respect has no place in an evolved society and one with aspirations as a global power. I can be cursing even as I am ostensibly showing respect! Oh, that is wrong. I indeed AM cursing.

One human being must show respect to another human being for simply the latter being that, a human being. That is all it must be. I am older to another means no more than the egg and the sperm that fused to make me did so earlier than those of the other person. So, can the sperm-egg pair of the other touch the feet of the similar pair of me? That is a serious question, do not laugh.

OK, let us get a little further, indeed quite a bit, in human life. The teacher became a teacher as their life circumstances (including the fact that it was in a Government Upper Primary School) imposed the situation on them; the student became a student for similar reasons. Is it then one’s life circumstances deserve to receive the feet-touching respect and the other’s to oblige and offer the same? Is there any sense in the above?

Mr. M. Veerapandian, the recently elected Tamil Nadu State Secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI) said the following (as reported in a newspaper): Laws alone−which automatically expand into laws and punishments−could not eradicate deep rooted caste pride from the minds of the people. Hallelujah to that!

Mr. Veerapandian went further than that. “Law offers protection for those who face suppression and violence.” I am not sure I agree with this. Law, at best and perhaps in a sphere of life that might not be connected to that in which the crime was committed, can provide only succour after the fact. It by itself cannot offer protection to those “who face suppression and violence”.

He says, and I agree totally, “Social science, questioning the superiority based on caste, should be taught in classrooms.” Perhaps, he could have used the moral imperative “ought” instead of the “should”.

The above incidence relates to harassment from a position of authority, to be understood as someone breaching the rules of enforcing obedience, in a primary school. Let your imagination roam. One of the students becomes an IAS officer (Assistant Collector) and exudes power over the teacher who is perhaps the District Education Officer. Will the DEO not complain if the IAS officer smacks the DEO with a stick? Power is at best transitory, and at worst, a mirage.

 Now I come to another form of harassment that most would agree is categorically at a higher plane than the instance described above. Sexual harassment. 

I could discuss sexual harassment in two different ways, with and without the sexual context. In the latter, this is pure harassment, and do not expect me to say, “Nothing but.” 

Such harassment has an unmentionablesociological context that goes beyond power dynamics. The other way of saying this is sexual harassment, though in two words, must be treated as only one, not a category within but indeed distinct from harassment. Sexual harassment cannot even be hyphenated. The sociological context inter-twined with power dynamics makes it heinous. 

 It is very difficult for me to think that a human being could descend so much as to harass anyone. This beggars belief, but I have to believe as this is what is happening. 

I end this post with a point put forth by Mr. Veerapandian: “[O]nly the continuous inculcation of social science, aimed at challenging the sense of superiority based on birth, could bring about meaningful change in society.”

Raghuram Ekambaram