There are two
disparate, yet connected (made so quite forcefully), events that have captured
the public imagination over the last couple of days. The first, of course, has
been referred to as the “Saheb stalking” case in Gujarat, wherein the Modi
government put a woman, a landscape architect, under illegal surveillance for
months. This, allegedly, was at the behest of the girl’s father, who personally
approached Modi for her “protection”.
Second,
and the more shocking, is the case of Tarun Tejpal sexually assaulting a female
junior colleague and fellow journalist at the Tehelka Think2013.
Tejpal is the co-founder of Tehelka magazine, which is
critically acclaimed for its incisive, critical investigative journalism,
something it has pioneered in India – and a bulk of Tehelka’s journalism
has been a hard-hitting coverage of the pervasive violence against women in
India. This incident, thus, is a trial-by-fire of sorts for Tehelka:
one where their ethics, their values are put on the dock. And one, going by the
recent turn of events, that looks on extremely shaky grounds.
I,
like the majority of sane voices, some of them echoed on Times Now’s News Hour debate last night, think the blame
squarely lies on Tejpal, and Tejpal alone (something to which he admits).
However, there are certain points that compound the picture. But, in Tejpal’s
case, this becomes extremely problematic.
The first is
Tejpal’s email to
his Tehelka colleagues, primarily the managing editor, Shoma
Chaudhury. In the letter, Tejpal writes that: “A bad lapse of judgement, an
awful misreading of the situation have led to an unfortunate incident that
rails against all we believe in and fight for.” He further writes
for a need for “atonement” but “not just in words”, a “penance that lacerates”
him, and with that, he offers recuse from the editorship of Tehelka for
six months. The public, naturally and rightly so, is livid. The fact that
Tejpal “chooses his own punishment” is in violation of the rule of law, said
the Times Now debate. Atonement, lacerations, recuses and moral guilt cannot,
in way whatsoever, dilute the reprehensible nature of his actions. They are, as
someone rightly put it on Twitter, sanctimonious. And needless to say, the rest
of Tejpal’s letter is a glorification of his organisation.
Now,
there are many issues at stake here: the primary one being the (lack of)
implementation of the Vishaka Guidelines to put a check on sexual harassment of
women in workplaces. There are other pertinent points about the pervasive
nature of patriarchal power and control over women in workplaces. Nivedita
Menon, for instance, chronicles this pervasive “sexualisation of workplaces”:
“The workplace – from the classroom to the court to the newsroom, every single workplace in short – is utterly sexualized. It is sexualized in a masculinist and misogynistic power-laden way. The continuous invocation of the possibility of sex and of women as sexual objects is the very air of the workplace.”
This culture of violence is an inherent aspect of what I have
argued is the patriarchal moral-political economy. Very briefly,
the patriarchal moral-political economy denotes an insidious structure, or a
network of structures, that function on patriarchal and misogynistic logic of
governance. There is no one model of moral-political economy; it is a
Janus-faced, hegemonic enterprise, that manufactures legitimacy for violence;
and lastly, it invests its power in the repository of the masculine.
By this argument, therefore, what has ensued in Tehelka conforms
to the operation of a patriarchal moral-political economy.
At
the same time, alongside the question of real violence perpetrated on real bodies
and by real people, there is a discourse of sexual violence, and our response
to it, that is equally real: if not its form, but certainly in its effects and
consequences. And this discourse is something that needs to be critically
examined as well. People, usually critics of Tehelka, have not
spared the opportunity to drag the magazine’s (and Tejpal’s) name through the
mud (“critics” is a polite term; I’d prefer the term ‘trolls’, or just idiots).
Allegations about “prostitutes” in
the offices of Tehelka or the insults hurled at Tejpal’s daughter, to name a few,
nauseate the environment. Because let’s face it: we still are a terrible
public. We want a spectacle; we want blood; we want hangings and castrations.
In the aftermath of the Delhi gang rape-murder, I argued that only
because the perpetrators were from a particular demographic group they were
caught in record time. In this case, Tejpal represents a different monstrosity: arrogant,
sanctimonious, and elite. And we want his blood. This demonization of Tejpal,
thus, is a result of a petty, middle class, fettered conscience; wherein, we
forget to (or choose not to) see that he, like other predatory men, is human,
and must be held accountable for his crimes. For, as Nivedita Menon writes:
“Men in the workplace need to know this now, and with certainty, – their
sexualized behaviour is not charming or harmless, but a criminal offence.”
Having
said that, I do not think that Tejpal – despite his efforts, his “blood, toil,
tears and sweat” – is reducible to Tehelka and nor the magazine
to him; Tehelka’s journalism is the credit of dozens of
hard-working journalists – men and women – who certainly, to a degree, embody
the glorification Tejpal makes of the magazine. And it’s precisely their faith,
and the faith of its readers, that is at stake here – if not entirely betrayed.
Perhaps, Tejpal’s glorification of Tehelka is actually a
desperate plea for the law of function impartially and without biases; of the
magazine upholding the principles upon which it was founded, by seeing that Tejpal
faces the full force of the law – something, which the people crititcised
by Tehelka, have escaped. Or perhaps, it is sheer
arrogance, an indefensible and utterly shameful justification of patriarchal
power in the sexualised workplace. We cannot know for sure; and must, unlike
blood-thirsty trolls on social media, wait for our courts and legal machinery
decide the same (of course, the legal machinery is something that itself is
deeply embedded in the patriarchal moral-political economy).
There is, as I
mentioned in the beginning, an uncanny similarity in the overarching narrative
of the Tehelka case, and the Saheb stalking case. Both cases
are models of patriarchal moral-political economies: they rest on a gross abuse
of power (a patriarchal power-space, it must be remembered), and both cases are
(apparently) shying away from legal intervention. Furthermore, there is the
regressive assumption that for women to be “protected” (ironically, by and
against patriarchal forms of violence), they must submit to patriarchal
controls, and forfeit any agency they have. In the Saheb case, the woman’s
agency is completely overtaken and appropriated by her father and the masculine
state: the father wrote to the National Commission of Women makes no
mention of the alleged “threats” his daughter needs protection from; and Arun
Jaitley, in a spectacularly silly move, said that “security and protection are not snooping”.
Similarly,
by trying to cover up Tejpal’s alleged sexual harassment, Shoma Chaudhury
is doing more harm than good; to Tehelka, and to the larger
question about women’s movement, and its critiques of patriarchy. Regrettably,
Chaudhury, who once appeared on a debate in The Outsider, where she
spoke for the motion that ‘India is no country for women’, and has
herself written critical pieces on women’s rights, and violence against women
(her coverage of the Arushi Case is most prominent), comes awfully close to
what I have argued is the Janus-faced nature of moral-political economies
(something we can describe as Jaitley’s comments as). The burden,
unfortunately, has befallen on her. As a woman, and especially under these
circumstances, I can imagine that things indeed must be very, very hard for
her. But this is a chance for her to subvert and challenge the patriarchal moral-political
economy – one so pervasive in her own organisation.
Yes, Tehelka and
other organisations (media and otherwise) need to implement
Vishakha Guidelines; and, more importantly, the criminal proceedings against
Tejpal (and the Modi government) must and should proceed, but not in a logic of
protectionism to the women in question. That further robs them of agency, and
reasserts the perverted nature of patriarchies. They – and the Tehelka journalist
more so – need to act on their own free will, free of compulsions, compromises,
and coercion [Read Amba Salekar's argument on the same; however, it should also be noted that insofar are we are talking about agency and implementation of law, there are many constraints on the former by the latter: see Postscript].
At
the same time, it is extremely imperative that the responsible parties do not
go away unpunished. The legal complications in both cases, thanks to my own
limitations, are lost on me [See Postscript]. But as sociologist Dipankar Gupta puts it, there is a need to
differentiate between the moral and the ethical; the former, he argues, is
dangerous because it is personal, ambiguous and thus, dangerous – which is how
both Tejpal’s and the Modi government’s actions can be defined as. Hence, he argues for: public ethics replacing private
morality; transparency and accountability in public behaviour; and trust in
institutions replacing trust in people. However complex and contradictory this
may seem, and in spite of my own criticisms of it, the need for such
intervention is imperative.
Patriarchy
doesn’t make monsters out of men and women; it exists because we see it as
normal, because we fail to see the ways in which it harms human beings. This
failure – to stand up to, and against, patriarchy; to rubbish atonement, and
demand impartial justice; to see violence for what it is – is the fatal flaw. We cannot fall back on our “inordinate capacity to forgive sinners”, “who
turn a new leaf”. It is that flaw that we must perpetually
struggle against. And I, for one, do hope that Shoma Chaudhury senses this as
well. For, it’s not just Tehelka’s credibility, the faith of
its readers, or even the question of justice for the journalist, that is at
stake here; it is a larger danger of a feminist question failing itself, and
its politics.
Postscript: There’s
two additional points I would like to add on. First concerns the question of
agency. According to the Vishakha Guidelines, if sexual harassment does occur
and:
“Where such conduct amounts to a specific offence under the Indian Penal Code or under any other law, the employer shall initiate appropriate action in accordance with law by making a complaint with the appropriate authority.”
The prerogative, therefore, was on Chaudhury to register an FIR against
Tejpal, and not address the grievances of her colleague. The
notion of agency – of the woman filing the complaint on her own, as many,
including I, have argued – is compounded. Thus, when we do talk about the law functioning impartially, there are already, by that virtue, constraints on the operation of that agency.
Secondly,
since the publication of this post, many ugly details have come out about the
nature of the crime, and more shockingly so about Tehelka’s consistent
failures of addressing the crime in question; more so, several journalists and
editors have also resigned from their respective posts in the
magazine. As of now, 25th of November, 2013, the Tehelka journalist
in question has given her resignation
letter. She has also alleged that Tejpal’s family members have
intimidated her. She writes that despite Tehelka “defending
the rights of women… [and speaking] harshly against the culture of victim
blaming, tactical emotional intimidation and character assassination of
those who dare to speak out against sexual violence”, and now that she is the
victim to such a crime, she is:
“…shattered to find the Editor-in-Chief of Tehelka [Tejpal], and you – in your capacity as Managing Editor – resorting to precisely these tactics of intimidation, character assassination and slander.”
It
would, therefore, appear that whatever cautious arguments I have made above
concerning Tehelka, thanks to this gross lack of concern and
victimisation of the journalist, now stand discredited. For, as the journalist
writes, it is not just Tejpal who has failed her as an
employer, “but Tehelka that has failed women, employees,
journalists and feminists collectively.” I am left with a bitter,
nauseating aftertaste. This is the end of Tehelka as we’ve know
it. I might still have great respect for their coverage of certain issues in
the past, but clearly, I do not anticipate a bright future for it. And for that
that, shame on you, Shoma Chaudhury; and shame on you, Tarun Tejpal.
Acknowledgements: To Shubhra, for the discussions that never (and,
hopefully, should never) end. And to Uday Chandra, for bringing about the
complexities of agency in this context, and even otherwise.
