Bollywood actress Tanushree Dutta recently
issued a statement through her media team, expressing her views and
concern on the issue of harassment. Dutta alleged that a complainant who
comes forth with a sexual harassment case is not taken 'seriously' in India.
She also stressed the importance of education on the issue and how things
should be changed to make the world a safer place for women.
Here
is the complete statement that was by Tanushree Dutta:
Many people in our country do not
understand the meaning of sexual harassment or for that matter the meaning of
the word "harassment" or perhaps they just pretend not to. Harassment
means mentally torturing someone on the premise or pretext of asking sexual
favours, trying to pressure a woman to do something against her will or out of
her comfort zone by using underhanded tactics, by force, by manipulation or by
threats. Outraging her modesty by Uncomfortable advances, sleazy comments,
verbal abuse and uncomfortable physical touch where the woman is not willing is
also in the purview of sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is qualified as a
separate category in law apart from abuse, assault, rape and molestation and is
also a punishable offence as serious as the other offences.
This kind of information needs to be taught in schools,
colleges, in companies, hiring departments of various industries as well as
part of a public service initiative so that people can be aware of their rights
and responsibilities. Also the Police force, law and judiciary need to be given
a master class on harassment laws as those guys are the primary investigative
agencies and very often they mix harassment with abuse, assault and rape and
hence unable to correlate the evidence when its provided to them. Very often a
harassment complainant is not taken seriously in India although eve-teasing and
unwarranted misbehaviour towards women/feminity has been rampant across the
country according to several psychological studies and reports. This needs to
be taken note of too.
Also, the use of terminology callously without
understanding the meaning and ascribing more heinous offences to it makes it
plausible for it to be denied and thus dismissed. This is the sad and sorry
state of awareness about harassment laws in our country and hence clever creepy
people continue to thrive despite rising protests as they always pretend
indifference, ignorance or twist words to dismiss matters when confronted. So
the key is to verbalize accurately with clarity the nature of the offence while
confronting these people. Therefore a mass initiative on creating awareness on
harassment laws will curb the incidence of crimes against women and children in
our country. They say when you throw light on darkness the darkness slowly
dissolves. The police force, as well as the judiciary, needs to be schooled and
sensitized on this.
I suggest the women politicians of our time take up this
issue seriously with the powers that be and actively enforce some educative and
corrective measures en masse. In layman's terms teach the public what kind of
behaviour tantamount to misbehaviour and harassment since clearly most of these
guys who indulge in this kind of behaviour have not been brought up well by
their parents and need extra schooling on the concept of consent, personal
space and civilized behaviour. Also, there should be a legal blanket ban on the
glorification of such behaviour in popular media.
If these measures are implemented then that would be an
active step towards reforming the Midset of a nation that is reeling under the
influence of a very negative kind of oppression, one that is surely affecting
future generations in many ways.
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