- Geeta Pandey
- BBC News, Delhi
7 hours
image source, Getty Images
A university council met her and asked for explanations for some stories that she had published two months before starting as a professor.
A leading private university in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta) has been embroiled in a nasty controversy in recent months.
A former assistant professor at St Xavier’s University told the BBC she was forced to quit her job for sharing her bikini photos on Instagram, an allegation the academic center has denied.
The 31-year-old woman, who asked not to be named, accused university officials of “harassment sexual” and says that “she was bullied, intimidationouchin Omet to moral vigilance”.
She also filed a police complaint and sent a legal notice to the institution, which responded by accusing her of defamation and demanding 990 million rupees (regarding $2.4 million) in compensation.
“They took me to an interrogation room”
The assistant professor says that she joined the faculty on August 9, 2021 to teach English in undergraduate and graduate classes.
Two months later, it was summoned to the rector’s office for a meeting.
She was “led into an interrogation room” where she was questioned by a committee consisting of Vice-Chancellor Felix Raj, Secretary Ashish Mitra and five women.
He was informed that there was a complaint once morest him by the father of a first-year male undergraduate student.
image source, Getty Images
They asked her if she didn’t think that, as a woman, her photographs were questionable and if her parents had seen it.
“The Chancellor said that this father had found his son looking at my photos on Instagram where I was wearing only my underwear. He said they were sexually explicit and requested the university to spare his son from such vulgarity.”
Board members circulated a piece of paper with “five-six photographs” and asked him to confirm that they were his.
“Have your parents seen these photos?”
The photographs, in which he wore a two-piece swimsuit, they were selfies taken in her room, He says. He shared them as ‘stories’ de Instagram, which implies that they disappeared 24 hours later.
The board of teachers did not accept his explanation: the photos were published on June 13, 2021, almost two months before he joined the university and before he accepted his students’ requests to follow his account, which is private.
“I was shocked. When I saw the photos I had a panic attack, it seemed surreal that my personal photographs were shared without my consent,” said the teacher.
“I mightn’t bear to look at my own photos, the way they were presented to me and the conversation around them made me think they were vulgar. I realized that they were doing me gaslightingI started to feel sabotaged.”
“They asked me why I did it. That if, as a woman, I didn’t think it was questionable. If, as a teacher, I didn’t think that it was my duty to society to behave appropriately. “Don’t you know that women have a dress code?” bill.
image source, Getty Images
The teacher says that she wrote a letter of apology, but that she was bullied and ended up resigning.
“They told me that I was bringing disrepute and shame to the university. They asked me if my parents were on Instagram and if they had seen those photos. I felt nauseous and was in shock“.
He was asked to return the next day with a written report.
The apology and the “forced resignation”
The teacher returned to the principal’s office the next day and made an apology “written on the advice of some faculty members that included the head of the gender unit,” a former classmate and assistant professor who was also a member of the panel that had questioned her.
“If my images were interpreted in a way that might tarnish the reputation of the university, then I am sorry,” he wrote.
It was “a very unpleasant experience” said.
He hoped the matter would end there, but the rector told him that the board “had unanimously recommended his dismissal.”
“He said the photographs were already viral, that most of the students had seen them, that they would not take me seriously and that the parents would complain. And that it would be better for me to resign voluntarily.”
If not, he told him that “he would go to prison, because the father (of the student who saw the photo) wanted to file a police complaint.” In that case, her rector told her, she would be arrested.
“I felt cornered, and I resigned,” argues.
“But I also felt very angry and I sought legal advice. They downloaded my photos, took screenshots and shared them without my consent. So my lawyer suggested that he file a sexual harassment complaint with the cybercrime police,” he says.
“We are not asking you to resign”
Father Felix Raj, the university’s vice-chancellor, declined to comment on whether the committee had recommended his dismissal, but denied all allegations once morest him and the university.
“We are a sacred institution of learning and knowledge. As your elder and head of the university, I told him no should posting those photos.
image source, Getty Images
The university students have petitioned for clarification of what happened and say that the measure is “regressive.”
Still, he says, “he didn’t force her to quit and she left of her own free will.”
“She delivered a letter of apology on October 8 (2021). We accepted it. I thought it was a nice gesture. But then she sent her resignation on October 25.”
He adds that “they don’t hold a grudge once morest him” and that in college they were “very good to her”.
When asked regarding the professor’s claim that the photos were not available on her Instagram account following she joined the university and the accusation that a faculty member was sabotaging her, Father Happy Raj said he “wasn’t tech-savvy”.
“A Savage Form of Moral Policing”
The action once morest the teacher has been criticized by many students and alumni for being “regressive”.
A change.org petition, started by former university student Gaurav Banerjee and addressed to the West Bengal State Minister of Education, has received more than 25,000 signatures.
Banerjee told the BBC that she wants the university to apologize to the professor and asks the government to take disciplinary action once morest the committee for their high-handed behaviour.
“I’m glad that, like me, a lot of people are horrified that the university might do something like this”held.
Recently, dozens of university students held a silent protest.
“We found out regarding this savage form of moral vigilance to which she has been subjected one of our teachers,” one of the participants told me.
“It’s completely unacceptable. Why should anyone care regarding what I’m doing in my private space? Our personal space should be inviolable,” he said.
“It is frightening that the members of the committee, which included five women, did not think that this was moral vigilance,” he added.
The teacher said she was “overwhelmed by all the support and grateful.”
“After months of feeling bad, I feel that people see it because of the ridiculousness of the situation”.
The right to privacy and self-expression, he maintains, is inviolable and granted to us by the Indian constitution and this “surveillance” has extended beyond the workplace.
“My firm belief is that I have done nothing wrong. I may not win this, but for me it is an important fight,” he said.
image source, Getty Images
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