Sexual harassment charges at Kalakshetra to be probed: DGP
Tamil Nadu police has assured an investigation of the sexual harassment accusations against a faculty in the Kalakshetra Foundation in Chennai, after a National Commission of Women (NCW) directive seeking a report.
Chennai: Police will investigate the sexual harassment accusations against a faculty in the Kalakshetra Foundation in Chennai, the state’s Director General of Police (DGP) Sylendra Babu said on Friday, following a National Commission of Women (NCW) directive seeking a report from him on the case.
“I have forwarded it (the NCW letter) to the Chennai police commissioner to conduct an investigation and submit a report to me,” the DGP said.
This comes after the NCW tweeted on Wednesday that they have written to the DGP to file an FIR against the male teacher and Kalakshetra’s director Revathi Ramachandran for allegedly shielding him.
Ramachandran on Thursday met the DGP to submit a copy of the investigations done by their Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) which reportedly found no truth in the allegations.
“She (Ramachandran) said that their ICC has completed an investigation and they found nothing. These are rumours being spread, she said,” said a police officer who did not wish to be named. “The ICC found that they only have a student-teacher relationship. Nobody has given a statement so far that they have been sexually harassed, assaulted. Since it has now come into the public domain, she (Ramachandran) wanted to clarify.”
Ramachandran did not respond to HT’s calls and messages.
The allegations pertain to a faculty of the Rukmini Devi College of Fine Arts under the Kalakshetra Foundation. In anonymous online posts several students had shared experiences of being sexually harassed in trade-off for opportunities to be repertory dancers in Kalakshetra’s famed dance dramas. The accused is powerful enough to give them significant roles and pull them out, the students have said in their social media posts.
Chennai police commissioner Shankar Jiwal will have to first ensure a complaint is filed on the accusations by a student or an alumna of the institution and would be seeking their support in the investigation.
“We need a cause of action first,” said the officer quoted above. “A lot of people are involved in this and we will be enquiring with a few names.”
A similar situation prevailed when #metoo hit Chennai’s private schools where there was an outpour of complaints against teachers, coaches on social media in June 2021. The Chennai police had to coax students to file complaints so an FIR could be filed. More than a dozen accused teachers were arrested.
Kalakshetra founded by Rukmini Devi Arundale in 1936 functions autonomously under the Union ministry of culture. It spreads across 100 acres in Chennai as a learning and performance space for fine arts among which Bharathnatiyam is its most revered and popular form.
“Dancers of Kalakshetra would get precedence to represent India so it is also an aspiration for dancers to be part of the repertory,” said an alumni on condition of anonymity.
The dancer said that those studying for a four-year diploma have usually just passed out of school so they are fairly young in their late teens and early twenties. “So you have the guru-shishya relationship where you have to learn from this person who is also your examiner. You are staying and studying at the institution so there are limited options to ask for help,” the dancer said.
In this case, the issue began when former Kalakshetra director Leela Samson had in a Facebook post last December written about how several students were continuing to face sexual harassment under a teacher who was abusing his position of power. While Samson did not name the alleged perpetrator, she had named survivors. She has since deleted the post.
Jiwal told HT that a complaint has been filed in the Adyar police station on Thursday by one of the women from Kalakshetra against former director Samson for naming her in a Facebook post. “It’s a counter complaint where she has said that she is not a victim and her name has been unnecessarily dragged into this,” Jiwal said. “We will be enquiring both sides. We will call for the ICC committee, look at who they have examined. It will be a fair enquiry. We have zero tolerance in crimes against women and children. And if any offence is revealed during investigations, we will immediately register a case.”
Subsequent to Samson’s post, CAREspaces (Conscientious Artistes Rallying for Ethical Spaces in the Indians Arts Community), a non-profit organisation (NPO), based out of the US, in December 2022 released a statement that they would support survivors and allies in Kalakshetra since many allegations of abuse of power, controlling opportunities for personal gains, and actively neglecting complaints have surfaced.
The NPO formed an anonymous listening space online where they said more than a 100 stories of frustration and fear wee shared by students, faculty, alumni and repertory dancers. The NPO released samples of what the survivors had shared repeatedly: “he kept pursuing her through calls, videos, messages and pictures, I was shunned away when I tried to make a complaint, this is common in the dance field be prepared, subordinates cannot ask questions.”
In February CAREspaces said that these accounts have brought to light “patterns of sexual misconduct, abuses of power, and human rights violations” in an Instagram post. “Current students and employees actively seek reform, but Kalakshetra’s leadership is silencing their voices and severely threatening their livelihoods in retaliation,” they added.
On March 19, Kalakshetra’s administration released a statement on their website that the ICC took up the inquiry suo moto and a report has been filed after a thorough investigation.
“Enquiries were performed with full confidentiality and the committee did not find merit in the allegations,” the statement said. “These allegations were presented as a false movement to help students speak up, they actually contained numerous ragtag word-of-mouth accounts; some of which were decades old. They seemed to be mostly manufactured by vested interests who aimed to sully Kalakshetra Foundation by falsely projecting the institution as an unsafe environment and thus confuse and distress students and staff.”
CAREspaces said they are working on the next course of action.
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