St Stephen's sexual harassment case: Principal Thampu's 'defence' reveals a callous institution hiding behind Vishakha

A student pursuing her PhD at the Delhi University allegedly endured sexual harassment by her guide for one year. When she couldn’t endure it any more, the student claims she turned to the St Stephen’s principal Valson Thampu and filed a verbal complaint against her guide Satish Kumar, a faculty member at the college. The complainant is not a student of St Stephen’s but since her guide is a faculty of the college and she meets him within the college premises, she takes what appears to be the logical step against the accused professor. On 10 December 2014, she verbally complains to the accused’s superior, the principal of St Stephen’s College.  She doesn’t lodge a written complaint, perhaps hoping that things will get better after the principal intervenes in the matter. However, in January this year, she lodged a written complaint, as well. Six months later, she has now filed an FIR to bring the accused to the book. Though the complainant has not named the St Stephen’s principal by name in the FIR, according to media reports, she told the police that Thampu had tried to discourage her and tried to get her to withdraw the complaint. Thampu on his part has offered his version by penning an oped on the NDTV website and by speaking to Indian Express reporters. He claims that he has done everything necessary as per required protocol to address the student’s grievance. His NDTV editorial begins on a sharply accusatory note: “Bad news for those who want to revel at the expense of the College.” It is soon evident that Thampu is far from sympathetic to the complainant. For example, underscoring the fact that the complainant was not a student of St Stephen’s college, he writes: “To begin with - I would like to clarity that the complainant is not a student of St Stephen’s College. She’s a registered research student of Delhi University. Her research guide happens to be a faculty member at Stephen’s. As per regulations of the college, research students who come to labs are required to sign an attendance register which the complainant utterly refused to do.” There is no logical connection between the complainant not signing a register and the case of sexual harassment, and yet Thampu seems to think that nugget of information is important to the case. It is offered instead to invite the reader to draw conclusions about the complainant as someone who is possibly unruly and difficult. [caption id=“attachment_2305222” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  St Stephen’s College. Image courtesy: college website.[/caption] He then explains in great detail as to how the complainant was utterly confused about whether or not to go ahead with a formal complaint on sexual harassment. However, what is clear to anyone reading Thampu’s version of the incident, is the fact that the complainant was never in doubt as to the fact that she has been a victim of sexual harassment. She was only in two minds about the implications of lodging a complaint. The principal’s own version makes it clear that the complainant was anxious about the future of her thesis paper, 80 percent of which has been supervised by the accused. Thampu also says that he checked with the Delhi University authorities and states that there is no provision to replace a PhD supervisor. In other words, the complainant was stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one had, she was being harassed by the supervisor; on the other hand, initiating a formal complaint against him could endanger her academic future. “A few days later the Principal calls a meeting of the complainant and the accused at which both agree on completing the work latest by the end of July 2015.  The complainant does not utter a word about sexual harassment,” Thampu writes. He doesn’t elaborate as to the reason why he summoned such a meeting. And while he is quick to raise questions about the student’s silence, it is clear that he too failed to raise the subject of her complaint. We don’t question Thampu’s right to defend his institution but given that it is a St Stephen’s employee employee who is the accused in this case, he can’t wash his hands off all responsibility. And his own account makes it clear that Thampu dealt with the incident with very little empathy or compassion for the complainant. In the aftermath of the sexual harassment and rape cases at the workplace, there has been a lot of talk about the need to follow the Vishakha guidelines. But as this case makes clear, institutions who follow the letter of the law also often may violate its spirit. “With folded hands, the father pleads with the Principal not to turn this into a complaint of sexual harassment as it could result in a scandal and also affect his daughter’s chance of getting a Ph.D,” Thampu writes about the complainant’s father’s intervention.  The aim here perhaps to show that he can hardly blamed for her and her family’s own fear about consequences. The complainant and her family’s anxiety is hardly surprising.  Thampu’s role here should have been to assuage the family’s fears, and assure them of his full support to ensure there would be no such damage to her future. There is no evidence that he or anyone in the college – at the very least – tried to counsel the complainant and advise her on the best way to pursue the incident. Instead of allaying her fears, the institution presented her with a set of options, asking her to choose and accept whatever consequences that would follow. The St Stephen’s incident and Thampu’s critique of the complainant makes it clear that instituting a committee to probe incidents of sexual harassment is useless when those heading the investigation have no interest in ensuring justice, or in tackling sexual harrassment complaints with the seriousness they deserve. The ICC instead becomes a means to create a hostile and unsympathetic environment for the victim, intended to pressure her into not filing charges. From the Tarun Tejpal case to the recent complaint of sexual harassment against Greenpeace, it is clear that the country’s biggest and most ’liberal’ work spaces have failed its employees when it came to incidents of sexual harassment. The case against Tarun Tejpal picked up momentum when the media turned its attention to it. The case of sexual assault in Greenpeace seems to be proceeding now that there has been a furore against it in the media and social media. In both cases, the internal committees had failed to resolve the issue and the victims had to go public with their story. In the Tehelka’s case via ’leaked’ letters, and in the Greenpeace case, the victim wrote a blog post for a website recounting her experience. It’s as if, the internal complaints committee is set up precisely as a fig leaf for institutional complacency. Thampu complains in his op-ed: “14 January 2015: The complainant does not turn up. The Principal files all relevant papers with the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC).” What does this actually tell us: the complaint went to the ICC over six months back and the college has not come up with a finding. In fact, Dr Karen Gabriel, the presiding officer of the ICC told The Indian Express, with much disdain, “We are bound by the tenets of ensuring the confidentiality of the case, the complainant and the accused. But the case has been leaked out to the media and names are being bandied about loosely.” But without the case making media headlines, there would still be no action on this case. In fact, no one would even know about it. Perhaps that was the exact aim of the ICC all along. Call it the Vishakha guideline to hushing up sexual harassment charges.