Tehelka case: How we lost the middle ground

By T. Kadam 1. The progressive website Kafila carries an analysis of events thus far in the Tehelka sexual assault case. It is being shared on social media as the final word in the matter, and it is quite convincing. It aims to establish Tarun Tejpal’s guilt and deceit, and Shoma Chaudhury’s negligence and hypocrisy over the past week: It is now clear why Tejpal and Chaudhury refused to use the term sexual assault in either his email to the complainant or her email explaining his recusal to the office at large: they were clearly aware that acknowledgment of what had actually transpired in the elevator constituted a serious criminal offense under the law. And it does so by setting out facts, and revealing the contradictions and retractions made by the two editors. It nears its conclusion on some tough questions, using Tejpal’s own words: Surely a description of an incident cannot both be “mendacious in its suggestion of non-consensus”, and also “clear reluctance” at the same time? Surely it cannot be “incredibly fleeting” and also stretched across “two occasions”? If Mr. Tejpal now insists her version is a “complete lie”, why then did he hold himself “first and last accountable for an unconscionable lapse” in his official apology? Mr. Tejpal seems to subscribe to the Humpty-Dumpty school of semantics: a word means exactly what he wants it to mean, neither more nor less. The polar opposition in Tejpal’s claims, between the start and the end of the week, seems ludicrous. It seems to clinch his guilt. But then, if you think about it, it may not be that ludicrous at all. 2. Let’s follow Kafila’s example and summarise the sequence of events and statements. They have been studiously, almost scholastically, recorded by the internet at large. Skip to the next section if you’re familiar with them already. [caption id=“attachment_1259363” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] On Monday last week, a journalist at the news-weekly Tehelka sent a letter of complaint to her immediate superior, the Managing Editor, Shoma Chaudhury, alleging a case of sexual assault by the Editor-in-Chief, Tarun Tejpal, at the THinK conference the previous week. In her original complaint, the journalist alleged that Tejpal “sexually assaulted” her; she also uses the word “molested”. Following the email was a detailed testimony of the alleged assault and its surrounding events. She described Tejpal as “someone I had so deeply respected and admired for so many years”. She did not resign her position, but set out the terms of her justice—that Tehelka constitute an anti-sexual-harassment cell as per the law, and further: At the very least, I will need a written apology from Mr Tejpal and an acknowledgement of the same to be circulated through the organization. An “unconditional apology”, such as it is, (enough has been said about its deficits) was forthcoming on Tuesday afternoon. Tejpal conceded his error, in vague and slippery terms: he expressed contrition at attempting “a sexual liaison … despite your clear reluctance”, “a colossal lapse” based on “an inherent disbalance of power in my position as editor-in-chief and you as an employee”. His email ends with him urging the journalist not to quit her job at Tehelka, guaranteeing her “the space to do your work proudly and freely”. His lame, evasive effort at an apology was rejected by the journalist the next morning. She caught Tejpal out on his fabrication of an improbable, legalistic disclaimer; as well as his calling “an attempt” at “a sexual liaison” what she saw as “sexual assault” and “molestation”. She terminated any further direct correspondence with him. The pace picked up. By mid-afternoon, the Managing Editor met a group of concerned employees, representing their colleague, and announced that Tejpal would be stepping down as Editor-in-Chief. In the early evening, Chaudhury sent an email that carried a message from Tejpal announcing his “recusal” for six months. That’s when it exploded. The email containing Tejpal’s pompous elegy was forward out of the staff circle to other journalists. Twitter began its fission chain-reaction, and thereafter every piece of the correspondence began to come out, fast and furious. As the case reared up in the public eye, critical mistakes were made. First, Shoma Chaudhury described the case as an “internal matter”, and claimed the complainant was “satisfied”. The journalist made it known that she was emphatically not satisfied. Second, Chaudhury dithered before announcing the formation of a sexual harassment hearing, as requested by the journalist and required by a landmark ruling of the Supreme Court. By the time the Managing Editor did announce a formal complaints committee—just over 24 hours after the first leak—Twitter and TV had gone critical, and she was far behind the general script. The third mistake was the leak of the journalist’s private testimony about the assault, which no values of civilisation could hold back from Twitter and mainstream news sites. Tweeters and reporters published intimate details against the journalist’s pleas and defended their indiscretion by saying that the intimate details qualified the assault as not just molestation, but rape. The Goan police, rising to the alarm-bell of that word, initiated an investigation on suo motu terms. Until this point, and now with growing intensity, the journalist and her allies protested that her testimony was private, and that it was not yet their preference to pursue a criminal case. Kavita Krishnan, the fierce face of the year’s activism against sexual-violence, who was in touch with the journalist, wrote on Facebook: The complainant in the #Tejpal case is neither isolated nor pressurised… If she decides that a properly constituted Vishakha enquiry is what she wants, keeping the FIR option open for later, we should respect that decision. This required them to thrash through difficult legal counter-arguments, to the effect that not filing an FIR was not at their discretion. The very feminist campaigners who had spent the year struggling against the public’s and police’s apathy, now faced a public and police screaming for criminal justice, while the feminists—even Kavita Krishnan herself—hedged against it. After the FIR was filed, the two sides—who had seemed close to conciliation, if never agreed—flew apart. Tejpal changed his position dramatically, calling the complaint “a totally mendacious account of what has happened, in its details, in its tonalities, in its very suggestion of non-consensus”. His leaked message to his friends confirmed his version: he said he had apologised only “out of an attempt to preserve the girl’s dignity and on Shoma’s adamantine feminist-principle insistence”, whereas the situation had in fact been “an incredibly fleeting, totally consensual encounter of less than a minute in a lift”, misrepresented in “a total lie”. In the opposing trenches, the journalist agreed to cooperate with the police, and her allies began to publicly call the incident a “rape”—a word she had never used in her initial complaint. Shoma Chaudhury, attempting desperately to mediate, under searing media skepticism, ran round and round: the journalist never used the word “rape”, Chaudhury said, so Chaudhury hadn’t reported it. Yet the description of the assault, if true, would be rape; yet Chaudhury hadn’t reported it. A precious, sensitive middle ground that had existed—in which the journalist said molestation, not rape; and the editor said reluctance, not consent— vanished in a mushroom cloud. 3. Kafila’s conclusion: The encounter was either consensual or coerced. Tejpal is either innocent or guilty of rape. What scenario, besides guilt, could be indicated by his wild reversals? In fact, something else was indicated: a third scenario, in which both the journalist and the editor are conscious of a nuanced truth, and maybe, inclined to a nuanced justice. To the journalist, the nuanced justice might not mean jail for her boss and mentor. If she had long admired him and shared a close professional relationship with him, but found herself assaulted, she might choose to call his actions “molestation”. If she knew the law well, as a female reporter at Tehelka would at the end of 2013, she would know that it technically met a definition of “rape”. She would be aware of the sheer-drop of sentencing (ten years to life) that that implied. She might choose other words, and request a hearing of a kind envisaged by a court 15 years ago. To the editor, the nuanced truth would allow him to confess to coercion. In the context of a private reckoning, even a formal hearing within the company, without a risk of jail, he might admit sorrow, guilt and crime. If the truth was a nuanced truth—if—they could have sought a nuanced justice. But with an FIR forced on the situation from outside, as it was, it could only explode. The two accounts, neither too far from a middle-ground, would blast apart. The journalist, who had until the very end declined to go to the police, would now claim the editor’s guilt. “Molestation” would become “rape”, because the claim of digital penetration would require it, automatically. The alternative would be to say she had “lied”. Her allies, though supporting her original choice, would “try to build her courage to take that step” toward criminal prosecution, and eventually she would yield. In her public statement, she would concede that not she, but the law must frame the crime, and “in this case, the law is clear: what Mr. Tejpal did to me falls within the legal definition of rape.” At his end, the editor couldn’t claim anything less than total innocence, because any step closer to the truth would put him straight in handcuffs. Ten years to life. His legal team, using invidious forensics, would start to question her behaviour, her claim that she was “hysterical” or “destroyed” after the event. In his account, “clear reluctance” would become “consent”; his atonement would swing over to her mendacity. To do anything else could mean his spending most of his remaining life in jail. The “tonalities” would change. He is pursued in one direction by a berserk media, she is led in the other by political conviction. Their accounts polarise altogether. Soon, the memory that there had been any middle-ground at all, would be one that the journalist and the editor, and everyone around them, would do everything in their power to suppress. T. Kadam is a freelance writer