It has taken four months of protests, formation of a committee and filing of a case in the Supreme Court for the Delhi Police to register two First Information Reports (FIRs) against the Wrestling Federation of India chief. Seven women wrestlers, one of whom is a minor and many of them highly decorated sportspersons, have accused the federation boss of sexual harassment and exploitation. The race to register an FIR, which is the first step in recording the likelihood of a crime having been committed, runs frazzled by the government around this possibility, and attempts to shame victims for ‘indiscipline’ Textbook on the workplace There are reactions of sexual harassment, all these cases make reporting a difficult task.
Delay, shame and silence are among the tools patriarchal societies and institutions use to keep complaints of sexual assault under wraps. Time and again, in anecdotes, reports and studies, it emerges that women who try to report it are told that their experiences did not amount to harassment, that women before them had faced the same and worse. that they shouldn’t ‘draw attention’ to themselves, that they should just ‘quietly sort things out,’ or that they shouldn’t be ‘troublemakers’. We are all complicit in silencing victims, which creates a safe haven for criminals. It is highly improbable that these players, some of whom are minors, did not make complaints of harassment and abuse before hitting the headlines. He was probably not heard. And now, they are in a public place, trying to draw attention to themselves – which is seen as very immodest for women in India at large. Women are expected to ‘adjust’ and ‘bear it’, not go public to demand justice.
There is always a tipping point, a point when anger, grief and disillusionment come together and compel people to act by inertia. It is never easy to talk about sexual assault because victims are shamed, and going through the judicial process is painful to re-live the violence. Therefore, speaking in public is even more difficult. In some ways, the protest is similar to the protest in 2004 by eight women from Manipur who stripped outside the Kangla Fort in Imphal to protest the brutal killing of Manorama Thangjam after she was taken into custody by the army. The circumstances may be different, but the underlying anger is the same. Importantly, it is a protest against political power that dwarfs those who suffer extreme injustice. In January, the players kept their protest non-political, and agreed to back down when assured of action – they tried to ‘resolve things quietly’ and ‘adjust’, as ‘Good girls’ are expected to do. But he confronted those in power as usual – a mixture of silence and condemnation. It is the asymmetry of power within the patriarchal structure that allows injustice to persist. This kind of imbalance runs deep in the world of sports. Selectors and administrators virtually rule over young players and can make or break careers; Coaches are often mentors whose guidance is valued. Reporting mechanisms and redressal processes are necessary but not sufficient to break the silence on gross abuse of authority. To end this menace, we need power shared equally by all genders. Women should have a greater number of leadership and decision-making roles in all fields and sectors, so that it is not only men—even if some women are in power with invisible limits—who speak for them, decide for them And provide gender justice for them.
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