Women theatre workers in West Bengal have created a discussion board against sexual harassment in theatre areas.
| Photo Credit: Instagram/@surokkha.istehar
Women theatre workers in West Bengal have created a discussion board against sexual harassment in theatre areas, calling it Surokkha Istehar (‘Safety Pamphlet’), which intends to supply authorized and psychological well being assist to sexual abuse survivors in theatre areas, and enhance consciousness about abuse.
On Tuesday night, the newly fashioned group submitted a memorandum to the Paschim Banga Natya Akademi, a wing of the Department of Information and Cultural Affairs, demanding measures against sexual harassment.
“It is a research-based fact that most survivors of sexual crimes do not lodge police complaints or take legal action. In the few cases that they do, the complainants have to overcome obstacles and social stigma for taking an offender to court, which is another big battle that they have to fight. So once someone comes forward and takes this huge leap, the legal aspect of the whole case becomes very important because everyone, including survivors who have been silent, hopes that justice will be served,” the memorandum mentioned.
“But in recent times, we have seen that on several occasions, theatre directors and actors who are undergoing trials for such crimes have returned to stage and performed in public. We feel that this strongly compromises the security of the complainants and invokes an unsafe feeling within young and vulnerable people in theatre,” it mentioned.
Such reinstatement of offenders, in response to Titas Samuho of Surokkha Istehar, despatched only one message to the survivors and the individuals of marginalised gender and identities — that their security doesn’t matter. “As a theatre worker, gender justice activist and a survivor, I am not okay with it. Many survivors had the same sense of injustice, and the don’t-care behaviour of senior ‘men’ and ‘women’ of theatre on this matter seemed straight-way hooliganism to us,” Ms. Samuho, an alumnus of the National School of Drama and the London International School of Performing Arts, instructed The Hindu.
The memorandum, additionally signed by a lot of professors and college students other than theatre individuals, demanded rapid formation of an Internal Committee if it was not in existence already. The group additionally needed to be told in regards to the plans and programmes of the Akademi it supposed to take up to forestall sexual offences and guarantee security of women, marginalised individuals, minors and youngsters in theatre areas throughout districts.
“The formation of Surokkha Istehar by theatre workers, queer-feminist activists and people in the field of education and entertainment, addresses a less talked about, but extremely crucial, issue of sexual harassment in theatre. Members of Surokkha Istehar have been writing and talking about entrenched practices of harassment in Bengali theatre, even in the most progressive groups. This forum and the memorandum that they have submitted highlights those horrific instances, and calls out the culture of impunity that group theatre, like the rest of society, works with,” Samata Biswas, Professor of English at Kolkata’s Sanskrit College and University, mentioned.