The Institutionalised Practice of Oppression: The Curious Case of Forced Resignation at St. Xavier's University, Kolkata

What unfurled as a horrifying event was an institutionalised suppression of bodily autonomy, violation of private rights and coercion at the hands of a patriarchal administration, leading to forced resignation of a female Assistant Professor at the prestigious Jesuit run St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata. In her interviews, she mentions how on a certain morning in October last year, she was summoned to the University without any prior intimation of the subject of the meeting with the Vice Chancellor of the University. She was questioned over her private Instagram pictures, apparently in a swimsuit that was uploaded much earlier than she had joined the institution. What is more staggering is that her profile was private, and therefore the Vice-Chancellor’s claim of questioning her on the basis of a complaint by the guardian of a first year student of her class, seems strange, malafide and misdirected by all means and how the pictures could be accessed by someone not in her connection raises serious questions on the issue of cyber-privacy and the violation thereof.

She felt every emotion sitting at the Kangaroo Court- “shame, horror, revulsion”, as she herself describes. The meeting presided over by the Vice-Chancellor and other Senior Officials, including her own departmental colleague and head of the Gender Cell of the University saw the distribution of prints of her photos, without her consent among each other to raise the concern that these could bring down the reputation of the institution as they were “objectionable”. None of the female members stood in her support which brings forth yet another question- Is there any unity in the workplace against unethical moral policing? Is the silence of the colleagues justified in the face of such a humiliating affair?

She describes how the entire series of events that resulted in her frailing mental health, her inability to cope with personal and financial crises over the period of time. Forcing someone to resign at gun-point, where she was threatened to be complained against on criminal charges must be seen as flexing of the authoritarianism and questions the kind of freedom that teachers enjoy in the higher echelons of Academic spaces. The legal representative of the University had demanded a sum of 99 crores as damages for having spoken up against the authorities and after the incident gained support from all quarters in the recent weeks. This is also in response to the Legal notice sent by the Professor in March 2022 asking the University authorities to tender an unconditional apology and reinstate her service. The Assistant Professor had filed complaints at the Jadavpur Police Station that had registered the case under Section 354(c) (voyeurism)and Section 509 ( outrage of modesty).

Thousands of people from the student community, Academia and Civil Society have come out in support of the Assistant Professor and have called out the extremely regressive behaviour of the University officials, while questioning the Guardian who had first complained on discovering his adult boy looking at the pictures. These is a very disheartening incident for the entire Civil Society that is slowly learning the ethics of sensitisation, and are becoming aware of bodily autonomy of people and the idea of agency. Also, this exposed various aspects of staffroom hegemony, power politics and the demerits of conservative workplace that silences dissent and diverts questions against the order in the name of disciplining the stakeholders of the institutions that includes both the teachers and the students. There is no right time to start questioning the odds, this is the time.