Bengal’s women theatre workers set up group against sexual harassment

Women theatre workers in West Bengal have created a forum against sexual harassment in theatre spaces.
| Photo Credit: Instagram/@surokkha.istehar

Women theatre workers in West Bengal have created a forum against sexual harassment in theatre spaces, calling it Surokkha Istehar (‘Safety Pamphlet’), which intends to provide legal and mental health support to sexual abuse survivors in theatre spaces, and increase awareness about abuse.

​On Tuesday evening, the newly formed 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 said.

“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 said.

Such reinstatement of offenders, according to Titas Samuho of Surokkha Istehar, sent just one message to the survivors and the people of marginalised gender and identities — that their safety does not 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, told The Hindu.

The memorandum, also signed by a large number of professors and students apart from theatre people, demanded immediate formation of an Internal Committee if it was not in existence already. The group also wanted to be informed about the plans and programmes of the Akademi it intended to take up to prevent sexual offences and ensure safety of women, marginalised people, minors and children in theatre spaces across 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, said.