On Sunday, as a new parliament building was being inaugurated in New Delhi, wrestlers protesting against sexual harassment were dragged, manhandled and detained by the police, preventing them from marching to parliament for a “Mahila Samman Mahapanchayat”.
The decorated medallist women wrestlers have been protesting since January 2023, when they went public with grave allegations of sexual harassment by the chief of the Wrestling Federation of India, a BJP MP. They were met with denial, silence, and little to no action by the authorities. The wrestlers have been sitting in protest at Jantar Mantar, at the height of the Delhi summer, demanding redressal of their grievances, accountability and the arrest of the WFI chief. The WFI has denied the allegations, dismissing them as politically motivated. It was only after the wrestlers moved the Supreme Court that an FIR, the first step in a criminal investigation, was filed. The wrestlers have also pointed out the hypocrisy of a government that campaigns to “save daughters” but remains silent and unresponsive to Olympic athletes protesting against sexual harassment.
The state’s response to the wrestlers’ allegations reflects the “architecture of intimidation” women in India commonly face when they report sexual assault at the workplace, which includes denial, silencing, harassment and even defamation cases.
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Sexual harassment of women at the workplace is a persistent social problem that continues to reveal itself in disturbing new forms. Every occurrence of this problem serves to delegitimise the work that women do and is a testament to the hollowness of the equality that we are promised and entitled to.
Sixteen years after the Supreme Court judgment in Vishaka and Others vs State of Rajasthan & Others, which laid down guidelines to prevent and remedy sexual assault at the workplace, Parliament passed the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, or POSH Act. The year 2023 marks a decade since the passage of the POSH Act, yet, out of 30 sporting federations in India, 16 have not constituted internal complaints committees mandated under the act, where women can make complaints of sexual harassment. Noting this deplorable fact, the Supreme Court recently issued guidelines to the central and state governments “to undertake a time-bound exercise to verify whether all the concerned ministries, departments, government organisations, authorities, public sector undertakings, institutions, bodies, etc, have constituted ICCs/LCs/ICs”. All public institutions must comply with these guidelines, as well as the letter and spirit of the POSH Act.
Laws on sexual harassment attempt to provide an important countermeasure to a culture of impunity. Such laws recognise the wide range of actions that count as sexual assault. They also recognise the power dynamics inherent in sexual assault at the workplace and take into account the delay in making complaints. For example, a 2010 judgment by the Delhi high court – cited in a handbook on preventing sexual assault at the workplace by the ministry of women and child development – endorsed the view that sexual harassment is a subjective experience, and allegations should be taken with a full “… appreciation of the social setting or the underlying threat of violence that a woman may perceive”.
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The unwillingness to proactively implement these laws – in letter and spirit – is a form of institutional betrayal. Institutional betrayal is the idea that when complainants face violence, the institutions they depend on exacerbate the detrimental impacts by failing to provide remedies for harms they experience. What is the antidote to this? Perhaps “institutional courage”, a term coined by the psychologist Jennifer Freyd, defined as the “institution’s commitment to seek the truth and engage in moral action, despite unpleasantness, risk and short-term cost. It is a pledge to protect and care for those who depend on the institution.”
Indians have won 21 individual Olympic medals since Independence, six of which are in wrestling. This is not to say that only women who receive medals deserve to be believed or deserve access to remedies; this is our constitutional guarantee. What they are facing today is institutional betrayal. As the country’s elected leaders came together to celebrate a new parliament building in a spectacle of democracy, the spirit of democracy itself had been hollowed out by the lack of response to cries of sexual harassment, and to protests.
It has taken exceptional courage and strength for the wrestlers to place their legitimacy, career, and life on the line and speak out about sexual harassment. The courage and endurance exhibited by them is inspirational. It is also an opportunity for the government to show institutional courage and its commitment to the rights of women. The Union government must expeditiously address the allegations made by women wrestlers, end the culture of impunity of perpetrators of such violence and by following legal procedure in letter and spirit, affirm women’s dignity and equality.
Ria Singh Sawhney and Praavita Kashyap are Delhi-based lawyers, who work on public-interest cases.