Akoijam termed the allegations a political witch hunt, refused to step down as MP, and vowed to clear his name through the legal process. Bimol Akoijam, Congress Member of Parliament from Manipur, was dismissed from his academic position at Jawaharlal Nehru University on October 9 after an internal probe found him guilty of sexual harassment charges brought by at least 11 women students.
The Congress party’s stand in this regard is steeped in double standards. Singh declined to resign as MP, insisting that he was innocent and the charges were – you guessed it – politically motivated. And the BJP ignored calls for his resignation, the way Congress has in the case of Akoijam (in August this year, a lower court in Delhi acquitted Singh of sexual harassment charges, but four women wrestlers have filed a legal challenge against the decision). This is precisely why charges of sexual harassment must be treated with utmost gravity – since it usually takes a lot for a woman to go public with them.
Because the Delhi police were not even filing an FIR against the powerful MP from Uttar Pradesh, the Congress railed against the BJP government at the Centre, saying that it was trying to shield Singh, and supported the women wrestlers who took to the streets and protested for months. Because of patriarchy’s grip on power structures, but also because even today, many women hesitate to complain about the predatory behaviour of influential men, the laws against sexual harassment in the workplace and the institutional mechanisms for addressing complaints have been hard-won not only. Because they are afraid of being stigmatised and facing blowbacks in their careers, they hesitate.
Public memory is short, of course, but as recently as 2023, it went all guns blazing with its demand for the resignation of Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, then BJP MP and chief of the Wrestling Federation of India, after six women wrestlers accused him of being a habitual sexual harasser and molester. Needless to say, now the roles have been reversed, and it is the BJP that is clamouring for Akoijam’s scalp, quite forgetting its own nonchalance when Singh was similarly accused in 2023.
Recently, senior Supreme Court advocate Indira Jaisingh said that several women judges privately admit to having been sexually harassed by their male counterparts, but that they prefer to remain silent rather than call out the offenders.
Unfortunately, the Congress’s response to the charges against Akoijam is also exactly that which one might expect from the playbook of a cynical political body – quick to demand resignations in case of allegations of sexual harassment against its opponents, and equally quick to resort to diversionary arguments when similar accusations are levelled against one of its own. India’s political establishment cannot afford to remain outside the ambit of this trend. A politician who faces charges of sexual harassment from multiple women cannot be permitted to remain in public office, citing the excuse that the legal probe against him has not been concluded, as yet. Let him step aside until he is exonerated. That is the right and honourable way. Of course, one realises that honour is not a quality that is greatly valued amongst India’s political class. But a party such as the Congress, which claims to hold itself to loftier standards of ideals than those of its opponents, begins to sound hollow and inauthentic when it seems unbothered about letting an alleged sexual offender continue to represent it in Parliament.
“If he is guilty, hang him,” said Congress spokesperson Renuka Chowdhury in a television interview, making it clear that the party did not give much credence to the sexual harassment charges against Akoijam, or indeed, the findings of JNU’s internal committee, and was happy to let him continue as MP until and unless a court of law pronounced a definitive verdict of guilt on him.
