The Dirty Dance: The sexual abuse scandal rocking Kalakshetra, India’s premier classical arts academy
It has been dubbed the #MeToo movement of performing arts in India. And at the centre of it is Kalakshetra, India’s premier cultural institution teaching Bharatanatyam, Carnatic classical music and visual arts. There have been allegations of sexual abuse and harassment against faculty at the Chennai institute in Tamil Nadu – at the Rukmini Devi College of Fine Arts run by Kalakshetra, which is known for teaching Bharatnayam. There have been protests by students and one arrest, as more victims speak up about the alleged harassment.
The allegations and the arrest
The rumbling started in December last year when Bharatnatyam dancer Leela Samson put up a social media post, only to delete it soon after. She was also a former student and the last director of Kalakshetra.
Samson wrote in the post on the “haven of the highest art and contemplation — now turning a blind eye to how young girls are treated”. A male member of the staff is “known to be threatening and molesting (those) who are not yet adults… The said teacher must be brought to book… Rukmini Devi did not build this institution and all her ideals to be abused so,” she alleged.
She also warned parents against sending their daughters to an institute filled with “sexual predators”.
While Samson did not call out any perpetrator, the names of Hari Padman, a known Bharatanatyam dancer and assistant professor at the Rukmini Devi College of Fine Arts, and a student appeared in the comments. Both denied having an inappropriate relationship.
In yet another post which was brought down, another student said that she was forced to discontinue her course in 2019, when a senior faculty member approached her inappropriately with sexual undertones. She reportedly identified Hari Padman as the faculty member and further said she had filed a complaint against him with Kalakshetra’s Internal Complaints Committee (ICC), set up as per the Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH) Act, on 6 February 2023, four years after the alleged incident, according to a report in News18.
Soon, more allegations of abuse started coming in against faculty members and three repertory artists. Students started registering their dissent on social media before it spread to the campus and they boycotted exams.
On March 31, Padman was booked under the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Women Act after a complaint from a former student that he had sent her obscene text messages. That day, he along with the other three accused reportedly performed at a dance festival in Hyderabad.
Days later, Padman was arrested on charges of sexual harassment and criminal intimidation. No police action has been taken against the rest.
At least 100 women from Kalakshetra have now lodged petitions with the Tamil Nadu Women’s Commission, complaining of verbal abuse and sexual harassment by the four faculty members. “Many women said they have faced harassment on the campus since 2008,” AS Kumari, chairperson of the commission said.
More tales of abuse
More students, present and former, have spoken out about their experiences at Kalakshetra. Complaints of sexual harassment are galore and some have even opened up about facing verbal abuse, caste discrimination, and body shaming. Even male students were not spared.
A male student told the BBC that a faculty member sent him offensive messages. “At midnight, he sent me a ‘good night’ message. When I replied, he asked if I was alone and if he could come over. I was shocked. He then asked for a video call so that he could see me ‘fully’. He continued sending lewd messages. I could not handle this, I fell ill,” the pupil said, narrating his ordeal.
A former student from Russia has mailed a complaint to the women’s body alleging that she was sexually harassed by a faculty. She said that she was staying in a hostel and faced harassment from the professor from the sixth month of the course. He used to call her over the phone at the hostel, according to a report in The Hindu.
The teacher touched her inappropriately when he called her to his house after 8 pm for a dance lesson. He threatened that he would give her poor marks in an internal exam if she did not “adjust”.
Several students have revealed that they complained to the college administration but it did not act on their grievances. “The administration did nothing about it and it further emboldened the harasser. It also prevented more students from coming forward to complain,” the male student told BBC.
Lapses from Kalakshetra?
At first, the institute dismissed the complaints of students as rumours and instructed them not to spread gossip. The college’s Internal Complaints Committee stated that it found the sexual harassment allegations “false” after taking note of a social media post.
The ICC has maintained that it did not receive any written or verbal complaints of sexual harassment from students. However, conducted a “thorough investigation” after taking suo motu cognisance of a social media post.
The case against Padman and the student was investigated and later closed because the latter denied any accusations of harassment.
Also read: #MeToo in India: Stalked, harassed for a decade, how one journalist coped with the trauma
Lawyer BS Ajeetha, who was an external member of the ICC since 2018 and quit recently, said that the students did to feel safe approaching the committee. “We never received any complaints regarding the current case. There were no complaints because there was no trust. The management was not taking the students’ struggles seriously,” she told The Quint.
In a statement on the website, the administration blamed “vested interests’ for trying to “sully” Kalakshetra Foundation.
According to a report in The Quint, the Kalakshetra ICC had earlier received four complaints of sexual harassment from male students. It responded to two saying it had the authority to deal with sexual harassment of women alone.
But after the scandal hit headlines, the institute said on 4 April that it had constituted an independent inquiry committee, comprising a retired high court judge and former top cops, to look into the matter. It has suspended Padman and said that the services of the three repertory artists have been dispensed pending an inquiry.
The professor’s defence
Before his arrest, Padman told News18 that he would make every effort to seek justice for himself.
“There are hundreds of students who are presently studying in Kalakshetra. Ask them if I ever misbehaved with them or misspoke. There are students who have been studying here for six years, I have never abused anybody. I stand by my conscience and I know they do not have a shred of evidence,” he said.
“We have 55 CCTV cameras in Kalakshetra. We will pull out every available footage to prove my innocence,” he added.
Defending Padman, his wife has lodged a counter-complaint against the complainant and two of Kalakshetra’s teachers, accusing them of levelling false charges against her husband out of “jealousy and professional rivalry”, reports the BBC. According to Divya Hari Padman, the charges against her husband were “an act of revenge” because he had “chided” some students for bad behaviour. Two teachers had “instigated” the former student to lodge the complaint.
The matter remains to be instigated but India’s “IIT of fine arts” has been tainted. It’s no longer the sound of ghungroos that reverberates on its serene campus but the voice of angry students demanding justice.
With inputs from agencies
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