'Harassment' misused.

Byline: Muhammad Tahir Iqbal

Some years back, I happened to read an Urdu novel by a famous female novelist. She wrote, 'A man is never helpless, he gets whatever he craves for in his life'. The theme of the novel explicitly gloats over the coquettish nature of a man who keeps changing his loyalties.

A slew of such anecdotes pervade our TV dramas where a man is shown to be a jocose who jilts multiple ladies at a time. The theme stretches the story to such an ignominious extent where the writer goes as far as to delineate the characters of a father or a husband as philanderers.

Such literature has terribly influenced the thinking patterns of our society as a whole. Men have been painted as debauchees. This is why when a female puts an accusation of harassment over a man, we are already in an ambush, ready to attack the villain with all our nerves we can muster up without least inkling that the woman may be crafting this with an implicit design to serve her ulterior motives.

Such a license to declare a man guilty has taken the life of a teacher in Lahore.

Prof. Afzal used to teach English at Govt. M.A.O. College, Lahore. His female student levelled charge of harassment against him. An inquiry committee was constituted to probe the matter.

The accuser, who had earlier blamed the professor with the charge of 'staring' - and that can ironically be harassment as this implies making the victim uncomfortable, later told the investigation team that the professor used to deduct students' marks because of low attendance. She also gave a written statement that Prof. Afzal is innocent and false accusations were hurled against him.

The committee verbally exonerated the teacher, but he wanted written evidence calling off false accusations against him. The process remained in limbo, Heaven knows for what?

On the 8th day of this month, he delivered a letter to the investigation in-charge and disappeared forthwith. Next day, everybody was stunned at the tragic news of his suicide.

After his death, the whole social media came out like a deluge to support the deceased Prof. Afzal who had to give his life to smash the fabricated social ethos where one is evermore swift enough to reach the conclusion of issuing a decree and labelling a man as sexual harasser whenever a woman blames him for that.

In the letter which he wrote before suicide, he said, 'It will help other professors from getting similar allegations when they are strict with students and give marks...

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