C Gouridasan Nair has resigned from his post of Resident Editor, The Hindu, Kerala, following sexual harassment allegation against him, raised by a number of women.
N Ram, The Hindu Group chairman, has tweeted: Gauridasan Nair has resigned with effect from October 17, 2018, and his resignation has been accepted with immediate effect.
Yamini Nair, a Delhi based journalist had accused Mr, Nair of sexually harassing her. She had written in detail about an incident of sexual harassment by a man she considered a guru, a mentor she respected, without naming him initially. Even though she had not named anyone women wrote to her narrating similar or worse experiences with Nair, who they had all respected and trusted.
It is then she realized he was a habitual offender, that she couldn’t just leave it as a blog post anymore and had to stand by the many other women – young girls among them. She tweeted that she was willing to cooperate with ‘the organization’s probe’. The Hindu made note of it. Gouridasan went on leave till he would retire in December. She then wrote to N Ram and copied Malini Parthasarathy, co-chairperson, The Hindu Group’s Publishing Company.
“Tthe latest comment on a gruesome account on my blog came from a young woman who worked within the purview of the organization. He did not deserve sympathy anymore,” Yamini said to The News Minute That comment came from a woman who was only 18 at the time of the incident, in 2013. She had been an intern at The Hindu’s Thiruvananthapuram office, and towards the end of her internship, gone out to lunch with him. She informed her parents, thought nothing of it and went for lunch with a man she thought so highly about. He invited her home, to give her a book. She went not knowing his family wouldn’t be there. Explaining the harassment she faced in detail, she wrote, “I made my disapproval extremely apparent with my words and reminded him of his impropriety at which juncture he had to rescind on his intentions for some semblance of morality.”
C Gouridasan Nair had announced that he was going on leave until he retires on December 31, 2018, after the allegations were surfaced against him. He has made a post on Facebook about it, days after a blog post was made by Delhi-based journalist Yamini Nair, in connection with the Me Too movement.
The latest allegation has been made annonymously by a woman whose family was friends with Gauridasan Nair. This happened when she was 17 years old. One day,her father’s very close friend and acclaimed journalist Gouridasan Nair was asked to drop her brother and her home. When they were walking towards his car which was parked a little far off, he started brushing his hand against her breast. even though she tried to shrug his hand off, he wouldn’t stop.
“She told my mother and she understood. So did my father. Mr.Nair came home two days later and apologized. ” She wrote in protesting India.
She said that shes is speaking out because this is an abuse of power and privilege. “The privilege of being an articulate, well-read savarna male at the helms of Kerala’s cultural circles. The privilege of male bonding, of thinking you have a safety net of men guarding you no matter what you do. And no, his contributions to the world of journalism don’t matter one bit. It is founded upon violence. I reject it out rightly.”
“The notion that sexual misconduct within the Left can wait until the revolution, is a great incentive for sexual abusers within the Left to actively ensure the revolution never happens, delaying it the best they can. What a shit strategy. Try again,” said Raya Steier, the first to start a #MeToo wave in India.
