A female student at the Jinnah Sindh Medical University was harassed by a teacher; she told some of her fellow students, who took on the teacher, and ended up beating him up. This was a case that demonstrated the adage that two wrongs do not make a right. First of all, sexual harassment is a heinous thing, and especially by a teacher, who is supposed to be in loco parentis. But if someone is suspected of it, beating up the accused person is not the solution. True, mostly teachers are allowed to resign and escape all other punishment, and often enough there is no woman on the departmental enquiry committee, but there is still no justification for taking justice into one’s own hands.
The tendency towards violence may be justified by some because of the flawed justice system, but the justice system was long flawed, and this tendency to violence is recent. It may be because there is a youth bulge, which has meant that there is a large number of young men available for any desperate venture. Like beating up somebody who has been accused, without bothering to hear any defence. The PTI is the political party which most encapsulates these values, and the jury is still out whether it has generated this attitude of ‘accusation is guilt’, or whether it is merely riding the wave of frustration that generates this intolerance.
There has been no proper social searching about his rising tide of intolerance. Accusations of blasphemy have been enough for crowds to kill people and storm police stations, to which have been added accusations of ordinary crimes like theft, and now sexual harassment. Not only must curricula include strong components inculcating tolerance, but sexual harassment must be something against which people feel revulsion, and not to be dismissed with a nudge and a wink. And even if the punishment is a public beating (which it is not), no one can administer it without a court convicting the accused.
