The detailed sexual harassment charges made against former star editor and media columnist M.J. Akbar, who was obliged to resign his office as Union minister of state for external affairs on October 17, have come as a great shock to your editor who worked conterminously with him in the Kolkata-based Ananda Bazar Patrika media group in the 1980s.
At that time, most of us were aware and impressed by Akbar’s reputation as a ladies man. But the general impression was that he was a suave and smooth operator with the gift of the gab who attracted beautiful and accomplished women with his silken charm. In the circumstances, the revelations of several well-educated, accomplished women journalists that he harassed and imposed himself upon them is hugely disappointing. In the high-stress media industry, office romances and some liaisons dangereuses are inevitable. But the convention is that mutual consent is a sine qua non. Akbar’s unawareness of this golden rule is confounding.
Now instead of quietly retreating into retirement — because surely the detailed testimonies of 20-and-counting professional women can’t be orchestrated malicious fabrications — Akbar has cynically invoked the interminable delays of the Indian judicial system to procrastinate his inevitable disgrace. A sorry tale of the decline and fall of an unfinished intellectual, simultaneously brilliant and stupid.