Professor 'slut shamed,' forced to resign for posting swimsuit pictures

A professor in India was forced to resign from her job at a prominent university for posting pictures of herself in a swimsuit on her Instagram account.

The matter came to light after the former assistant professor at St. Xavier's College, Kolkata, wrote an opinion piece on the matter in the Indian Express without revealing her identity.

She claimed that the university administration forced her to tender her resignation in October last year after a student's parent objected to the images and reported them to the college administration.

"Not only was I morally policed and harassed for over an hour over images which I had privately shared with a select group of people, but I was also forced to tender my resignation," she wrote in the article.

The woman added that a "kangaroo court" was held on October 7 in the presence of Vice Chancellor (VC) Felix Raj where she was "intimidated, bullied and taunted with sexually coloured remarks" and "objectionable insinuations."

"I was interrogated and subsequently slut-shamed over my private Instagram pictures," she added.

The teacher, in her article, also highlighted that she had once been a student at the same university before she went on to pursue a master's from Jadavpur University and then a doctorate from a European university.

The professor also filed a police complaint against the university administration in February but was slapped with a Rs 99 crore defamation notice after the matter became public, according to local media reports.

Meanwhile, the VC has denied the woman's claims that she was forced to resign stating that "she resigned on her own."

"She was on probation. She served us only for two months. She started in August (2021) and tendered her resignation in October. So, there is no question of force. There were some unpleasant developments, of course," Felix Raj said.

The incident has attracted widespread outrage and social media backlash with people demanding disciplinary action against the VC. An online petition demanding action against Raj has garnered 35,000 signatures so far.

This is not the first time that a woman's body and her right to choose what she wears has come under scrutiny in India, where women are revered as goddesses. Last year, Muslim students who wore hijabs (head covering) to school came under judicial and political scrutiny. A local court later ruled that wearing a hijab inside a classroom violated the school uniform policy.

In another incident reported from the Indian state of Kerala, a judge's observation while granting anticipatory bail to 74-year-old writer and activist Civic Chandran in a sexual harassment case sparked controversy.

The Kozhikode Sessions Court judge S Krishnakumar had said that the offence of sexual harassment was "not prima facie attracted when the complainant woman was wearing sexually provocative dresses."