KOLKATA: Why they were told to step back five rows before Swami Gyanvatsalya from BAPS Swaminarayan Mandir came up as the chief guest at a recent function in the city is what an internal probe by ICAI is trying to establish.
this ICAI On June 22, a CA students global conference took place in this venue. volunteer. This created uproar on social media with many people feeling ashamed and disgusted by such blatant sexism and misogyny. Several ICAI members also expressed “extreme discomfort” at the developments on the dais.
By Monday, which was National CA Day, neither the ICAI nor the order had officially responded to the criticism till when contacted.
“Though we are not sure of what led to that eventuality, it is well known that ICAI has started a full-scale investigation into the matter,” said Agarwal adding that “remedial measures would be taken towards avoiding such occurrences.” The institute Chairman admitted that “ICAI has 400k CAs out of whom one third are women including large numbers of female students among our 900k students” hence according to him, there are demographic structures showing that we have committed ourselves to empowering females. He emphasised his point by saying this was an unfortunate incident that had never happened since its inception in 1952.
Agarwal’s anxieties were largely triggere by debates within the CA community in Kolkata and beyond.
‘Event 1 imprint About history of institute’
Some past and present senior elder members of ICAI interviewed by stoutly condemned as wrong things concerning events at dais during which they occurred. According to one member of ICAL ‘we’ couldn’t tell why she made such an odd request but expected some protest from officials’. This unprecedented incidence is a blot on Institute’s reputation- former national president.
The images also angered and shocked many outside the institute. A case in point is Leena Gangopadhyay, head of West Bengal Women’s Commission who said “it is really shocking that not even a single present during the ICAI felt like protesting.”
“We live in a society of deeply ingrained misogyny and patriarchy” says feminist activist Pia Chakraborty. “It is an open discrimination that when done noticeably it is not just bad but also inherently illegal. I can’t imagine someone to say anything like this without serious repercussions,” she said.
As for senior monks from the BAPS Swaminarayan Mandir, they did not comment on the matter but a senior member of their group CA herself Twinkle Chhapia agreed that “the way this was announce before the speakers arrived was unfortunate” and found it “disturbing”, adding ‘Yet, this doesn’t reflect speaker’s sentiment”. She continued by saying that “Some monastics and priests follow special spiritual disciplines in Hinduism and many other spiritual traditions around the world. This does not mean that they disrespect or discriminate against women.”
