Statement in solidarity with Raya Sarkar’s list

AntiSerious stands in solidarity of the survivors of sexual abuse in academia. After going through Raya Sarkar’s crowdsourced list of…

AntiSerious stands in solidarity of the survivors of sexual abuse in academia. After going through Raya Sarkar’s crowdsourced list of professors who have been accused of using their position of power to harass their students, Manjiri Indurkar, Shruti Ravi and Debojit Dutta, three of Antiserious editors, have decided to remove Delhi University professor Prasanta Chakravarty’s contributions from the magazine. Antiserious wasn’t built around lofty reputations. It was built to celebrate the trivial, denouncing elitism and the hierarchical structures prevalent in the literary space. It has been built by our readers and writers who cherish these values. In situations like this, it is necessary to stand up and speak for the moral conscience, not only of the magazine but also of the society that we want to see. It goes against this conscience to stay silent just because we do not have faces to the voices of the survivors. We assure you, we would dissociate ourselves from the magazine till we can prove our innocence if a similar accusation comes up against any of us tomorrow. If the mentioned contributor comes clean on the issue, we will send out a written apology and would be willing to put his contributions back on our website.