The Unmute.help website is an open, free resource to which people go when they want to understand arts and the intersection with the Law. Recently, Manch UK included our work in its record of important work done during the COVID pandemic. The fact that there is an Unmute.help website, the fact that people have started going to it and the fact that we are allowed to discuss such issues in forums like Narthaki or even in the general media, are all reassuring, positive and encouraging developments. They give us the fuel and energy to continue this work that is being done pro bono.
Less affirming is the sharings that are done of travesties and abuse of power that threatens the very ecosystem of the arts. Every sharing makes the heart sink and serves to remind us about the enormity of the task at hand. Sometimes it helps us sharpen our focus and attention on a particularly disturbing issue at hand and organically prioritizes our work ahead. Sometimes, the prompt comes from an unrelated event. Sometimes both spheres, the core and the peripheral, imbricate.
In January this year, I began a focus on the rights of the child artistes, catalyzed by the Supreme Court of India ruling that the 'skin to skin' contact was not necessary for a crime to come under the purview of the POCSO Act. In this column, I continue unpacking the ideas of how to keep the child in the arts, safe. I want to share a disturbing story from the arts and how a vulnerable child has suffered. It makes me angry, but believing in the intrinsic goodness of mankind I hope that it happened out of ignorance. But really ignorance is no excuse since we are expected to know the law of the land. We need to be proactive about it. This column helps in that direction and I hope that many of you who work in the arts with children will read this till the end.
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