In India’s most populous (166 million) and most educationally-backward state (adult male literacy: 68.8 percent; female: 42.2 percent) where education, particularly higher education, has suffered steep decline under the rule of regressive caste-based political parties for several decades, one would expect college and university faculty to be working overtime to upgrade syllabuses and curriculums. Instead, following all summer-long discussions and debates, the managements of four Kanpur-based all-women arts, science and commerce colleges — Dayanand Degree College, Acharya Narendra Dev College, Sen Balika College and Johari Degree College, all affiliated to Kanpur University — agreed that their top priority is to prescribe a dress code for women students.
A week later it was proved that this top priority of principals in the country’s arguably most educationally under-developed state was not a minority opinion. On June 15 principals of an additional 22 undergrad colleges across the state, grouped under the banner of Uttar Pradesh Principals Association (UPPA) of government-aided colleges, endorsed the decision of the Kanpur college principals to prescribe a conservative dress code for female students. “The dress code will help strengthen discipline and regulation of colleges. Moreover it will also check display of indecent clothes worn by some college students,” says Ashok Srivastava, UPPA convener. Expanding the list of proscribed items — jeans, tight tops, sleeveless blouses, high heels and tight-fitting clothes — the UPPA added mobile phones to the list.
Surprisingly, Uttar Pradesh’s political parties (which are widely perceived as caste and religion obsessed) proved to be more liberal than the state’s academics. Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Premlata Katiyar opined that the UPPA dress code order was dictatorial and promised to raise the matter in the state assembly. Former MP from Kanpur Subhashini Ali described the list of proscriptions as “absurd”, while Samajwadi Party legislator Aruna Tomar dubbed it “narrow-minded”. Moreover, Bahujan Samaj Party MLA Pratibha Shukla described the ban on trousers and jeans as “foolish and unjustified”.
“It’s an indicator of the low calibre of college principals that they insist on regarding college students — most of whom are adults with voting and marriage rights — as school children. Undergraduate students are maturing adults and as such they are entitled to exercise basic freedoms in matters of dress and deportment. The fact is that college principals are unable to enforce the law on their campuses, and instead impose restrictions on women students who are soft targets,” says Moulindu Mishra, president of the Lucknow University Associated College Teachers’ Association.
With even the state’s powerful woman chief minister Mayawati voicing her disapproval of the dress code imposed on women students by UPPA principals, state government officials went into damage control mode. “There is no dress code prescribed for colleges in the state, hence no college can issue such a directive. Strict instructions have been sent to vice chancellors and district magistrates to report any college taking action against students wearing jeans,” thundered Kamran Rizvi, secretary of higher education, adding that even unaided colleges cannot impose such restrictions on women students.
Quite obviously it’s UP’s college principals who need to come of age.
Vidya Pandit (Lucknow)