A peaceful protest on september 24 by women students of the 101-year-old Benares Hindu University (BHU), sited in the Parliamentary constituency of prime minister Narendra Modi — demanding justice for a fellow student who had been sexually harassed and a safer campus overall for women — resulted in their being chased and thrashed by lathi-wielding policemen.
Trouble started brewing on September 21 when a student of the visual arts faculty alleged that she was sexually molested and humiliated by motorcycle-borne miscreants on the university campus. When the woman’s friends complained to campus guards, they were rebuked for venturing out of their hostels after 6 p.m. Though an FIR (first information report) was lodged the day after, the police too made light of the complaint prompting a wave of indignation among the university’s 10,000 women students.
This anger was fuelled by vice chancellor Girish Chandra Tripathi — a self-confessedly proud member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the hindutva revivalist ideological mentor of the ruling BJP government at the Centre — who deemed it more important to join the entourage of prime minister Modi on a two-day tour of his constituency, than to attend to the grievances of BHU’s women students. The latter had drawn up an unexceptionable charter of demands — all-night deployment of security guards on the campus, adequate lighting on the girls’ hostel grounds and installation of CCTV cameras across the campus.
Since Tripathi was appointed VC of BHU in November 2014 shortly after the BJP was swept to power at the Centre in General Election 2014, the varsity has imposed several restrictions on the freedom of women students. Among the injunctions: no-participation in off-campus cultural programmes, no Internet broadband in women’s hostels as it would tempt them to watch pornography and denial of access for women to the library after 6 p.m. In a subsequent closed door meeting with a delegation of women students Tripathi admonished them for blowing up a mere “eve-teasing incident” and besmirching the reputation of the prestigious university.
Curiously, even as Tripathi, whose term as VC ends on November 27, is adamantly indifferent to calls for his resignation and rules out going on leave for the rest of his tenure, the university’s chief proctor Onkar Nath Singh resigned, taking moral responsibility for not preventing police violence against the women students. Simultaneously, students unions (including the BJP’s student wing ABVP) across UP and in Delhi have strongly condemned police violence prompting the state government to transfer five police officials.
However, according to Madhu Garg, state president of the All India Democratic Women’s Association, these are knee jerk reactions that don’t go to the root of why BHU is such an unsafe campus where violence and sexual harassment of women students are common. In January 2016, a research scholar was raped by a senior of her own faculty; in August last year, a 19-year-old male student was gangraped by five men in a vehicle bearing the university logo; in April of the same year student clashes between the faculties of science and arts led to exchange of gunfire that injured ten students.
However, the fundamental cause of the rising wave of violence in university campuses countrywide is the ruling BJP’s proclivity to appoint hard-right RSS ideologues with 19th century patriarchal mindsets as vice chancellors of 21st century universities. These worthies tend to be tolerant of the low-brow Bollywood inspired proletarian culture in which according to Outlook magazine (October 9) groping vulnerable women is “proof of manhood”. This makes administration and student clashes inevitable. Therefore until Central and state governments begin respecting the autonomy of universities and allow their boards of management and faculty to select vice chancellors as is customary in the best institutions worldwide, India’s campuses will continue to be on the boil.
Puja Awasthi (Lucknow)