If you ask me, young Indian women on college campuses, recently denunciated by a Union Minister as “hormonally very challenged”, should wear that status as a badge of honour. Throughout the country, these young adults prone to “hormonal outbursts” are spiritedly leaping across the lakshman rekha surrounding them, by taking the ‘safety’ discourse that locks them up in student hostels past dark by the horns.
At the University of Mumbai, the trigger was the commencement of the 24x7 library facility on campus in January this year. The boys immediately started making use of it late into the night. The three on-campus girls’ hostels, which had a curfew time of 11 pm, questioned why they couldn’t use it similarly. In response, they were told that as they were physiologically and mentally less capable of taking care of themselves on their own campus post 11 pm, they could issue two library books overnight to read in their hostel mess. The boys? Oh, they could continue to roam the campus and read/study in the library. Eventually, on March 8, the Mumbai University Vice-Chancellor acceded to their demand, and the 220 female hostel residents now have 24-hour access to their library and campus.
At BITS Pilani, the 11.30 p.m. curfew for the Meera Bhavan girls’ hostel was lifted in November 2016, with full support from male peers, after a girls’ hostel survey . It was later lifted at the BITS Goa campus as well.
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These are a few of the battles waged by women students at campuses across India, questioning why hostels and paying guest (PG) accommodation has such restrictive and regressive regulations for them, compared to their male peers.
In Delhi, Pinjra Tod (Break the Cage), a dynamic independent collective of students/alumni of local colleges, which leads visible protest campaigns, forced the Delhi Commission for Women to issue notices to colleges that practise gender-discriminatory hostel timings. In Thiruvananthapuram, over 200 women hostelites of the College of Engineering broke their 6.30 pm curfew, by spending the night outside the hostel premises in 2015.
The same year, women at Hyderabad’s Maulana Azad National Urdu University protested the 7 pm curfew by tearing up attendance registers of the girls’ hostel. Staging a walk in the area around Lady Shri Ram (LSR) College in Delhi, LSR students in October 2016 protested against poor security and street lighting, and the irony that while the college hostel and nearby PGs imposed a 7.30 pm deadline for girls to return, male harassers and flashers roamed freely without restriction in the neighbourhood.
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That even in 2017, most girls’ hostels close doors between 6.30 pm and 10 pm, while most boys hostels have no curfews at all, is clearly unfair and discriminatory to women.
That’s not all. Several girls’ hostels have dress codes in place, while others, like those attached to Banaras Hindu University (BHU), take away mobile phone privileges after 10.30 pm, and deny Wifi/LAN access to the girls’ hostel but not to the boys.
Is this such a big deal? Yes, it is. Denying and limiting women students access to the library, laboratory, internships, coaching classes, projects and team work, many of which are carried on till late hours, interferes with their academic and professional training.
An educational institution is a place that should offer endless possibilities for learning, experimenting and spreading wings.
Finally, if institutions are truly keen on providing a non-sexist and safe-from-assault environment for women students, then they should immediately put in place well-functioning sexual harassment complaint cells and impart gender-sensitive training.