In 2015, the Kerala State Higher Education Council commissioned a report on gender issues on the college campuses in Kerala. The findings of the report, highlighting the myriad forms of gender discrimination existing on our campuses, would have normally sent shock waves through a society that is said to be progressive. But there was hardly a whimper.
The report, and the silence surrounding it, however triggered the idea for a documentary in Bina Paul, film editor and long-time festival director of the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK).
Over the course of six months, she and her crew travelled across several campuses in the State to document this discrimination. The documentary, aptly titled The Sound of Silence , is now ready to be screened across universities and other places. It eloquently talks about the limits that are set around every girl student, some of whom come to college after breaking many a glass ceiling, and step inside the campus with dreams of freedom — limits on how long they can stay outside, on whom they can talk to, on where they should sit and how far they should study.
“The trigger for the film was the gender discrimination report. I read the report and it got me thinking why this is not being implemented yet. This was a difficult film to make, because nobody was willing to talk. Everybody is very reluctant to talk about these things. Students were very forthright once they started talking. But I couldn’t get any parent to talk,” she says.
The film chronicles the various protest movements in recent times on campuses over these issues, from the ‘Break the Curfew’ struggle in the College of Engineering Thiruvananthapuram, to the Law Academy protests. For the authorities, the conservative stand taken by parents regarding early hostel deadline for girls and other moral codes are an excuse to not relaxing them, despite protests.
“Most of the Vice Chancellors said the findings of the report are exaggerated. What do you mean by exaggerated? There is this problem of infantalisation, with the authorities treating adult women as kids. They are not even allowed to think differently. The students have classes on feminism, but there is no understanding of what it means to be like that, to live like that. There is a kind of disconnect between what the syllabus is and what your life is,” says Ms. Paul.
She says that the infrastructural facilities for women have improved, but the attitudes have not changed. It has even regressed. “The end of politics on campuses is one of the reasons for this. Politics is always viewed as party politics. But the fact is that when you are involved in democratic politics, it gives you a certain viewpoint, a kind of critical thinking. Without that, it’s just a process of churning out future citizens who will conform to everything,” she says.
