[Women’s access to education in India has improved vastly in the past three decades, but social change has been slower. Reported crime against women has doubled in the past 10 years, which experts say is a result of deeply embedded patriarchal attitudes that are also evidenced by the persistent preference for male children and the decline in the number of working women.]
By Niha Masih
 |
|
Delhi University
students protest against curfews and other rules for women
in October. (Sanchit
Khanna/Hindustan Times/Getty Images)
|
NEW DELHI — Late one night in the fall, about 200
female students in Bhopal, a city in central India, held a rare demonstration
on their college’s basketball court. Their very presence there was an act of
protest: Women were not allowed to be outside their dormitories after dark,
just one of many restrictions on their movement.
They spent the night outdoors — the
first time many of them had seen the moon since they began college, one student
recalled.
For years, college campuses in India
have regulated the movement of their female students in the name of safety. But
in protests over the past several months, women on college campuses across the
country have voiced their demands: freedom from oppressive rules and equality
with the male students. And slowly, colleges are responding.
Women’s access to education in India has
improved vastly in the past three decades, but social change has been slower.
Reported crime against women has doubled in the past 10 years, which experts
say is a result of deeply embedded patriarchal attitudes that are also
evidenced by the persistent preference for male children and the decline in the
number of working women.
The recent protests were inspired by a
Delhi-based women’s collective, Pinjra Tod, or Break the Cage, which campaigns
against arbitrary curfews and rules imposed on female residents at colleges and
universities — part of a broader battle by women’s rights activists to take
back public spaces and challenge the threat of sexual violence.
They’re fighting not just the curfew,
but also “the idea of policing women and how they are kept in gendered spaces,”
said Joan Sony Cherian, a member of the collective.
In the past month, women in India have
entered a temple that once banned female visitors of menstruating age and
prompted the dismissal of a professor for comparing virgins to “a sealed
bottle.” Last year, dozens of women shared stories of sexual harassment at
workplaces as part of a burgeoning #MeToo movement.
At Bhopal’s Regional Institute of
Education, which trains students to become teachers, the campus residences had
strict rules for women. Female students had to be back in their dorm rooms by
5:30 p.m. in the winter or by 6:45 p.m. at other times. Leaving campus was
allowed only once a week on Saturday between 1 and 6 p.m. Food delivery was
allowed only until 5:30 p.m.
If a woman wanted to leave campus for a
longer period, her parents were required to fax the request, after which two
sets of administrative signatures were required. Female students did not have
access to the rooftop terrace. For the men on campus, most of these rules did
not apply.
The women began their campaign with a
sit-in, borrowing tactics and strategies developed by Break the Cage. Without
its support, “our protest would not have been at this scale,” said Rai, a
participating student, who spoke on the condition of partial anonymity to avoid
possible retaliation by the college.
On the third day of the protest, the
administration relented. Now women don’t have to return to campus until 8 p.m.
and can remain outside their dorm rooms while on campus until 9 p.m. Later that
week, a group of female students danced in a religious procession on campus in
celebration. It was a new taste of freedom: Under the previous rules, they were
locked in during festivals or could celebrate only in an enclosed space
demarcated for them.
The protests weren’t limited to Bhopal.
They spread. In some instances, they were inspired by previous protests; others
happened spontaneously.
Female students at a branch of the
Regional Institute of Education in Ajmer, a town in Rajasthan state, broke
their curfew barely a week after the Bhopal protests. In October, students from
Panjab University protested for 48 days. Protests led by Break the Cage at
prestigious Delhi colleges such as Miranda House and Lady Shri Ram College soon
followed.
Administrators at the government-run
Regional Institute of Education declined to comment on the protests. Lady Shri
Ram College, a branch of Delhi University, said that the college had introduced
changes such as ending the requirement for female students to have local
guardians. The new rules were announced
just before the planned protest.
Pratibha Jolly, Miranda House principal,
acknowledged that the old rules were “archaic and major reform was overdue.”
After last year’s protest, the college made the curfew later and increased the
number of nights a resident could stay out of the dorm.
“Our biggest challenge is to provide a
safe, secure environment while nurturing liberal and progressive education for
an extremely diverse student population,” Jolly said. “This requires nuanced
responses.”
But members of Break the Cage reject the
safety argument. Devika Shekhawat, a member of the group, said women are aware
of the risks. “We want to change the spaces” rather than force women to change
their behavior, she said.
Break the Cage has been advocating for
women on campuses since 2015. While curfews have been central to its demands,
it has also drawn attention to issues such as higher fees charged by
dormitories for women, the lack of sexual harassment committees mandated by
law, and moral policing of female students.
The solidarity offered by Break the Cage
has made a difference, said Kanupriya, the 23-year-old student union president
of Panjab University, who goes by one name. She led a successful campaign to
scrap the dorm curfew.
Of course, these successes alone will
not bring about gender equality, Kanupriya said. But she sees them as a way of
moving the needle. “This is about changing what is considered normal.”
Read more
