This is a guest post by Anonymous

It is over two months since policemen and others allegedly molested women students of Delhi University as they protested against Narendra Modi’s presence at a college event within the University Campus. Not a word of support or concern has emerged from the Vice Chancellor. Instead, cases have been filed by the police against students and teachers who participated in the protest. The Vice Chancellor’s silence is probably among the less hypocritical responses that he could have had. At least students don’t have to hear assurances about their safety once more, and that lie has been laid to rest.

Sometime last year I happened to be present at an interaction between the local Delhi police and women hostel residents of Delhi University. The police had informed three hostels of a ‘meet the public’ programme at which we were required to be present and urge students to attend as well.  The students, who were preparing for exams at the time, attended the event somewhat reluctantly, but in the course of the evening, provided the feedback that was asked for with unexpected vigour. A woman DCP and other police representatives who had been called to address us, chose to assure us that the city was in fact safe despite a lot of media noise to the contrary, and that the reliability of the police could be counted on in all instants. This did not go down well. Various students asked what they should do when the police leered at them, exposed themselves to the women, urinated deliberately in front of them, lolled in their chairs chatting with security guards while cars slowed down threateningly in front of the hostel gates. The DCP, flummoxed by this flood of complaints, finally said that the police were after all a part of society and would reproduce its problems. This rare if honest admission should be taken seriously as a sign of how women should regard the question of their own safety.

A newspaper report that appeared in the weeks after the rape of the physiotherapy student in Delhi claimed that the police had received several requests from the parents of women students asking for licences so they could carry arms. These were refused apparently on the ground that there had to be a real perceived threat to life for a licence to be issued. It should be possible to press this point further. If the police have a limited moral and political capacity to deal with sexual crime, and given the rape/murder rates in Delhi, being a woman in the capital implies a real and perceived threat to life.

Though the police admit that they reproduce the problems endemic to society it does not seem to alter the sanctimonious authority with which they instruct, reprimand and blame women for being victims of assault or harassment. On stage with the DCP and others that day, was an official we had approached to register a complaint when thieves had broken into the hostel grounds one night, and entered the room of one of the hostel residents to steal something, without, fortunately, injuring her. While the complaint was being filed, he reprimanded the hostel authorities for not enforcing more rules on the hostel residents – ‘These are liberal days and you have to allow women to go out’, he said, ‘but do you keep track of their addresses and phone numbers?’ On the occasion of thieves breaking into the rooms of sleeping students, the fact that women go out could still be raised as a cause for crime.

Over the last two years, the few attempts by women students in the University hostels to voice concerns have been met with threats of eviction, with parents being informed about their actions, binding them into the hold of parents, hostel authorities, the University administration and the police. While students are told time and again that the rules that enclose them into their rooms are for their safety, the silence of the Vice Chancellor over the public molestation this year makes the conditions attached to student safety quite clear. You can be safe provided you don’t protest; safe provided you ask no questions. As a proctor of the University once declared – ‘let them find private housing if they want to be out late’.  Barring a few faculty who can deal with questions of student sexuality, mishaps and even crimes, without blaming the women student for it, there is sadly no guarantee that the prevailing ideas about morality among faculty differ a great deal from those of the police, or from Sheila Dixit’s infamous comment about women journalists who choose to work late.

The absurdity of this situation was brought home recently when I was informed by students that while they are only allowed out late a certain number of nights in the month (when the city is presumably safe), hostel authorities apparently don’t see any contradiction in their rules when residents are severely ill and are sent off to hospitals in the night on their own. Stories about such treatment abound. A student from a hostel in Mukherjee Nagar revealed that the hostel authority in charge was notorious for not answering the phone – in one case a student in severe pain eventually received permission at 1 a.m. to leave with friends for the hospital, but was told to return home alone, which she did at four in the morning, with no authority to enquire about her return until late into the morning.

These frequent demonstrations of hypocrisy and power have helped reveal the lie about safety being the one reason why women students are shut into their hostels. They reveal in fact the underlying truth, that when women students are assaulted, all institutions involved are less concerned about justice, or about ensuring that the survivor is put back on her feet to resume her life, than to conduct a public relations exercise where the ‘name’ of the University is secured. The ‘name’ of the University is only about institutional reputation, never about acquiring the reputation for producing confident and informed students who can take on and throw back challenges to the system. Institutional reputation here is only an extension of the repressive authority of the father who ensures that the personal freedoms of the female members are sacrificed to some abstract notion of familial pride. No wonder the central authority of Delhi University is silent over the molestation of women students.  After all, by protesting against Modi, they had stepped outside what was befitting for members of the family. In a campus where students and teachers alike, struggle for permissions to hold meetings and talks let alone demonstrations, the police could not have enjoyed the freedom to beat and molest within the campus itself without the tacit agreement of the University authorities.

The question of women students’ mobility can only be addressed through a working consensus between students and hostel authorities. For the one public relations strategy that the University and any government institution employs to deal with ‘disturbance’, is a blame game, where the police and the University must find an individual unprotected enough to blame for a breach of security. Needless to say, when agitated parents also may need a target to fix responsibility for crime, the immediate hostel authority is at hand. The removal or alteration of rules could ideally happen through a process of discussion about these conditions, but the University is not known for openness or discussion.  Instead, a proliferation of cctv cameras has been achieved across the campus, at who knows what cost, at a time when a majority of the contract workers supporting university institutions are grossly underpaid. In fact the singular response of the police and the administration to any crime is now the installation of the cctv cameras. This must keep camera companies and many other people within the police and the University quite happy.

A test of the ‘protector’ status that authorities adopt would be to examine the institution’s record in addressing sexual harassment cases. Unlike in JNU where students to a large degree are responsible for making campus culture at least inhospitable to assaults on women if not safe, the sprawling streets of Delhi University, the absence of a large enough consolidation of progressive students and the appalling attitudes of both male and female faculty pose many hurdles to developing a good campus culture. The last, the attitudes of faculty, are worthy of a sting operation on their own. It is well known that even minor administrative positions in the University could be stepping stones to more significant ones if faculty prove that they will in no way come in the way of the University authorities. This alone ensures that there are few to step up to support students. Rather, there are hostel authorities who recount their voyeuristic raids on student rooms to check if women students have stayed overnight, and if found, try to have them humiliated by their own hostel authorities, or other university personnel. In a recent meeting held by women students attempting to change some of the most retrograde hostel rules, several undergraduate and graduate students recounted the rites of humiliation and punishment that hostel authorities find themselves participating in frequently. While there are students associations in each hostel, they scarcely approximate the culture of unions, and when they do attempt to take on the responsibility for the rules and conditions of the hostel, they are instantly silenced. The fear of punitive action and eviction has still to be overcome by the growing disgust with the misogynist culture of the University.

The experience of women students has however helped to dispel another myth – there is little guarantee that women faculty will instinctively adopt sensitive or sympathetic stances in dealing with cases of what they see as indiscipline – these could range from putting up posters on the wall announcing student meetings, or an extra night out or late arrival back in the hostel. In fact, the few women faculty who can be relied on time and again to adopt principled positions on women students’ sexual freedom or merely basic mobility in the city have to be guarded about these positions lest even these small spaces be shut down.

In this context, the Vice-Chancellor’s silence over the public molestation of women resounds in contrast to the immediate punitive measures meted out to those who dare raise their voices within the University. A short but significant agitation by students of a post-graduate women’s hostel last year saw the dismissal of a member of the hostel staff who was perceived to be supportive of the students. The environs of Delhi University hostels are a study in the violation of workers’ and women’s rights. The Ambedkar-Ganguly Students’ House for Women was infamous until recently for underpaying their cleaning staff, until an agitation by hostel students reversed the situation.

While the University claims that it is hurtling towards reinventing itself as an institution with international standards, potential women students should know that if they are residents of hostels, they won’t be allowed to use the University library until its closing hours; a facility that should be available without being asked for. A gender safety audit conducted among a few students of Delhi University indicates that few women students feel safe and that sexual harassment of various kinds is almost expected.

This Holi was unusual for the fact that a group of students who withstood intimidation the whole of last year from the university administration, asked for the usual procession of abusive and drunk young men through the campus to be banned. While banning and censoring are not the preferred mode of action, women on the receiving end of direct assault have little option but to ask for this to secure relief. The young men of Delhi University can make their way around the campus, molesting women who happen to be out, gesturing lewdly and abusing girls who are inside their hostel rooms. None of them are beaten or charged by the police, and the University administration including the current woman proctor, feels no compulsion to intervene. It appears that men will continue to be men in Delhi University, while the women are locked up in their hostels on Holi, some of them without access to food the entire day until they are let out in the evening.