Crossing The Ravana Rekha

Women students clashing with ­authorities in north India signal that while patriarchy hasn’t changed, the ground under its feet is shifting

- Pragya Singh

Any talk of the State’s benign paternalism vis-à-vis India’s daughters comes up, first of all, against raw reality. A most revealing snapshot of this came recently from the Banaras Hindu University (BHU). Even as the country was moving into annual Durga Puja festivities, to mark a divinised form of woman power, angry girl students hogged television screenspace for days on end with a most unexpected outburst of protests. And rampant sexual harassment was only the starting-point of their complaints.

But then, the BHU is no exception. Not only would the typical university in the northern Indian plains not do anything to help check predatory male behaviour, they put the burden of security back on the girls: they have hostel curfews, strict dress codes, no WiFi (to ‘save’ them from porn). They have to stay indoors on Holi to be safe from wanton boys. And the university administration is emblema­tic of this attitude­—of stifling, all-consuming patriarchal control. Worse, high calibre young women with dreams of a life of intellectual pursuit or an upwardly mobile lifestyle drop out of their chosen courses fearing harrassment and worse.