Recently two pieces of news caught my eye – both about girls in college. Where one made me despair the regressive nature of the authorities and the other gave me cause for cheer and reinstated (in small part) my rapidly eroding faith in the judiciary. Check out this bizarre video of female students permitted entry based on the length of their kurta and the story of Faheema Shirin who defied hostel authorities and fought to have the Kerala High Court uphold her rights.
St Francis College for Women in Hyderabad issued a new diktat for students: no sleeveless outfits, only kurtas allowed with the qualifier that the kurtas should extend to below-the-knee length. The video juxtaposes two videos --- one of the girls arrayed before a college official as she decides what kurta length can and cannot be allowed within the hallowed portals of the educational institution. The other video is that of the protests that quickly followed the video going viral.
Girls protested with placards with slogans such as “sorry, do my knees distract you?” and “dress codes promote rape culture” and “say no to long kurta” and “educate, not regulate”. With the groundswell of protest, the college authorities backtracked on their dress code diktat.
However, the very fact that such a diktat was issued is a shocking case of moral policing; the sort of policing only female students are subject to. We never hear about boys told not to wear jeans or trousers or to turn up in traditional Indian outfits such as dhoti or kurta-pajama for college. It is never even contemplated that the length of their shirts and kurtas or the tightness of their jeans be the subject matter of rules and regulations.
The curtailment of men's activities or movement in the name of their safety is another thing that we never hear of. Remember how the use of mobile phones for unmarried women was banned in 12 Gujarat villages not so long ago? In July this year, in Gujarat’s Dantiwada taluka, the Thakor community passed a rule that unmarried girls would be prohibited from using cellphones. They should concentrate on their studies instead and not waste time on phones. If girls are ‘caught’ with mobile phones, their parents would be held responsible. This not the first time either. In February 2016 in Mehsana, phone-use was deemed to distract girls from studies and housework. In UP, girls with mobile phones would be fined; let off only if they were speaking to relatives on their parents’ phone.
Sree Narayana College, in Kozhikode district of Kerala, required girls living in the hostel to surrender their mobile phones each day from 6 PM to 10PM. Faheema Shirin refused to abide by this rule and was required to vacate the hostel. This meant that she had to commute 150 km from her home and her college. With the backing of her family including her father photographer Haksar R K, she challenged this rule of the hostel in the Kerala High Court. Faheema said that she used her phone for her studies. As an English literature student, she accessed a lot of course materials online including by scanning QR codes. Her petition was upheld by the High Court and the hostel was directed to re-admit Faheema.
Both these incidents cause us to revisit the issue of curbing the rights and circumscribing the activities of women in the name of their own safety, in the name of tradition, in the name of upholding family values. We are a society of victim blamers; of people who believe that it is a woman's responsibility to protect herself from being attacked rather than to make our public spaces and families safe for those women. We believe that clothes are responsible for rape, when the simple fact is that rapists are responsible for rape.
We repose the ‘honour’ of the family in the bodies and activities of women. We expect women to sacrifice their rights, their time, their dreams and ambitions for the ‘good of the family’ or to uphold ‘traditional values’. What she wears, what and where she studies, where she goes at what time, her life choices --- all these are dictated by society’s definition of the ‘obedient girl, the good girl’, whereas there are rarely any such expectations from men; or any such strictures on their movements and life choices.
Sure, there are certain expectations we have from the adarsh balak (ideal child) in our society regardless of gender. But why are these expectations so much more restrictive and onerous for women? Why does the idea of a woman with her own mind, making her own choices and exercising her own agency unsettle and threaten so many?
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