-Anu K. Antony & Greeshma Justin John

Introduction

University of Hyderabad is a campus  spread over 2300 acres with a  population of over 5000 students. The student profile is a varied one constituted by differences in class, caste, gender, sexual orientation, region, language and other such categories. The used spaces – public and other – constitute a small percentage of the total area.  Even though there is no curfew on the campus, the roads are usually deserted at nights save for days of festivity (like DJ nights, the Sukoon annual festival, Diwali etc.). This situation cannot be viewed apart from incidents of harassment of varying degrees – reported and unreported – occurring on the campus. However, these incidents are not restricted to nighttime, they happen in broad daylight as well. This can happen to anyone irrespective of gender. Contrary to the claims of the administration these occur not only in the densely forested areas of the campus and at ‘rave’ parties. Most shockingly, a majority of the reported cases happen on the main roads, in the shopping complex, in classrooms, labs, departments and so on.
The response from the campus community—the administration, CASH1, the students union and various other students’ political groups—towards various reported cases of harassment has been disheartening. This indicates a failure in developing a gender sensitive atmosphere even after three decades of establishment of this so-called progressive and highly ranked university of the country. It is in this broad context that we place ‘Students for a Gender-Sensitive UoH’ a group that was active for a few months in 2011-2012.
We first give a brief history of the group and its activities.  After that, we focus on a particular initiative by the group called ‘Reclaiming UoH: Safety without Pins’ organized on 9th March 2012. By illustrating the peculiarities of the initiative, we intend to look back and reflect on it. In the process, we try to think about more effective and inclusive ways of making interventions in orienting a space like this university’s towards gender-sensitivity.

Brief History

The immediate circumstances that led to the formation of the group were provided by the silence of the students’ union, political groups and GSCASH in response to a circular issued by the administration2. Some of us wanted to do something about this when the Students’ Union elections were round the corner. In the annual University General Body Meeting (UGBM) prior to the elections, we noticed that no one had raised questions about the circular. The General Body meetings in HCU are severely undemocratic and questions of import are usually drowned in the din of accusations among various political parties. Thus nothing about the circular could be raised in the GBM.
This led to the creation of a poster titled ‘Stay Home, Stay Safe?’ in which we discussed the circular,  urging all political parties to take the gender question seriously during the upcoming university elections. We called ourselves “Students for a Gender-Sensitive UoH” and sent the poster to all political organisations. As a result, almost all candidates mentioned gender issues in their manifestoes, in a manner unprecedented in the previous five years.
In another register of our activism as a student body we found that GSCASH did not have a constitution we could access. As a result, in early February 2012, the group filed four RTIs requesting access to the GSCASH Constitution, and other information (statistical, etc.) pertaining to its functioning. We heard from GSCASH only by April that year after the semester had ended and most of us left the university completing our courses. Those of us who remained began to think of alternative strategies of getting the administration to do something about GSCASH.

Reclaiming UoH – Safety without Pins

By this time, most of us in the group had come to think of the limitations of addressing gender issues in the campus from the security point of view that most political groups and the administration had. It is true that security is the most practical and immediate step towards ensuring safety for all. However, the clamor for security made by the student community was not thoughtful, and the administration granted it in a patronizing and gender-insensitive manner. An article on the situation in Mumbai by Shilpa Phadke3  which argued that more than asking for more legislation (against potential risks), it was necessary to assert the right to take risks, reinforced our convictions. The group wanted to address sexual harassment on the campus in a gender-inclusive manner. At the same time, the group was conscious of the fact that the first step in this direction is to focus on achieving the minimum requirements to live and move about safely on the campus.
What do we mean by minimum requirements of safety?  We feel that easy and fearless mobility through the main roads of the campus (both south and north campus) that connect places such as hostels, library, 24/7 reading room, labs, computer center, department reading rooms/labs, gates, ATM, health center and canteens would constitute minimal requirement on an academic campus. Places like libraries, reading rooms, labs, and canteens function round the clock. We would like to make it clear that this in no way intends to underplay the needs of the campus residents to venture out to spaces other than those listed above, or for needs that may qualify as leisure. However, the group considered the right of access to the public spaces mentioned above as the most pressing need of the hour.
As mentioned earlier, most incidents of harassment happened in these spaces rather than in deserted areas and forests. Basic facilities such as well-lit roads were absent. Forget about harassment, we couldn’t see a snake lying on the road or a cycle/ person coming from the opposite side. The environment on the campus at nights is not friendly, so even those who want to be out at night prefer to stay indoors. Those who want to make use of these facilities are severely restricted by the lack of the basic and essential requirements. We organized the campaign “Safety without Pins – Reclaiming UoH” in this context.
The campaign was planned to be such that we get the students of the campus, irrespective of their gender, on to the streets and public spaces on one night to begin with. A day would be marked for this on which students would be requested to wear a badge – a newspaper heart with a safety pin on top – all through the day in solidarity with the cause. Students were asked to deposit these badges at midnight at assigned spots on the campus as a mark of solidarity and as a way to reclaim that space. We chose March 9th as the day. As a culminating gesture, an event would be held at the shopping complex where students would be invited to drop their hearts and take part in singing/ dancing or any other activities. We also organized a few programmes of dance and poetry recital. The event at the shopping complex was attended by around 200 people.
We now revisit the campaign to reflect on the ways in which it could have been more inclusive and effective. It is true that the event at the shopping complex saw a huge turn out; but the other public spots we had marked for our activism were as deserted as on any other normal day. The midnight event in effect became a spectacle where firstly only a portion of the campus community attended (some critics commented that these were the students who were anyway already mobile at nights, and that such spectacles could alienate people). Secondly, those who attended it were the normal audience for programmes organized at that place. This could possibly imply that this event did not motivate most of the students on the campus to participate in this campaign. More than these, we think that filling up the public spaces without the celebratory event at the shopping complex would have been more enabling. In this context, we the event failed and was reduced to a spectacle. The focus of the campaign was about reclaiming the public spaces on the campus fearlessly by each individual at night. The event at the shopping complex overshadowed the campaign as indicated by the very small number of badges recovered from other spots.
What we would like to say here is that in spaces like this, movements for gender-sensitisation have to be inclusive. Groups should act as pressure groups facilitating conscious agency and individual participation. For instance, reclaiming the public spaces in UoH was to have been a political act where participation could have been ensured by strategies like door-to-door campaigning, explaining the programme to each individual and coaxing them to participate. Secondly, gender sensitivity is not a sensitivity which is separate from sensitivity to class/caste/religious and other experiences. In our opinion, the group failed to represent and include these and for all these reasons, the campaign which ended as a spectacle, failed to meet the needs of everyone’s safety. (When there is a cultural spectacle, e.g., a temple festival, women go out with their families to watch it even in the most conservative of villages).
What we fought for, perhaps unsuccessfully was the right of an individual to walk alone; it was a question of basic needs as the first step, which went unaddressed. It was fundamentally a question of normal nights and basic needs.
Anu Antony and Greeshma John are students at University of Hyderabad
Notes:
1. Later renamed as Gender Sensitisation-CASH (Committee Against Sexual Harassment) henceforth called GSCASH.
2. A circular (UH/RG/2011/1384) dated 16th May 2011, was issued by the Registrar, on the subject of ‘Security on the Campus’. It followed an incident in which a girl was attacked by a group of men earlier that month.  The tenor of the circular may be grasped in this extract, which reads as follows: “… it is brought to the notice of the authorities that some students including girl students are venturing out late at night to isolated areas on the campus. It is also necessary to (sic) for students to maintain the certain minimum dignity while on the campus…” This circular, issued during the summer break of 2011, had not received much attention from the campus students.
3. Phadke, S. (200) ‘Dangerous liaisons: Risk and reputation in Mumbai’, Economic and Political Weekly.  We thank Prof. Sujata Patel, Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, for alerting us to this article.