It is said that life is not a competition between men and women- it is a collaboration. Even though historically, women all over the world have been a symbol of strength and wisdom in many cultures, an alarming majority of world leaders, CEOs, athletes and educators are males. This does not by any chance mean that there aren’t strong successful women in the world. In the last century specially, we have come a long way towards rendering equality of opportunity to both the sexes and more and more is being done in this area to ensure that no woman is left out of the race merely because she wasn’t given the opportunity to run.
Time and again, things are being done proving to us that the whole world is now tuned to the fact that the divide between the men and women has to be eliminated and if the world has to move forward, it certainly cannot be done by ignoring half of its population. The Kerela High Court in a recent development has questioned why only girls and women need to be “controlled” or “locked up” at night and asked the State government to ensure they get the same freedom as given to boys and men.
Justice Devan Ramchandran, explaining that it was the job of the government to ensure that it was safe for the girls to go out at night said that there was no need for women to fear the night. These observations were made by the judge while hearing a plea moved by five women students of Kozhikode Medical College challenging a 2019 government order which restricted movement of hostel inmates of higher education institutions after 9.30 PM. The court further questioned why only women or girls need control and not boys or men and why a curfew of 9.30 PM has been fixed for women in hostels of the medical college. Taking matters in its own hands, the court went forward to say- “Girls also have to live in this society. Will heads fall off after 9.30 PM? Will mountains collapse? The government has an obligation to keep the campus safe,” the court also asked if there was any hostel in the State where boys had a curfew.
Clarifying its stance, the court went on to state that it was rather the problematic men who deserved to be locked up and not the other way round. Justice Ramachandran was candid enough to state that some people were blaming the fact that he had no daughters himself to be the reason of him questioning the restrictions placed on women to which he has said that he has relatives who are girls and live in hostels in Delhi where they are studying and such restrictions are not present there.
The government on the other hand is defending its stance by saying that the restrictions were in place taking into consideration the concerns of parents of the girls, which did not go down well as the court asked about the other hostels in the State, where there were no curfews- “Don’t children living there have parents?”
Reinstating that the freedom given to boys should be given to girls too, the court said that the State and public authorities must endeavour to make girls and women competent to take care of themselves rather than locking them in.
This stance adopted by the court is in the same breath as what was said by G D Anderson the great feminist writer-
“ Feminism is not about making women strong. They are already strong. It’s about changing the way the world perceives that.” It is high time that we as women realise that our silence will not protect us and even though we might not have been born courageous, no one can stop us from becoming it. There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of the mind and once the mind attains freedom, the limits dissolve. A lot is being said by the judges these days to promote the feminist way of thinking. Feminism is about giving women a choice, it is not a stick with which to beat other women it is a realisation for all women that they exist and will continue to do so on their own terms.
Even though a woman might not be able to control all the events that happen to her, she can certainly decide to not to be reduced by them so in that way, every woman controls her own destiny. The current uproar on the restrictions placed upon women is not a new one, the Pinjra Tod (Break the cage) movement started by a feminist collective run by female college students all over the country had also challenged the rules and regulations, which tend to tie down women’s freedom and try to provide a counter-narrative to the age-old brahminical patriarchal rules which fail to give space to women’s rights, religious diversity, class diversity and to those who do not fall under the gender binary way back in 2015.
Initially, the movement was active on the university campuses in the national capital territory of Delhi, but it soon expanded and diffused to colleges and universities in India’s other big cities and small towns.
The movement that had started with an open letter to the VC of jamiaMillia Islamia regarding the regressive gender-biased rules for the women’s hostel mentioned in the revised prospectus of the university took no time in spreading to the other colleges and universities all over the country. The main contentions of the activist in the said movement were that the Jamia administration did not fulfil the demand of the extension of the curfew timing for girls’ hostel to 10:30 pm, whereas earlier it was 8 pm, but instead, they had stealthily rolled the curfew timing to 09:00 pm. The updated prospectus also said that women would have to fill their accommodation renewal forms and required them to sign an undertaking which stated that the residents of the university hostel would bar themselves from taking part in any protest or resistance against the hostel or university, in any form—physical or signatory; and doing so would lead to the cancellation of their accommodation. Students claimed that the rules were drastically altered without any consultation with the student community or the residents. They also complained in the open letter that the VC of the university was never available for its students instead, the administration made many attempts to break student unity and scare them to drop their demands. Women students had also protested against the removal of late nights since 2015, but no one paid heed to it.
It had been at that time contended by the university students that the authorities under the veil of giving protection to the female students were trying to cage them into historical norms that were riddled with patriarchy and hence a group called pinjra tod was formed which today also has a presence at Delhi University, Ambedkar University, LSR, Hindu College, Punjabi University, Presidency University, etc. The group today not only deals with doing away with curfew timings but also risks its voice against all the conservative patriarchal rules, for instance, colleges asking women to wear ‘decent’ clothes, involvement of parents in every menial issues, different rules for boys and girls in the same campus, etc. It has also helped establish sexual harassment cells in universities and colleges.
Looking at the rules on the subject, the University Grants Commission’s (UGC) regulations dated May 2, 2016, declared restriction on women’s mobility as unjustified for universities to impose and added that the higher education regulator has said that concern for safety of women students must not be cited to impose discriminatory rules for women in the hostels as compared to male students. The notification further went on to clarify that “Campus safety policies should not result in securitisation such as over monitoring or policing or curtailing the freedom of movement, especially for women students and employees,”.
Even though student life teaches an individual discipline and a curfew timing is thus necessary, there shouldn’t be any discrimination between boys and girls in this respect”. Hostels should have stipulated timings but that timing should be same for boys and girls. There should not be any discrimination based on gender in this matter. Not just our parents but some students too want to learn to live a disciplined life and hostels play an integral role in that” – a student said.
From time to time, students, specially the girl students have raised their voices in protest to extend the ‘in-time’ of hostels. Curfew timings and females are so linked together that whether it is a college hostel or a home, every girl is asked when she will be back for all the wrong reasons. Like Cinderella, every outing in a girl’s life is governed by the hands of the clock but unlike Cindrella, the timings in the real world are even shorter! For many organisations, imposition of these time rules are a compulsion, and hostel curfew times are justified citing so-called security reasons. However, most miss the graver question- If Women are assumed to be unsafe from men, then why is no curfew imposed on them?
