Is This D.U of 21st Century?

NI Wire

Preeti Chauhan

Sat, 18 Aug 2007: 

Aug 18: On Friday, a Dharna was organized at the VC office of Delhi University by students and teachers from the Coalition for Safe Campus to protest againsthe continuous neglect of cases of sexual harassment in D.

U and the delay in their implementing the recommendations of Apex committee on sexual Harassment. The whole process and the incidents that took place during an entirely peaceful demonstration raise some questions which must be probed.

It was so that another rally organized by ABVP was to also culminate at the VC office and the hooliganism shown by ABVP members was beyond comprehension. They manhandled the demonstrators against Sexual harassment, not sparing even the elder members neither the girls present and it all happened in front of Police personnel posted at the VC office. This shows the complicity that exists between people in power at D.U and their complete callousness towards issues of gender justice. It also reflects the kind of political thinking that these student organizations believe in and practice as the main provocation for their attack was that the Demonstrators were communists and therefore should be attacked irrespective of the fact that all those demonstrating there didn’t necessarily belong to any particular ideology or student group and even if they did, does it warrant such a behavior It reflects the politics of intolerance and hatred that has become the hallmark of such groups. One cannot help but ask -Is this the culture of India that they claim to represent? Is this the way to react to a peaceful demonstration by your fellows from the same university? Are they representing the students or the goons of the University as sensible students of the university can not stoop so low as these supposed representatives of D.U students did? And what an irony it was, they were carrying posters of Swami Vivekananda!

As if this wasn’t enough, came another shocking revelation. A girl student was coming to attend the Dharna and it was just yards away from the VC office that an N.S.U.I member tried to pull her ‘Salwar’(pants) down! It could be quite possible that those implied in the Apex Committee report have sent these goons to threaten girls so that they dare not raise a voice against these Sexual Harassers and especially against people in power as one of the persons under question here is Head of Political Science Dept. and Dean of Social Sciences and another continues to be a ‘Prof’ in the Punjabi Department in spite of being found guilty in the Apex Committee Report. The incident is just an indication of how a free hand has been given to such sexual Harassers under the reigning VC as after all ‘It’s just another issue’ for the VC. It just doesn’t matter whether Female students feel threatened, harassed and defeated and why should it as the VC sits in his Air-conditioned office without even bothering to meet the delegation!

But the VC as the head of an Enlightened institution like D.U. is answerable to all its members and therefore he will have to bother and own the responsibility for all the Disgrace he is bringing to it by being a de facto authority in not implementing the recommendations and refusing to follow University’s own Statues.[ordinance15(d)]. There is something called Rule of Law, after all we live in a Democracy…can anybody deny that, not the least dear VC!

[The writer is a student of Delhi University and also an active member of Coalition for Safe Campus]