At the time of writing this article, the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) administration is trying hard to disperse women students by using police lathicharge that has left scores of them grievously injured. However, the banner of revolt against everyday sexism and misogyny, which these brave women have raised through their 35 hours long sit-in at the BHU main gate continues to fly high. The movement continued undauntedly despite the attempts of the administration to break it by using provocation from ABVP lumpen by sending agent provocateurs and also pressuring the parents of the students.  Many BHU observers see this spontaneous movement as the biggest movement in the university in the last two decades.

The immediate trigger for the agitation was the harassment which a second year BA student faced while returning to her hostel on the evening of September 21. All attempts to lodge a complaint with the university administration turned futile, since everyone starting from the security guard to the hostel warden and Dean of Students’ Welfare tried to pass the buck on the complainant by telling her that she should have been careful.  This led to an outburst of inbuilt anger among the girl students and they occupied the main gate of the university since the morning of September 22.

The spontaneous escalation of this agitation in terms of intensity and scale only points to the everyday misogyny which has become part of the everyday life of the women students of this university. Along with this the anti-women attitude of the university administration makes the matters worse. Women hostellers have to face discriminatory hostel curfew timings, along with ridiculous rules prohibiting non-veg food in the mess of girls’ hostels and the use of mobile phone inside the hostel.

Girish Chandra Tripathi, the BHU Vice-Chancellor, a loyal RSS man that he is, proudly carries forward Hindutva’s anti-women worldview through his administration. In November 2015, when young boys and girls were fighting in the streets to save their research fellowship; Tripathi, while speaking in IGNOU’s annual day function in New Delhi, said, “Boys use this fellowship to buy bikes while girls use it to save money for their dowry.” In March 2017, while speaking in the women’s college of BHU, he said, “For me, a daughter is one who values the career of her brother over her own career.” These two statements are enough to show what the man who heads the university administration thinks.

BHU has always been considered a Hindutva bastion and RSS carefully calibrates the entire structure by people inside the administration, as well as using the storm troopers to silence the opposition voices. The fact that the current movement could stand for this long in the face of all attacks, despite not having the organisational coherence shows the magnitude of misogyny which women students have to face in their daily lives.

On the same day when the women students of BHU were fighting on their university gates, the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University were conducting their extraordinary university general body meeting to chart out the path of struggle against the assault on the Gender Sensitisation Committee against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH).

BHU and JNU are generally considered the two opposite ends of the spectrum. While the former is seen as dominated by conservatism and feudal values; the latter is seen as an abode of liberal and progressive values. Gender discourses become an important marker in this marked difference between the two. However, institutions are created by various stakeholders and one of the important reasons behind the way JNU is today is the presence of a strong progressive student movement. It is this movement which forced the administration to put in place a GSCASH in the wake of the Visakha guidelines of the Supreme Court. It would be erroneous to believe that students entering JNU have progressive values when it comes to gender beforehand. In fact, they bring with them the patriarchal and feudal notions regarding women, relationships and consent from society. It has been to the credit of the long progressive student movement and the institution such as GSCASH that these regressive notions have been successfully combated to some extent. It would be wrong to believe that everything is rosy in JNU; however the presence of these institutional mechanisms has ensured one of the better conditions when it comes to gender equity. Sadly the present JNU administration is hell-bent on dismantling GSCASH, destroy its democratic nature and instead put in place a puppet internal complaint committee (ICC). This again is being done by a VC, who is acting on the instructions of RSS-BJP.

On the other hand, the feudal and patriarchal worldview in BHU is actually actively encouraged since it confirms with Hindutva. Hence, discriminatory rules for girls is fine, girls and boys talking to each other is wrong, girl complaining against harassment is wrong, so on and so forth. In the recent developments in both JNU and BHU, we find a clear pattern wherein Hindutva is trying to subject women’s freedom.

While in JNU the attempt of curtailing the hard-won institutions are fought back; in BHU, it is the Sangh which is pushed to take a backfoot. The brave women of BHU have given a tight slap on the faces of the thekedars of Hindutva. What happens next cannot be predicted. However, it is sure the Hindutva prescription for women isn’t going to be taken lying down; since what is at stake is the very idea of India as a modern nation. There can’t be any meaning of modernity when the best and brightest of women who have made it to the best of the institutions facing all odds are forced to live as second-class citizens inside the university spaces. Fight, we must and fight, we will!

Long live gender justice! Long live students’ unity!