AUD: The Writing on the Walls

Graffiti art has traditionally been a nifty tool to protest against the parochialism of authorities across college campuses. At Ambedkar University, Delhi, it commenced in August 2016 when stencil art voicing the issues regarding Kashmir and Bastar were allegedly whitewashed by the authorities within a day or two, saying that it amounted to defacement of property. A ‘Notice’ had been put up on one of the walls, which was a constant reminder of the ‘disciplinary power’ that works in very subtle ways; in this case, it started disciplining by curbing dissent.

This ‘Notice’ board sparked a long-drawn-out struggle in the campus against the authorities.  The ‘Delhi Defacement of Property Act, 2007’ seemed absurd since the walls of ‘liberal’ AUD have always had graffiti art. Political messages such as ‘Kashmir Ki Azadi’ and ‘Stop War on Adivasis,’ turned out to be enough for the hypocrisy and jingoism to surface since the administration was incapable of conceding that the removal of these political messages was an attempt to undermine the students’ freedom of expression. Eventually, the board was put down, but the struggle didn’t end there.

Embodying ‘Where there is power, there is resistance’, several meetings were organised by the Students’ Council in an attempt to have open conversations about these events. The deliberate attempt to whitewash led to a series of drives organised by students/groups within the university for almost a week. Adopting this non-violent mode of protest against the authorities, several slogans were painted across the campus walls.

However, the counter slogans were painted all over the original ones in no time. This act of counter attack was received as a positive measure in terms of reclaiming the university space since it reflected how at least a dialogue was taking place between opposite ideologies.

This episode took another turn when one of the walls was adorned with an attack targeting the Department of Gender Studies specifically. Very often it is assumed that ‘gender’ affects the lives of only women and ‘personal is political’ is just a slogan, limited to theory and classroom.  Statements like ‘Gender Studies is time waste’ are offensive even if one does not get into the intricacies of how ‘time’ has been capitalised in the globalised world and how the worth of a human body is measured by its ability to ‘produce’ knowledge in academic spaces. Students of Gender Studies department tried to tackle this situation by putting up a chart paper right next to this particular graffiti with some counter responses. After a day or two this chart disappeared.

Following this, the department’s timetable and a chart paper with an invitation to attend the classes was pasted on the wall. This was first met with a flimsy ‘Get Married’ and later ‘Get Laid!’ This timetable along with the polite invitation disappeared in the thin air of AUD. This sexism reached another level when students came across questions like, ‘Who’s your daddy?’ and statements that tried to beware men and boys of Feminism. The horror, the horror!

By this time, women from different departments and the Pinjra Tod movement had decided to come together to make these walls a battleground for acknowledging that sexism affects every woman (everybody for that matter) and not just the women of Gender Studies or Pinjra Tod. Women whose conscience didn’t allow them to sit back and wait until one more sexist comment appeared on the walls had joined in and painted some thoughtful responses on the walls. When the liberal university spaces like AUD start to put women down at every step of their way from CR area till NL2, ‘If you sexist me, I will feminist you!’ and ‘Save women from the likes of you’ are the best responses. Women also tried to break the stereotypes by writing “हम बेशर्म, आजाद, आवारा औरतें” on the wall.

For the past two months, these walls have been the sight/site of conflict between ideologies. Students have been using them to resist, protest, and transform the political discourse within the university in a hope to create a more comfortable and inclusive space for themselves.