Campus Politik

Is St Xavier’s College terribly ignorant about the F-word?

Lurking within the 150-year-old walls of St Xavier’s College in Mumbai is an ideology as archaic as the walls themselves. It erupts to the fore, every now and then, with the most recent example being the motion set for the student-faculty debate for 2017-18.

Much to the anger of a sizeable section of the student body, and alumni, the topic for this year’s debate was set as ‘Feminism: A movement of sheer convenience’. Within an hour of the announcement of the debate motion on Facebook via the college’s Debating and Quizzing Society (DebSoc) page, questions were raised about ignorance of the cause.

In the face of considerable criticism, the motion for the debate was revised to ‘Feminism is becoming a movement of convenience’. But the rephrasing did little to change the problematic nature of the motion.

The post announcing the rephrasing was prefixed by the belief of DebSoc that no motion is beyond the purview of discussion, no matter how redundant or one-sided it may seem. The lackadaisical “freedom of speech” defence mounted by DebSoc reached a point of self-satire when it began to block and delete the comments of various people criticising the motion.

“I don’t agree with the idea that all motions should be debated. Some notions have been rejected by civilised respectful societies due to their abhorrence and when a motion has massive scope to perpetuate and legitimise problematic opinion, it needs to be rejected. It shouldn’t be debated under the notion that it is merely an exchange of ideas,” said Osho Chhel, former student at St Xavier’s College and former member of DebSoc, and currently a final-year student at NLSIU.

“We don’t debate slavery or sati. We can’t debate whether the movement pushing for equal rights for women is disingenuous or not. One has to always be aware of the ramifications that occur from a debate onto the larger societal context in which it happens. When teachers say these things, when you allow students to make such claims, you send a message to society that there is disingenuity in the cause. Which is terribly insulting and degrading to millions of women,” added Osho, previously also the convenor of the Literary and Debating Society at NLSIU.

Perturbed by DebSoc’s decision to persist with the motion in the face of widespread criticism, Nayanika Nambiar, a third-year student of psychology and anthropology at St Xavier’s, said: “The fact that the Debating Society is being so stubborn about this whole situation angers me more than the initial faux pas of the choice of topic itself. The culture of playing the devil’s advocate when it comes to feminist issues is rampant at Xavier’s – this debate topic is only the latest among several incidents – and I’m really sick of it.”

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a student formerly affiliated with DebSoc said: “I was disheartened but not surprised when I came across the motion for the debate. We must, however, realise the motion is not decided suo motu by the core committee of the DebSoc. The management does have a say in it too. Therefore, the ideological problems run deeper than a few students, and are not restricted to the student body, but the management is complicit as well.”

The lack of nuance in the topic consciously sets one side up to make a painful generalisation of, and perhaps even ridicule, the feminist movement itself. That is not to say that there are no valid and perhaps even much needed critiques of the feminist movement, such as those of white and savarna feminism, corporate feminism, and trans-exclusionary feminism. However, instead of attempting constructive criticism, the way the topic has been framed acts as a platform to voice regressive and possibly sexist views by those participating.

“The feminist movement isn’t sacrosanct. Like all social movements, it has its flaws. However, this motion is incredibly reductive, bordering on the ludicrous. It’s contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. The movement neither stemmed from convenience, nor does the practice of fighting for one’s space and rights in society while continuously being harassed, trolled and ridiculed come close to any notion of convenience,” said Farah Maneckshaw, a third-year student of psychology at St Xaviers. “It’s incredibly sad that this is happening in an institution renowned for its social sciences,” she added.

A member of the core committee of DebSoc could not confirm whether the topic had been given the go-ahead by the management, because of being kept out of the loop for this event by the head of the Debating Society.

However, they did go on to say: “The Debate Society’s content and activities have always had to pass through the management’s scrutiny. We usually ran everything by the convener of the college’s extra-curricular committee, Dr Ashma Aggarwal, and sometimes the Principal was indirectly involved too. If regular protocol has been followed for this event, the faculty has approved the topic.”

Despite multiple attempts at communication, Rishav Rastogi, head of Xavier’s Debating Society, and Dr Ashma Aggarwal, convener, Extra-Curricular Committee of the college, remained unavailable for comment at the time of writing.

However, after sustained backlash, the Xavier’s Debating Society put out a statement on Monday evening saying the motion had been dropped. “No organisation is beyond being flawed and we concede to being myopic in our vision when we went ahead with this motion,” the statement read. ”

The Society has decided to opt for a complete overhaul of the topic for the debate.