Is Sita Liberated Today?

Thirty years later, the wave has receded, social change is not an issue and sexual harassment on the campus is worse than ever before. Walk into the college today and the only activity is of students attending lectures, the library and finally heading home. The canteen is no longer a place for heated exchanges on Marx or Greer. In fact, there are no loungers in the canteen at all. Business-like, today’s young women respond with embarrassment rather than enthusiasm when asked to participate in street-level protests.

Perhaps the unpredictable fortunes of the Miss Miranda House pageant best describes the reverberations that resounded through the red brick walls of the college in the last three decades.

It was in 1971 when Madhu Kishwar, Editor of Manushi, and senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, called a general body meeting of the students to boycott the beauty pageant, ‘‘to the horror of the angreziwallas,’’ as Kishwar refers to them. Earlier, she had gone from class to class addressing students in Hindi as she was trying to reach out to the non-English speaking ones. ‘‘A Hindi-speaking behenji — no matter how beautiful and elegant — could never hope to be chosen Miss MH,’’ says Kishwar today. After her successful mobilisation, for the first time, the prime requirement of fair skin and western looks was done away with, while intelligence became a criterion. A year later, a ban was implemented. ‘‘I explained how inappropriate it was that a premier institution for women’s education should be known for the beauty contest, not its academic excellence,’’ says Kishwar.

For those who insisted on holding the beauty contest, the student body showed them the college gates, literally lining up on either side of the path leading to it and booing participants. Despite this, the contest was held in an apartment on nearby Mall Road. ‘‘I remember how some students insisted on calling the selected person ‘Miss Mall Road’,’’ laughs Kirti Singh, lawyer and head of the legal cell of the All-India Democracy Women’s Association.

For 30 years the ban remained until this year, when a self-declared ‘Fashion Society’ of the college decided to sneak in the pageant through the annual festival. It was a vigilant faculty that swooped down on them and thwarted their efforts.

‘‘When I joined Miranda House, I was a fence sitter,’’ says a candid Preeti Chaturvedi, a Third-Year English Honours student. ‘‘But the way my department helped me read my texts — in a politically aware manner — has changed all that,’’ she adds. However, Chaturvedi can resent the fact that today, political or feminist issues are presented as a ready-to-pop pill rather than the result of internal questioning and discoveries. ‘‘Teachers go out of their way to teach in a manner which helps you contextualise everyday experiences in a feminist mould,’’ she says. In fact, the process of change has also become the onus of formal groups like the Women’s Development Cell (WDC) within the college and Saheli and FASH (Forum Against Sexual Harassment) outside.

So, where does that leave the student community and their representative bodies? Perhaps Urvashi Butalia, co-founder of Kali for Women, India’s first and only feminist publishing house, explains the way the movement has changed over the decades when she says, ‘‘Sexual harassment committees are now replacing the movement. Young people join feminist NGOs and genuinely believe their contribution is enough.’’

Seniors and teachers also point out to the recent horrific Law Faculty rape case when the president of the student union did not take the initiative to protest but had to be pushed to make a move.

Says Deepika Tandon, a teacher in the English Department, ‘‘When the Law Faculty rape case happened and the issue was taken up in our college by the WDC, I asked the president why she had not reacted at all. She said that it was a job for the WDC, not the student’s union.’’

Butalia also remembers the time when sexual harassment became a big part of their agenda. As college president in ‘71-’72, she and a group of fellow students managed to get women’s specials (buses devoted to university students) plying; separate seats for women was also an outcome of agitations staged by the students at the time.

Ishita Dey, a Third Year student in English Honours, who stood and lost for presidential elections this year, also had women’s safety in the campus on top of her election agenda. Though it did not ensure her victory, she is determined to carry out her plans. ‘‘We are creating a database by gathering information on the kind of accommodation girls are living in, their safety requirements, their contact numbers and the identity of the landlords through questionnaires,’’ says Ishita.‘‘We wanted the administration to recognise PG accommodations to ensure greater safety, but they refused.’’

Priyani Roy Choudhury, yet another Third Year English Honours student, who led protests after the Law Faculty rape case, is part of this sustained movement. From identifying the post numbers of street lamps that do not work — the students actually walk around campus in the evenings, systematically noting down lamps to lodge complaints — to meeting the DCP of the area, Priyani and her teammates are doing it all.

Such dedication, however, seems to be rare. Akhila Sivadass, who works with the Media Advocacy Group, a media watchdog, is stinging when she says students participate in such activities to beef up their resumes. ‘‘What we fought for is redundant today. For instance, the oppression within marriage carries on because most young women swear by the institution. There is no personal zeal and the label of feminism is purposeless,’’ she says.

So, has the feminist fervour of the ‘70s been wasted on the girls of Miranda House today? Not really, because just like before, there are still islands of activism and ferment in the college that continue to challenge tradition and motivate change. But as Priyani exclaims, ‘‘Freshers who come in are mostly unaware of women’s issues. And until we make the debate less academic and intimidating, we cannot make feminism mainstream.’’ That’s one step forward from the ’70s.