Is the ‘Saffronization’ of sex inevitable in JNU now?
Barely has the heat and dust settled on JNU that again a dossier compiled by a group of 11 JNU teachers viewed as pro Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh students’ wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, has scandalously alleged that “JNU has become a den of organized sex racket”. In a telling 200-page document compiled last year and submitted to the university administration that’s been going viral since yesterday on social media, the group spearheaded by Amita Singh, professor at the Centre for Law and Governance, alleges, ‘over 1000 boys and girls (sic) students have been fined from Rs 2000/- to Rs 5000/- for consuming alcohol, for indulging in immoral activities in their hostels. On a casual glance at the gates of the hostel one can see hundreds of empty alcohol bottles. Sex workers are openly employed in hostel messes, where they not only lure JNU girls into their organized racket but also pollute the boys. How come big and high brand cars are moving around the hostels particularly in the night hours. Some security staff is (sic) also involved in this racket. Freshers are particularly inducted in this ring of vice by luring through money, sex, drugs and alcohol, so that they become tied up with the cause of foreign agencies.’
What’s even more shocking are Singh’s colleagues tainted as co-conspirators not just in the sexual anti socialism but also held responsible for legitimizing separatist movements in India. The dossier that starts off with sexual slander, and titled ‘Jawaharlal Nehru University: The Den of Secessionism and Terrorism,’ goes on, ‘…A few academics of JNU particularly Prof. Ayesha Kidwai, Prof Kamal Mitra Chenoy, Prof. Anuradha Chenoy, Prof Nivedita Menon have been misusing JNU and their coveted position of senior teachers in the university for propagating secessionism in Kashmir and North-East, legitimizing and rationalizing terrorist activities in these states, stoking the fires of hate and anti-nation sentiments by organizing seminars, lectures, issuing pamphlets, posters, publications and nukkad nataks, rallies, demonstrations, sit ins, hunger strikes and strikes in JNU for several years without any fear. They are actively recruiting young minds in JNU campus and elsewhere by addicting them to night parties/revelries, alcoholism and cash payments to carry forward their agenda through mass campaigns, strikes etc. In this process JNU has become a den of organized sex racket in which some hostel karmacharis, maid servants, beauty parlors being run in Munirka village and the activists of DSF, DSU, AISA and other rogue elements are coordinating their activities…’
While the protesting students and professors are blaming this dossier for the recent hate campaign against JNU, some like Ayesha Kidwai who’s been accused in it says, ‘the dossier reflects an extreme Right Wing position, and one is forced to rewind to 1998 when during the NDA Government, the Education Minister Murli Manohar Joshi often made such scathing remarks that JNU was a den of Communists and there was actually a court order passed that forbade students sitting on a hunger strike with regards to SC/ST admission that they had to remain 30 meters away from the administrative office, and couldn’t occupy shaded car parks. The same talk of this moral cleansing simmered back then, and suddenly in the middle of the night there was a police raid and students were picked up arbitrarily, spending more than a week in Tihar, while 50-60 of us faculty went berserk trying to find out their whereabouts. This was a big movement too, but in those days there was no FB/social media, so it didn’t make as much of a hullabaloo and was naturally forgotten.’
Why this sudden sexual sanitization of a campus known globally for its liberalism and free mixing, that was always seen as refreshingly open as compared to claustrophobic Delhi University, for instance? Why sex is suddenly anti-national, and must sport a certain party color? Is the saffronization of sex inevitable in a society like ours that secretly thrives on a latent misogyny, trickling down also to the educational sector? Is it easier to bully women on campus? Peek into dorms? Count condoms in a trash can and fulfill our latent voyeuristic pleasures? Are students the safest, softest target of a patriarchal pecking order?
Kidwai continues, ‘This stern control of any free association is an endorsement and extension of both patriarchy and the caste system in India that seeks to police a woman’s body, and Universities like ours that offer free spaces are perceived as a challenge, because the Sangh Parivaar’s major pre-occupation, for example, is to preserve this archaic caste system. This dossier is part of a larger and uglier nexus where we are attacking a particular emerging social order by dictating a age old moral dikkat, by imposing curfews and encouraging suspensions. That this dossier was submitted to the previous JNU administration shows the plot was hatched well in advance, there is an effort to make JNU a gender unequal space.’
This isn’t the first time however that JNU has been mauled by the moral police with both BJP and the RSS launching an offensive campaign against it with arguments eerily akin to the current dossier. In November ‘15, The Organiser and Panchajanya, RSS’ mouthpieces, had published a cover story portraying how JNU was ‘anti-national’ and ‘immoral’ in character. Similar allegations were also made by Rajasthan’s BJP legislator Gyandev Ahuja, says Women’s Studies M.Phil, student activist Pankhuri Zaheer, a resident of Shipra Hostel who quotes the minister, ‘More than 10,000 butts of cigarettes and 4,000 pieces of beedis are found daily in the JNU campus. 50,000 big and small pieces of bones are left by those eating non-vegetarian food. They gorge on meat… these anti-nationals. 2,000 wrappers of chips and namkeen are found, as also 3,000 used condoms — the misdeeds they commit with our sisters and daughters there. And 500 used contraceptive injections are also found.’
Zaheer who maintains that the regressive dossier is laughable, questions how the use of condoms can be seen as a sign of immorality, instead of responsible sexual behavior? ‘If students are adults, making the decision to come to another city, stay in a hostel/PG and study in a reputed institute like JNU, why is sex the only threshold they can’t cross sans the State patrolling? In fact, having sex makes one a healthier adult rather than remaining celibate through your 20’s and 30’s. In JNU, there is an active gender movement and also gender sensitization and sexual harassment bodies where regular elections are held and they are very much active. So, if there’s a sex racket in play, we’d know.’
Like many others on campus, she believes that the timing of the dossier needs to be surveyed in the context of the university high-level enquiry committee (HLEC) report claiming that a number of students were guilty of raising anti-national slogans in the campus. ‘On 25 April, 2016 the university administration, acting upon the HLEC’s recommendations, announced stringent, unfair punishments on Umar Khalid (rusticated for one full semester), Anirban Bhattacharya (has time till July 21st to submit PHD after which he’s out of bounds from the campus for the next 5 years), Ashutosh Kumar, and Kanhaiya Kumar (fine od Rs.10,000). 14 others were fined between Rs 10-20,000 and two were chucked out of their hostels. A large group of JNU teachers and students are opposing this HLEC report on the contention that it violates many rules and regulations of the JNU constitution and hasn’t been created basis the versions of students who say that they did nothing that can be called ‘anti-national,’ Also it wasn’t inclusive, and today this dossier that comes along and blames teachers are deliberately assaulting the likes of Anuradha Chinoy, Ayesha Kidwai and Nivedita Menon who have always been pro students, often talking to the Vice Chancellor on our behalf,’ alleges Zaheer, pent up anger soaking her words.
With agitation escalating around the upcoming Hindu Women’s College’s gender biased prospectus and the discriminatory fee structure, Professor of English Brinda Bose says, ‘compared to a lot of other Universities, JNU was free of conservatism, moral surveillance and control of the female students, and this sexual tension that is now being hyped up is bound to hamper education adversely.’
One is also forced to question why there are just two gynae’s and one counsellor at the health centre and no condom vending machine on campus? Girls are allowed to boy’s hostels till 11 pm, but the reverse is forbidden. Why is no one talking about safe sex and methods of birth control here or focusing instead on the sexual health of young students? Why is being sexually active or even promiscuous a threat to the State? Must students be seen as asexual? What if a girl gets pregnant/acquires a sexually contracted disease on campus? Sayan Choudhuri, living in JNU for a couple of years, and originally from Kolkata, adds, ‘the dossier demeans women more than men, sure. Also, in JNU the conversations around sex and sexuality have always been visible than Delhi University, and such documents are a deliberate attempt to caricature any free thought about sex, by alleging its illegitimacy on a national scale. We are shutting down a sensitive, nuanced discourse, and of course being a male student, I am equally outraged!’
That India is a sexually suppressed culture isn’t new, what is, is the way we are now targeting a deliberate castration of students under a hypocritical hijab! ‘I haven’t read the full 200 pages. The sexual defamation in JNU is misplaced, what’s more is that the dossier has been doctored by our own teachers,’ signs off Shreya Ghosh, pursuing PHD in political science, who’s just returned to the campus from her hometown.
‘Another controversy,’ Shreya shudders. The politicization of sex, this time!
