On sexual assaults on women in JNU: Ayesha Kidwai

I have been associated with JNU since 1988, first as a student and then as a faculty member from 1996. As a member of the Gender Studies Forum, along with Ritoo Jerath, Angelie Multani, Ania Loomba, Madhu Sahni and some other faculty, I have seen JNU culture intimately.

A dinosaur, I was a student when sexual harassment was a problem with no name, when sexual assaults on women were barely whispered about, when women were publicly thrashed by their self-proclaimed "owners" for daring to choose their own partners and even an incident in which a woman was set on fire by her husband in a hostel room for dowry.

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And in these 28 years, we feminists have had many moments of utter despair when cases against employees have been enquired into by GSCASH, when powerful interests have sought to thwart or tamper with GSCASH proceedings, when in a survey that we did after the terrible axe attack in 2013, I learnt that about one in five women suffer intimate partner violence in JNU, and when even after a huge march of JNU karamchari women living in Paschimabad (before its gentrification by the Towers), the JNU administration wouldn't agree to run a shuttle service to the area.

And of course today, I feel the greatest of anger, that a young woman in JNU has been raped on the campus by a political leader (from AISA, but now expelled).

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In short, like a few others in JNU, I am one of a handful of people that have the most continuity to be cynical, to join in the chorus that says that JNU's progressive culture is a sham.

But I will not do so, because if I were to, I would be ignoring the efforts of the Gender Studies Forum which fought for GSCASH, the GSCASH, Anjuman, Dhanak, the Faculty Feminist Collective which has stood solidly behind aggrieved women and men and challenged heteronormative patriarchy consistently, as well as the thousands of students and their organisations that over these last decades have fought for gender justice, complainants of sexual harassment, the rights of sexual minorities, etc.

WE ARE ALSO JNU and will not accept being written out of JNU's culture or history.

The term "progressive culture" is not a certificate of participation that is given to each constituent at the end of some boring sessions at a conference.

It has to be earned by doing, and that includes abiding by GSCASH's order of restraint that nothing must be done to endanger the privacy, security, and health of the complainant on the JNU campus.

But this order does not prevent us from speaking out about the fight that lies ahead in making institutions like student organisations and their hierarchies acknowledge the reality of sexual violence.

It is not enough to give oneself a certificate of attendance, real discussion and changes must be shown to be in place, if we are to ensure that women's political activism is not something that will be met with such horrific attacks on their bodily integrity and personhood.

Looking forward to those conversations, rather than just a focus on the "left politics" of the perpetrator. And for the cooperation of people who may have seen or spoken to the perpetrator in the last two days with the GSCASH and the police in ensuring his arrest.

(A version of this first appeared on Ayesha Kidwai's Facebook page.)