Excerpts From “Women’s Students Forum: A Trajectory”

-Rekha Pappu

The Women’s Students Forum, formed     in the University of Hyderabad, in     November 1990, grew out of an older protest tradition in which women’s issues had been taken up by different individuals (women students and faculty).  For elections to the Students Union, a woman student had filed her nomination for the post of Vice President. A few days later, obscene graffiti against the student concerned appeared on the walls of her department. This, along with threats of a sexual nature that she received in anonymous phone calls, made her withdraw. This incident upset many because the graffiti and the consequent withdrawal of the candidature underlined the kinds of threat could be used only against women.
A group of women students then took the initiative to call for a General Body Meeting (GBM) to discuss the issue. Their main demand was that there should be a call for fresh nominations. They argued that continuing elections would be unfair since a candidate had been forced to withdraw due to intimidation.  After a scandal, a furor and much heated discussion, it was decided that a vote held the same evening would decide whether fresh nominations should be called for.
During discussion we realized that there was much confusion because students, (mostly women) who insisted on looking at the problem as a women’s issue, had to identify themselves as individuals. We felt that our cause would be better served if we identified ourselves as a group. Therefore a meeting of about thirty women students decided to form the Women’s Students Forum.
Following the decision that the issue of fresh nominations would be decided by a vote, members of the newly formed WSF conducted a door to door campaign in all the hostels. However, the election results announced later in the day proved to be a disappointment for us because the verdict was against our demand for fresh nominations. This result was largely influenced by fears from various quarters that the WSF would definitely contest the elections if fresh nominations were called for and that this would then affect the vote dynamics. The predominant narrative was that the issue was raised by some women who wanted to capture power.
Though we had lost the battle, we benefited from experience. Not only was the WSF formed but our understanding of other issues was greatly enriched. Some of these issues are discussed below.
The elections of November 1990 on the campus were preceded by the V. P. Singh Government’s announcement of its decision to implement the recommendations of the report of the Mandal Commission. This polarized the campus (and the entire nation) into the pro-Mandal and anti Mandal groups, making visible the upper caste biases against the lower castes.
Most of the members of the yet to be formed WSF were part of the anti-Mandal group due to our upper caste, upper class backgrounds and our lack of politicization. The liberal discourse that we were consciously or otherwise part of, provided spaces from within which the question of women’s equality could be raised in a limited fashion and most of the individual members did use this space to rebel or protest acts of discrimination against them as women. An understanding of structural inequalities was absent and awareness that the oppressions of class, caste, community and gender were interlinked was a long way in coming. Therefore, notwithstanding the presence of some close friends within the pro-Mandal group (which had by then grouped together on the campus as Progressive Students Forum or PSF), most of us joined the anti-Mandal camp: variously justifying our involvement in the campus as AMCF (Anti Mandal Commission Forum, or for our own chances of employment)!
When the Students Union elections were announced, the issue of the elections was still largely Mandal. The alliances, we thought, were more or less clear. Therefore when the issue of re-nominations was raised we expected full support from the AMCF. Surprisingly, this support was not forthcoming from the men within the AMCF. In contrast, during the entire debate on re-nominations, we had to rely on the members of PSF. In that crisis ridden period we accepted PSF support without much critical thought.
After the excitement of the elections had died out, the question of the unexpected alliance (between students agitating on the women’s issue but opposed to Mandal on the one hand and the PSF who supported Mandal, on the other) once again came to the fore. This was precipitated by the fact that members of the AMCF began to treat us as betrayers of a larger cause.

Around this time, the debates within the Women Studies class where we were introduced to feminist theory, especially materialist feminism, and discussions with members of other women’s organizations and pro-Mandal groups forced us out of our self-righteousness. The transition from an unthinking anti-Mandal position to a committed acceptance of the pro-Mandal ideology was an extremely difficult and painful one for most of us. This was largely because of the fact that the issue forced us to accept responsibility for casteist attitudes and thought structures which we thought we were incapable of possessing.  We were forced to admit that even as we protested against gender discrimination and oppression we were ourselves guilty in complex ways of discrimination and oppression of different kind.
Moreover, the recognition that women’s problems required changes at the structural and systemic levels enabled us to extrapolate the same logic to the caste problem and to understand the need for reservations there. The Mandal issue therefore marked an important moment in our political growth. Though the group, (as well as many other relationships), was on the verge of breaking up a number of times on this issue, the experience was ultimately enriching because it helped us perceive the parallels between the women’s question and the caste question.  In this moment, emphasis on these parallels allowed us to understand that in the fight for women’s rights it was important to make alliance with Dalit groups since gender oppression and caste oppression are closely interlinked, and reinforce one another. The acknowledgement that there were a host of differences between the two questions came much later.
Therefore, for most of us, feminism provided entry into other debates and enabled a more comprehensive understanding of the patriarchal system.  Such an understanding was achieved at some cost. An incident that stands out in our collective is regarding a case of eve teasing. Contrary to popular perceptions about the campus, incidents of eve teasing are frequent enough both on campus buses as well as in public spaces. The offenders, if at all, are inhibited only by the fact that anonymity (one of the prerequisites in this kind of bullying) is not guaranteed since our campus population is a small one.
In this case, a written complaint was given by the WSF against the offender after a number of girls voiced their discomfort about his behavior. The case was referred to the Disciplinary Committee. After a brief enquiry, the Committee accepted the WSF demand that the person concerned should make a public apology and he did as much.
While we still hold that incidents of eve teasing should be condemned, and that for pragmatic reasons it is only individual cases that can be brought to book, our discomfort arises from the fact that we did not take the caste/class background of the particular individual offender into consideration. Our actions were decided entirely by the gender perspective. At that point of time it seemed to us that gender issues could be looked at in total isolation and that they spoke for themselves in unambiguous terms. We were blind to the intersections of class, caste, community and location that impinge on the gender issue.
Later discussions made us realize that we had acted on a case that was “obviously” intolerable to us because of the class framework of our thought and that the support we had received may have been because the accused was outside the upper caste-middle class framework. Our accusation seemed to draw on and reinforce stereotypical notions, of lumpen elements. It became clear that within a highly stratified society, spaces of protest such as the one we had used to complain against this particular person were coded as legitimate offerings to appease and contain individual anger while the oppressive structures continued to remain in place.
That protests could even get sidetracked became evident in the incident regarding pornographic mail. In March 1991 a few women students received pornographic mail (hard porn pictures along with some typed messages). Though the mail was anonymous, there was ample indication that it was the handiwork of campus residents. The WSF meeting to condemn the incident was attended in large numbers. As planned earlier the group of people present began to walk out in a procession with slogans condemning the incident.
When the procession reached one of the men’s hostels, the group was surprised to find posters defending sex (slogans such as “sex is not obscene” etc.) and a few of the hostel residents standing defiantly beside the display board. The posters, moreover, were signed by a newly floated group called Osho. (Osho became defunct soon after the pornographic mail issued died out). This dissenting group apart, the rest of the campus joined us in condemning the cowardly act of sending anonymous pornographic letters to girls in an obvious attempt to intimidate them.
The debates regarding pornography continue to rage and an unproblematic condemnation or defence of it is not easy. Our response to the issue was from the point of view of the recipients of the pornographic mail and the motives, while implicit, on the other hand seemed to be shifting the debate to a moral realm thereby entirely erasing the subject of the different socialization of men and women. It also hid the fact that women are constantly represented as sex objects by the media to aggressively reinforce such a notion against the very self perception of the woman, and to violate the privacy of the concerned woman.
[…] An instance of the WSF directly opposing the authorities was when a rule was introduced in early 1991 to the effect that the residents of the women’s hostels had to notify the Warden’s office details of their travel plans. The ostensible reason was that in the event of “something” happening to the women resident of the hostel, the parent would approach the office and so the office needed to know since they would be answerable to them. Regarding movement on the campus itself, it was stipulated that women going out of the hostel after 8pm had to enter their names in a register and also sign in when they returned, specifying the time of their return.  Till then unlike in most women’s hostels (both at the graduate as well as postgraduate level), there was no restriction on the movement of the women residents of the University of Hyderabad hostels …
[…] A delegation from the WSF met the Vice Chancellor to protest against the introduction of these rules. They were told that the steps taken by the administration were necessary because “women were like grass, men like cattle and so it was important to fence the grass to keep away the cattle!”
[…] As mentioned earlier, we had gained experience in dealing with cases of gender discrimination on the part of individuals and the administration but were inexperienced when it came to elections. During the 1992 elections, we decided to field candidates from the WSF though we were unaware of methods of mass mobilization or election campaign strategies. Two members of the WSF contested for the posts of President and General Secretary respectively.
The main reason for contesting the elections was a symbolic one. Since in the Students Union elections of 1990 it had not been possible for a woman candidate to enter the contest, it was necessary for us to prove that women could contest elections for important posts. Apart from successfully being able to make this statement in 1992 we gained a great deal in terms of knowing at first hand, the money involved in these elections and the alliances that are made. The part that caste and community play in affecting electoral equations was also revealing but we won in terms of our larger goals – firstly, no intimidator tactics were used against the women candidates and secondly every candidate was forced to address women’s issues on the campus because of the presence of the WSF on the campus at large and in the elections in particular.
[…] Within the framework that we had adopted of addressing women’s problems only within the University campus, it is true that the kind of issues we addressed were largely middle class.  This was a lapse. We were blind to the problems of women of other classes and did not make enough effort to acquaint ourselves with their problems. However, what was distressing was that many subscribed to the view that our involvement in an issue might hinder rather than help it. Such a viewpoint seemed to overlook the fact that voices that are oppositional to the mainstream thinking are usually dismissed as irrational, hysterical or mindlessly disruptive. So instead of working to incorporate and legitimize these voices of protest, our rejection of them would result in an endorsement of the rigid and oppressive structure already in place.
This became clear to us in a recent case (February 1994) where an incident of eve teasing was taken up by a group of women who did not want the overt involvement of the WSF for the above reasons. Since the WSF had also to an extent internalized the blame attributed to it, it maintained a low profile. However, the proceedings made it clear that women (not part of the WSF) who were articulate in voicing their dissatisfaction and who had earlier been acceptable were now accused, in terms similar to those applied to the WSF members.
Ironically, an incident in which rejection of the WSF as a group was made quite explicit was one that helped rejuvenate it in terms of understanding the process by which delegitimation works. This understanding helped us appreciate our history—we may have been politically naïve but the process of working as the WSF and the process of change and growth had definitely enriched our lives enormously. Today we feel strengthened by our experiences and given the fact that more women are ready to be associated with the WSF, we are hopeful that the fight for equal rights and opportunities will succeed.

Rekha Pappu teaches at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad