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Mohd Asim is Senior News Editor, NDTV 24x7)
The crude comment of the Vice Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University that girls will attract more boys at the varsity's central library has created a lot of noise and fury. But we must thank the Vice Chancellor for this rather bad joke. It at least brought to the fore the serious issue of a section of girl students being denied use of a university facility for being, well, girls.
The issue is as old as the library itself. It is a legacy of the century gone. The central library, named after India's first education minister Maulana Azad, is out of bounds for under-graduate girls at the AMU. Ironically, the issue exploded on national media on the birth anniversary of Maulana Azad. The university's argument that these girls have a library of their own at the Women's College, which is about 3 km away from the main campus, is illogical.
During my years at the AMU as a student - from schooling to post graduation in 2004 - I saw girl students speak up against this gender-based discrimination. If lack of space is an argument for under-grad girls, then why not for under-grad boys? Let only students pursuing their post-graduation, men or women, use this library, one of the finest and biggest in Asia.
The real issue is the mindset of the administration, not "space" or "distraction". A separate college for girls till the undergraduate level and denying access to common facilities, restrict their ability to realise their full potential.
A woman professor at the AMU, who didn't wish to be identified, aptly said, "The students of the Women's College have to perform with the limited resources of the Women's College library, while their male counterparts have access to one of Asia's finest libraries. When women students are unable to access the facilities, services and knowledge structures that the institutional space of a university offers, such unequal access leads to differential learning outcomes and opportunities. Women's roles in participatory learning as well as in the democratic decision-making processes of the institution are compromised. Besides, their exclusion creates a general culture of inferiority in women. This weakens and dis-empowers women at vantage points of knowledge production, thereby reproducing the social knowledge of women's limitations and barriers for women. Their exclusion also creates a general culture of fear to speak. This systemic denial perpetuates a culture of silence and acquiescence."
This professor says her only hope today rests in Human Resource Development minister Smriti Irani, who has sought a report from the university.
The role of the HRD ministry is indeed pivotal and that brings me to a larger question of university administration. The most cruel joke that successive governments have played on AMU is appointing former Armymen and bureaucrats as Vice Chancellors. The current VC, Zameeruddin Shah, is also a retired Lt General, and at least two other top posts in the administration are today occupied by former faujis.
Why on earth should a fauji be sent to run an educational institution? Is there a shortage of good academicians? Why don't we hear of former Generals being deputed at DU or JNU?
Educational institutions should be spaces of debate, enquiry, exchange of ideas and harbingers of change. An ex-fauji or a retired babu on a post-retirement assignment cannot bring in new ideas. They only administer and rule. They curb free expression, embolden patriarchal tradition and play "safe".
Owing to the high-handed and status quoist approach of its administrators, the AMU is operating in inertia quite oblivious to the socio-economic changes in the nation. For any change to come to the university, the government must first change its policy of sending babus and faujis to administer it. Let good academics take over.
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