Ethnic Minorities, Sexual Violence and University Spaces: Notes from Visvabharati and Jadavpur University

Sarmistha Dutta Gupta On a September afternoon, when the sky was signalling the arrival of the Pujo season in Bengal and yet monsoon flowers like dopati were in full bloom, I joined a rally in Santiniketan. The rally was organized by the students of Visvabharati to demand justice for a fellow-student from Sikkim who was sexually abused by her seniors in the university shortly after joining the institution in July. The rally also bore a special significance as it was being organized on the birthday of the survivor who was still hospitalized, bearing the brunt of severe physical injuries and psychological trauma. It was mainly the ethnic minorities from north Bengal, Sikkim and other north-eastern states that participated in this rally though a small group of other students also joined them. A smaller group of leftist students, mostly from the plains, had already submitted a deputation to the university authority demanding action against the accused. The day after the Santiniketan rally, another procession in solidarity with the Visvabharati students walked from College Square in Kolkata, led by the students of north Bengal and the north-east studying in JadavpurUniversity. The rally in Santiniketan was without slogans. Some of the students carried posters, sometimes they sang. The team of five ‘outsiders’ from Kolkata to which I belonged, comprised of members of the West Bengal-based women’s rights network Maitree. By virtue of being an ‘outsider,’ I also had the perspective of the ‘unattached’ observer. I noticed that most of the students felt a deep sense of let-down. Those from the hills were not convinced as to how many from the university community were standing by them and by the painter couple who had sent their daughter to study fine arts in Santiniketan. Some divisive political outfits were already exploiting the extremely sensitive nature of the situation and trying to polarize the students of the hills from those from the plains. Many of those students from north Bengal and Sikkim, who were stolidly standing by the survivor and her family, seemed to be quite unsure of the sincerity of those protesters who, following the same thread of events, were demanding the formation of GSCASH in Visvabharati, the way it has been implemented in JawaharlalNehruUniversity. ‘Are they genuinely concerned about the wellbeing of the girl?’ asked the student-organizers of the rally. The procession seemed to reflect a couple of things. First, a definite lack of trust and bonding between local students and those from the hills and from north-eastern states. The ethnic minorities and other students from these regions, who usually tend to stick together to negotiate language and other cultural differences when they first arrive for study, may develop friendly terms with their other peers but feel a justified uneasiness in trusting others to take up issues collectively. Let me come back to this anon. The other thing I noticed was the conspicuous absence of local citizens and the university community in this near-silent protest walk. I am not assuming for a moment that their absence means that they were necessarily unsympathetic and insensitive towards the survivor and her condition. It may well be possible that many of them did not get the news of the protest march on time. With my close links with Santiniketan, I can testify to the fact that many local residents including university teachers extended their helping hand unhesitatingly to the friends of the survivor without making themselves visible. Yet I certainly sensed an atmosphere of terror, spread among the local citizenry in a calculated manner, which influenced them to stay in, rather than to come out in support of students. This has been done without any use of force whatsoever, by coercing people into believing that being undisturbed is a virtue and any flutter or dissent is a severe crime to be curbed ruthlessly. It seemed that these courageous students were taking out a protest march in a society which is well on its way to becoming an oppressive Orwellian dystopia, where breaking conventions invites strict chastisement and lessons in moral edification. 2 Every year a sizeable number of students come to study in Visvabharati and JadavpurUniversity from north Bengal, Sikkim and north-east India at large. Although on campus they may not feel any particular discomfort, there is a lot of unease outside the university spaces with the kinds of provincialism usually directed at them. The feeling of discomfort and perceptions of insensitivity are felt much more acutely in Kolkata than Santiniketan as Visvabharati used to generate a sense of shared cosmopolitanism which may not be metropolitan in its outlook but was certainly borderless and more international in its engagement. As many Bengalis from both India and Bangladesh, routinely face the incredibly banal and downright obtuse question ‘Are you a Bengali or a Muslim?’, similarly many young people belonging to ethnic minorities from Darjeeling-Gangtok-Shillong-Imphal are regularly asked in Kolkata and other places in south Bengal, ‘Are you a Hindustani or are you from China or Japan?’ Such questions might be posed and racial comments passed on them anywhere—while shopping in the old Gariahat market or any of the new malls in Kolkata, or while looking for a place to rent in the city. The situation is much more complex for girls. They are forced to tolerate the intent gaze of many male strangers in the streets, who are always indefatigably curious in measuring the difference in their bodily features. The rude stare and often lewd remarks equally combines racial and sexual aggression with the young women (usually dressed in western clothes, speaking English or their mother tongue) perceived as the ‘other’ by local men. Sometimes such aggression takes extreme forms, taking full advantage of a person’s unfamiliarity with the local language and distance from the social milieu. This is what happened recently in Santiniketan where the vulnerability of the first-year-student from Sikkim was manifold. While it is true that hate crimes haven’t yet taken lives of young men like Nido Taniam in Bengal, the repeated