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Author: Varghese K George
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: February 9, 2006
URL: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=62593
Wearing a T-shirt can be dangerous as a girl student of the prestigious Aligarh Muslim University realised last week. For daring to wear what she wants to, Najma (name changed) is being threatened by fellow students who claim the sole right to interpret what is moral in Islam.
She has been threatened to change her dress habits by replacing T-shirt with kurta and dupatta and stop her campaign for an effective mechanism in the university to address complaints of sexual harrassment.
Trouble began for this post-graduate student from Bihar the day she joined the campus of 30,000 students. Not merely in her dress, but in her sense of right and wrong too, she stood out among the 5,000 girl students of the campus. ''You are the only one who is defying the dress code of the university,'' she was told by the moral police.
Though the university doesn't have an official dress code, she was told to wear a dupatta. When she continued with her T-shirt, a group of students began to comment upon and abuse her. On February 2, while she walking inside the campus, two youth on a bike snatched her shawl and sped away.
Najma and nearly 40 students went to the vice-chancellor. The next day, she filed an FIR with the local police, but nothing has moved yet. University officials now say the police will probe.
AMU's moral police have found fault not only about Najma's dress, but also her practice of sharing meals with boys at canteens and even visiting the library with them. She had been threatened in the past by a section of the students-which enjoys a substantial following. ''Girls are not expected to be seen in public places,'' she has been repeatedly told.
Najma defied such instructions and she and a group of students formed a cultural group, Saada, and raised issues related to gender. Among the demands of the group has been strengthening a mechanism to monitor complaints of sexual harassment.
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