BHU incident has made me bold

Outside Banaras Hindu University. (Express Photo by Anand Singh/File)

With Navami ushering in loud puja celebrations, ragas and Bollywood songs alternate from a loudspeaker at a nukkad puja pandal, roughly 500 meters from the gate of Banaras Hindu University’s (BHU) Singh Dwar, the site of last week’s protest that ended in the September 23 clash between police and women students. Inside, policemen sit in small huddles, idling away at the gates of the five hostel complexes in BHU’s Women’s College, the Mahila Maha Vidhyalaya.

There are few students; most have gone home after the university advanced the Dussehra holidays by a few days.

At 10 am, Hemani Rai, a second-year student, has just woken up in her two-seater room. “We usually get up by 7 am for classes. Abhi chhutti hain, isliye (Woke up late because we are shut now),” she says, with a sheepish grin. “These are perks of a quiet holiday away from home — no parents getting after you,” she says between giggles. Hemani is fasting for Navratri, so her roommate goes alone to the mess for the poori-sabzi and tea breakfast.

The college houses 1,000 of the 10,000 women students who study and live on the BHU campus.

By 11.30 am, eight second- and first-year students dressed in cotton T-shirts and tights have assembled on the front lawns of the college, wary and curious. A few of them get calls from anxious parents. One of the wardens says she stayed back only because of the incidents of last week, giving up her week-long Dussehra break, which she planned to spend in Aligarh with her family.

The girls talk about how hostel life in BHU is their first real window to the outside world. “BHU is popular among students of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana because it is situated in Varanasi, a place sacred to us. My parents were happy I got a seat here,” says Jyoti, 19, a Kuchipudi dancer and first-year student from Nagarkurnool, a small town in Telangana.

To many of these students, who took part in last week’s protest demanding safety on the BHU campus, the university has been a teacher like no other. Says Hemani, “I was a meek girl, always scared. But I have become bold… BHU has made me bold. I get angry when men tease me on campus. Now I publicly shame anyone who stares or makes a lewd comment.”

Mansi Pandey, a second-year student who came to BHU because there was no university in her home state of Bihar that offered a combination of maths, economics and statistics, says she also volunteers with an NGO teaching children.

While a few leave for the university’s central library to prepare for the exams that are slated a few days later, others have plans for the evening — pandal hopping and “going Lankating (shopping and eating at the BHU-Lanka market)”.

Nalini, an assistant lecturer and a former BHU research scholar who drops in to visit one of the wardens, says that as a student on the campus, she had been harassed by a stalker, forcing her to even drop out of college for a while. “Sexual harassment on campus is nothing new. But what is historic is that these young students came together spontaneously and fought. That’s very rare because women usually are always intimidated into silence.”

The young students split now for the evening, knowing they they have to be back inside the gates at 8 pm, followed immediately by dinner. They joke that the 8 pm deadline haunts them when they are back home during vacations.

Jyoti, the student from Telangana, walks back to her room that’s cramped with four wooden cots and gaddis. She says that growing up in Nagarkurnool, she would often attend Kuchipudi performances late into the night.

“My father, a primary school headmaster, never stopped me. He only used to insist that my brother accompany me. But when I came here and heard of the 8 pm rule, I was stunned,” she says.

On a wall beside her window is a crayoned poster, which says, “Leaders do things different.”