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Campus Violence Against LGBTQ – DU Students To March In Protest
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In December 2014, a DU student was bashed up and dumped off a car by some students of the same university. The case went unreported due to concerns related to protecting the victim’s identity. This was a clear case of homophobic violence as the language used was ‘gandwe, gaand marwaata hai‘ (expletives to refer to the victim’s sexuality), ‘aaj tujhe sabak sikhaayenge‘ (we will teach you a lesson today). Filing an FIR meant disclosure of identity. Neither the University administration nor individual colleges have any institutional support structures for LGBTQ students, where an incident like this could be reported.
There have been several other instances where LGBTQ students have been subject to mockery, abuse and bullying because of their sexual or gender identities. Each time the cases go unreported because the University lacks primary grievance redressal mechanisms and the victims often do not wish to have their identities revealed. The absence of institutional support renders LGBTQ students vulnerable and paves the ground for campus violence.
Queer groups from DU, AUD, JNU, IIT-Delhi and others are coming together to resist the silencing of queer voices across campuses. The idea of the Zero Tolerance Campaign is to build inter-university alliances and push for institutional support for LGBTQ. Unlike JNU and AUD, DU having an open campus makes it difficult to reach out to individual colleges. The administration maintains a conspicuous indifference to LGBTQ issues. While the university had opened up admissions into its postgraduate courses for Transgender students last year, there is no institutional mechanism to address cases of violence – physical as well verbal – for gender non-conforming persons in the University. In terms of sexual harassment, Ordinance XV-D that was earlier in place and recognized a victim as ‘person‘ has now been replaced with The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 that identifies a victim as ‘woman‘, thereby keeping LGBTQ outside the domain of gender justice.
Through this protest, we want to send the message – loud and clear – that violence against LGBTQ students won’t be tolerated and the University must immediately come up with measures to address complaints regarding bullying and harassment of students who do not conform to normative ideas of gender or sexuality. Please join the protest march on Friday (24th April), 10:30 AM, outside Arts Faculty main gate (North Campus). We will also stage ‘Pehchan‘, a street play on LGBTQ identities by Asmita Theatre.
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Rationale
The writer stresses on protecting victim’s identity and says the victim did not file an FIR because that meant disclosure of identity. I can not help but remember a previous incident a few years ago when the above writer ensured the identity of a male rape victim was revealed and reasoned that in the larger interest of public knowing the violence against LGBTQ, his act was justified. There was no concern about victim’s family knowing about his sexuality and chances of him getting thrown out of the house. Now this singing the new tune amazes me.
The description of the writer above reads ‘I believe we all have vices in us and don’t advocate a puritanical way of life. Life is imperfect. I’m a non-conformist.’ Great! So let’s take a non-conformist non-puritanical example. A guy goes to a bunch of girls and makes comments about their bodies, how sexy they look and propositions to have sex with him. What does this amount to? It amounts to sexual harassment or even molestation under IPC. Now, what redressal mechanism does a bunch of straight men who are propositioned in this manner by a gay guy? Or in other words, does what the gay guy does is justified? Does the gay male’s right to express his sexual desires stop at where the other person’s sexual autonomy begins or does it extend further? Doesn’t a person have a rigth to rpivacy or does walking on the street means one need to be prepared for such propositions? The resort to violence in such situation is not something I would endorse. I condemn it. But the author has an ethical responsibility to state what happened and why a particular student was attacked. It’s way too easy to protray honour killing as a phenomenon in rural Haryana, Jatt men as epitome of violence and sexual harassment. But one need to understand the whole context to get a clearer picture. No Rafiul Alom Rahamn, you did not play the victim card correct this time. Better luck next time.