Month: July 2017

College campuses must breed productive citizens – not by placing battle tanks on their premises but by teaching students to question authority

The VC’s suggestion comes straight from the rightwing playbook of JNU as the site of anti-national behaviour (not to mention excessive condom use). After all, it’s only anti-nationals who need a dose of patriotism.(Saumya Khandelwal/HT File Photo)

I’m trying figure out which one of the two is more outrageous: that a university should be considered an appropriate location for an Army tank, or that the suggestion should have come from its own vice chancellor.

If Jawaharlal Nehru University’s vice chancellor, M Jagadesh Kumar gets his wish, we might soon have a weapon of war on its grounds. This presumably will remind ‘thousands of students about the great sacrifices and valour of our Indian army’ as they goose-step their way to class.

Why an army tank and not a plough? Farmers who feed us don’t make a lesser sacrifice. And what symbol represents those who die keeping our sewage lines clean?

The VC’s suggestion comes straight from the rightwing playbook of JNU as the site of anti-national behaviour (not to mention excessive condom use). After all, it’s only anti-nationals who need a dose of patriotism.

Nobody will dispute the idea that college campuses should breed productive citizens. The question is: how best do you do it? Certainly not by being lectured to by a minister who laments that since we are a democracy, people ‘dare’ to question the army. I’m sure minister Dharmendra Pradhan is not implying that we junk democracy and become a military dictatorship but his lament does sound dangerously close.

Any mother will tell you that enforced disciplining is doomed to backfire. Compulsory singing of the national anthem or Vande Mataram, as the Madras High Court recently ruled, will raise a generation of parrots not patriots.

How do campuses raise good citizens? First, teach students to question. Go against the grain of rote learning and blind respect for authority. Question everything – professors, received learning, assumptions and the fake news received daily on phones. You cannot have national progress without inquiring minds.

Next, teach them to hold power to accountability. Citizens who question elected representatives keep democracy alive. No institution is above critique, not even the judiciary and especially not the media.

Armies are and must be questioned. How does a military court justify suspending the life sentences of five army personnel that was handed down by a court martial for the crime of staging the killing of innocent citizens? It is incumbent on us as vigilant citizens to ask these questions.

A country without engaged and informed citizens is just territory. Colleges must be incubators for such citizens.

My love for my country might lead me to question its caste system or its treatment of minorities and women. This does not deplete my love for India but in fact makes me a citizen who is vested in my country’s future and in preserving its identity as a multi-cultural democracy.

Meanwhile, my suggestion to JNU’s patriotic VC: Ditch the tank. Read the Constitution instead.

Namita Bhandare writes on social issues and gender. The views expressed are personal.

In India, the intersection between morality and medicine can make a visit to the gynaecologist harrowing for unmarried women

Most women, married or not, will only see a gynecologist when they are pregnant — or trying to be. For most – even those with the means to healthcare — the idea of a routine checkup or health screening is alien. (Photo for representational purposes only)(Shutterstock)

She panicked when she thought she might be pregnant. She couldn’t tell her parents; had heard horror stories about doctors. “I was too scared to even buy a DIY pregnancy kit,” says the unmarried, final year college student. Those harrowing days were finally dispelled with the arrival of a late period.

Not every story ends so happily. In a country where sex is taboo and virginity is prized, unmarried women who have to visit the gynecologist often end up receiving large lashings of judgment.

Are you married? Are you having sex with your boyfriend? Do your parents know? Beta, girls from good families don’t do these wrong things.

Sometimes it isn’t even about sex but ‘protecting’ virginity.

Gayathri, who asks that I use only her first name, talks of going to a posh Delhi hospital for an invasive vaginal examination for a diagnosis of polycystic ovary syndrome and being ‘advised’ by the lab technician to opt for just a superficial examination. The technician was worried that the invasive test could rupture her hymen. “He was trying to be nice,” she says wryly.

In a country where sex education is practically absent and parents are loathe to have that conversation with their children, the result of a disapproving encounter between patient and medical professional is not humiliation so much as the patient’s health.

Most women, married or not, will only see a gynecologist when they are pregnant — or trying to be. Our bodies, vessels for delivering new generations of babies, are deemed worthy of a trip to the doctor only when we’re fulfilling our roles as mothers. For most – even those with the means to healthcare — the idea of a routine checkup or health screening is alien.

Yet, India has 132,000 new cases of cervical cancer a year and WHO estimates that by 2020, 1.24 lakh women will be affected by breast cancer. Can we really afford to be squeamish?

“If you’re young, you’re shamed for having sex. If you’re older, you’re shamed for not having kids,” says Paromita Vohra, film-maker, writer and founder of Agents of Ishq that aims to create positive conversations about sex, love and desire.

There are exceptions. A crowd-sourced list maintained by Delhi-based activist Amba Azaad has a directory of trustworthy, non-judgmental gynaecologists.

Elsewhere, Haiyya, an NGO has an on-ground campaign and online petition for the right to safe medical services for everyone, regardless of marital status.

The next step, says campaign manager Mrinalini Dayal: getting doctors to agree to various ‘commandments’ including respecting patient confidentiality and treating adult unmarried women as capable of making informed decisions about their bodies.

It is not an unreasonable demand. Doctors need to be reminded they are medical practitioners, not the moral police.

(Namita Bhandare writes on social issues and gender. The views expressed are personal.)