College Women in India: Stop Caging Us With Curfews!

It's fairly common in colleges across the country for female students to be required to obey curfews – some as early as 6:30 p.m. – while male students are allowed to stay out later, or even roam free. Now some students are pushing back, arguing that the female curfew is discriminatory and perpetuates a "blame the victim" mentality in a social climate where incidents of sexual assault are on the rise.

In the news quite recently was a protest staged at Delhi University as part of a new movement called "Pinjra Tod," or "Break the Cage," ​in which students broke curfew with late-night marches, organised petitions, posted slogans of female empowerment in graffiti, and held public meetings and classroom discussions to challenge regulations that they claim are sexist and oppressive. 

Student ​Nilanjana Pau​l, who lives in a woman-only dormitory at Delhi University, told the Washington Post that every time she leaves her dorm, she's asked a series of invasive questions like: Where are you going? When are you coming back? What's the contact information for the person you're seeing? She is not allowed to be out of her dorm past 8 p.m. – not even to go to the library, which remains accessible for male college students well past 8 p.m.

 ​"Why do I have to write the purpose on my forehead if I want to go out?" Paul asked. "Why can't I just go out aimlessly and meet friends and stroll? Am I inside a cage?"​

​According to PRI, the Pinjra Tod movement began in August after Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi removed privileges that granted women an extended curfew of 10 p.m. two nights a month. Students across the city came together through a Facebook group and petitioned the Delhi Commission of Women to take a stand against the discriminatory practice of curfews.​ ​The movement has emerged alongside another social justice effort, "Why Loiter?" which argues for women to be more visible in public spaces, which in India are usually dominated by men. As political science graduate student Utsa Sarmin told the Post, "The city will become safe not by having less women in public spaces after dark, but by having more women. When will they get it?"​

Delhi University school officials say the curfews are necessary to protect women, and that parents support the protective measure. But activists wonder: who and what are the regulations really protecting? ​PRI points out that sometimes the curfews are "so strict that some wardens don't even let women inside even if the women are a few minutes late ... which arguably puts her at risk of being attacked."​​​

The curfew and desire to keep women out of public spaces reflects a larger cultural problem in India, where, if a woman is raped, police, politicians, and community officials question the woman's choice of clothing or why she was out at night. Women's Right's Activist Kavita Krishnan says the movements are "the flowering of a new generation of women's movement in India."

"It is coming out of the tension created by the new economic climate where you want to send more and more women into higher education and workplaces but you want to control their behavior in the name of tradition," she told the Post.

​​According to Devangana Kalita, one of the Pinjra Tod's founding members, the rules are not about safety – they are about moral policing. ​"For far too long, women's personal freedom has been curtailed in the name of safety. State institutions and universities need to understand that they cannot protect women by undermining their autonomy," she told the Indian Express.​ "Through the campaign, we are trying to address four issues — unnecessary restrictions on women, moral policing in the name of concern, need for creation of more egalitarian and affordable spaces where women can stay, and proper implementation of anti-sexual harassment laws. If the environment is more enabling, we believe women don't have to be caged at all. State authorities have to stop acting like khap panchayats that seek to control and regulate the lives of young adult women in the name of 'protection' and 'safety.'"

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