Cultural activists up in arms against Kerala college’s segregation policy

Cultural activists have responded sharply to the suspension of a student from Farook College, a higher education institution recently awarded with the autonomous college status, for acting against its management’s instruction that boys and girls should sit separately on the campus, including in classrooms and the canteen.

‘Regressive move’

Screenwriter and social activist Deedi Damodaran has said that such a decision fundamentally had to do with the kind of “education” such institutions impart. This very incident, she says, tells up on the “poor quality” of “teaching” taking place there. Modern-day education, according to her, should enable each student to be completely at ease with gender differences. “We are not even living in a black-and-white society of male and female alone,” she said suggesting that there was something seriously cruel and anachronistic about the suspension a student from a college for sitting along with another gender. “The civil society should stand up against such regressive move,” said Ms. Deedi.Rights activist K. Ajitha has also termed the college’s decision totally unacceptable.

K. Dinu, a first year BA Sociology student, was suspended by the college authorities on October 29 for “violating” the college “discipline.” Eight other students, including girls, who had been ousted from the class for sharing bench space with their opposite sex, had earlier been let into the class only after tendering a written apology. “I didn’t apologise, because I never thought I did something wrong,” Dinu, an IIT dropout, who later joined Farook College, told The Hindu .

Though the Students Federation of India (SFI) had taken up the cause of Dinu and others, it didn’t gain momentum because majority of the students were “afraid” of the management’s action. “However, we are still protesting against it by whatever means possible,” said Ananth Krishnan, an SFI worker from the campus.

Meanwhile, a statement signed by around 50 cultural leaders, including writers such as K. Satchidanandan, K. R. Meera and K. Venu, against the decision to suspend the student was issued here on Tuesday.