Kerala Education Minister P.K. Abdu Rabb says he is against girls and boys sharing the same bench in a college. He is okay if they sit in separate chairs though.

The remarks came, last week, in response to the suspension of Dinu K., a student at the Muslim-run Farook College in Kozhikode.

Dinu was told to bring his guardians for the crime of sitting next to a girl student in class. His behaviour allegedly violated the decorum of the college.

Gender segregation is a way of life in Kerala. A protest against moral policing in Delhi, above

Dinu refused, forcing the management to suspend him.

What the management did, or the minister said, should hardly come as a surprise if you, like me, have lived most of your life in Kerala.

Incidents like this happen on and off across the state. For the record, Kerala has a pathological aversion towards any public mixing of sexes. And believe it or not, it begins right from the kindergarten.

Like the Farook College incident, the PTA of a government school in Malappuram stalled nursery classes, a few years ago, when children belonging to the opposite sex shared the same bench in class.

Gender segregation is a way of life in the state. It begins from school and continues through college and into public life in the form of segregated seats in buses, separate queues at ticket counters, and segregated workout spaces and timings in gyms, making any meaningful interaction with women in public an unpleasant experience.

Bharatmata, a Catholic-run college in Kochi, went to the extent of installing a vertical iron grill as a barrier inside its college bus to keep boys away from girls.

Mar Ivanios, another Catholic-run institution in Thiruvananthapuram, where I studied, had campus guards who acted more like anti-vice squads chasing away love-struck couples looking for a secluded spot inside empty classrooms.

Dating, a term synonymous with college campuses in Delhi, is an alien concept to most Malayalee teenagers. The only date they are familiar with is of the edible variety.

This is not to say that there aren’t any storybook romances happening in campuses. Of course there are, but not without attracting their share of snide remarks and social opprobrium from people who have absolutely no stake in them.

For many youngsters, a chance to enter into a relationship outside marriage without fear or social shaming exists only when they move out of the state to relatively more liberal cities such as Bengaluru or Delhi.

Falling in love was a calculated risk only the brash and the bold took, because the risk factor was not just confined to campuses alone.

Outside the gates, there have been occasions when even married couples had to explain their relationship status to rank strangers.

One of the first things my father advised when I revealed my plan to go on a honeymoon in Kerala was to carry my marriage certificate with me.

As Sahitya Akademi award-winning writer Paul Zacharia says, it is “the wrong religious doctrines and educational system” followed by Christians and Muslims for ages that have paved the way for a moral policing culture in the state.

Now, the Hindus, whose doctrines were more liberal, have started sharing the ideas of Christians and Muslims, he says.

What I have written might ring true for readers from other states as well, including Delhi.

Nothing epitomises the Capital’s gender segregation than the Delhi Metro. Women passengers will vouch how Metro has turned them into a captive moving feast for the lecherous stares of men by introducing a separate women’s-only compartment in the name of safety.

Then why single out Kerala? Because that is the state I call home, and I grew up listening to Marxist intellectuals and economists singing paeans about the so-called forward-looking ‘Kerala Model’ of development.

Little did I realise then that literacy rates and human development indices will not bring about any attitudinal change in characters like Rabb.

Labour draws flak for sex segregation

Men and women pictured sitting separately in the UK

It is not just Indian politicians who are at the receiving end of the sexism row.

Earlier this year, the British Labour party came under attack after it defended its decision to segregate Muslim men and women at a party rally in Birmingham.

A photograph from the rally published by Daily Mail showed men and women sitting apart in the hall, listening to the speakers who included senior party figures including Khalid Mahmood, an MP from Birmingham Perry Barr, known for his fight against gender segregation in schools.

Though party members denied that people were forced to sit separately based on gender, critics called the decision ‘sickening’ and claimed that the party was ‘selling values for votes’ in order to get Ed Miliband into Downing Street.

Talking to MailOnline after the event, Mahmood dismissed criticism based on the rally photo as “ridiculous.”

According to him, though the picture of the event showed men and women to be sitting apart, afterwards the groups all mixed and took “selfies” together.

“I was happy to support the event. It wasn’t as segregated as people are making out. The photo has been taken out of context. Nobody was told to sit anywhere. It just happened that men and women sat separately – but what the photo doesn’t show is there were women and men together at the back,” said Mahmood.

“What people need to understand is that this part of a process of engaging with Muslim women and this was the start of that. It is about giving women in some communities the confidence to engage,” he said.

“People can say what they like. In 2010, I went to rallies where there were no women at all,’ he added.

Senior party figures also appeared to defend Mahmood, saying that the seating arrangements ensured that women from the city's Muslim communities were able to take part - ensuring all were “treated equally and respectfully.”

Tory candidate Julian Smith, however, mocked the segregation saying that the “Labour are completely desperate. They are selling their values in exchange for a few votes.”