Sexism at IIT Roorkee: from a female alumnus

A little while ago, an article on Youth Ki Awaaz caught my attention.

" 'My Kindness And Personality Didn't Matter. My Breasts Did': Guest Lecturer, IIT Roorkee"

Inflamed headlines are a regular part of click-bait but I had a feeling there was more to this than a cry for attention. I spent 5 years at IIT Roorkee myself, and I'm dismayed to admit that this didn't surprise me.

My first thoughts on reading the article was that it is poorly written. There are several male dominated spaces where it is enough to say "woh r**nd hai yaar" and the man is instantly believed by a large group of people. But it is not enough for a woman to write ~300 words about her personal experience on a public forum, to be believed. The public hate ensued:

"hahah its happen when you hire incompetent and useless guest faculty with no knowledge and feminist ego....its the fault of IIT administration .....thanks god this women was mere a guest faculty...if it could have been permanent..u can assume the nuisance she can create....on other side...youth ki awaz had maintain their mediocrity standards by attacking such prestigious institution by fake rumours and complaint.....the IIT roorkee administration should take cognizance of this matter and file a suit against that stupid guest faculty and media.."

"Hahahahaha so much paranoid these days, girls are. Just because we fantasies women doesn't mean we want to rape and murder everyone of them. It's human nature we fantasies what we can't get. Read a book...."

[Among "Top comments" from Youth Ki Awaaz's Facebook post about the article]

This kind of an attitude is exactly why a feminist movement was needed in the first place, and the fact that it still persists in our elitist (not "elite", please!) institutions is a big problem. It wasn't enough that the woman said she had a problem, she had to clear an agneepareeksha to prove that it was true, or she would be ripped apart on social media. Well, as it turns out, people aren't normally videotaping everything going on in their lives. Unfortunately, we only have her word for what happened.

"What is proof that it really happened ,or just a hoe creating drama to become permanent from guest lecture.playing victim card is only thing which hoes can do..its a gid gifted talent..n plz we all know how hoes earns thier phds"

"Its just that this card plays out well and people are automatically on your side. You felt humiliated by someone accuse him of being a sexist and pervert. And public sympathy would be on your side."

I don't know this woman and I wasn't there personally. Yes, I recognise the possibility that this is a hoax. I'd like to share my own experiences at IIT Roorkee to tell you why I believe this stranger.

I joined IIT Roorkee in 2009 as an undergraduate student in the Department of Earth Sciences. Geology is a male dominated field, they said, it's meant for strong people, women can't usually make it. I'm a woman in Geology 7 years since I first heard that remark. I was the only girl in a batch of 23 students, and I've gone through something that I now know too many women go through: I needed to prove myself better than others to be considered at par. If I did well in a subject, it was assumed that the faculty member was being kind to me. If I didn't do well, it was because I was a girl, (and herein lay the implicit meaning that I was inferior because of my gender). But let me not harp on my fellow students too much. Several of them were very good people. So much, that when they treated me like a regular person, it was assumed that they were being extra nice to me...because I was a girl. I remember vividly, when a fellow student slandered me using a fake Facebook profile, several of my male friends showed their anger in their comments. The reply was, "are you next in line for her"?

IIT Roorkee is a male dominated space and I worry that it will remain so for a long time. In such communities, women do not have a voice. Rumours spread in hushed voices and lead to some very loud judgements indeed. Morals can be questioned by those of questionable morals themselves, and a girl can not raise a voice because no one is asking her anything. They simply assume.

I have been a victim of this public slander myself. It affected me significantly and I can go on and on about it. It isn't nice and it certainly isn't fair. But then again, you might not want to take my word for it.

"But that isn't IIT Roorkee, that's just the male mentality"

An institute is far more than a fraction of the male undergraduate community, the biggest pillars are the faculty body and the institute's structure of rules (or 'system').

So let me begin there. In my 1st year, it was finding out that girls (only) aren't allowed to wear capris to the Library and to some classes. In my 2nd year, it was a faculty member pointing to my sleeveless kurta and saying, inhe dekhiye, ye to kuchh pehenke hi nahin aayi hain. In my 4th year, it was a security officer telling me in confidence, aapko pata nahin hai humein ladkiyan kahan-kahan, kaise-kaise hotels mein milti hain. In my 5th year, it was another faculty member reprimanding my friend for wearing jeans when she wasn't thin "enough". He was a faculty member, and the most I could do was jokingly tell him that times have changed and it is no longer okay to comment in this manner. I had to be polite and it irked me so much!

The same system that sought to lock up the girls at 10 PM (now changed to 11 PM) did nothing when girls were eve-teased. A regular feature near our hostel was an outsider who liked to point towards his private parts and make lewd gestures when girls were passing by. The security guards were usually too busy playing moral police to undergraduates. Many of my male friends have heard, chalo bhaago yahan se, Girls' hostel ke saamne ghoomte rehte hain. But when a girl complained of being catcalled, I overheard the guard say, ab kaise pakde, woh to chala gaya na motorcycle pe. It's easier to pick on young students than chase men on motorcycles, the same men that could have been stopped at the gates or at least asked for an ID.

When my (male) friends approached the Dean of Students' Welfare about the student who had used a fake Facebook profile to slander some of us, the reply was, Social media isn't within our domain. Fair enough, but so aren't our morals, characters, figures or dress codes.

The system has never understood empowering women. It has presumably given up on protecting women too. It finds it more convenient to restrict these women, because women are the cause of all evil anyway.

This post is written in retrospection. I wish I had more evidence, but I am relying on my experiences being enough to show you why I wasn't surprised (not passing a judgement on whether the Guest Lecturer's story was a hoax or not).

I wouldn't go as far as discouraging girls to attend IIT Roorkee. [What this post wasn't about is how I found some very able peers at my alma mater. Indeed, I felt the best part of IIT Roorkee was not the system, the faculty, the infrastructure or the campus, it was the undergraduate student body.] But I would sincerely warn them that it isn't the elite campus they expect would change their lives. Elite is as elite does, and no part of elite should be left unscathed for being patriarchal. In most cases, it is the girl who finds a way to solve this problem, by staying quiet. A sorry state of affairs, but hopefully, it can be changed.

As for all those spewing hate on social media, I can only feel pity for the way you think.