Veiling the right to education

Educational institutions should focus on improving the quality of education imparted to the lakhs of students, and stop short of moral policing is a point that seems to be repeated very often that the people who have to take note are missing frequently. Two news items that have appeared earlier this week in Bantwal and Uppinangady, both places in Dakshina Kannada, highlight a disquieting trend of increasing religious intolerance and how right wing extremists are blatantly using academia as a means to an end.

Aysha Asmin, a first-year student of Sri Venkataramana Swamy College, Bantwal, was given two options by her principal Seetharamayya --- ‘abide’ by the college rules or quit. That no such rules exist or were mentioned during the time of Aysha’s admission and the college union is managed by a right-wing group is not a mere coincidence. Similar objections raised by the college management at the Government First Grade College, Uppinangady, seem to have died down after Muslim girls have been permitted to wear a head scarf for the ‘time being’.

Religious intolerance has been on the rise and Dakshina Kannada has been its epicentre in South India. The banning of burqas and the graphic visuals of hooligans, backed by Pramod Muthalik’s Sri Ram Sene, beating up boys and girls in Mangalore in January this year, details a disturbing malice that is gaining currency.

The show-cause notice issued by the district deputy commissioner is a move in the right direction and it is expected that the Department of College Education would take punitive action against the college. The state home minister, V Acharya, who has backed the college decision citing ‘discipline’, has overlooked a simple norm that ‘discipline’ and order should not be imposed or attained at the cost of an individual’s freedom as enshrined in our Constitution.

The question to be asked is why is it that the Universities Grant Commission and the ministry of education have not taken cognisance of the issue if there is a ‘rule’ in the prospectus of the government-aided college banning students from wearing a burqa, as claimed by Seetharamayya. As the ban is a clear violation of the fundamental rights, the college should be reprimanded and not just smacked on the knuckle.

The college principal’s statement ridiculing religious freedom and that he was under pressure from certain organisations, coupled with the Mangalore University vice-chancellor K M Kaveriappa’s assurance to Aysha that he would secure an admission in any college of her choice, are confessions in public that the system has bowed to antics of right-wing groups.

That colleges, and universities in some cases, insist on a dress code alibi discipline, is a reflection of the lack of maturity in thought and blinkered vision that is spreading among educational institutions at an alarming rate.

(The edited version of this can be accessed at http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Intolerance+in+academia&artid=8PA3IZ3a8eQ=&SectionID=RRQemgLywPI=&MainSectionID=RRQemgLywPI=&SectionName=XQcp6iFoWTvPHj2dDBzTNA==)