United Students

Everybody knows that sexual harassment is rampant in Delhi University. Girls endure lewd comments and even groping on an almost daily basis. It goes on inspite of article XIV-D and heavy policing on campus. In fact, the police seems to add to the problem for they are very evidently not sensitized to the issue and just can’t deal with the problem in an acceptable manner. It is obvious that some institutional changes are required to tackle this problem.

 (All photographs by Aditya Raj Kaul)
(Click on photographs to view full image)

However, over the last three weeks the university administration as well as the NCW has done little about this case, and are also clueless about how to deal with the recurring problem of sexual harassment in the campus.

Thus, United Students decided to take this issue out to the common people of Delhi, by organizing a large protest meeting in Connought Place, and by involving parents and guardians of students of the university. We got a great response from the people of Delhi, and everybody was one on the view that sexual harassment has become rampant in the city, and there is pressing need of changes at the insitutional level to deal with this menace.

On the occassion of the International Day of Non Violence, I’d like to highlight the following comment made to a post in this community by Akshay Bakaya in the past:

The idea of Ahimsa Day, International Day of Non-Violence is an initiative of an English language class of mainly Japanese and Korean children in Paris, working on Attenborough’s film ‘Gandhi’. This proposal was taken to the 2004 Bombay WSF by Peace Nobel laureate, Shirin Ebadi of Iran, and supported by Romila Thapar, Asma Jahangir, Noam Chomsky, K.R. Narayanan, Immanuel Wallerstein, etc. Krishna Kumar (now director NCERT) had predicted that this call will take 3 years to be properly heard…

Hard News, the Indian associate of the international French monthly Le Monde Diplomatique, supported the initiative. Editor Sanjay Kapoor discussed it with Mohsina Kidwai, General Secretary of the Indian National Congress, who took it to party president Sonia Gandhi just before the January 2007 Satyagraha convention where archbishob Desmond Tutu on January 30th formally proposed that a call for an ahimsa day (on 2nd October) be sent to the UN.

Nikhita Arora of United Students finished fourth for the President’s post in the recently concluded Delhi University Students Union elections securing 1156 votes.

This is a decline from last year, when Aaditya Dar of US got 4,300 votes for the same post, but it should not be forgotten that polling this year was at an all-time low of 25% as opposed to 53% last year.

United Students takes pride in the fact that it is perhaps the only independent [of political affiliation and ideology] group that has stood the test of time to contest 2 consecutive DUSU elections, and we shall continue to take up students’ issues at all possible fora.

Thank you all for your support during the campaign. In particular I’d like to thank Nikhita Arora [for contesting inspite of family pressure], Ekta Marwaha, Krishna Kaul, Vaishali Rawat, Vindhya Malik, Sonakshi Babbar, Ishita Tiwary, Nupur Mittal, Kush Verma, Nikhil Bhaskar, Vikas, Dhananjay, Shruti, Samar, Upen, Dhruv Suri and last but not the least Mr. Sanjay Kaul.

Posted by: Ritwik Agrawal for United Students.