Scaling Of Walls & Holi Scares: Decoding Aftermath Of Delhi University Harassment Cases

A video from Delhi University's Daulat Ram College is making rounds on social media in which some boys can be seen hooting and whistling outside the campus and eve-teasing the female students of the college publicly. This happened just a few months after Miranda House's Diwali fest incident.

Delhi University's fests are famous everywhere but what happens beyond a 15-second Instagram reel is much more horrible than you can ever imagine. In October 2022, during the Diwali fest in Delhi University's women's college Miranda House, all protocols were broken as male students tried to climb the gates of the college attempting to enter within the premises. Not only this, there were students who groped, eve-teased, harassed and masturbated at female students from college at the open-for-all DU students fest. A lot of problematic comments were made, and a lot of promises of action were made, but just a few months later, in February 2023 another such incident happened and this time in DU's Daulat Ram college.

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Delhi University Fest Harassment Cases

As the 2023 fest season of Delhi University arrived, a video went viral in which a group of schoolboys were allegedly seen shouting comments like "Pappi do ya pappi lo" outside the DRC campus, an attempt to harass female students much elder than them. The problematic thing was that none of the passersby-es felt the need to scold or stop them. The point is what happens after such harassment incidents happen in DU's girls' colleges?

When such incidents are happening, the authorities go into panic mode as they did not expect such things to happen. This is an irony considering Delhi's troubling past regarding women's safety. What follows is calling the cops and taking control of the situation. Statements from female students are noted, complaints are registered and promises are made to take strict actions. The college, on the other hand, restricts the entry of outsiders on the campus anymore and poses many such restrictions on the female students while the male offenders go by enjoying their college life, hitting on other college students.

A student from Miranda House reportedly claimed that she was in college when the Diwali incident happened and there were men in college who were passing comments at them which she found problematic. However, she was cut off by her friends who told her, "It's Delhi, yeh sab toh normal hai". No it's not, harassment is not normal, though it is common in Delhi but it should not be normal in any case. Such mindsets remind us how common these wrong deeds have become to be considered normal.

The invisible after-effect of such incidents is the trauma in female students. They will find it difficult to attend another fest without pepper spray, leave for college in shorts or skirts or even feel comfortable around unknown men. Delhi already has a bad reputation when it comes to women's safety and such behaviour is not expected from a generation that calls itself modern and woke.

A student from DRC College commented on the recent incident and said, "The sad reality is nobody is going to do anything. We have our college fest lined up, and even before that there are so many Holi events on campus and trust me, the amount of molestation that happens during Holi is too much. Last year some of my classmates went to one of these events and the crowd was so bad. There were reports of guys throwing semen-filled balloons at female DU students a few years back and yet we have these events without any proper measures for safety".

Talking about the restrictions in women's colleges after such fests, a student said, "Given all these circumstances, we can't even blame the authorities for restricting the entries in a way. But yeah I do agree that it is always the women who are put behind the walls."

The aftermath of such harassment cases is limited to girls being restricted and boys being let go and the fact that two such incidents happened in a course of 3 to 4 months shows how severe the condition is. College life which is supposed to be fun and adventurous ends up becoming a terrifying experience for girls. It's high time to rethink our actions against such cases, our solution should not be limited to girls, the boys should be held responsible for their behaviour as well. The public, the authorities and the administration, everyone need to take strict action because what's the point of being India's leading university when you can't give your female students a safe environment?

Views expressed by the author are their own