Patriarchy,Community Rights and Institutions for Education: Counter-discourse and Negotiation for Rights

Disciplining Women: Informal Norms and Institutional Rules

Institutions for women’s learning that came with ‘modern reforms’ in India socialised girls and women to accept gender inequities and disabilities; ‘reform’ agendas aimed not at enabling or liberating women and their minds from patriarchal controls, but rather to reshape and reform their inner space in tune with a fresh set of patriarchal gender norms that further burdened and constricted women’s lives (Forbes, 1998; Kumar, 1993; Lal, 2012; Sarkar, 1973, 1975). ‘Suitable literature’ for women laid down fresh codes of behaviour that confirmed the dominant view that regarded home as the only defining feminine space (Chatterjee, 1989). Learning was to be imparted in closely confined spaces, meant to preserve the distinct ‘Indianness’ of women. Institutions for women bore the same concerns across communities notwithstanding the ‘progressive’ or conservative strand in respective reform agendas.

However, in keeping with their particular concerns, communities responded in some specific ways. Muslim ‘reform’ placed the specific question of purdah at the centre of the discourse; purdah was viewed both as an obstacle to women’s education and, at the same time, as a defining characteristics of the community’s ‘Muslim’ identity. The history of these institutions that represented the struggle between modernity and tradition, where preservation of heritage competed with claims for a modern education, explains some of the problems faced by women today.

The central Muslim university referred to in this study was formed out of the reform initiatives of ‘progressive’ Muslims whose primary interest was boys’ education. The girls’ school founded by younger men in the movement in opposition to the stalwarts, however, sought to accommodate the traditional content and arrangements for women’s education, not only to gain the approval of senior men but also out of their own attachment to sharif (Muslim elite) values (Minault, 1998). The specific character of the institution thus was largely shaped out of pragmatic responses to the conservative gender ideology of the movement. It undertook to instruct women in faith and traditional cultural values and to impart training in subjects previously undertaken by households, with some knowledge of courses essential for modern wifehood and housekeeping. Although with the institution’s evolution into a women’s college over the years, many more subjects were added, it remained within the strictly guarded structure of a girls’ school.

The project thus started as a girls’ school in the early 20th century, and the questions around women’s education at the time necessitated that it be located at some distance from the college for Muslim boys, and housed in a boarding space within the boundary of the school. The strict observance of purdah was a condition for, and a way to counter the conservative reaction against, female education. It conformed to norms of the Muslim elite to keep women secluded and away from interactions with men. There were attempts by a section of reformers engaged in promoting Muslim women’s education—the founders of girls’ schools, the editors of women’s magazines—to liberally interpret purdah mainly to the extent that girls were allowed to leave home and go to school. Confinement of women in the smaller settings of household spaces was regarded as excessive and therefore ghair sharii (not sanctioned by Islam). Instead, sharii (sanctioned by Islamic canon) forms of purdah by which women would be protected from the male gaze were insisted upon. The schools therefore followed stricter norms of purdah. Even when, in due course of time, the Muslim elite was receptive to modern advances and a number of families abandoned purdah, it was fully enforced by the school (Ansari, 1990; Mirza, 2005).

The establishment of boarding facilities inside the campus was in keeping with the discourse of protecting women from undue exposure to public gaze as it would do away with the need for travelling to and from the school. In order to reassure parents and convince them to send their daughters to the school, greater purdah arrangements were enforced at the boarding house or secluded area, referred to as ‘purdah ka boarding’ by its founder (Minault, 1998). The physical location of the school (and then the college) thereby followed strict rules of segregation. The boarding area was surrounded by high walls and the hostel and school buildings had separate enclosures within these high walls, a sort of double protection from the outside gaze. Students were allowed to meet only their family members and conditional, well-guarded movement outside the campus was permitted. Thus, despite criticisms of excessiveness of veiling by founders of girls’ school, the idea of purdah as an enabler of Muslim women’s education gained greater respectability and permanence through institutional arrangements and norms of comportment laid out for women. Later, for higher education of girls, a college was also housed within the boarding campus, as all girls whether in school or college were to study only in purdah settings. It was only for post graduate education that the university, for reasons of logistics, opened up for girls.

In the present, the continuing linkages with the past, especially in relation to purdah are striking. Besides the concrete structural aspect of a secluded area with the girls’ school, college and hostels housed in it, and its layout and architecture that validates and reinforces the ideology of purdah, the university maintains a structural separation between men’s and women’s campuses up to the undergraduate level. In fact, the college’s spatial separation from the university has been strongly upheld as part of its historical–cultural legacy. The undergraduate courses at the university admit only male students as women students can only apply to the women’s college—except for professional courses which are at the co-educational university. Interestingly, the rationale provided for the segregation of undergraduate students in the current context, in terms of protection of young girls and their vulnerability, is not applied to women students of the same age enrolled in professional courses such as medicine, engineering and law. A number of these courses were added as the university expanded and added newer disciplines. Logistics and pedagogic requirements of these courses do not allow for segregated courses. Therefore only regular BA, BSc/BCom courses remain segregated.

Undergraduate women students have little connection with the main campus. It is a long-standing joke within the university that refers to the women’s college campus as the darba (penhouse) and its residential students as hens who are shut in every day at a fixed hour. This is a shared joke not only among the men students but male teachers as well, many of whom were students at the university.

With this separation at the undergraduate level, women’s visibility in the main university campus—where women enrolled in postgraduate, professional courses and PhD programmes share common institutional spaces with male students—is therefore considerably less. It is largely men students who are seen walking or biking from one building to another or hanging out at university grounds, cafeterias and lawns. Women students are visible on the roads but are conspicuous at the many ‘hangout’ places by their minuscule numbers or total absence. This marginal visibility of women has an obvious implication for women’s mobility and access to university resources. The unwritten codes of behaviour for women students accessing common spaces with men ensure that the campus is sanitised of women’s presence after a stipulated time. University spaces then become increasingly masculinised.

Similarly, strict rules govern women’s everyday living and mobility in the hostels for women. The structural separation of undergraduate education had such strong legitimacy that the institution did not allow its undergraduate women students access to the university library. In a recent development to be discussed later, for the first time in the history of the university very limited access to the library has been granted to students of the women’s college. This was a consequence of external pressures including a high court order, the result of the issue of denial of admission gaining sudden visibility in the mainstream media. However, the extremely limited nature of access to the library leaves the trend of this paper’s argument unaffected. While the newer boarding houses that are meant for women students enrolled in the postgraduate and professional undergraduate courses, located outside the women’s college campus have relatively relaxed rules, the ones housed inside the campus continue to bear the weight of the tradition of ‘reform’ as discussed in the previous section.

We now delineate some of the practices associated with the culture of restrictions at the women’s hostels. The gates are shut at four in the evening, the time when classes give over on weekdays. Residents are not allowed to leave the campus during the day or night without permission from the hostel wardens, except for one specific day every week scheduled as the one when resident students are allowed to step out of the campus. They are however, required to get back by a stipulated time—sunset. Signed letters of permission are required from a local guardian, more recently from parents, for stepping out of the campus on any day other than the scheduled outing day. The boarding house entrance notice specifies restricted spaces for women boarders such as certain market places, cinema halls, and areas of the city that are located at some distance from the campus. Regular monitoring of students through roll calls at various times is a standard procedure. Any transgression from rules implies dismissal of the student from the hostel. Additionally, it is assumed that the discourse of traditions and cultural values, the cornerstone of the university’s character, are to be to be upheld by girl students, keeping in mind the boundaries of acceptable feminine conduct. While these have been some of the traditionally applied restrictions on women student boarders, the overarching legitimacy of official discourse on order, security and protection means that newer forms of restrictions could be imposed with ease, without much reaction from any quarter. For instance, a rule disallowing non-resident women students to leave the campus gate before 1 p.m. is imposed on and off in response to actions seen as breach of college discipline. Other instances of restrictions imposed at will have taken the form of a ban on boarders going out of the campus for coaching classes and participating in other university activities in non-segregated campus spaces.

Regulatory dominant discourses on women as repositories of honour (enunciated through official addresses or messages to students), the strict system of formal rules guarding women, informal censuring by wardens and provosts who assume ‘responsibility’ for girls as fictive parents in boarding as well as discussion by university fraternity on social networking sites reaffirm the institution’s role in maintaining family honour. This is done explicitly in the form of an agreement reached with the families of women students during the admission process. For instance, the hostel application forms have a section seeking parents/guardians’ permission for allowing the admitted student to use a mobile phone, another asking whether they would allow their ward to travel alone, with student groups or only with them. Institutional authorities thus become a proxy for the family and assume a protectionist as well as a disciplining role.

Such legitimacy to oppressive patriarchal practices constraining women’s autonomy in an institutional space underscores the complicity of these institutions in denying the legal–constitutional protection/rights of women. In a way, the university almost becomes an extension of ‘conservative’ households that mainly see academic degrees for their daughters as aids to better marriage prospects. The administration banks on the support of traditionalists and a section of parents who consider these restrictions appropriate for their daughters. ¹

Besides, there is a trend to project these sets of restrictive rules for girls as the only opportunity for women from conservative Muslim families to acquire education, particularly in the context of post-Sachar mobilisation on Muslim backwardness, ² thereby seeking fresh legitimacy for these rules. The growing practice of veiling by Muslim women across the Muslim world, as much as in the campus in the post-9/11 scenario, provides added ballast to the norms of purdah and the segregated arrangements of the university (Ahmad, 2011; Haddad, 2007). Considerable liberties and space are allowed to Islamist groups and organisations that seek to school women in ‘Muslim’ values. These groups periodically hold lectures, training programmes, exhibitions and sale of literature on such themes as virtues of domesticity and motherhood for women, the evils of aspiring to a professional career, proper form of purdah to be observed etc. (Hussaini, 2012). Thus, newer ways of interpreting religious sanctions get employed to justify the unequal arrangement in education, overlooking women students’ demands for rights and access to institutional spaces.

The university was backed by the conservatives in denying its undergraduate women students access to the university library. Especially since 2011–2012, the issue gained strength on account of media coverage and the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s intervention. However, the university opened its library gates for women only after a High Court ruling—and despite the order for gender neutral and uniform access, it allots only restricted timings of 3 hours in the early part of Sunday morning for women’s college students’ use of the library. As Sunday is also the boarders’ ‘outing’ day, it does not affect the rules of the boarding house. The idea that segregation at the undergraduate level could be relaxed immediately sparks strong opposition from various quarters. The section which supported the demand (in debates on social forums and networks), premised their argument on theological logic by quoting from hadith to emphasise the importance of education for all and re-interpreting purdah to argue against the rule banning women college students’ access to the main library. Interestingly, as in the early 20th century, purdah was liberally interpreted. The opposition mainly was and continues to be from the foundational discourse of purdah that attempts to limit the need for women students of the college to step out.

Issues raised pointing to the violation of women students’ rights are routinely met by either outright opposition or hostility or are reframed to fit into the logic of gender segregation. For instance, the facilities of university coaching housed outside the women’s college campus, previously accessible to its students, were later shifted to the college premises, further restricting students’ mobility. In an even more remarkable move, in response to women’s demand for library access, a section opposed to it put forth the proposal of a Muslim Women’s University. The idea is to include postgraduate courses within the current college structure, and recognise it as a university. The proposal was to meet all the demands of equality with male students within the already crammed and segregated women’s college campus. The underlying argument is that co-education discourages Muslim families from sending their daughters to postgraduate institutions, an argument that has gained considerable support within the university population and administration.

Thus, the pact between the family, community and the educational institution for keeping women in control is firmly in place. The specific patriarchal forms of family control are duplicated through control over college education. In the context of rising majoritarian Hindutva politics, recent mobilisation over threat to the community has further encouraged a regressive gender ideology. While everyday experiences of controls and denials are common to women across institutions, the discourse over cultural rights and women’s special responsibilities to communities makes it particularly difficult for women from minority communities in any context (Sunder Rajan, 2003). On the one hand, their own cultural and emotional attachment to the community’s resource restrains them from speaking up on problems and oppression within. On the other, when they do, they find it necessary to be guarded and add qualifiers, conscious of the limitations and their ability to negotiate for rights. In practice, the rights enshrined in the constitution often do not come to them as direct entitlements of citizenship but rather as negotiable matters with the leaders of the community.

Women Students Respond: Contestations and Negotiations

Borrowing from feminist scholars who have focused on the ways in which girls negotiate and challenge the dominant culture while simultaneously conforming to the gendered identities created and circulated within cultural discourses (Durham, 1999; McRobbie, 2004; Willis, 2009), this section documents women students’ negotiation and manoeuvring for their rights to access institutional spaces and facilities. The origin and expansion of both the university and the women’s college and the relationship of the two is the story (as delineated in the previous section) of the institution’s attempt at reconciling tradition and modernity. The events that form the substance of this section reveal that women students’ struggles are also an attempt to creatively engage with tradition and modernity. The back and forth movement between resisting and conforming as evidenced in the following accounts, however, does not produce a uniform picture; instead it lends itself to two forms of analysis. The first could be framed as an exercise of agency, where conforming to tradition is voluntary. In other words, agency is exercised not so much to challenge patriarchal norms or structures that legitimise discrimination at the institutional level but to make choices within traditional limits (Mahmood, 2005). The second could be to highlight the value of conforming to certain norms of both femininity and cultural discourses for instrumental purposes, in other words, to stay legitimate within the community. This frame allows looking at the movement between power and powerlessness explicated by Fine and Macpherson (1992) in their analysis of girls’ efforts to negotiate with cultural norms.

Interviews with women students and information available through the archival material housed at the women’s studies centre are the source of the data that informs this section. The events on which the analysis is based cover a span of almost a decade from around 2004, the time most of our interviewees joined the college. We have organised this section to reflect not the chronology of events but rather to focus on issues.

A few years back, some students, both boys and girls, had formed a voluntary students group, ACT, to work on various social issues including awareness about women’s rights. Rehana (all names mentioned in this section are changed) and some other girls, who were then enrolled at the women’s college joined the group and planned awareness activities inside its campus. Reminiscing about various strategies they employed to involve the girls in discussions, Rehana recounts,

We would write questions concerning gender issues on a few sheets of paper and put them up on various hangout places inside the campus. We would sit at some distance and see girls reading the sheets. We would join them in the discussion and even try to give it direction.

She however regrets that the views of the girls were often very passive and sometimes even opposed to the idea of women’s equality—but draws satisfaction from the fact that ‘at least they responded’.

ACT had to stop its activities, however, after the group was suspected by the university administration as being complicit in an incident that involved another group member, Sehba, who had been bold enough to report an incident of sexual harassment involving her; the university’s subsequent inaction and apathy to media reports were palpable. Sehba’s action was widely regarded as a transgression, an act against the interest of the university community that amounted to disloyalty as it made public an issue that should have been dealt with within the institution. The student’s efforts to assert her right to seek redressal publically for sexual harassment challenged the boundaries that defined ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. Given the place of the university within the discourse of cultural rights as a symbol of community identity, this transgression was seen as an act against the interest of the community itself. The censuring of the group of which Sehba was a part, and of Sehba specifically, had the implicit or explicit support of the wider academic community, including many women students who had earlier supported her on the issue. As reflected in the responses of some of the women students interviewed, she was seen to have ‘gone too far’.

The legitimacy of such censuring was derived from a sense of the need for the assertion of community identity and preservation of the university’s interests (Kymlica, 1995), specifically in the context of majoritarianism that has come to mark contemporary political reality and discourse in India (Bacchetta, 2002; Sarkar, 2002). In this context, the scrutiny that women’s actions come under gets even sharper (Werbner and Yuval-Davis, 2005). Due to the group’s notoriety, after the incident, students hesitated to associate with it for fear of getting into trouble with the administration. At times, they faced outright hostility from students as the group came to be regarded as too radical for the university’s ethos.

Another incident involved a spontaneous organising by mainly resident students of the women’s college over the death of a hosteller, Maryam. There was a general feeling that her death could have been prevented and that she had died due to the apathy of the hostel authorities. Maryam was unwell and was denied permission to leave the campus to see a doctor. The students were outraged by the authorities’ attempts to malign Maryam by suggesting that it was a case of suicide and that the girl might have been pregnant. At least two women mentioned their outrage at this allegation and said it made them reflect that had they been in Maryam’s place, their character could have been similarly maligned. They attributed this view of the authorities to be the catalyst for their subsequent actions. Paradoxically, it was the idea of honour and its inextricable connection to the notion of chastity that proved to be the catalyst for the spontaneous resistance that soon turned into a full-fledged campaign—even if short-lived—as subsequent events reveal.

Various accounts affirmed that women students walked out of the campus to the Vice Chancellor’s office and demanded an inquiry into Maryam’s death. Almost all of them, in talking about the incident, got excited at the memory of their walk out. There were certain details that were repeated by each one of them, like the act of ‘gate-crashing’: the boarding house gates remain locked under the supervision of security guards once the classes are over. Forcing the gates (‘gate-crashing’) was in itself an act of assertion followed by a spontaneous march by at least a thousand girls; the stunned looks on the faces of the onlookers, including the men students, and the fact that they camped out at the Vice Chancellor’s lodge until late in the night and compelled him to speak to them, were no small achievements.

The sense of triumph in having violated the code of conduct that required the girls to be ‘well behaved’ was evident in all their accounts even though they saw the movement only as a partial success at best. Rehana narrated how the resident students managed all the affairs at the hostels for a week on their own. She emphasised that they had daily meetings and everything was handled smoothly, conveying their capacity to handle their lives without any supervision. However, no one from the administrative team was held accountable for Maryam’s death. With a new administrative team in place, the girls were pressurised into giving up the issue.

A remarkable contradiction is evident in the fact that the act of gate-crashing and camping outside the four walls of the campus at night—in other words transgressing against the established patriarchal norm that afforded limited mobility to women students—was in effect an act of protecting themselves from the potential threat to their own honour. In its substance, the actions reinforce a defining characteristic of patriarchy, namely the need for surveillance and control of women’s bodies due to its association with honour. The acts of simultaneously challenging and conforming to accepted gendered identities within cultural discourses have been theorised to highlight the agentive capabilities that girls display using the discourse of femininity—albeit in very different contexts (see Mazzarella and Pecora, 2007; Willis, 2009). Mahmood’s (2005) work discusses and expands a similar notion of agency as exercised within traditional limits. She however goes beyond the binary model of enacting or subverting the normative. Agency, she argues ‘can be understood only from within the discourses and structures of subordination that create the conditions of its enactment’ (p. 15). This understanding of agency as historically and culturally specific suggests that agentic acts need not always aim towards ‘liberatory politics’: As we note here in women students’ narration of these incidents, that while there was frustration and resentment against those in authority or those who could have supported them but did not, there was little sense of failure. The act of resistance was regarded as a moment of triumph in itself.

Since the acts of resistance have been sporadic and the actors as well as the issues varied, our analysis reveals that unlike the motivations above, in other acts, reliance on and conforming to the cultural norms were done for instrumental reasons rather than a self-conscious concern for preservation of tradition. As Fine and Macpherson (1992) have pointed out, even in situations of constraints, young women find ways of talking as subjects, resisting and conforming simultaneously as they move between the nexus of power and powerlessness. It occurred repeatedly in their accounts of resisting the discourse of femininity that requires them to obey the powers that be. Through these mechanisms they resist, sometimes alone and, at other times, together.

The newly established women’s studies centre in the main campus also became a locus for organising. The centre invited women leaders to form a national women’s organisation (NWO) that could organise to deliver talks at the campus. Thus encouraged, some set up a local chapter of the NWO. Sushma, a student of law, recounts that though the chapter grew at an impressive pace, it proved to be short lived as it too fell foul of the authorities. An unrelated incident that involved girls marching out of the women’s college campus once again, led to strict disciplinary measures along with a complete ban on any activity that required girls to leave the gates. As mentioned in the previous section, even coaching classes at the main campus were made out of bounds for girl students and the activities of NWO were curbed as well. Amna mentioned another initiative of those times called Youth and Democracy, that only had non-confrontational activities like screening of films on social issues—but this was not regarded favourably by the boarding house authorities. In Amna’s words, ‘There’s just too much censoring. You can’t show girls this, you can’t show girls that…’

The letting go of one organisational effort after each disciplinary action and starting another could be seen as a way to shift issues to keep the counter-discourse alive. Girls came together in innovative ways after every episode of confrontation, to speak about matters that were not too conspicuous but challenging nonetheless. Acts of resistance on an ongoing basis can be exhausting if they involve regular confrontation. Under situations of constraint, therefore, young women learn to find meaning and produce effects through transgressive engagement with the cultural discourses around them, as well (McRobbie, 2004; Willis, 2009).

Poster exhibitions on the campus is another instance of women students’ attempts at employing cultural resources to support the discourse of gender equality. The women’s studies centre organised several exhibitions, of which one commemorating International Women’s Day was taken to various locations such as the university lawns that are regarded as a hub for men students. Sara explained, ‘The idea is to initiate a dialogue on gender inequality in the main campus. It is an uphill task.’ The posters were an eclectic mix of messages that celebrated girlhood/womanhood rather than specifically speaking to any of the specific problems that girls faced at the university. The narrative line of resistance was evident in two posters taped together that quoted from Begum Rokeya’s Lady Land, a satirical fantasy of role reversal and the other carrying a quote from the Quran. The lines from ‘Rokeya’s Dream’ start with a habitant of Lady Land asking

‘… in your country … men who do, or at least are capable of doing no end of mischief, are let loose, and the innocent women [are] shut up in the zenana [segregated women’s section inside a house]? How can you trust these untrained men out of doors?’ It ends with the advice that women living on Earth ‘have neglected the duty you owe to yourselves and you have lost your natural rights by shutting your eyes to your own interests.’

This rather simple message asking girls to challenge their marginalisation is significant for several reasons. The norm of limited mobility for women intertwined with the discourse of protection and honour is exposed as ridiculous. At the same time, evoking a figure like Begum Rokeya who is a part of the history of elite Muslim culture in India, the message pre-empts attacks that suggest Islamic traditions are being violated.

Similarly, the poster quoting from the Quran (surah Noor) which says, ‘tell the believing men to lower their gaze and to be mindful of their chastity…. God is aware of what you do’, assumes its importance in the context of an unwritten dress code for girls at the campus. As many girls told us, straying from the norm of shalwar-kameez by wearing jeans or being without a dupatta, as some of them do, earns disapproval and, occasionally, reprimands from some faculty members. The wish to avoid being ‘eve-teased’ by boy students at the main campus proves to be an even stronger reason for girls to abide by the norm. Thus, the injunction presented in the poster flips the idea of modesty by displacing the responsibility that girls are made to assume for men’s behaviour towards them, back on to the latter. Further, by drawing on Islamic values, it seeks to strike a chord with target audiences.

Interestingly, in talking about the campaign for access to the main library, Sushma explained that they hoped that the demand—though amounting to questioning a well-established discriminatory practice—may appear less controversial and therefore encounter not much opposition from the authorities. She further talked about the use of conforming behaviour as a strategic tool and that she always tried to appear conventional in her appearance. ‘That gives you legitimacy’, Sushma explained, adding that she never let go of an opportunity to talk about issues like library access for girls or lack of women’s washrooms, with faculty and others who were willing to listen. ‘They listen to me only because they see me as one of them,’ Sushma stresses. The fact that Sushma is not a Muslim seems to give another layer of meaning to her statement in the context of the delicate act of balancing conformity and resistance.

Another attempt by women students saw them initiating discussions in the Arts Faculty lounge on the newly drafted Rules and Procedures for the committee against sexual harassment on the campus. The only woman member of the university student’s union, when asked to speak on the occasion, began by extensively quoting from hadith literature and invoking public lives of exemplary women in Islamic history, like Khadija, Ayesha etc. Her speech was countered by zealous Islamist students who asserted their interpretation of prescriptions for women. As the religious and community rights discourse have a strong sanction on the campus, it becomes a matter of everyday contestation and negotiation for women students (Scott, 1987).

Recently, the issue of library access was voiced at the women’s college’s student union installation ceremony. The new union’s representatives reiterated the demand in the presence of a media crew. It was dismissed, as on earlier occasions, on grounds such as concerns regarding women students’ safety on the road to the library, insufficient infrastructure at the library and, more significantly, parents’ unwillingness to allow their daughters to step out of the premises of the women’s college boundary. This was picked up by the media and initially women students gave statements to the press expressing their demand to be included as members of the library in some form or another. However, very soon the issue of access to the library was taken over by a concern about motivated targeting of ‘their’ university (and the community) by the media. Responding to this real or perceived threat, women students came out in large numbers to protest against the media projecting the university in a ‘bad light’. But when the university, on orders from the High Court, allowed the limited access to the library, many women students publicly celebrated it as their achievement and waved victory signs in the presence of the press.

Due to the symbolic value that the university holds for the Muslim community, women students bear a double burden of having to live up to the ideals of femininity and community identity. This makes for a terrain where conforming to the norms becomes essential to stay legitimate. Challenging discriminatory norms, therefore, is a delicate act of balancing dissent and conformity. Thus the back and forth movement, where girls make collective efforts to address issues bothering them and then back off when it threatens their legitimacy as members of the institution.

Conclusion

A history of the women’s college and its relationship with the university reveals a continuity in women’s expressions of agency. While gender-based discrimination in institutions of higher education is reported frequently through news and anecdotal accounts (even if there is a lack of scholarship on the subject), its particular form is often context specific. This paper attempts to reveal those specific contextual details that determine both the form of and rationale for discrimination as well as the modes of resistance adopted by women students. The need to engage and reconcile tradition and modernity is explained both by the origins of the institution as well as the context of rising majoritarianism in India’s polity.

While the potential of varied forms of resistance in bringing about changes that allow for more equitable institutional structures is debatable, the various ways in which women students exercise their agency reveals creativity in engaging with the discourses of femininity and cultural and religious identity. In fact, as discussed in the analysis, not all acts of resistance are necessarily aimed at questioning structural inequalities. Nonetheless, there is a constant effort to negotiate for more space within the given context.