January 22, 2025

Age of consensus at 18 years. Curfew hours for girls and boys. Umpteen restrictions for girls – in and out of campus. Is India going back to the Stone Age?

Young adults have full right to enjoy their life. Studies are part of life and have to be taken care of. But unwinding is as necessary as studying and it can only be done after study hours. It can obviously be done outside the campus. By confining girls in hostels after 6 pm, Maneka Gandhi will not protect them from “hormonal outbursts” but will make them prisoners. The hormonal outbursts (obnoxious words) may find other, worse (for people like Gandhi) avenues.

Why are interactions between boys and girls after college hours frowned upon by the authorities in India? At college going age (18), a person is supposed to be an adult. He or she is well aware of the consequences of his or her actions. They need no policing, no guiding and no chaperoning. Their bodies have certain demands (which the minister might think as hormonal outbursts but normal folk think of it as normal sexual behavior) which they may or may not wish to fulfill with a person whom they may or may not be in love with. Who are we to stop that? Also, it is disturbing to think that when girls meet boys in privacy, they only have sex on their minds. It is bad to brand girls as sluts, which is what is meant when someone says their hormonal outbursts need to be controlled.

The minister should transgress the laxman rekha of outdated notions she has in her mind instead of drawing up a laxman rekha for the youth. She should come out of the thought menopause that seems to have engulfed her brain.

The International Women’s Day seeks to give equal space to women. But in India, a minister officially designated for their well being seeks to make them prisoners and restrict their freedom. If this is the way Maneka Gandhi thinks, she should resign immediately.