IIT Bombay's cancellation of seminar on gender justice 'attack on campus democracy, academic freedom': APPSC

NEW DELHI: Condemning the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay’s decision to cancel a panel discussion on gender justice in the campus, a student group called for upholding the rights of academic freedom. The IITB administration allegedly cancelled the seminar on ‘What It Takes: Re-making the Workplace (Or, How Bhanwari Devi changed our world)’ scheduled for January 4, 2025.

In a public statement, the Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle (APPSC) lamented that the cancelled event would have highlighted the women’s movements in history, serving a great purpose in the contemporary times when the RG Kar movement is underway.

The panel discussion was organised by IIT Bombay gender cell and “aimed to inspire conversation around the struggle against gender injustice through panelists like Bhanwari Devi”. APPSC recalled that Devi’s fight for justice in the 1990s, with support from various women-led groups, led to the formation of Vishakha guidelines against sexual harassment in the workplace. This helped strengthen the struggle against ‘Brahminical’ patriarchy, it said.

The seminar would have shed light on the women movements in the past which aimed to create democratic institutions against sexual harassment.

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“Today women's movements experience attacks under neoliberalism, leading to reactionary patriarchal politics causing growing violence on women from Unnao to Hathras to women wrestlers. The panel discussion at this juncture would have served as an important intervention at the time of RG Kar Movement towards a much required resurgence of women's movement,” APPSC argued.

Suppression of discourse on gender equity

The student collective claimed that the event was going to be conducted in line with the procedural guidelines. Despite ‘sincere’ attempts of including the changes suggested by the institute, the IIT abruptly cancelled the event. This points to an ‘alarming’ suppression of critical discourse on gender and caste equity, APPSC believes.

Feeling betrayed, the students said, “The anonymous objections, coupled with opaque administrative interventions, undermine the autonomy of statutory bodies like the Gender Cell and betray the values of transparency, inclusivity, and academic freedom and most importantly pushes us backward in the fight against patriarchy.”

Based on previous cancellations of such events, the APPSC finds the ‘continuous suppression of spaces of dialogue’ a serious attack on campus democracy, academic freedom, and social responsibility of the universities. It asked for more hands to ensure that IIT Bombay remains an open space for critical scrutiny and progressive changes.