The document is obviously meant to be accusatory and it’s composed (using the word loosely) with the intent to shock. What makes it really interesting are the unspoken assumptions as to what people might find shocking.
The compilers obviously believe that “everyone” will be shocked at the thought that students have sex. The dossier also mentions that many students also smoke and drink (some eat meat as well). According to the compilers, this indulgence of sundry appetites is a heinous crime — the word “pollution” for example, is freely used.
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It is of course nobody’s business whether JNU students have sex, provided the sex is consensual. Nor is it really anybody’s business what they choose to eat or drink. JNU is a postgraduate institution. The entire student population is over 21. Many, if not most of them, are closer to 30, than to 18.
India treats 18-year-olds as adults, holding them capable of voting and driving cars, and liable to be sent to jail, or given death sentences if they commit crimes. In fact, students from JNU have been arrested and treated as adult undertrials in several high-profile cases in the very recent past.
The age of sexual consent is also 18 in India. So, if students are considered adults and subject to arrest as adults, they also have the right to have sex with pretty much anybody they please. Well, actually, the men cannot have penetrative sex with other men because that would apparently be a crime under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. But the women can certainly have sex with the men, or even with other women, if they so choose.
Therefore, given the demographics, claims that students of JNU have sex are no more revelatory or earth-shattering than claims that students drive, ride bikes and vote. Why are we supposed to outrage about students having sex any more than we are supposed to outrage about them driving, or voting?
More to the point, why are the compilers so hot and bothered at the thought that students in JNU might be having sex? Let us assume that the accusations arise from motives less base than jealousy or sexual frustration. If such base motives are not involved, why would anyone care if somebody else has sex?
It’s all about a meme called permission. The Constitution might say, indeed it does, that adults are allowed to make their own life-choices and suffer the consequences, or as the case might be, enjoy them. However, a fair minority of people seem to believe that permission is required before adults are “allowed” to have sex.
A common example of such “permission” is the arranged marriage. Two families get together, strike bargains and ceremoniously give their children permission to have sex. This is normal enough to pass without comment. The arranged marriage is also tied up with asset allocation across generations so it isn’t just about permission to have sex. But that is clearly part of the deal.
A more extreme version of the permission meme manifests on Valentine’s Day when adults seen together in public are liable to be harassed by moral policepersons. Another extreme version arises in cases of so-called ghar wapsi since moral policepersons believe that inter-religious, inter-caste, or same-gotra sex, should never be permitted.
The accusations in that dossier amount to saying students do things they are entitled to do. The pity of it is, if that document had been edited with some care and a little more in the way of imaginative attention to detail, it would at the least have been worthy of self-publication as an aid to self-gratification.
Twitter: @devangshudatta