Kerala education minister and Muslim League Leader P K Abdu Rabb quoted a statement where he said “segregate girls from boys”. According, to him the girls and boys shall not be sitting together adjacent to each other in their college campus. Why this sexism for?
The minister was reacting to the recent controversy over the suspension of a student at Muslim-run Farook College in Kozhikode who protested against the management decision to crack down on the boys and girls sitting next to each other in their class. Later, the high court had suspended the decision of the college, an autonomous institution.
The Education minister says “At the same time, they can sit so using chairs. They can sit next to each other in the same bench, if the institutions and students do not have any complaint. I don’t think there was gender discrimination at Farook College in this regard.”
Recently at Farook College, nine students were suspended after they were found sitting adjacent to each other, the girls were also not saved and were sent out of the classroom as they sat adjacent to their male friend. While eight students reported back to the college with their guardians after being asked to do so, one student Dinu K refused to budge and defied the management’s diktat. Subsequently, the college suspended him pending a probe.
High court also stayed with the boy’s suspension for a month. The student, in his petition, pointed out that the strength of the class is 130 and two students who came to class late had seats vacant only in a bench where three girl students were seated. They occupied the seat, but the teacher asked them to sit separately or to leave the class.
Well, where India is diverging from its laid back roots to modernized views, this sitting together of girls and boys really making a difference and urging the education minister to say such lines. It needs to be curbed down as we are rising and the country has to rise.
