A women’s college in Jharkhand’s Daltonganj has banned its students from wearing jeans and using mobile phones inside the campus to promote “sense of equality” between rural and urban students and “help them perform better”.
Officials of the Yodh Singh Namdhari Women’s College - Nilamber Pitamber University’s (NPU) only constituent girls’ college in the region - have asked intermediate and undergraduate students to wear the college uniform comprising salwar-kameez and dupatta from the new session that began two days ago.
“Ours is the first NPU college to have implemented a dress code for students. It’s already there in Ranchi University colleges.The move will create a sense of equality among the students who hail from both rural and urban areas and from rich and poor families. In addition, it will also help students perform better,” the college’s principal-in-charge Dr Mohini Gupta said.
Ranchi’s three women colleges - Nirmala College, Women’s College and Marwari Women’s College - have been following dress codes for the last several years.
“The students can bring mobile phones to college so as to stay connected with relatives but using them in the classes or in the campus has been totally banned. The move was initiated after some of the students were earlier found to be misusing the wifi connectivity available in the campus and watching objectionable – porn – contents,” Gupta added.
“Though we have not made the violation of dress-code punishable yet, we intend to implement it strictly. On finding students using cell phones, we will call their parents to the college to apprise them about their ward’s activities,” she said.
The college administration’s decision to ban “casual outfits” was first announced in April this year before it ran into a storm with two students’ bodies taking opposite stance on the move. The college’s student union leaders insisted on a strict dress code and a ban on jeans and a rival student’s body threatened to take out a jeans-march if it was banned.
Purnima Singh, president of the students’ union, welcomed the college’s decision to introduce a dress code.
“Wearing jeans and tops casually was improper. Now, the girls will dress more decently,” Singh, who has a backing of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) that is affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, said.
Kamalesh Pandey, chief of All Palamu Students’ Union, said, “We were earlier opposing ban on jeans and tops without introducing any dress code. Now, that a dress code has been introduced, nobody will naturally come in casual wear. We thank college authorities for meeting our demands.”
Colleges routinely impose dress codes on women, limit or screen their male visitors, and have other rules that men don’t. Female students across the country have protested such rules, saying they were discriminatory and distressing.
St Xavier’s College, one of Mumbai’s best-known colleges, banned female students from wearing ripped jeans in December last year. It previously forbade female students from wearing shorts, sleeveless tops, and short dresses.
Sarojini Naidu Girls Post Graduate Government College in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal also issued a similar dress code banning jeans and other western attires on the campus in the same month last year.
