Lucknow, January 21:When Mariam Johra fought yesterday’s student union election at Aligarh Muslim University, she broke a 135-year taboo. Today she smashed a barrier by becoming an elected member.
The BA final-year arts student became the first woman to enter the university’s student body, scaling a wall that had so far denied girls a say.
“She is the first woman elected leader of the students’ body,” AMU spokesperson Rahat Abrar told The Telegraph this evening.
Mariam was euphoric. “It’s a historic moment,” she said.
She wasn’t the only one, though, to have challenged the gender barrier. Five other girls also fought the elections, but lost. But what they did was clear the way for increased participation of girls in student affairs at the university founded by social reformer Sir Syed Ahmed Khan.
“I don’t think it is a loss,” said Asma Javed, a PhD student who stood for the union president’s post and lost by a few dozen votes. “It is a victory for future women students of the university.”
Naima Khatoon, a professor at the institute, agreed. “That the very fact that they contested, braved the odds and fought is something to remember,” she said. “Their efforts to break the taboo by fielding themselves for the first time is a major step for the future.”
However, it was a man who played a key role in the “major step”, though Rahul Gandhi may not have foreseen his contribution.
The Congress MP had intervened with the AMU administration and also pleaded with HRD minister Kapil Sibal to restore the varsity union that had been disbanded after student murders and violence rocked the campus three years ago.
If the six girls carved out a space for their gender in future affairs of the institution, their effort came four years after another major step in any AMU body when the Aligarh Muslim University Old Boys’ Association elected a woman as a member of its executive committee.
That was Azra Sultan. Last May, another woman, Arfa Khannum, a journalist, joined the executive body. Of the 2,800 association life members, only 15 per cent are said to be women.
Asked if the association would change its name to something more gender neutral, Kokab Hameed, a member, said: “It is a name people are familiar with since 1899. We may consider (a name change) if there is a demand from the women members.”
Mariam’s election has won her a place in the “cabinet”, a union executive body that has 10 elected members apart from the president, vice-president and the general secretary.
But it wasn’t easy.
Law student Zohra Naqvi, one of the five girls who lost, said some male students told her to withdraw but she stood her ground. “I asked them to open the window of their mind and look at the role women are playing in the changing world,” she said.
“My rivals campaigned against me saying a girl of my age cannot do anything,” said Soumya Pundhir, 17, the youngest among the six. “I told them to look at the young MPs of the country.”
The first-year history honours student, who fought for the union vice-president’s post, said she wanted to “come back” and fight again after the current committee’s term expired. “That is, if I get a chance.”
————Agencies