Tracing the Evolution of the Discourse on "Sexual Harassment" in University Spaces in India

In this paper, I attempt to trace the development of the discourse on recognising sexual harassment in the university spaces in India. Engaging with feminist law archives, and having conducted in-depth interviews with active members of the feminist resistances in the university since late 1970s in India, I illustrate how the context of the ongoing Indian women's movement on one hand, and the growing interest in academic feminism on the other, created a space to speak about sexual harassment in higher educational institutions in India. While today many institutions may not have retained the institutional memory of these feminist resistances against sexual harassment in their institutional spaces, these resistances have become very important to revisit to understand how the very language of speaking about sexual harassment in the university was made possible by feminists. Without such a contextual understanding, our interpretation of the contemporary issues around sexual harassment in the university remains ahistorical and incomplete. In the light of the MeToo movement which has shown us the failure of institutions in dealing with complaints of sexual harassment, tracing the development of the discourse on sexual harassment in the university spaces has become necessary to review why the university has such fickle memory that has been able to erase these feminist resistances and created a space that makes people more vulnerable to sexual harassment.