Tamil Nadu: Trivial pursuits

Despite being ruled by former film star-turned chief minister J. Jayalalithaa who shook more than a leg on the silver screen during her heyday, a rising wave of puritanism is sweeping over campuses in the industrially and educationally advanced southern state of Tamil Nadu (pop.72 million), ranked third nationwide in the Union finance ministry’s latest (September 26) ‘under-development index’ compiled by a panel headed by Dr. Raghuram Rajan (as chief economic adviser of the ministry). This is making life difficult for over 700,000 students of the state’s 520 engineering and 503 arts and science colleges. Back in 2006, overriding student protests, Anna University decreed a dress code for students in all 520 affiliated engineering colleges compelling all women to switch from informal jeans and casuals to salwar kameez, and men to formal shirts and trousers. Taking a cue from Anna University, on September 1 the Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK government announced a similar “appropriate attire” code for the state’s 60 government and 446 private arts and science colleges governed by the Directorate of Collegiate Education (DCE). According to DCE spokespersons, the dress code diktat — yet to be implemented — was prompted by several college principals complaining about students attending classes in “indecent” attire. While the proposed dress code has aroused indignation within the students community and among liberal-minded parents, the majority of college heads and principals are known to favour it. “Our students are from different backgrounds and tend to dress very casually if they aren’t compelled to adhere to a dress code. We have to train them to be appropriately dressed for campus placements and don’t allow casual wear such as T-shirts and jeans in college. A dress code is essential to inculcate discipline and good values in students, and they should take it in the right spirit,” says Dr. Leela Abraham, principal of the Alpha Arts and Science College, Porur, a suburb of Chennai. Considering that an informal dress code has already been imposed by most government and private colleges in the state, liberal academics and parents are perplexed by the state government’s   focus on a non-issue when numerous important academic and administrative issues in higher education are crying for attention. “Most managements have informally imposed dress codes in colleges to project their institutions as academies of learning. It is a socialisation process for students which shouldn’t be construed as an intrusion on personal freedom. Most students follow these norms voluntarily,” says Kala Shreen, a Chennai-based sociologist and visiting researcher at Queen’s University, UK. However, more mature  university students, who are also subject to sartorial impositions, believe that personal and constitutional rights are being abridged by “under-educated rustics over-promoted into positions of authority in most higher education institutions”, as an angry postgrad student of Madras Christian College puts it. According to this student who prefers to remain anonymous, socially backward politicians-turned-educationists who run self-financing engineering colleges beyond Chennai city limits, have appointed themselves arbiters of morality and impose rustic norms and unreasonable restrictions on students. “In many colleges, gender…