[Assam] Code for the Uncivilized?

[Dilip/Dil Deka]

The following editorial from the Sentinel provides some more details from the Delhi Police publication, and also blames Delhi police for singling out the NE students and putting the burden on the victim.
  Like the editorial says, why couldn't it be a code of conduct for all students in Delhi if at all there was a need for a publication?
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            EDITORIAL » »
    Last updated : FRIDAY 20 JULY 2007          Code for the Uncivilized?
With three well-known universities and scores of colleges, India’s capital is indeed one of its major educational hubs. As such, it would have been in the fitness of things for the Delhi Police or some such authority to have issued a pamphlet of directives for the students in the city. In fact, the Delhi Police recently discharged this important responsibility by issuing such a code of conduct for students. Unfortunately, this was a document drafted and issued Mr Robin Hibu, Deputy Commissioner of Police (West Delhi), exclusively for students from the Northeast studying in the city. Among the dos and don’ts listed specifically for the students of the Northeast, we have instructions to avoid ethnic food from the Northeast that can sometimes give off unpleasant odours. Other instructions include staying away from deserted and unsafe places, avoiding short dresses, the need to be a Roman in Rome as far as customs and languages are concerned, avoidance of late night parties
 that can annoy neighbours, and the advice to meet one’s beloved only in ‘civilized’ and ‘appropriate’ places. There is also an exhortation to parents to enrol their children only in the front-ranking educational institutions, to demand regular statements of expenses from their children, to monitor their activities in the hostels and other rented accommodation, and not to believe everything that their children tell them about their studies, expenses, friends and so on. This would indeed be deemed a laudable initiative were it intended for the consumption of all students in Delhi. Instead, as a code of conduct meant exclusively for the students of the Northeast, it sticks out like a sore thumb. It reads like a document intended solely for subnormal students who seem to be regarded as the denizens of the deep forests with no benefit of even the rudiments of civilized behaviour.
It is not terribly difficult to surmise the motivation for such an exclusive code of conduct. It will be recalled that a couple of years ago a girl student from the Northeast, venturing out for a cup of coffee late at night, was picked up by some Delhi goons and gang-raped inside a moving vehicle. True, she should not have ventured out at such an hour in an unsafe city like Delhi. However, this does not detract from the other condemnable fact that Delhi is indeed an unsafe city for all vulnerable human beings, whether they are unaccompanied girl students, children or elderly people who even manage to get their throats slit right inside their own homes because the city authorities have no clue as to how such crimes can be prevented. It will not do for the Delhi Police to claim that students from the Northeast are more vulnerable because of their ‘provocative’ dress or because they move about in unsafe places at the wrong time. One could well ask the Delhi Police as to how
 the medical student who was raped outside the Maulana Azad Medical College in broad daylight a few years ago was incorrectly dressed or had gone to an unsafe place. After all, she was just going to her college. Those in charge of ensuring the security of citizens will do much better to introspect on their own shortcomings rather than finding fault with the victims. In fact, all the directives included in the code of conduct for the students of the Northeast would have been very well received by all students and parents had they been circulated as a code of conduct for all students. And an insult like this should not suddenly become acceptable to the vice-president of the Assamese Students Association of Delhi merely because the Delhi Police got it drafted by an officer hailing from the Northeast and because he offers a belated clarification.

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