The dispute over a newly erected, curtained female zone in the Teacher-Student Centre (TSC) cafeteria at Dhaka University has laid bare a profound philosophical impasse. The zone was installed by the Dhaka University Central Students Union (DUCSU) under the auspices of Umme Salma, an official elected on the Islami Chhatri Shibir panel.
Ostensibly designed for breastfeeding, adjusting garments, and eating unobserved, this modest partition has triggered a fiery debate that neither secular progressives nor orthodox Islamists are equipped to resolve. The controversy exposes the blind spots of both camps, raising a question that cuts to the heart of modern liberalism: how do you empower someone who actively seeks non-participation?
The secularist reaction has relied on a familiar, reflexive script. Dhaka University is a coeducational institution; therefore, critics argue, installing a purdah screen in its institutional living room creates artificial segregation where none previously existed. The TSC carries a progressive cultural inheritance, the argument goes, which cannot accommodate practices that seem to repudiate that legacy.
Other detractors speculate that the space will inevitably serve as an informal office for Shibir’s female wing—a prediction about party politics masquerading as a principled critique of spatial segregation.
Yet these objections rest on a parochial conception of progressivism that deserves critique rather than defense. If a female student who refuses to dine in full view of men cannot be accommodated within the TSC without supposedly violating the spirit of the institution, the fault lies with the narrowness of those institutional values.
A progressivism capable of welcoming only those who already conform to its social mores is merely a particular class ethos passing itself off as a universal standard. The TSC is held up as neutral territory, yet one specific mode of student life is treated as the default norm, framing any alternative as an unacceptable intrusion.
That is not genuine inclusion; it is the dominance of one cultural group restated as a universal moral principle.
The secularism underpinning this backlash remains stubbornly unexamined, matching the rigidity of the Islamists it purports to oppose. Hardline Islamists similarly reject the female zone, viewing the TSC’s broader cultural life as irredeemably un-Islamic. In their view, religious duty demands retreat to dedicated prayer spaces rather than compromising with a secular cafeteria.
Both camps arrive at the same flawed conclusion that faith and public life must remain strictly partitioned. Secularism banishes religion to the private realm, rendering it palatable only when it ceases to organize public space. Meanwhile, conservative Islamism withdraws faith from a public square it deems contaminated.
In both instances, the public canteen ceases to be a domain where religious reasoning can be meaningfully negotiated.
Skeptics also question DUCSU’s priorities, asking why resources were devoted to a curtained alcove rather than pressing infrastructural issues like the university’s neglected washrooms. This argument misapprehends the union’s actual record.
DUCSU’s quarterly reports document legal assistance provided to over a hundred students facing cyber harassment, alongside union-funded career and research workshops. None of these practical initiatives generated a fraction of the controversy sparked by a single piece of fabric. The curtain ignited uproar precisely because it is politically legible. Public attention routinely tracks symbolic ideological battles rather than mundane student needs.
Furthermore, blame for broader unmet promises is misplaced. Union initiatives—such as cafeteria upgrades, digital security systems for female dormitories, and dietary monitoring—were prepared but subsequently stalled due to resistance from an administration aligned with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
Deprived of administrative cooperation, a student union’s primary lever is public mobilization. DUCSU declined to rally its constituency, preferring quiet negotiations with a recalcitrant administration. Had any other political faction led the union, observers would have immediately identified administrative stonewalling; instead, critics framed the impasse as proof of Shibir’s administrative incompetence. A structural political bottleneck was conveniently reinterpreted as a flaw of character.
While conventional critiques remain shallow, two critical questions regarding the female zone demand scrutiny. The first is operational and spatial. Female students comprise nearly half of the registered student body. A facility intended for women generally would occupy half the cafeteria; a single table clearly falls short.
The corner was either never intended for all female students—serving instead exclusively niqabi women or specific, brief tasks—or DUCSU genuinely considers a screened alcove an adequate share of space for half the campus population.
The former interpretation is more plausible, yet the quality of the accommodation offered to niqabi women remains very poor. More fundamentally, the ongoing dispute over physical territory overlooks the deeper political paradox…what does agency mean for the women behind the curtain?
Online, the defense of the partition was largely conducted by men, while its fiercest critics were individuals who would never use it. The few women who publicly defended the initiative were primarily affiliated with Shibir, their visibility made possible by the political machinery that placed them on the ballot.
The vast majority of women for whom the space was built remained silent. The social norms governing their visibility also govern their public speech; a woman who declines to eat in front of men is unlikely to enter a public forum to demand a private dining table. This creates an acute representational dilemma.
How can a constituency achieve political recognition when its defining preference is to remain unseen? In a university setting, visibility is the primary currency of political clout. A claim advanced through retreat cannot be processed by this system.
If these women prefer to delegate their advocacy to male representatives, external observers have no way of verifying the terms or legitimacy of that delegation. What emerges is an organization claiming to speak for a group whose informed consent cannot be independently confirmed.
Political representation easily shades into political appropriation. Furthermore, political gains endure only so long as a constituency is willing to defend them. A right claimed on behalf of those who will not enter the arena leaves a mandate that anyone can hijack, ensuring any victory is credited entirely to the political party that orchestrated it.
At the core of this impasse lies a question about the nature of empowerment. Modern liberal discourse assumes a subject who naturally desires greater public presence, mobility, and voice. Each step toward greater public exposure is treated as a self-evident good, blocked only by external social constraints.
But what if the constraint is internal and doctrinal? What if some women hold that public self-assertion before strangers is a spiritual liability rather than a fundamental right?
In that case, the demand for a curtain is not a request for the conditions of public participation, but a request for the infrastructure of non-participation. Modern frameworks of emancipation know precisely how to dismantle barriers, but they have nothing to say to those who actively desire the barrier.
This tension is particularly acute within a university, an institution designed for public debate and open contestation. To demand that a group demonstrate a public voice before granting them a dining table is an unfair standard. Yet the underlying challenge remains real: secularists and Islamists alike have failed to explain how a public sphere can accommodate those whose primary commitment is to withdraw from it.
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Md Ashraf Aziz Ishrak Fahim is academically trained across Thailand, England, and Qatar, bringing together political, philosophical, and theological perspectives. He writes on the intersection of politics, society, gender, religion, and culture in Bangladesh and beyond