Medieval rites of passage

A recent episode of junior medicos being subjected to ragging by their seniors at CMC Vellore has highlighted how this dehumanising ritual continues in campuses across Tamil Nadu. One of the victims put out a social media post naming the perpetrators and describing the humiliation visited upon the juniors. The seven students who were booked on charges of ragging were asked to be present for inquiry as and when summoned by the police.

The scourge of hazing was witnessed in Telangana as well, where 19 people were booked in Hyderabad last week on account of a student from ICFAI Business School being ragged for his comments of a religious nature. Eight of the 10 students identified in relation to this assault have been arrested. Legal action has been initiated against the registrar, the director of administration, a few faculty members and wardens for failing to act upon the complaint when it was first lodged by the student. Closer home, last year, four students of the Dharmapuri Government Medical College Hospital were booked on charges of ragging a second year student, who had subsequently attempted suicide. Similarly in September last year, a nursing student from Kerala was subjected to hazing in his college dorm in Coimbatore. The ritual involved pronouncing the names of his seniors correctly, and every time he failed, he was slapped.

These are not isolated episodes as we have been dealing with a surge in ragging-related incidents for a while now. As per statistics provided by University Grants Commission (UGC) portal www.antiragging.in as well as the Aman Satya Kachroo Trust, which can be contacted via the national anti-ragging helpline 1800-180-5522, as many as 511 cases were registered in 2021, which is almost twice compared to the 219 cases from 2020. The cases reported in the years 2019 and 2018 were 1,070 and 1,016 respectively.

In a written reply in the Lok Sabha in December 2021, it was stated that a total of 2,790 complaints of ragging had been received from students since 2018, of which action had been taken in 1,296 (which is less than 50%) of the cases. All these developments were reported in spite of the presence of adequate legislation to tackle ragging. In October last year, the UGC had issued a circular pertaining to the revised procedure for students to file an online anti-ragging affidavit. The circular refers to the Supreme Court Judgment from 2009 which led to the UGC notifying the Regulations on Curbing the Menace of Ragging in Higher Educational Institutions, 2009. As per the rules, each student is required to submit an online undertaking each academic year confirming that the students will not engage in any form of ragging. The details of the institution’s Nodal Officer of Anti Ragging also needs to be highlighted on the website, and placed prominently on campus.

Having said that — rules, penalties, the fear of incarceration or even threat of loss of an academic and professional future can only go so far in mitigating this social evil. Youngsters rely on such medieval rites of passage inspired either by exaggerated portrayals of boot camps in media or by their need for passing down the cycle of abuse. It speaks volumes about everything that’s wrong — not just with parenting — but the environment in which they grow up, which perpetuates notions like the survival of the fittest, without considering the underlying framework of empathy and inclusiveness that education is based on.