Brawn over Brain
It is indeed laudable that the Governor of Goa Bharat Vir Wanchoo has made a call to make Goa a ragging free state and has reiterated the need to rigorously enforce the Goa Prohibition of Ragging Act 2008 which provided a regulatory mechanism to curb this unhealthy ritual in the State. Though Goa is far from being the ragging epicentre, there has been a recent incident of ragging by senior students of the Goa Engineering College at Farmagudi-Ponda. This practice reached such a serious pitch that policemen in plainclothes were deployed to protect young students commuting in buses between the college and Vasco. While no official complaints of ragging were received by the police or the college authorities one must bear in mind that such incidents are rarely reported, apprehensive as these young students are of being branded as sissies or cowards and not ‘manly’ enough to take such crass behaviour sportingly on the chin.
However, there is nothing macho about the ‘big boys’ humiliating the fresher to perform silly and embarrassing actions to raise a few chuckles or superior smirks. Ragging is simply bullying by another name and can often be traumatic and scarring for the young student. Cheerleaders for the alleged manliness of ragging may perhaps be skeptical of the governor’s warning, but in truth the practice is simply a display of brawn over brain, of crass insensitivity over sensitivity. It is simply bullying by another name.
In reality ragging has in some cases led to suicide by young students or at the least to serious emotional trauma. It is an avenue for legitimized sadism where a victim is forced to perform demeaning acts, often seemingly comic, the idea being that such actions will make him ‘one of the boys’ and part of an ‘inner circle’ that has gone through a rite of passage. The problem is, if not nipped in the bud, this practice leads to a chain reaction and the creation of a tradition of bullying passed on by the victim to other innocent young novices when the victim himself has seemingly ‘come of age’. It is a vicious cycle that needed to be grounded. The role of ragging appears to be to offer bragging rights to the physically superior. It is a contagious disease passed on from generation to generation, but one would imagine at odds with the young these days who have grown up in this ‘superior’ electronic age that, one imagine, would consider ragging to be an obsolete ritual. But unfortunately the power of brawn over brain still prevails.
In several institutions in the North of India, the practice of ragging has become almost de riguer with often tragic consequences. Indeed, humans are the only species to adopt this abhorrent practice. We can be quite humane with the establishment of SPCAs and animal shelters. But in curbing ragging we still seem to be in the Victorian age when this practice and its other ‘macho’ counterpart, corporal punishment was all to be borne with a stiff upper lip.
To highlight this problem, in early May this year a 19-year-old student of a Navi Mumbai college, Nitin Padalkar killed himself after being repeatedly ragged by his fellow students. And though the UGC has proclaimed zero tolerance towards ragging, last year six students were suspended after being found guilty of this misdemeanour in a suburban Mumbai train. Indeed the Raghavan Committee set up by the Supreme Court, headed by former CBI director R K Raghavan has recommended as many as 50 measures to curb this practice. The very fact that the malaise needed the intervention of the Supreme Court underlines how widespread a menace this practice has become.
