The Stop Ragging Campaign

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2005-10-11T05:23:00.000+05:30

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Parody and panic: homosexuality and homosocial organisation in sexual ragging

2005-08-04T15:09:00.000+05:30

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'Ragging leads to student's suicide'

2005-07-05T19:14:00.000+05:30

The Hindu/UNI, Basirhat, July 2

A first-year student of hotel management of a private institute in Kalyani in Nadia district allegedly committed suicide in his Chaita residence in North 24 Parganas on Friday night, police said on today.

Police recovered the body this morning and sent it for post mortem.

However, family members of the deceased insist that Kamlesh was a victim of ragging in the institute.

Kamlesh Sarkar (19) came home three months ago, but he was reluctant to return to the institute, they said.

Police said no complaints about ragging was lodged. However, an unnatural death case has been registered.

‘I wanted to prosper, but failed. Sorry’

The Indian Express, Kolkata, 2 July 2005

A teenager last night committed suicide in his home at Chaitahgram in Bashirhat after being reportedly ragged by students of a private hotel management institute in Kalyani.

Nineteen-year-old Kamalesh Sarkar was on a visit home in North 24-Parganas when he hung himself from the ceiling of his room. Elder brother Alokesh has alleged that Kamalesh was suffering from acute depression due to severe ragging by senior students of a private hotel management institute in Kalyani where the teenager was studying.

‘‘My brother came home last Wednesday and told me that it was getting absolutely intolerable for him. The seniors simply formed a racket in order to victimise him,’’ Alokesh said.

In a suicide note addressed to his father, Chittaranjan Sarkar, Kamalesh simply states: ‘‘I wanted to prosper, but have failed. I am extremely sorry. Please excuse me.’’ Police sources confirmed that the suicide note makes no mention of any ragging incident. Alokesh, however, insists Kamalesh had even mentioned to his friends the trauma he was suffering in the hands of his seniors.

Police said Kamalesh’s family did not lodge any complaint but the boy’s body has been sent for post-mortem examination.

Chhattisgarh acts to stop ragging

2005-07-05T19:12:00.000+05:30

IANS, Raipur, 1 July 2005

Raipur, July 1 : The new academic session began in Chhattisgarh Friday with the government sending out orders to college and school principals to curb ragging with the threat of immediate suspension.

According to the order, "teachers or responsible teaching staff would be suspended with immediate effect besides starting legal process against the accused students for ensuring a five-year jail term".

"We have listed sensitive and super-sensitive colleges on the basis of their past ragging records. Local police stations have been advised to keep a close watch on these campuses and act instantly," Higher Education Minister Ajay Chandrakar Chandrakar told IANS.

'Good News: Draculas Are Dying Out'

2005-07-05T19:10:00.000+05:30

By ANAND SOONDAS
The Times of India, Delhi, 30 June 2005

There was this 'thing' called freshers. Some even called them 'thingies'. They were the ones who had that weird expression on their faces, something like, well, a vegetarian from Saurashtra asked to choose for supper the snail of his choice in a Bangkok aquarium. And then there were those heavenly beings called seniors—grand draculas with fangs dipped in blood, ready to sling behind their backs the thingies to the slaughter house. Those who survived were called 'first year students'.

But that was then, days of unmitigated cruelty which was couched in a word that gave it both currency and justification—ragging. The institution, for all that it was worth, is dying a slow death. And across India, thingies, who seem to have morphed into freshers at about the same time that the dracula was fading with the morning sun, are a relieved lot.

"The kind of stories my brother used to tell me," says Shrishti Singh, taking time to let out a gasp for dramatic effect, "it was so scary." But by the time she passed from IP College in Delhi last year, the situation was different. "There was no wear and tear."

At the sought-after Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, in Ranchi, ragging as a rite of initiation is dead and buried. Punishment for those indulging in it is swift and severe. That has been a great deterrent. "Ragging is just a formality on the campus," says Vinod Kumar Mahto, a 4th year student of electrical engineering. "All freshers do these days is introduce themselves." In fact, in the architecture and pharmacy stream it was the girls who ragged the newcomers. The boys mostly stayed away. Dr Gopal Pathak, dean of students at BIT, says the new trend is here to stay. "There is no ragging in the institute at all," he maintains, with conviction.

The good story wafts across to the IIT campus in Kanpur. Neeraj, a third-year civil engineering student, says the "Laxman-rekha" is never crossed. "In the last few years, everything has been verbal and very decent. Even during our first days here, no one dared to be abusive. Though we had to sing and dance, there was no nudity involved. Those days had been spent by then." He was, of course, not very happy that the authorities had imposed a blanket ban on the trend and seniors couldn't even ask the names of their juniors without fear. IIT-K director Sanjay Govind Dhande is clear about it. "Ragging is notan issue on the campus. But we don't take any chances. Students have been told to refrain from anything that even smells of ragging."

Things were not so hunky-dory though. Some of the ragging tales from Tamil Nadu have been blood-curdling. Navarasu, son of former Madras University vice-chancellor P K Ponnuswamy, was first ragged by some of his seniors and then chopped into pieces when they found that he had died during the third-degree session.

Following the incident, a very stringent Tamil Nadu Prevention of Ragging Act was enforced in 1997. When he died on November 6, 1996, authorities found his severed body parts in a hostel room. Navarasu was a first year student of the Raja Muthaiah Medical College, Annamalai University, in Chidambaram. He was 19. Though his hostel-mate John David later admitted to ragging Navarasu to death and the Cuddalore district and sessions judge on March 11, 1988, awarded him a 36-year sentence, a division bench of the Madras high court acquitted him in October 2001. There was a furore across the state, and rumours of money changing hands between the judges and the defendant's family gained ground.

Many in the south, however, are not convinced that things have changed all that much in these parts. In a December 19, 2004, case, Mohan Karthik, 19, a first-year engineering student of S K R Engineering College at Poonamallee, committed suicide when he couldn't take the ragging any more. He had been forced to bathe in his own urine. Later, two college officials, including the managing director, and two students were arrested. The principal and a third student went into hiding. In 2003, Deepa, a first-year student of an arts college near Kancheepuram, set herself ablaze after she was ragged.

Nobody, it seems, is ready to be taken by some bad surprise. The 1998 death of Indu Anto, a student of Sophia College, Mumbai, is fresh in people's minds. She killed herself apparently after an unbearable ragging session by her seniors.

This year, campuses will be more alert than ever. Maharashtra deputy chief minister R R Patil has already instructed the Mumbai police to direct senior officers at the ACP and DCP level to remain vigilant when colleges begin. Patil has gone to the extent of asking policemen to hang around outside colleges in plain clothes.

Not that the colleges themselves don't take precautions. The Narsee Monjee College of Commerce & Economics at Vile Parle, Mumbai, turns into a fortress with security guards scanning the campus for trouble-makers. In colleges like Bhavans, Andheri, and Hinduja College, Charni Road, degree college students are chased away from campus before the juniors walk in. Anti-ragging squads remain active for 15 to 20 days after college begins. Moreover, it has become imperative for colleges to prevent ragging after the supreme court said an institution would be liable to lose aid from the University Grants Commission if it failed to curb ragging.

The grave for ragging was dug by time, though. Trends have changed, students have changed, so have teachers. Suddenly, ragging, like smoking, is no more cool. There is no bluster, no bravado or glory associated with it. Manan Rakheja, a third-year KMC student in Delhi, remembers the time when he had to run in multicoloured shoes around campus, screaming at the top of his voice that he was Spiderman. "It was so humiliating. But things like this don't happen any more. It is really very uncool."

Ashima Arora from the capital's Hindu College has a different take on it. "Freshers are no more meek and subdued," she says. "They refuse to get cowed down. It is up to individual students to choose if they want to get ragged or not." Aniruddh Prakash, warden at the college, echoes the sentiment. Going beyond, he closes the argument and says, "Earlier, things were definitely bad. Incidents of harsh ragging are nil now a days and there are anti-ragging committees that ensure freshers don't have it too rough."

The monster, then, is slowly disappearing into the sea. In the garden there is more sunshine and the birds, soaring in the sky while charting their own destinies, are singing full-throated. As a happy Simba says in the 'Lion King', It's a whole new world.

(Inputs by Swati Das, Chennai; Sandhya Nair, Mumbai; Sonali Das, Ranchi; Akhilesh Kumar Singh, Kanpur; Rati Chaudhary, Delhi)

The Rag(g) ing debate

2005-07-05T19:07:00.000+05:30

By NATASHA CHOPRA

The Times of India, 27 June 2005

After demanding a state-wide ban on dance bars in Maharashtra, the state's deputy chief minister R R Patil intends to clean sweep 'ragging' in colleges and schools in the state. While some states already have such a law in place, it has always remained a subject of debate: is ragging a necessary evil needed to initiate freshers to college life?

Architect and visiting faculty at CEPT Yatin Pandya says it's 'evil' and 'unnecessary'. He feels ragging is "against human dignity." Citing the case of his niece who shifted colleges and consequently her subject due to incessant ragging, Pandya says: "Ragging is not an equal game. It is just the call of some seniors who suffer from their own insecurities and perversions. It is absolutely unnecessary and scary for new students."

Professor Rasu Vakil, director CEPT university does credit ragging with certain advantages. "Initially freshers are apprehensive and do not enjoy ragging. In retrospect, though, many of them do term it as a good experience," he reveals. However, on the whole, Vakil censures its use. "I feel ragging should not be encouraged as it can psychologically traumatise youngsters," he says.

While many professors are opposed to ragging, there are some who feel that if practised with care, ragging could actually translate into a valuable as well as enjoyable experience for the wonder years. "Healthy ragging without any malice can actually be a wonderful way of interaction with one's peers. However, the seniors in question must have a certain sensitivity on an individual level, so as to handle newcomers with care," opines Somesh Singh, HOD Apparel Department NID.

Singh's opinion is echoed by many students. "I feel there should be a certain extent of ragging for freshers. One can get friendly with seniors either way, but ragging is intimate and so it helps one 'bond' with seniors on a different level altogether. After all, nobody can guide you better through your confused freshman year like your seniors," says Shaileja Shah, a final year arts student. But what about ragging that sometimes takes an ugly turn?

"It is definitely not in good taste, but that again is a learning experience of sorts. You have to take it in your stride," she says.

Yet not all youngsters share Shah's enthusiasm for ragging. "Having fun and making fun of somebody are two different things, which unfortunately merge during ragging. The fun during ragging has to be a two way experience. Moreover, when one joins college, one is very eager to be accepted by the seniors. Playing on such vulnerabilities just because one is in a position to do so, is not cool," says Anuja Parikh, a second year design student.

'Senior command: Thou shalt not be ragged now'

2005-07-05T19:03:00.000+05:30

The Times of India, Delhi, 27 June 2005

There was a time when fuchchas dreaded entering colleges because of ragging. Not anymore! Now there is a change in the attitude of new entrants and the seniors.

The numero uno reason attributed to the change, by the seniors, is not making the juniors feel as bad as they felt, when were ragged. According to Manan Rakheja, a third year student: "When I joined college, I was ragged terribly. The memories still haunt me. I was asked to run around the college wearing different colour shoes and shouting 'I am spider man'. It was so embarrassing. I can not even think of making someone do that. It is so uncool."

Students nowadays do not belong to the old school of thought that believes ragging is a way of making friends with juniors. " There are so many other ways of making friends. Just tell them to give an introduction and that is it. You don't need to make people run around the campus doing weird things and then expect them to be friends with you. There is some ragging in the hostels but otherwise it is minimal," said Sukhmani Sachar, another third year student.

Some feel it is not as if ragging is no more in vogue, just that it is more peaceful and friendly now. According to Ashima Arora: " Ragging still exists.What is college life without ragging? However, the way it is done has changed. We throw parties in college and try to interact with the new students. The maximum we ask is to bow and hail the seniors."

Another reason for changing trends is the freshers are more confident now."Gone are the days when freshers were meek and subdued. They are a confident lot. It is up to them whether they want to get ragged or not. Even when I was fresher, I did not agree with a few seniors and I refused to be ragged,"said Manu Saxena.

So as a freshers you no longer need to be scared of ragging. The seniors have a different perspective now. All you will need is attitude.

Public Schools: Of Fact And Fiction

2005-07-05T19:00:00.000+05:30

By INDRANI BARUA
The Statesman, 22 June 2005

Children studying in day schools often wonder what it would be like to live in school even at night! Would there be secret parties at midnight? Pillow fights and ragging from older boys and girls? Would there be adventures in the dark corridors or eerie playgrounds? Delicious meals and serious slogging too?

Such thoughts are but natural for urban children belonging to the elite and their parents brought up on a diet of Enid Blyton’s school series — Malory Towers and St Clare’s. These things happen every other day in her wonderful stories of the O’Sullivan twins. Blyton created residential schools in which one worked hard, had fun, lazed and was scolded; where children could play innocent tricks on their unsuspecting teachers, such as Mamzelle, who shared in the joke if it was funny and did not victimise them. Teachers in such schools were understanding, loving and strict. The naughtiest child turned over a new leaf at the end of the term, the virtuous were rewarded and the wicked punished. I wonder what Dame Blyton would have said had she faced the kids of the 21st century who have problems ranging from severe depression to nervous breakdowns, who flirt with sex and end up in mobile-scandals among other things!

Letters
The residential schools that she created were so liked by children and parents alike that in those days she used to receive loads of letters inquiring about the whereabouts of the schools from parents intending to send their children to such boarding schools. Truly, Enid Blyton was perhaps a great educationist. The schools she created on paper may have simplistic but they upheld all the virtues that are so sought after in today’s residential or public schools. The self-rule, the camaraderie, the cooperation that she talks of in her school series are very much a part of the public schools of today.

The term “public school” emerged in the 18th century in England when a group of institutions educating secondary-level students began taking in students whose parents could afford residential fees and thus became known as public in contrast to local schools. Their tradition was aristocratic, exclusive, formal and classical. Their main goal was to develop “leaders” for service in public life. The first book on public schools — “Tom Brown’s School Days” by Thomas Hughes and about life at Rugby, a famous public school in England in the early 19th century — eulogised residential schools and probably did much to further the establishment of similar institutions in the countries under British domination.

Even today most public schools in India are run on the principles of honour, glory and competition. Whether such competition is healthy or not remains unanswered by the fiction of most writers. JK Rowling, following in the footsteps of Blyton, creates a wonderful world of make-believe for her young readers. Codes are strict but one need not feel the pressure to excel in everything one did. But since Rowling is after all talking to children of the 21st century she also does not deny the fact that sometimes such competitions can create jealousies and rivalries and even lead to death. For the reality, one has to go to the autobiographies of Roald Dahl or Ruskin Bond.

Disadvantages
Dahl, a Norwegian by birth, had to undergo long years in British public schools and learnt all about the “stiff upper-lip”, “bonhomie” and “do-or-die attitude”. Reading Dahl makes one realise that perhaps the system that has been so praised by Hughes may have its disadvantages. He talks of corporal punishment, lack of proper food, extreme ragging and masters bent on breaking the spirit of children. Dahl is extremely critical about such schooling. He first went to boarding school in 1925 called St Peter’s in South Wales and he says: “An English school in those days was purely a money-making business owned and operated by the headmaster. It suited him, therefore, to give the boys as little food as possible himself and to encourage the parents in various cunning ways to feed their offspring by parcel-post from home”. Both Roald Dahl and Ruskin Bond met teachers who were cruel, sadistic and could have had better job satisfaction in a butcher’s shop. Ruskin Bond had his schooling in a public school of Dehra Dun and had his own taste of bitter experiences of teachers who are insensitive and are in simple terms “bullies”.

However, all is not darkness in such schools. There is a sort of bonhomie, of friendships through-thick-or-thin that could help one to overcome pain and sorrow. It is undoubtedly true that public schools make you tough in spirit. In the stories of Bubla Basu who again writes from her own experience of teaching, one learns why such schools leave a lasting effect in moulding children the right way. Bubla Basu talks of teachers who discover the worth of each child in the school and who believe that no child is intrinsically “bad”. She feels that with love and guidance any problem child can be brought back to the mainstream and that is what a good public school should do.

The recent boom in residential and “international schools” in India advertising undreamt of facilities for the students and charging mind-boggling fees makes one wonder whether education has finally arrived as a lucrative business. Will it be the same as the schools founded by great thinkers, educationists and seers such as Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Krishnamurthy or Sosaku Kobayasi, who thought of education not in terms of leading to a cushy job but to the development of an individual so that he understands himself and the world around him.

Opposed to the education system of the British, Tagore established his school in Santiniketan as an alternative. It was based on the tradition of the gurukul systems of the Vedic ages where students came to live and study in the teacher’s house amidst sylvan surroundings but without a fee. Education had not then become the bastion of the elite. Patha Bhavana, Tagore’s dreamchild, had been established on these ideals. It is still a school with a minimum fee structure getting the help from the central government and is still not a profit-making institution. However, that is but half the story. Supriyo Tagore, in his book, Ananda Bhavana, merges fiction and fact and builds his story of an ideal residential school around some characters.

Rigid rules
But the heartbeats of his story are the same ideals and vision that founded and guided the original school. Only in “Totto Chan” written by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, a famous TV personality in Japan, does fiction echo fact. The dream that was dreamt by Sosaku Kobayasi, a leading educationist of Japan, found fruition in his school where Tetsuko had studied when she was a child. This too is the story of a little girl, imaginative and unusual, who hates the regular school with its rigid rules and regulations. Nurtured in this atmosphere of trust and openness, of freedom, Tetsuko or Totto Chan (as she prefers to be called) learns to enjoy studies.

Kobayasi’s school was not the residential school or public school of today’s world with AC rooms and classrooms and swimming pools and golf courts and room service and intercoms and cold drinks in small fridges in the library. It was rather simple and the classrooms were in a converted railway compartment. But the spirit that guided it can only find some resemblance in the alternative schools of Krishnamurthy or Aurobindo. If the modern era is one of child-centric education these schools have really focused on building the character and psyche of a child. Their focus is not on producing efficient workers for the civil-service or other white-collared jobs.

They are intent on producing men and women who are confident because they have come to terms with themselves as well as the world around them and who enjoy the freedom to choose and if needed build their future themselves.

(The author is assistant lecturer, Patha Bhavana, Visva-Bharati)

'SIOI plea against ragging'

2005-07-05T15:27:00.000+05:30

Newindpress.com, Monday July 4 2005 11:58 IST

KADAPA: Student Islamic Organisation of India (SIOI) president S Isaq Ahmed in a release here on Sunday appealed to the student community not to indulge in eve-teasing and ragging of new-comers.

The students should encourage their junior in pursuit of their studies, he said. The managements should enlighten the students on the bad habits of eve teasing and ragging.

'Ragged? Go online for redressal'

2005-07-05T15:19:00.000+05:30

By Neha Agrawal
The Indian Express, Lucknow, 5 July 2005

A new website has taken up the cause of students subject to ragging in various college campuses in the country. stopragging.org has been started by Sachin Agarwal, a lecturer in the Poorvanchal University, in Jaunpur.

Agarwal is a part of a group — SPACE (Society for People’s Action, Change and Enforcement) — that has experienced ragging in their days and are determined to stop the practice.

Talking to Newsline, Sachin said: ‘‘ We started the website after some members asked me to help such students.’’

The need to do somthing was badly felt as ragging sometimes becomes serious and results in drop outs and even suicides.

What makes the organisation’s help invaluable is the fact that Uttar Pradesh is yet to frame any anti-ragging laws — something that most states have already done.

How does the website work?

The student has to send a mail to the Yahoo link of the website and register a complaint. The website volunteers take up the issue with the institute.

Till now, the organisation has succeeded in proving three cases of ragging — ISBM Pune, IIM Gaziabad and Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad - and ensured that the guilty was punished.

Currently, they are looking into a case in IIT Delhi.

The varisities, on their part, are gearing up to fight ragging in the coming session.

Last year, the entire first-year batch at the King George’s Medical University (KGMU), had fled for a month to escape ragging.

When contacted, the Dean, KGMU, SK Agarwal, said this time he has already shot off a letter to the Proctor. All departments have been asked to be on high alert.

The Lucknow University Pro Vice-Chancellor RS Yadav said: ‘‘There are strict laws to check ragging inside the campus. This time, the proctorial board will undertake surprise checks. Also, students are free to complain if they are subject to any kind of ragging.’’

Some recent cases
College of Fine Arts and Crafts, Lucknow University:
March 2004: Bachelor of Fine Arts students were reportedly stripped, ragged and forced to do objectionable acts

Lucknow University
February 2000: Dozens of students fled hostels, alleging that the seniors asked them to dance throughout the night

Institute of Engineering and Technology, Lucknow
September 2002: Anoop Kumar (19), committed suicide. A four-member committee was set up to probe the incident

'The college authorities did not do anything'

2005-07-01T16:56:00.000+05:30

Complaint we just got:

Hi, I am really impressed with Stop Ragging Campaign . It is Excellent. I joined DU last year , this year I have again given IIT JEE and will be joining IIT .

In College , I was a hosteller and I also had a harsh experience of ragging for over one month , then I left the place back to Rajasthan as my aim was Engineering and it was difficult to study there.

About one week before leaving , I complaint about ragging to the college authorities ( I knew I will leave so why not Complaint and see what happens ) . To my surprise, the college authorities did not do anything and said this was a mere "Regular Practice" which will end gradually after few months. Then I left the place. After 3 days my roommate called me up and told that he was suffering more because of the complaint (They (Seniors) think that my roommate was also a part of complainig).

Now I am joining IIT , I have heard many stories of ragging there which I believe must be true (as I have seen ) , so at IIT should I stand against ragging or just happen what happens????

To Give an introduction and remarks and abusive language of seniors – Till here I do not react but when it comes to doing things which they want us to do, according to me it is slavery and crime and one must protest against (It is like same thing -- British treated Indians and Seniors treating Freshers)

(If you post my message please do not reveal my name)

Please email reply as soon as possible.

DGP throws rule book at bullies (Andhra Pradesh, June 2005)

2005-06-24T17:25:00.000+05:30

DGP throws rule book at bullies

The Times of India, Hyderabad
22 June 2005

Director-general of police (DGP) Swaranjit Sen has directed all police officials to keep a close vigil on the possibility of college seniors ragging the freshers in the new academic year.

He asked his staff to send letters to all heads of educational institutions, along with the enforcement of provision of 'Ragging Act, Rules and Responsibilities' to prevent ragging.

The DGP said action would be taken against those police officials, if ragging takes place in their respective jurisdiction. The state government has enacted a legislation - 'Andhra Pradesh Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1977' which prohibits ragging in educational institutions.

Causing any annoyance, fear, threat, insult, intimidation or injury to students in educational institutions will be punishable with sentence and fine as laid down in Section 4 of the Act.

agging is prohibited within and outside any educational institution according to the Act. In addition to conviction, the student will be dismissed from the educational institution and will not be admitted in any other college. The Act further states that if the head or manager of any educational institution fails or neglects to take action in the manner specified, he will be considered an offender himself and shall be punished for it.

The state government has also formed another Act — Andhra Pradesh Prohibition of Ragging Rules 2002 — fixing the responsibility on the heads of academic institutions. According to that, the heads of educational institutions have to keep a vigil on ragging and prevent its occurrence.

Failure to prevent ragging shall be construed as negligence in maintaining discipline on the part of the management. If an institution fails to curb ragging, funding agency shall consider stoppage of financial assistance to that institution.

Home > Ragging News > 2005-06

RR Patil plants spies in colleges (Maharashtra, June 2005)

2005-06-21T20:44:00.000+05:30

RR Patil plants spies in colleges

By Naveeta D Singh

Mumbai Mirror

21 June 2005

Seniors in Mumbai's colleges impatient to rag their juniors could be in for a sorry surprise. Big Brother R R Patil is watching, and he says he will surely catch them this year.For this, the Deputy Chief Minister has come up with an ingenious plan. He has formed special cells of State Intelligence Department officials to crack down on ragging. But Patil is aware that intelligence officials will be easily identified if they hang around college campuses themselves. So he has told them to find informers among students themselves who could tip them off on such crimes, so they could take prompt action. The cells, which will report to Patil every week from early July, when the colleges reopen, have been asked to pay special attention to colleges with hostels as most ragging incidents are known to occur in hostels. "Despite issuing notices to colleges every year, cases of ragging go unreported. At times, the accused go scot-free and even college authorities don't take any action. So we have formulated this new strategy," Patil told Mumbai Mirror.Patil said the college management too will face action if a ragging incident occurs on the campus. "I have already directed all officers of the rank of superintendent of police, deputy commissioner of police and assistant commissioner to strictly punish those found even remotely linked to ragging," he said. "Even the education department has been instructed not to let go any college management that is found to be lenient with the accused," he pointed out.

The Maharashtra Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1999, says a person if convicted will get two years' imprisonment along with a fine of Rs 10,000.Patil decided to act this year after he received a number of complaints from students from mofussil areas of the state who, after becoming victims of ragging in Mumbai colleges, were deeply pyschologically affected and unable to concentrate on their studies. The deputy chief minister initially tried to seek co-operation from colleges but realising that no help was offered, has now placed matters in the intelligence department’s hands.

Undercover cops to stop ragging in Mumbai

NDTV, Mumbai
Tuesday, June 21, 2005

The Maharashtra government says undercover cops will watch over new entrants to the state's colleges and act against those attempting to rag them.

"We have asked the police and all its informers to keep an eye out for any ragging, and we will take strict action against anyone found guilty," said R R Patil, Deputy Chief Minister, Maharashtra.

In 1998, a first year student of Sophia College, Indu Anto committed suicide after allegedly being ragged by her seniors.

While that case is still in court, recently 26 students of the Pune's ILS Law College were expelled for ragging new students.

Move welcomed

The state government's initiative, say teachers, might help avoid such incidents.

"It's a very good move. Sometimes ragging can go upto sexual abuse, it should be completely banned and this is a very good move by the government," said K Shivan, Professor, Wilson College.

"When students go to college, we need to feel safe, I'm glad they are doing this," said Sanyukta Tyagi, student.

Teachers welcome the government's initiative to check ragging in the state's colleges.

The important thing they say is to keep an eye on places where ragging may take place, places like college canteens and hostels.

Home > Ragging News > 2005-06

Minister vows to stop ragging, seeks panels in colleges (Karnataka, June 2005)

2005-06-19T12:55:00.000+05:30

Minister vows to stop ragging, seeks panels in colleges

Newindpress.com
Bangalore, 16June 2005

With over 240 cases of severe ragging reported in the city's medical and engineering colleges over the past five years, it is high time authorities in the higher education department acted to put an end to it.

Higher Education Minister D Manjunath told this website's newspaper he will visit all the colleges where extreme ragging has been reported.

"I have spoken to many principals and have asked them to take remedial measures. I will also be writing to colleges asking them to report to me on any anti-social behaviour. It is necessary that freshers do not get traumatised when they are subjected to ragging. Instead they should report the matter to the authorities," Manjunath said.

The Minister also mentioned that he would be happy to see all colleges set-up anti-ragging committees.

"These committees can monitor student activities. They should be empowered to conduct special investigations. I have asked colleges to punish those who indulge in such behaviour in spite of repeated warnings. The authorities can take the help of student unions, teachers to put an end to the menace," he said.

Manjunath pointed out that the law was very strict against ragging.

"If you check recent records, you will understand that incidents of ragging are going down. Nobody wants to risk a ruined career, especially after paying a large fee for education. This year only local students have appeared for the CET. Students getting admission will be under constant surveillance," he said.

City police records revealed most ragging cases were booked under the Indian Penal Code Section 294 and 509. Both these sections deal with punishments for obscene acts and eve-teasing. Police sources also revealed that these had been especially mentioned and mechanisms to counter them should be set up.

Records also revealed that in 2002 there were 62 cases reported. But, thanks to the crackdown on heavy ragging, the number of cases booked under these two sections had come down to 35.

The Government circular that warns of action should be pasted in all common rooms in the college.

The circular No: ED99URC99 of 16th August 1999 describes ragging as a 'devilish act'. The circular mentions all offences and punishment for them. So, whenever a miscreant is looking for some fun, he would surely end up in trouble.

Home > Ragging News 2005-06

Victory at the Indian School of Mines (ISM) Dhanbad

2005-06-15T23:20:00.000+05:30

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Shifting focus

2005-06-15T21:47:00.000+05:30

Two news items that appeared today, both in the Bangalore press. The first one is a cliched story which tries to present a balanced perspective on the issue, which means how society takes ragging. All that the story says unconsciously blames the ragging victim: my son is a loner now, a fresher feels humilaited, etc. The subject is the ragged fresher and his mind, but not the ragger and his mind. The second one, however, presents a fresh perspective.

Pros and cons of ragging in college
College is supposed to be the best period of one's life but ragging can ruin it

The Hindu, 15 une 2005
Staff Reporter

Bangalore: The beginning of an academic year marks another session of anxiety and apprehension among new students.

They have to face ragging from their seniors, sometimes purely fun and often, going beyond that. Most colleges say, if any fresher is really harassed, he or she can complain in confidence.

Shilpa Sachdev, a first year student of mass communication from Jyoti Nivas College, claims that ragging, although not in a harsh form, exists in her college.

"It is not fun; it is demoralising and a public humiliation. It has to be banned to save new students," she says. Contradicting this view is Rohini Debroy, a first year student from Mount Carmel College, who says, "Ragging, if within a certain limit and taken in the right spirit, can be fun and act as a means of bonding with the seniors."

The Principal of RV College of Engineering, K. Sharma, says, "Ragging is non-existent in our college. We are vigilant and cautious. We value human rights and to protect them, we have thus established a squad comprising select students and a police officer."

The views of the Principal of the St. Joseph's College of Arts and Science, Fr. Amorse Pinto, are no different. According to him, there has not been one incident of ragging in the college the previous year.

He says, "Students indulging in such activities should be dismissed or handed over to the police." It is morally degrading and affects the students mentally, emotionally and in some cases even physically. Humanism should be practised." College life is supposedly the best period in one's life, but ragging can make it the most torturous phase one would go through.

Some students who are reserved may start to despise the system on the whole resulting in depression because of ragging. This will also lead to problems to their families.

Rajeev, father of Karan, a II PU student, says his son went into a depression when he joined I PU as a result of ragging.

He says, "Karan lost focus, seemed lonely, confused and upset. He did not mingle with the other students and had no friends."

How about this – violent ragging is due to mental disorders

Newindpress.com

Wednesday June 15 2005 10:36 IST

BANGALORE: There are certain individuals who enjoy ragging others on a regular basis and they do it only because they have a dark past. What are the reasons behind this immature behaviour? May be such youths want to subject others to an extreme form of domination.

This website’s newspaper spoke to experts who say that the culprits behind ragging suffered from personality disorders. Head of the Psychiatry department at the Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences P M Krishnamurthy said that these disorders were mostly found in children from broken homes.

“If a child grows up with abusive parents or is subject to violent surroundings, it is very likely that he will seek self-identity and power. When frustration builds up, the person takes to drugs and criminal activity.

“The immaturity, which renders a person incapable of independent thinking, will look for people who are submissive. Hardcore raggers are not worried about maintaining order in society,” he said.

Krishnamurthy said that it was not easy to deal with those suffering personality disorders. A lot of patience will be required.

“The best way to control them is by making them feel accepted in society. Intense therapy can lead to cure. They will then come to understand that the underlying reasons behind their actions can be traced to their childhood trauma. This can help them to mend their ways,” he said. “The violent forms of ragging like forcing someone to parade naked can be very upsetting. Inspections in hostels will help, as this is where it is prevalent. Highly sensitive students may take an extreme step such as suicide.

“It is necessary that teachers bond with their students. Unfortunately, most students are shy and the teacher is very busy. Early identification of abnormal behaviour can prevent heartaches,” Krishnamurthy said.

Head of Psychology department at Bangalore University, Sudha Bhogle said that ragging could result in mental trauma and physical humiliation. “When a student is subject to severe ragging he may develop phobias. This makes them abandon studies. His whole personality will be ruined. Physically a person may be sound, but he will be a social misfit. Counselling is required for the abused,” she said.

Sudha also said that students were made to sign affidavits before their admission to a course at the University and added that ragging as a psychological subject should be studied.

Home > Ragging and the Media > Shifting focus

JAM, do you have common sense?

2005-06-13T23:00:00.000+05:30

Some time ago a volunteer from The Stop Ragging Campaign had submitted an article on ragging to JAM. They did not have the basic courtesy to reply.

They call themselves a youth magazine which currently has a circulation of 30,000 copies, or so says its editor on her blog. So we did a Google search for the keyword ragging on the JAM website. Even a cursory look at the 20 or so results shows they're promoting ragging. Like Delhi Times. I know they're out there to make money, but being populist to this extent is just not done.

No, I'm not appealing to the hearts of JAM editors: "Look, there were 3 reported ragging suicides in 2004-05! Do you have any sympathy for them!" I'm just saying do you have common sense? If you were to publish something against ragging, it would only boost your circulation by fostering debate and thought. But such are the perils of consumerism (no wonder their editor keeps bragging about being an 'IIM product'!) that debate and thought have no place. They aren't sexy. Ragging is. So what if some sissies don't like it? Ms Rashmi Bansal couldn't care less.

I randomly opened one link and found it bordered on pornography: "The most widespread type of ragging in the subcontinent is the 'Salman Khan' type, where guys are asked to run around the cricket ground shirtless. Now if the girls were running shirtless it would be a different story. "

I don't want to waste my time reading the rest.

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Goa law graduates to help ragging victims (June 2005)

2005-06-05T12:30:00.000+05:30

Law graduates guild to hold seminar on forensic science

The Navhind Times
Margao, 2 June 2005

The annual general body meeting of the law graduates guild was held recently which was presided over by its president, Mr Vithobha Dessai.During the meeting, the guild decided to conduct a detail study on the functioning of the investigating agencies with special emphasis on detection of cases.

It was decided to concentrate on coastal belt, specially Colva, wherein cases of child and woman abuse have been reported. The members of the guild also expressed concern over educational institutions not making any attempt to enforce the Supreme Court guidelines on ragging. The members also resolved to provide support and legal help to any such victim.

It was also decided to take appropriate steps against institutions, which failed to curb ragging.

The meeting also criticised the policy of some government aided educational institutes which demand huge donations at the time of admission. It also decided to organise a national seminar on forensic science for police officers and lawyers.

Meanwhile a new managing committee of the guild was elected. Mr Vithobha Dessai was elected as president while Mr Pritam Morais as the secretary and Mr Prasad Naik was elected the treasurer.

StopRagging Home > News 2005-06 > Goa

And you thought college was all about freedom?

2005-06-05T12:27:00.000+05:30

Links to two recent news items:

"The ragging session, though officially banned, is something all the girls enjoy," says The Economic Times in a sweeping generalisation about Miranda House.

"At Baldwin Boys' College, Hosur Road, 10 teachers will stand in attendance to hunt down those indulging in ragging," writes the Times of India's Bangalore edition in an article that mourns, "And you thought college was all about freedom. Step into your classroom on Day 1 of college and you'll begin to wonder if it is an extension of school."

Will our newspapers ever grow up?

StopRagging Home > Ragging and the Media > Two links

Delhi University Ordinance XV-C: Prohibition of and punishment for ragging

2005-05-30T14:38:00.000+05:30

Here is the Delhi University ordinance banning ragging. We got it from here.

ORDINANCE XV-C: Prohibition of and punishment for ragging

1. Ragging in any form is strictly prohibited, within the premises of College / Department or Institution and any part of Delhi University system as well as on public transport.

2. Any individual or collective act or practice or ragging constitutes gross indiscipline and shall be dealt with ;under this Ordinance.

3. Ragging for the purposes of this Ordinance, ordinarily means any act, conduct or practice by which dominant power or status of senior students is brought to bear on students freshly enrolled or students who are in all way considered junior or inferior by other students; and includes individual or collective acts or practices which
* involve physical assault or threat or use of physical force;
* violate the status dignity and honour of women students;
* violate the status, dignity and honour of students belonging to the scheduled caste and tribes.
* Expose students to ridicule and contempt and affect their self-steem;
* Entail verbal abuse and aggression, indecent gestures and obscene behaviour,

4. The Principal of a College, the Head of the Department or an Institution the authorities of College, or University Hostel or Halls of Residence shall take immediate action on any information of the occurrence of ragging.

5. Notwithstanding anything in Clause (4) above, the Proctor may also sao motu enquire into any incident of ragging and make a report of the Vice-chancellor of the identity of those who have engaged and the nature of the incident.

6. The Proctor may also submit an initial report establishing the identity of the perpetrators of ragging and the nature of the ragging incident.

7. If the Principal of a College or Head of the Department or Institution or the Proctor is satisfied that the some reason, to be recorded in writing, it is not reasonably practical to hold such an enquiry, he / she may so advise the Vice- Chancellor accordingly.

8. When the Vice- Chancellor is satisfied that is not expedient to hold such an enquiry, his / her decision shall be final.

9. On the receipt of a report under Clause (5) or (6) or a determination by the relevant authority under clause (7) disclosing the occurrence or ragging incidents described in Clause 3(a), (b) and ( c ) the Vice-chancellor shall direct or order rustication of a student or students for a specific number of years

10. The Vice-chancellor may in other cases of ragging order or direct that any student or students be expelled or be not for a stated period, admitted to a course of study in a college, departmental examination for one or more year or that the results of the student or students concerned in the examination or examinations in which they appeared be cancelled.

11. In case where students who have obtained degrees or diplomas of Delhi University are found guilty; under this Ordinance, appropriate action will be taken under Statute 15 for withdrawal of degrees or diploma conferred by the University.

12. For the purpose of this Ordinance, abutment to ragging will also amount to ragging.

13. All institutions with the Delhi University system shall be obligated to carry out instructions / directions issued under this ordinance, and to give aid assistance to the Vice-chancellor to achieve the effective implementation of the Ordinance

Stop Ragging Home > Ragging and the Law > University of Delhi

West Bengal Prohibition of Ragging in Educational Institutions Act, 2000

2005-05-29T23:21:00.000+05:30

Thanks to the Jadavpur University website, we were able to obtain the major provisions of the West Bengal anti-ragging law, passed after the High Court asked the government to do so, in response to a PIL filed by Mr Tapas Bhanja. Here's the source. If you have access to the full text of the law, please do send it to us.

Besides this, West Bengal is the only state where the Indian Penal Code has been amended to make ragging an offence.

The West Bengal Prohibition of Ragging in Educational Institutions Act, 2000 (W.B. Act XIII of 2000) which contains the following provisions (for detail, ‘The Calcutta Gazette’, Extraordinary, published by Authority on Monday, May 29, 2000 may be seen) :

1. “Ragging” means the doing of any act which causes, or is likely to cause any physical, psychological or physiological harm of apprehension or shame or embarrassment to a student, and includes–

(a) teasing or abusing of playing Practical joke on, or causing hurt to any student. or
(b) asking any student to do any act, or perform any thing, which he/she would not, in the ordinary course, be willing to do or perform.

2. Prohibition of Ragging

(a) Ragging within an educational institution is hereby prohibited.
(b) No person shall participate in, abet, or propagate, ragging in any educational institution.

3. Penalty for Ragging

(a) Expulsion from the educational institution, if found guilty on enquiry by the institution against a complaint lodged by any other student.
(b) Imprisonment of either description upto two years or fine upto five thousand rupees or both.
(c) Any student convicted under 3 (b) shall be dismissed from the educational institution in which he/she has been prosecuting his/her studies for the time being, and shall not be re-admitted to that educational institution.

Stop Ragging Home > Ragging and the Law > West Bengal

Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1997

2005-05-29T19:18:00.000+05:30

Thanks to the website of the Bishop Heber College, here are the salient features of the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1997. Here's the source. If you have access to the full text of the law, please do send it to us.

The following Act of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly received the assent of the Governor on the 14th February 1997 and is hereby published for general information.

Excerpts form Act No.7 of 1997

An Act to prohibit ragging in educational institutions in the State of Tamil Nadu.

Be it enacted by the Legislative Assembly of the State of Tamil Nadu in the Forty eighth year of Republic India as follows:

Short title, extend commencement

This Act may be called the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1997.

It extends to the whole of the state of Tamil Nadu.

It shall be deemed to have come into force on the 19th day of December 1996.

2) Definition

In this Act unless the context otherwise requires, "ragging" means display of noisy, disorderly conduct doing any act which causes or is likely to cause physical or psychological harm or raise apprehension or fear or shame or embarrassment to a student in any educational institution and includes.

a) teasing, abusing of playing practical jokes on, or causing hurt to such student or

b) asking the students to do any act or perform something which such student will not in the ordinary course willingly do.

3) Prohibition of ragging

Ragging within or without any educational institution is prohibited.

4) Penalty of ragging

Whoever directly or indirectly commits, participates in, abets or propagates "ragging" within or without any educational institution, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years and shall also be liable to a fine which may extend to ten thousand rupees.

5) Dismissal of Student

Any student convicted of an offence under section 4 shall be dismissed from the educational institution and such student shall not be admitted in any other educational institution.

6) Suspension of student

(1) Without prejudice to the foregoing provisions, whenever any student complains of ragging to the Head of an Educational Institution, or to any other person responsible for the management of the educational institution he / she shall inquire into the same immediately and if found true shall suspend the student, who has committed the offence, from the educational institution.

(2) The decision of the Head of the Educational lnstitution or the person responsible for the management of the Educational Institution that any student has indulged in ragging under sub-section (1) shall be final.

7) Deemed abetment

If the head of the educational institution or the person responsible for the management of the educational institution fails or neglects to take action in the manner specified in sub-section (1) of section 6 when a complaint or ragging is made, such person shall be deemed to have abetted the offence of ragging and shall be punished as provided for in Section 4.

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Kerala Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1998

2005-05-29T19:13:00.000+05:30

Here are the 'cardinal features' of the Kerala Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1998. Here's the source we got this from. If you have access to the full text of the Act, please do send it to us.

RAGGING IS A COGNISABLE OFFENCE AND PUNISHABLE UNDER PROVISIONS OF KERALA PROHIBITION OF RAGGING ACT 1998. The instutution will take stern action against the offenders.The cardinal points contained in the Act are furnished below for information of concerned.

(1) SHORT TITLE AND EXTENT

(i) The Act may be called the Kerala Prohibition of Ragging Act 1998.

(ii) It extends to the whole of the state of Kerala.

(2) DEFINITION

"Ragging" means display of disorderly conduct, doing any act which causes or is likely to cause physical or psychological harm or raise apprehension or fear or shame or embarrassment to a student in any educational institution and includes :-

a) teasing, abusing of, playing practical jokes on or causing hurt to such student,

b) asking the student to do any act or perform something which the student will not in the ordinary course willingly do

(3) PROHIBITION OF RAGGING

Ragging within or without any educational institution is prohibited.

(4) PENALTY FOR RAGGING

Whoever directly or indirectly commits , participates in, abets or propagates ragging within, or without, any educational institution , shall, on conviction ,be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extent to 2 years and shall also be liable to a fine which may extend to ten thousand rupees.

(5) DISMISSAL OF STUDENT

Any student convicted of an offence under section 4 shall also be dismissed from the educational institution, and such student shall not be admitted in any other educational institution for a period of three years from the date of the order of such dismissal.

(6) SUSPENSION OF STUDENT

(1) Whenever any student or, as the case may be, the parents or guardian or a teacher of an educational institution complains, in writing , of ragging to the head of the educational institution, the head of that educational institution shall, without prejudice to the foregoing provisions, within seven days of the receipt of the complaint , enquire in to the matter mentioned in the complaint and, it, prima facie, it is found true, suspend the student who is accused of the offence , and shall, immediately, forward the complaint to the police station having jurisdiction over the area in which the educational institution is situated for further action.

(2) Where, on enquiry by the head of the educational institution, it is proved that there is no substance prima facie in the complaint received under sub-section(1), he shall intimate the fact, in writing, to the complaint.

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Assam Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1998

2005-05-29T18:18:00.000+05:30

Here's all we could find about the Assam Prohibition of Ragging Bill, 1998. Here's the source. If you have access to the full text of the law, please do send it to us.

The Assam Legislative Assembly on December 5 passed the Assam Prohibition of Ragging Bill, 1998 to prevent ragging in the educational institutions of the State. The Bill was passed without any opposition and even Opposition Congress member Dr Ardhendu Kumar Dey thanked the Education Minister for bringing such a bill.

The Bill said whoever commits, participates, abets or propagates ragging in any educational institution shall be punished with imprisonment for up to six months or with fine for up to Rs.10,000 or both. The student involved will be expelled for not less than one academic year and shall not be admitted in any other educational institution during that period.

Stop Ragging Home > Ragging and the Law

Maharashtra Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1999

2005-05-29T18:09:00.000+05:30

Thanks to the relentless efforts of a voluntary organisation, Pravah, Maharashtra got itself a very strong anti-ragging law in 1999. Here's how Pravah got it done, in their own words, followed by the key features of the new law. Here's the source.

As a part of the ongoing agitation against ragging, we presented a memorandum to the Honorable State Minister for Education. Subsequently, a Charter of demands and Representation was presented during the last session held at Nagpur, to Janata Dal leaders Shri. Vyanka Patki and Shri. Sambhaji Pawar, who raised questions in the Assembly. As a result of these efforts, we had an assurance from Mr. Sudhir Joshi, the Honorable State Minister for Education, that a Law will be passed against ragging. Later, in Mumbai, on 12th January 1999, we presented him with a letter regarding the various provisions that should be incorporated in the Law. Our efforts finally bore fruit in May 1999. The Government of Maharashtra passed an Act prohibiting ragging.

This Act is called the Maharashtra Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1999. Here are some extracts from the Act:

2 (c) "ragging" means display of disorderly conduct, doing of any act which causes or is likely to cause physical or psychological harm or raise apprehension or fear or shame or embarrassment to a student in any educational institution and includes -

i) teasing, abusing, threatening or playing practical jokes on, or causing hurt to such student; or
ii) asking a student to do any act or perform something which such student will not in the ordinary course, willingly, do.

3. ragging within or outside of any educational institution is prohibited.

4. Whoever directly or indirectly commits, participates in, abets or propagates ragging within or outside any educational institution, shall, on conviction, be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years and shall also be liable to a fine which may extend to ten thousand rupees.

5. Any student convicted of an offence under section 4 shall be dismissed from the educational institution and such student shall not be admitted in any other educational institution for a period of five years from the date of order of such dismissal.

6.

(1) Whenever any student or, as the case may be, the parent or guardian, or a teacher of an educational institution complains, in writing, of ragging to the head of the educational institution, the head of that educational institution shall, without prejudice to the foregoing provisions, within seven days of the receipt of the complaint, enquire into the complaint, enquire into the matter mentioned in the complaint and if, prima facie, it is found true, suspend the student who is accused of the offence, and shall immediately forward the complaint to the police station having jurisdiction over the area ....... for further action.

7. If the head of the educational institution fails or neglects to take action in the manner specified in section 6 when a complaint of ragging is made, such person shall be deemed to have abetted the offence of ragging and shall, on conviction, be punished as provided for in section 4.

If you have access to the full text of the law, please do send it to us.

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Full text: Andhra Pradesh Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1997

2005-05-29T16:16:00.000+05:30

Here is Andhra Pradesh's legislation against ragging. We are reproducing it here in the interest of all freshers in Andhra Pradesh.

THE ANDHRA PRADESH GAZETTE

PART – IV-B EXTRAORDINARY

PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY

[No. 36] HYDERABAD, THURSDAY, AUGUST 21, 1997.

ANDHRA PRADESH ACTS, ORDINANCES AND REGULATIONS Etc.,

The following Act of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly received the assent of the Governor on the 19th August, 1997 and the said assent is hereby first published on the 21st August, 1997 in the Andhra Pradesh Gazette for general information.

ACT No. 26 OF 1997

AN ACT TO PROHIBIT RAGGING IN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE STATE OF ANDHRA PRADESH.

Be it enacted by the Legislative Assembly of the State of Andhra Pradesh in the Forty-eighth Year of the Republic of India, as follows:--

(1) This Act may be called the, Andhra Pradesh Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1997.

(2) It extends to the whole of the State of Andhra Pradesh.

(3) It shall be deemed to have come into force with effect from 4th July, 1997.

2. In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires –

(a) ‘act’ includes words either spoken or written or signs or sounds or gestures or visible representations;

(b) ‘Educational Institution’ means and includes a college, or other institution by whatever name called, carrying on the activity or imparting education therein (either exclusively or among other activities); and includes an orphanage or boarding home or hostel or a tutorial institution or any other premises attached thereto;

(d) ‘notification’ means the notification published in the Andhra Pradesh Gazette and the word ‘notified’ shall be construed accordingly;

(e) ‘ragging’ means doing an act which causes or is likely to cause insult or annoyance of fear or apprehension or threat or intimidation or outrage of modesty or injury to a student;

(f) ‘student’ means a person who is admitted to an educational institution and whose name is lawfully borne on the attendance register thereof;

(g) All words and expressions used but not defined in this Act shall have the meanings assigned to them under the Andhra Pradesh Education Act, 1982 or the Indian Penal Code, 1860 respectively.

3. Ragging within or outside any educational institution is prohibited.

4. Whoever, with the intention of causing ragging or with the knowledge that he is likely by such act to cause ragging, commits or abets ragging and thereby –

(i) teases or embarrasses or humiliates a student shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months or with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees or with both; or

(ii) assaults or uses criminal force to or criminally intimidates, a student shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year or with fine which may extend to two thousand rupees or with both; or

(iii) wrongfully restrains or wrongfully confines or causes hurt to a student shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years or with fine which may extend to five thousand rupees or with both; or

(iv) causes grievous hurt to or kidnaps or abducts or rapes or commits unnatural offence with a student shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to five years and with fine which may extend to ten thousand rupees; or

(v) causes death or abets suicide shall be punished with imprisonment for life or with imprisonment for a term which may extend to ten years and with a fine which may extend to fifty thousand rupees.

(1) A student convicted of an offence under Section 4 and punished with imprisonment for a term shall be dismissed from the educational institution.

(2) A student convicted of an offence under Section 4 and punished with imprisonment for a term of more than six months shall not be admitted in any other educational institution.

(1) Without prejudice to the foregoing provisions, whenever any student complains of ragging to the Head or Manager of an educational institution, such Head or Manager shall inquire into or cause an inquiry to be made into the same forthwith and if the complaint is primafacie found true, shall suspend the student or students complained against for such period as may be deemed necessary.

(2) The decision of the Head or Manager of the educational institution under sub-section (1) shall be final.

(1) If the Head or the Manager of an educational institution fails or neglects to take action in the manner specified in sub-section (1) of Section 6, such person shall be deemed to have abetted the offence and shall be punished with the punishment provided for the offence.

(2) If a student commits suicide due to or in consequence of ragging, the person who commits such ragging shall be deemed to have abetted such suicide.

8. The provisions of this Act shall be in addition to and not derogatory of any law for the time being in force.

(1) The Government may by notification, make rules for carrying out all or any of the purposes of this Act.

(2) Every rule made under this Act shall immediately after it is made, be laid before the Legislative Assembly of the State, if it is in session and if it is not in session, in the session immediately following for a total period of fourteen days which may be comprised in one session or in two successive sessions, and if, before the expiration of the session in which it is so laid or the session immediately following the Legislative Assembly agrees in making any modification in the rule or in the annulment of the rule, the rule shall, from the date on which the modification or annulment is notified, have effect only in such modified form or shall stand annulled as the case may be so, however, that any such modification or annulment shall be without prejudice to the validity of anything previously done under that rule.

10. The Andhra Pradesh Prohibition of Ragging Ordinance, 1997 is hereby repealed.

G. BHAVANI PRASAD,

Secretary to Government,

Legislative Affairs & Justice,

Law Department.

Stop Ragging Home > Ragging and the Law

Ragging and the Milgram Experiments

2005-05-24T00:32:00.000+05:30

This page has moved to a new location.

The Hostel as Home: Ragging and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

2005-05-07T19:53:00.000+05:30

By Our RESEARCH DESK

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the famous Russian composer who was persuaded by his former classmates to commit suicide to protect the honour of their old law school

The Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was said to have died of cholera in 1893, after drinking a glass of contaminated water. This lie reigned for about a century, but the composer’s biographer, Alexandra Orlova, revealed to the world after migrating to the US the real story of Tchaikovsky’s death. The truth was that Tchaikovsky’s old classmates in law school got to know that the legendary composer was going to be punished for homosexuality, and possibly exiled. This would have brought disrepute to their old law school, and so the composer appeared before a "court of honour" made up of eight other former classmates who ordered the composer to "preserve the good name of the school" by taking his own life. One of his judges procured the necessary poison, and the cholera story was hastily concocted to cover up the truth. (The italicised is from here.)

Such is the value of an educational institution in the minds and hearts of their alumni!

This implies that ‘students’ see an educational institution as not so much a place to learn, but as an extension of ‘home’. Just as ill-repute should not befall one’s family and clan, so must the honour of one’s alma mater be preserved. Even at the cost of the individual’s rights.

The college is a “community” rather than an association of individuals. The internal functioning and power dynamics of this community depend upon unwritten social codes. Such a community is anarchic in nature and has no place for individualism.

That is one context in which we can understand hostel ragging: as not merely diametrically opposed to individualism, but also a collective, communitarian, ritual exercise with the aim of establishing the fluid, unwritten codes which rule the community. These codes obviously are about power relations, but also about other factors that define what is permissible and what is not within the community. Sexual conditioning is one such code.

The junior who is being ragged has to not only suffer abuse but also accept the discourse of ragging.

As ragging is being increasingly discredited, freshers are often told, “Do you think I am ragging you? Is this ragging? Or is it personality development?” Thus the attempt is to make the fresher accept the discourse, whatever nomenclature you apply to it.

As part of the opposition to anti-ragging disciplinarian measures enforced in hostels by the law, many students question: “We are adults, we know where to draw the line. We know how to differentiate between right and wrong.” This is a strong case for anarchism; the student is arguing that ‘the law’ does not need to intervene because the codes of the community (“rites of passage”) will take care of everything.

And so the fresher will be ragged in the manner that is acceptable and prevalent within the community. What is perpetrated as part of ragging should be acceptable within the community; whether or not it is acceptable to the fresher is a non-issue. Furthermore, the fresher has to be indoctrinated to accept ragging as part of ‘college life’, that is, the discourse of the community. The fresher is told: “You have to live here for three years, dude. So be nice to your seniors. They’ll help you a lot. Then you will also rag your freshers.”

This means that rebellion from the individual fresher and ‘disciplinary action’ by the college ‘authorities’ are threats to the codes of the community, to its way of life. It is an ideological assault that undermines how the community defines itself.

The community’s ideology depends a lot on ritual: the fresher has to stand in a certain manner, speak in a certain manner, never smile even when provoked by humour. There are little limericks which freshers are made to learn by heart, and one of the themes of these works of literature is that “I will make my a**e available to my seniors whenever they want it.”

Any deviance from these rituals is blasphemy; it is an affront to not just one senior but an insult to the entire community. For power dynamics, too, ritual is important: because power by itself is not enough: power has to be shown and explicitly demonstrated.

The problem with all of this is that the individual and his/her rights are not recognised. Some students oppose the idea of any kind of surveillance against ragging in the hostel on the grounds of privacy. Such is the acceptance of the discourse of ragging, however, that the fresher’s privacy is not an issue at all. It is important for the ritual of ragging that the fresher’s room be entered into in the late hours of the night, that the fresher be prevented from doing what he wants because getting ragged is more important; because fetching water for the senior or dancing naked before him is to be given preference over finishing the book that he was reading.

To the apologists of ragging who say that ‘mild’ ragging should be permissible, that’s another difficult question: what about the fresher’s right to privacy within the hostel space?

Ragging is not a passage to ‘manhood’ but to a society of hierarchy and patriarchy where individual freedom is not respected. This too is referred to by the senior, who insists that he is training the fresher for the world ahead (‘personality development’): “You will face ragging everywhere. When you get a job you will see how your bosses will treat you to begin with.” (Incidentally, one doesn’t have to pledge one’s a**e in a ritual before being given a job.)

The clichéd theory of ragging as a ‘rite of passage’ therefore, should be replaced by the term ‘wrongs of passage’, which is by the way the name of a book on hazing in American campuses.

Stop Ragging Home > Ragging and Society > Essay

Assam Medical College and Hospital threatens students with legal action (May 2005)

2005-05-06T10:22:00.001+05:30

Legal action threat to agitating students

By Our Correspondent
The Telegraph, 6 May 2005

Dibrugarh, May 5: The Assam Medical College and Hospital (AMCH) management today threatened legal action against students who are demanding a rollback of the disciplinary action against four post-graduate students who allegedly indulged in ragging and drunken brawls.

A large number of students of the premier institution, led by the post-graduates, have been wearing black badges in protest against the disciplinary action.

Addressing the media here today, college superintendent Nripen Gogoi said the management would be forced to move court if the students continue to press for withdrawal of the punishment against the four students who were found guilty of ragging and breaking hostel rules.

“It has been observed that a tendency has grown amid some section of the students to hold the poor patients hostage at the drop of a hat. We are not going to tolerate this anymore. If the handful of students who have brought a bad name to our prestigious institution think they will be achieving something by staging protests, they are wrong,” D.K. Patgiri, principal in-charge of the college, said.

The college authorities had taken disciplinary action against four post-graduate students — Krishna Deka, Pranjal Bora, Prasanta Saikia and Arnab Borgohain — on charges of ragging and taking part in a drunken brawl.

Sources said the under-graduate students of the college had given in writing to the college authorities that they are not supporting the agitation.

“They have also told us that they had been threatened by some of their seniors, who said they will face dire consequences if they do not extend support to the agitation,” the college superintendent said.

Police have intensified vigil on the college campus.

Home > Ragging News > 2004-05

JJ student files FIR against Kingshuk Datta (January 2005)

2005-05-03T08:22:00.000+05:30

JJ student forced to strip by senior

Mid Day, January 11, 2005
By A Correspondent, Mumbai

“Mein a****, mein p****, mein Sir JJ, sabsa bada g****, main apni s**** b**** ki kasam kha kar kehta hoon main apni saari senior ladkiyon ko maa aur junior ladkiyon ko behen manta hoon.

This was the infamous oath taken by a 19-year-old architecture student at the behest of his senior.

Last week, Puneet Gupta, a first-year student of architecture at Sir J J College, lodged a complaint at the Kherwadi police station that his senior, Kingshuk Datta, had allegedly stripped him and forced him to utter the oath at the Sir J J College hostel in Bandra East.

“I was stripped, paraded naked and told to utter the oath. On more than one occasion I was slapped and physically abused by Datta,” said Gupta. Gupta alleged that he was being tortured for the last five months — the time he came to stay in the hostel.

A senior inspector of Kherwadi police station confirmed that an FIR has been lodged, although no arrests have been made.

“Arrests in such cases are made only after a complete investigation is done. We have asked the college authorities to conduct an inquiry and give us a report. We shall take further action only after that,” he said.

However, the rector of the hostel, A P Wadegaonkar, said he would not take any action as Gupta had directly approached the police instead of confiding in him first. “I cannot do much now as it is a police case,” he said.

While Dutta was not available for comment, other senior students of the hostel said that Gupta was a pampered kid and all the complaints were false. They said that he was never ragged.

Architecture student files ragging complaint

The Times of India
Mumbai, 10 January 2005

A first-year student of JJ School of Architecture has filed a police complaint of ragging against a senior student in his hostel in Kalanagar, Bandra (East).

Twenty-year-old Punit Gupta, from Nagpur, has complained of being beaten up andmade to recite obscene sentences on two separate occasions.

However, no arrests have beenmade in the case so far. The police are awaiting a report from the hostel rector before taking action against the accused, 21-year-old Kingshuk Dutta.

According to the police, Gupta first complained of harassment as early as November, a few months after he had moved into the hostel.

Gupta told the police that Dutta, a second-year student who hailed from Tripura, had slapped him and insulted him in front of fellow students at the hostel. The police summoned Dutta and let him off with a stern warning.

However, the situation only worsened with Gupta complaining of being ragged physically.On separate occasions, he was asked to strip and utter obscene statements in the presence of other hostelites. The police allegedly refused to take down a complaint at the time until Gupta’s family came down from Nagpur and pursued the case.

An FIR was registered on Saturday under the provisions of the Prevention of Ragging Act, 1999.

Senior professors at the JJ School of Architecture confirmed the incident but said it was difficult to keep a tab on the activities of the hostelites since the hostel was a government institute and accommodated students from various colleges.

The college has summoned the parents of both the students and will also undertake counselling sessions with the students.

Meanwhile, deputy chief minister RR Patil has promised to look into the delay, if any, in taking down the police complaint.

Ragging instances received wide media attention after Indu Anto, a first-year junior college student of Sophia College, died after a fall from the two-storeyed building of her hostel four years ago. While the police registered the case as a suicide, Anto’s father alleged that she had died due to ragging after they found dayold injuries on her body.

The Anto case is still on in the metropolitan court.

Home > Ragging News > 2004-05

Appraisal

2005-05-03T07:27:00.000+05:30

A saviour for ragging victims, is how The Indian Express' Pune edition describes us.
"This particular incident is actually about our batch(Class of '95) in 1991 December. The anonymous narrator was no doubt one of the level headed seniors (4th year, we were in the 1st year, 3 month virgins) who saved us from the 2nd year goons who started this mass ragging incident. Horrible night, one I will not only never forget but also relive a million times till the day I die." - Shreyas on the 'The Masks of '91'

"It was a rather smooth sailing for me. Most of the time I was merrily enjoying ragging and grinning away whenever I was made to do anything stupid." - Saurabh Nanda , Kanpur, in response to Sujt Saraf's essay
Yazad Jal recommends The Stop Ragging Campaign to the readers of the Bharteeya Blog Mela.

"Yes - in that sense, ragging is childish... But it's childish, not child-like and one must grow out of it!" - Jaya Jha , commenting on Sujit Saraf's essay

"Sujit Saraf... talks about his experiences with ragging at IIT-D, discusses the seniors' rationalizations of ragging, and presents cogent arguments (not that one needs any) for why it is an awful practice." - T. A. Abinandanan , Bangalore, on Sujit Saraf's essay
I have had my experince of ragging as most people did in my early days in IITK. I had come with an impression that ragging would be as severe as I had heard in other colleges. So, some may argue that I was already prepared for the worst. Well, I wasnt. A shy guy coming from an protected family environment is never prepared for ragging of any form. - Apurva Mathad of IIT Kanpur, responding on his blog to the debate started by Saurabh nanda above.

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Stop Ragging Home > Appraisal

Why are Delhi newspapers promoting ragging?

2005-04-30T21:59:00.000+05:30

By A STUDENT

Pictures like these, accompanied with text that glorifies ragging and mourns its decline, misrepresent and promote ragging. Newspapers present the practice as glamorous, ignoring the ignominy of hostel ragging. The picture above is from The Tribune.

This article first appeared in The Hoot on 11 September 2003.

Picture this: there is a practice that the Supreme Court, Central and state governments have outlawed as a "cognisable criminal offence" and your daily newspaper promotes this practice on page one. Can the media get more insensitive and irresponsible than this?

The crime in question is ragging, and the newspaper coverage of this crime in Delhi University raises a few pointers on the state of local reporting in the national capital.

I am a student of a prominent North campus college and stay in its hostel. Ragging "in any form" is banned under a Delhi University (DU) ordinance, which reads thus:

Ragging for the purposes of this Ordinance, ordinarily means any act, conduct or practice by which dominant power or status of senior students is brought to bear on students freshly enrolled or students who are in all way considered junior or inferior by other students; and includes individual or collective acts or practices which

* involve physical assault or threat or use of physical force;
* violate the status dignity and honour of women students;
* violate the status, dignity and honour of students belonging to the scheduled caste and tribes.
* expose students to ridicule and contempt and affect their self-steem;
* entail verbal abuse and aggression, indecent gestures and obscene behaviour.

Whichever way you read this, ragging in any form means that even the mildest ragging is banned.

Delivering the order in a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by an organisation named the Vishwa Jagriti Mission, the Supreme Court had observed in 2001, "Ragging can be stopped by creating an awareness amongst students, teachers and parents that it is a reprehensible act which does no good to any one, and by simultaneously generating an atmosphere of discipline by sending a clear message that no act of ragging shall be tolerated and any act of ragging shall not go unnoticed and unpunished." Further, the Court has said put the onus of curbing ragging on the colleges. If an institution is unable to curb ragging, the UGC (University Grants Commission) or other funding agencies may stop in part or whole the grants and aid to these institutions. They can also be disaffiliated.

Ragging in DU no doubt has declined substantially, but instead of assisting it to a peaceful demise why are the papers promoting it? Why is The Hindu saying in an article, "Ragging can be fun, if played in the right spirit"?

Delhi University opened for the academic session 2003-4 on July 16 and this was the first day of ragging, reports about which appeared the next day. The most glaring incident of promotion of ragging was in the Hindustan Times. The lead story on page one was, "Freshers complain Day 1 was too goody goody", accompanied with a three column photograph that showed a girl dancing in Kirori Mal College. The photograph was prominently headlined, in block capital letters, "HOW ABOUT A LITTLE RAGGING?" The tone of the jointly bylined story is ironical in its irresponsibility: "First day, first show of college was a flop for most freshers at Delhi University. They went expecting to get ragged bare, but went home disappointed and bored." The article said that ragging isn’t what it used to be, which is true, but why did it mourn this? The article quoted only those first year students who said they were disappointed at not being ragged much. This indeed may be a viewpoint of some students, but as an insider I can tell you that there are quite a few students who don’t see any point in ragging. In any case, even if a student wants to get ragged it’s against the law.

The Times of India, not to one be outdone, also had a similar picture on P1 with a P3 report: ‘Day 1: Fun for freshers, seniors’. The report gave a more realistic picture of the ragging scene than most other papers, but it still called it ‘fun’.

The Indian Express in its Newsline supplement was also very similar in its portrayal of the whole issue as a light tamasha. ‘A rather quiet New Year on the Campus,’ said The Hindu. The Statesman seemed very sensible by contrast when it asked on page one, "Lull before ragging storm in Campus?" It also reported how DU colleges "created history" by beginning their classes on the very first day. And all the papers saying ragging is fun seemed to suggest that students go to college for fun, not to study. This is in line with these papers’ policy of dumbing down in order ‘to give readers what they want’.

The HT article said: "Being asked to sing and dance to ‘Kaanta laga’ seems to have been the most daring thing freshers were made to do on Friday." I know of a case in a North Campus college where a (Delhi) girl was asked by male seniors to bring them a condom from the nearby market of Kamla Nagar. She did this with some hesitation, but just imagine how would a reserved girl from a conservative small town family have responded? It is very likely that she, and perhaps even the Delhi girl, would have liked to avoid the situation.

The papers have been saying that ragging this year has been very mild, but ‘mild ragging’ is a subjective term. For someone it may be fun, but for someone else it may be immensely embarrassing. A student who is shy or completely unexposed to sexuality can be traumatised in such cases. Why then is the media projecting ragging as ‘fun’, as though it is part of a Channel [V] ‘Popstars’ contest? This undue emphasis on ragging being ‘fun’, or mourning that ragging has declined, is almost a message to seniors: ‘Why don’t you rag, it’s fun!’ Surely, small evils can escalate into big ones?

If only the reporters would have cared to look deeper they would have found something fishy in the hostels. Even as I write this, quite a lot of not-so-mild ragging has been going on in the hostels of prominent North Campus colleges such as SRCC (Sri Ram College of Commerce), St. Stephen’s, Kirori Mal, Hindu and Hans Raj. The media coverage of this issue concentrated so much on day scholars dancing and singing as though the hostels don’t matter. This is the kind of ragging going on in these hostels: stripping, making freshers wear formals all day, making them carry luggage and clean rooms, and sending them on errands all the time. Besides this there are ‘recreational’ activities such as vulgar songs that freshers have to learn and sing. Is this fun? Not to me. Everyone knows that the real ragging always takes place in the hostels, so why didn’t the papers care to investigate what’s going on in there? That would have been too much of hard work.

Is hostel ragging really ‘fun’? Is it fun to work like a slave for your seniors, just because they were born a year before you? Is it fun to live with the constant fear that your sleep is going to be disturbed by a senior wanting to see your body? Is it ‘fun’ to live with the constant fear that if you go to the mess tonight for dinner, somebody will catch you and won’t let you sleep till two o’clock? Is it fun to actually understand what Kafkaesque fear is?

In ragging lingo a newcomer is called ‘fachch’, and the deployment of this term by the newspapers with the aim of pepping up their stories, is also objectionable and potentially promotes ragging. The Indian Express wanted to tell fachchas about the eating hot-spots around DU and a frivolous story on P1 of TOI’s Delhi Times supplement wanted to explain fachchas the abbreviations used by college-goers. Another story in Delhi Times was headlined, "Chillax! It's just Ragmatazz!"

Obsessed with such earth-shattering matters as what to wear to college, the papers have no time or space to tell freshers how to deal with ragging, where to report, are the anti-ragging measures enough, where to look for counselling…

Home > Ragging and the Media > Article

Mohan Karthik: Chennai, 19 December 2004

2005-04-29T22:51:00.000+05:30

Student forced to bathe in his own urine, commits suicide

Sun Network
Chennai, 22 December 2004

A first year engineering student of S K R Engineering College at Poonamalle committed suicide on Sunday evening after he was humiliated by his seniors, who allegedly made him bathe in his own urine. The college's managing director and one of the students involved in the incident were arrested on Monday evening under the Tamil Nadu Prevention of Ragging Act and on the charge of abetting the suicide of the student.

According to the police, Mohan Karthik, 19, a first year Electronics and Communication Engineering student, committed suicide on Sunday evening by hanging himself from the window grill of his hostel room using a towel.

Investigations revealed that Karthik committed suicide after he was forced to bathe in his own urine, police said. "Karthik, who is from Gudiwada district in Andhra Pradesh, was found hanging from the window grill of his room by two other hostel students. Karthik was ragged by two third year students - K V Barghav Kumar and Venu Madhava Reddy - in the hostel.

They forced him to urinate in a bucket and ordered to him to bathe in it," said a Poonamalle police officer. The police said Karthik informed his parents in Andhra Pradesh about the treatment meted out to him.

The parents promptly complained to the college authorities. Following Karthik's death, his parents lodged a complaint with the Poonamalle police that the college, which failed to take any action despite their complaint, was responsible for their son's death.

"Investigations revealed that the college did not take any punitive action against the two third year students. So we filed a case under Sections 4 and 7 of the TNPRA, 1997, and 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code and arrested the college managing director K Ramdoss and Barghav Kumar," said a Poonamalle officer.

Students, college staff held for ragging death

Agencies
Chennai, 22 December 2004

Police have arrested two students and two officials of an engineering college here, holding them responsible for the suicide of a student after he was severely ragged.

Police are on the lookout for the college principal and for a third student.

Mohan Karthik, a student of the S.K.R. Engineering college on the outskirts of Chennai was found hanging in his hostel room Sunday.

Police said Karthik was forced to bathe in his own urine, resulting in severe trauma that prompted him to commit suicide.

The parents of the 19-year-old from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh said in a complaint to police that their son had told them he was ragged and humiliated by senior students.

The parents said they had complained in writing to the college authorities but no action was taken.

The suicide has once again focused attention on ragging in Tamil Nadu colleges that the government has been unable to contain despite several strict laws that have been in force since 1997.

Navarasu, the 19-year-old son of former Madras University vice chancellor K. Ponnuswamy, a first year student of the Muthaiyah Medical College of Annamalai University went missing from his hostel room Nov 6, 1996.

His mutilated body was discovered far away the next day.

John David, a hostel-mate of Navarasu, was charged with committing the ragging-related murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The high court acquitted him.

In September, 15 students of a Tiruchirapally law college were suspended on charges of ragging.

In 2000, Deepa, a first-year student of an arts college near Kancheepuram set herself ablaze after she was ragged.

In September 2003, eleven students of a medical college here, who had allegedly ragged first year students, were debarred from attending college and taking examinations for two years.

The problem has become so acute that NGO Exnora International has even instituted an award for a ragging-free college.

Fresher made to bathe in his urine, commits suicide

The Pioneer
By K Venkataramanan in Chennai

A college fresher has committed suicide in a students' hostel after being made to bathe in his own urine by seniors. One of the senior students involved in the ragging incident has been arrested, along with the managing director of the college at Nazarethpet near Poonamallee, a suburb of Chennai, police said on Wednesday.

A stringent law against ragging in campuses, the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1997, seems to have had little effect on KV Bhargav Kumar and Venu Madhava Reddy, both third year engineering students at SKR Engineering College.

The victim, Mohan Karthik (19) a first year student of Electronics and Communication Engineering, was found hanging from his ceiling of his hostel room on Sunday. He had complained to his parents about being ragged in humiliating ways, and the parents had formally complained to the college principal. However, there was no action, according to the police.

"Apparently, he chose to die to avoid another humiliating experience," said a police officer. He had once been asked to urinate in a bucket of water and then wash himself with it, police said. Karthik had recently visited his native place in Gudivada district of Andhra Pradesh, but had once again been called by his two oppressors on his return. He had apparently gone into his room and hanged himself using a bath towel. Other students found him dead after breaking the door open.

Under the State's anti-ragging law, even the management of an institution is liable to prosecution if it is shown that they failed to act on a valid complaint. Poonamallee Police arrested K Ramadoss, the college managing director, and Bhargav Kumar. A search is on for the principal, Mr Swamidurai, and the other student.

If a preliminary enquiry by the principal shows that a complaint has some basis, the students involved in the act of ragging should be immediately suspended. However, it did not happen in this case despite a formal complaint. The suspects have been charged with offences under provisions of the Anti-Ragging Act and Section 306 of the IPC (Abetment of Suicide).

The Act was passed in 1997 after the brutal killing of Pon Navarasu (17) at a student's hostel in Chidambaram the year before. Navarasu was allegedly killed by a senior, who was sentenced to life imprisonment by the trial court, but subsequently acquitted by the High Court. The case, in which the victim was the son of the then Madras University Vice-Chancellor, created a public outrage against the practice of ragging. However, the pernicious practice is said to be continuing in many colleges and hostels in the State.

Home > Ragging Deaths > The Mohan Karthik Suicide Case

Ehsan Saba, Manipal, 17 August 2004

2005-04-28T22:43:00.000+05:30

Apart from the stories you see below, there has been no follow-up reportage on the Ehsan Saba case, not any that has come to our notice. Did the government or the police take up the matter? Was any investigation held? Did the father sue the college, as he promise to? If you have any info, please leave it as a 'comment' below or mail us.

Manipal fresher pushed into sea, dies

Indo-Asian News Service
Patna, 21 August 2004

A non-resident Indian (NRI) from Bihar plans to file a suit in the Supreme Court against the Manipal Engineering College in Karnataka for the death of his son during alleged ragging at the institute.

Mohammad Sabahuddin, a doctor working in Saudi Arabia, said he would move the apex court against the college authorities for failing to prevent the ragging that apparently led to the death of his 17-year-old son Ehsan Saba.

The pain of losing his only son writ large on his face, Sabahuddin told IANS, "The college's negligence is responsible for my son's death".

Saba, a student of first year computer engineering in the Manipal Engineering College, died early this week when some senior students allegedly pushed him into the sea after he refused to jump in while being ragged.

Sabahuddin, a native of Bihar, said he would not be able to pursue the case if it was filed in Bangalore as he was an NRI. "The only option for me is to file a case in the Supreme Court.

"What were the college authorities doing when nine students left their hostel without permission and went to the sea beach with my son? Who is responsible for this?" he asked.

He said his son's leg was broken in three places and his hand was also broken. "How could the bones break if he died of drowning in the sea? It appears that he was beaten during the ragging after he refused to jump into the water and his body was thrown in later to hush up matters," Sabahuddin said.

He claimed that the college authorities and the local police did not help him.

"The college first informed me that my son was missing but when I contacted the official in-charge of NRI students from Saudi Arabia, they refused to cooperate. The college authorities did not take help from the local administration to trace my son," he said.

Saba was admitted to the college through the NRI quota Aug 12. He died a day after he began attending classes Aug 16.

Ragging: NRI to sue Manipal college

By Ishan Kumar in Patna
Sify, 23 August 2004

Dr Mohammed Sabauddin is a shattered man: His only son died during a "ragging session" at Manipal engineering college in Mangalore. The grief-stricken father is now planning to move the Supreme Court against the college authorities. Dr Sabauddin's son Ehsan Saba had gone with his mother from Patna on August 7 to Bangalore where his sister is studying. On August 10, he went to Manipal to leave his luggage and returned to Bangalore. As his classes were to start from August 16, he returned to the hostel on August 15.

According to Dr Sabauddin, who is a NRI doctor in Saudi Arabia but belongs to Patna and whose family stays here, Ehsan attended classes on August 16. The next day he talked to his son around two in the afternoon.

Just a few hours after that, at around 6.30 in the evening, his daughter called up from Bangalore to tell him about the tragic death of Ehsan. The principal had phoned her to inform that Ehsan had drowned at the beach.

Dr Sabauddin immediately called up the college principal to gather information about his son, but the principal said nothing could be done as it was quite late. Dr Sabauddin said it was only after his wife, who was still in Bangalore, reached the beach that the college authorities swung into action and fished out his son's body from the sea at 9.30 am.

Blaming the college authorities for the tragic end of his son, Dr Sabauddin said that the authorities are trying to cover up the matter by saying that Ehsan had drowned while he was swimming in the sea. He said the truth is that some senior students took his son along with a few other first-year students to the beach.

In the name of ragging, they were told to jump into the sea, the doctor said. However, as Ehsan refused to do so, he was pushed into the sea by senior students.

Dr Sabauddin said Ehsan may even have been beaten up before being pushed into the sea as both his legs were found fractured at three places and one of his hands was also fractured.

Terming it to be a case of murder by ragging, Dr Sabauddin, who buried his son at the graveyard near Patna airport, said he would now move the Supreme Court against the college authorities.

Student’s death not by ragging: MIT

The Deccan Herald
Manipal, 24 August 2004

Manipal Institute of Technology Director B S Prabhu denied that the death of Ehsan Saba, a First Year BE student of MIT, was due to ragging.

Ehsan visited the beach with eight of his friends on August 17, and suddenly went missing. His father alleged that ragging was the reason for the death.

Mr Prabhu stated that this was untrue. “All the students with Ehsan were First Year BE students. There were no seniors present in the group. Hence ragging cannot be the cause,” he said. “Ragging is not permitted at any of the Manipal institutions, and students are warned of serious penalties on indulging in it,” he added.

The MIT Chief Warden has alerted the coast guard and police to organise a search for Ehsan.

Meanwhile, the entire management team staff and the student fraternity of MIT has expressed deep anguish over Ehsan’s death.

MIT Regrets Unfortunate Accident

From the website of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (Deemed University)

The entire management team staff and the student fraternity of Manipal Institute of Technology express deep anguish over the untimely death of our student, Ehsan Saba. We have personally extended our heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family and continue to empathise with them in their moments of grief.

The recent press report alleging that the student's death was due to ragging is not true. Student ragging is not permitted at any of the Manipal institutions and students are warned of serious penalties. On August 17, Ehsan with 8 of his friends had visited the beach on their own accord. All the students were First Year BE students and there were no seniors in the group.

On realising that Ehsan Saba was missing, the MIT Chief Warden left no stone unturned in alerting both the Coast Guard and the police to organise the search.

It is our constant effort to ensure such unfortunate and tragic accidents are avoided. The college authorities have repeatedly discouraged students from visiting this beach due to the currents. In the regular orientation program that is given at the start of the academic year, students and parents are emphatically told to adhere to guidelines of not venturing out to sea. In the light of this incident it is our endeavour, to prevent any more of these terrible accidents ever happening again.

Home > Ragging Deaths > The Ehsan Saba 'Murder' Case

Get, set, go at IITD

2005-04-28T21:44:00.000+05:30

Get, set, go at IITD

By Amit Kr Chanda
The Times of India, Delhi, 19 July 2004

At the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IITD), the forthcoming academic session which is going to commence from July 30 will see the introduction of new initiatives for the benefit of the student community.

The dean of students at the IITD, S M Ishtiaque said: “From this academic year, we plan to start the concept of student advisor where each faculty would be assigned 10 first-year, under-graduate (UG) students. Faculty would be available on request so that students can discuss any personal, financial or family-related problems. We have come up with this idea, as most of the UG students will be staying outside their home for the first time and that too for a long duration. It has been found that first-year UG students are sometimes lost in the maze of institute’s infrastructure and even due to academic rigour. This is a step towards making the students comfortable and give them a homely environment in the campus by providing them with emotional support.”

The institute will be having an orientation programmes on July 28 and 29 at different hostels in the campus to bring faculty and students close to each other. “The faculty of different departments at the both UG and PG level will meet with students during orientation dinners. Generally, students at the UG level do a common course in the first year, and so they do not get a chance to interact with faculty of respective departments. However, the orientation will provide students of each department whether it’s computer science and engineering, civil, textile or mechanical, a chance to interact with faculty of respective departments and discuss different issues pertaining to their specialised subject,” added Ishtiaque.

A stint at IIT is not only about academic excellence but there is focus on personality development of each candidate. This is mainly done though sports’ activities, recreation and cultural activities, publication and students’ welfare. “These events are particularly directed at students who have just entered IIT portals after clearing IIT-JEE. Quite a few of them are book worms. If they have had their way, they would prefer to spend most of the time sitting in front of the PC or library.

“Moreover, students who come here are toppers in their own stream. And, this is the case with perhaps all students in particular branch. It does happen that a student who has been a topper throughout his life finds it difficult to compete against his peers in the same branches in which he or she is equally good. His or her performance goes down and sense of disillusionment creeps in. So, we encourage students to participate in extra-curricular activities. We even award one credit to students who are willing spend 100 hours in four semesters in the next two years in different extracurricular activities.”

Moreover, to inculcate the values of sport, the institute is constituting an award called ‘Best Sportsperson of the year’ award. The winner would be awarded Rs 18,000. It will be awarded on the basis of Inter-Hostels’ Meet and Inter-IIT Sports’ meet.

Apart from these measures related to the welfare of student community, the authorities at the IITD have enhanced the monitoring system to deal with the menace of ragging, which gave a bad name to the institute last year. “We have different committees at the hostel level to deal with the these kind of situations. This include the Committee of Protection, Monitoring and Interaction (COPMIN), which comprises of hostel residents. First year students can contact members of COPMIN for any problems that they face. A proctorial committee consisting of the professors constantly carry out surprise checks during the entire length of the interaction period to ensure that any defaulter is caught and punished,” exclaimed Ishtiaque.

The institute has ensures that minor issues are sorted out at the local level. “If indiscipline exceeds a certain level, the matter goes to a committee headed by director, deputy director, all deans, head of departments which include hostel warden too. Depending upon the gravity of crime, students indulging in ragging might be suspended from hostels, academic suspension and sometimes they are even asked to do social work,’ added Ishtiaque.

Ishtiaque added, “We never believe in penalising but believe in improving the behaviour of students. We have to manage 5,000 students at any given time. Students coming to study here are part of the same society, where everything which is being done is not right. We don’t operate in isolation and last year’s incident can be treated as an aberration. However, we will ensure that this kind of activites are not repeated again.”

Related archives:
IIT-K: These moms and pops rock!
Bare beginnings by Chetan Bhagat
How I was ragged in IIT Delhi and why it was no joke by Sujit Saraf

Home > Orientation Cells > IIT Delhi for 'student advisors'

Tamil Nadu: Students form anti-ragging cells in medical schools (2004)

2005-04-24T21:30:00.000+05:30

Students form anti-ragging cells in medical schools

Sun Network
Chennai, 14 October 2004

In an attempt to curb ragging, the Directorate of Medical Education (Tamil Nadu) has directed the deans all government medical colleges to form anti-ragging committees of students.

Such committees are already functioning in the three medical colleges - Madras Medical College, Stanley Medical College and Kilpauk Medical College - and the hostels. Apart from preventing ragging, members of these committees comprising senior students, divided into several groups, have been advised to put the freshers through their paces without much hassle.

“When we tell them no ragging, it’s hardly worked. This time we decided to give them to responsibility of guiding the freshers,” said Director of Medical Education P Vijayalakshmi.

“Most students from rural areas and Tamil medium stream find medical schools, particularly those in city, a culture shock. The huge textbooks, the English speaking senior students and even the dressing styles scare them. Many students suffer from homesickness and bouts of depression. We thought counselling by peers would not only help juniors but also bring about a better interaction between them and seniors,” she noted.

Posters denouncing ragging are splashed all over the college and hostel campus. The students have organised luncheon and coffees meets with the freshers. These meets feature quiz competitions organised by seniors and discussions on issues dogging colleges. Icebreaker sessions - fun games - are also held regularly.

“I found it strange but it was interesting. After having heard terrible stories on ragging in med schools, I thought I can’t escape the humiliation. I am glad my seniors made it easy” said Vijay, a fresher, from Rasipuram.

Not that there is no ragging on campus. “Of course, we do rag our juniors,” admits a final year student at the Stanley Medical College. “Nevertheless, we make it a pleasurable experience. Only violence or harassment is taboo not fun,” he added, asking his junior to finish up the last few pages of the notes, he had to copy from the reference text he had picked from the college library.

If the freshers from Stanley have been asked to practice the “Staleyian salute” and the “college yell-up”, those at the “premier” Madras Medical College have been asked to mug-up the college history and the list of “best doctors” who passed out of the college.

Home > Orientation Cells > Report on Tamil Nadu's Medical Colleges

Orientation Cells

2005-04-24T20:03:00.000+05:30

The Final Solution

Yes, ragging is a problem, but do we have a solution to offer? Is law-enforcement, which means taking action against raggers, the only way out?

Since ragging systems with their abusive power dynamics have become the (only) mode of 'interaction' between seniors and the new entrants in college, many students feel that the crackdown on ragging has led to decreased 'interaction'. "I am not as close to my freshers as my seniors were," said one email to us.

The answer is to have 'interaction' in a manner that is not only civilised but also institutionalised: a mechanism whose sole purpose is to bring about such interaction by avoiding the volatility, fear and abuse of ragging. IIT Kanpur calls it Counselling Service but we prefer to call it Orientation Cell. We will soon be issuing a draft proposal outlining how such a cell should work. Meanwhile, this page also documents such existing cells across

India

Get, set, go at IITD
“From this academic year, we plan to start the concept of student advisor where each faculty would be assigned 10 first-year, under-graduate (UG) students.

Tamil Nadu: Students form anti-ragging cells in medical schools (2004)
“When we tell them no ragging, it’s hardly worked. This time we decided to give them to responsibility of guiding the freshers,” said Director of Medical Education P Vijayalakshmi.

IIT-K: These Moms and Pops Rock!
A report in the Times of India's Kanpur edition on the Indian Institute of Technology's Counselling Service.

Home > Orientation Cells: Index

Anoop Kapoor, Kanpur/Lucknow, 12 September 2002

2005-04-24T02:05:00.000+05:30

Ragging: Engineering student hangs himself after trauma

UPEducation.net
September 2002

Anup Kapoor, a 19-year-old first year engineering student has committed suicide on Thursday by hanging himself from a ceiling fan at his house here. He had returned home from his institute in Lucknow following sexual harassment and mental torture by his seniors.

An outstanding student, Anup had joined the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) on September 2. Though, according to the rules, first-year students don't get entry into the hostel, he was allotted a room in the Anand Villa hostel. In his suicide note, Anup said that he was going through mental agony due to the sexual harassment by second-year students of the institute in the name of ragging.

The note said that on some occasions, the seniors dragged the first-year students out from their rooms, took them to a room, asked them to strip down and play ''kabaddi''. It said the physical and mental torture of the first-year students did not end just there.

The maternal aunt of the victim, Dr Gita Seth, said that Anup had complained several times about the harassment to the warden of the Anand Villa hostel and IET officials. She said that Anup had also said he did not want to continue his education in the institute.

Paras Nath Kapoor, Anup's father and a teacher, cursed the institute's administration with tears in his eyes, ''It was my fault that I couldn't guess the gravity of torture Anup was experiencing in the name of ragging in his institute.''

Anup's mother, Manju Kapoor, a school teacher, was not in a condition to say anything except for chanting Anup's name. He had qualified in the MLNR and CBSE entrance tests last year and had also topped the list in Rohilkhand University's engineering examination. However, he wanted to join a high-ranking institute. He had left the MLNR seat as he wanted mechanical engineering course. When he got it at the IET, Lucknow, he decided to join there.

The police said Anup took ''this extreme step due to the agony of ragging by seniors''.

Student hangs himself after ragging trauma

By Vikas Vajpayee in Kanpur
The Times of India, 14 September 2002

A 19-year-old first year engineering student Anup Kapoor committed suicide on Thursday by hanging himself from a ceiling fan at his house here. He had returned home from his institute in Lucknow following sexual harassment and mental torture by his seniors.

A bright student, Anup had joined the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) on September 2. Though, according to the rules, first-year students don’t get entry into the hostel, he was allotted a room in the Anand Villa hostel.

In his suicide note, Anup said that he was going through mental agony due to the sexual harassment by second-year students of the institute in the name of ragging.

The note said that on some occasions, the seniors dragged the first-year students out from their rooms, took them to a room, asked them to strip down and play ‘‘kabaddi’’. It said the physical and mental torture of the first-year students did not end just there.

The maternal aunt of the victim, Dr Gita Seth, said that Anup had complained several times about the harassment to the warden of the Anand Villa hostel and IET officials. She said that Anup had also said he did not want to continue his education in the institute.

Paras Nath Kapoor, Anup’s father and a teacher, cursed the institute’s administration with tears in his eyes, ‘‘It was my fault that I couldn’t guess the gravity of torture Anup was experiencing in the name of ragging in his institute.’’

Anup’s mother, Manju Kapoor, a school teacher, was not in a condition to say anything except for chanting Anup’s name.

Anup had qualified in the MLNR and CBSE entrance tests last year and had also topped the list in Rohilkhand University’s engineering examination. However, he wanted to join a high-ranking institute. He had left the MLNR seat as he wanted mechanical engineering course. When he got it at the IET, Lucknow, he decided to join there.

The police said Anup took ‘‘this extreme step due to the agony of ragging by seniors’’.

Police identify main accused in IET ragging case

The Times of India
Lucknow/Kanpur, 17 September 2002

Even as the Kanpur police on Monday claimed to have identified the main accused in the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) ragging case which forced Anup Kapoor, a BTech first year student, to commit suicide, officials of the institute here said that they did not know anything about this development.

The SSP, Kanpur, Rajendra Pal Singh said the final year student of the IET Vishnu Kumar Singh was responsible for the death of Anup. He said that preliminary investigation into the case pointed towards terror unleashed by senior students. A team of the Kanpur police had been sent to Allahabad, the home town of Vishnu, to collect more information about him, the SSP added.

Singh said that the police had got vital clues about the student who accompanied Anup to Anand Villa hostel where the alleged ragging took place.

Meanwhile, IET officials in Lucknow said that they were completely unaware about the identification of a final year student by the Kanpur police.

“Our investigations are revolving around second year students because final year students rarely indulge in such activities,” said a senior official.

He was surprised to know that some teachers and students made these disclosures to the Kanpur police. “The student, who the police are claiming to be the main accused, does not figure in our investigation report. But now we will inquire the matter afresh,” he said.

Meanwhile, the four-member committee, constituted on the state government’s directive, also started inquiry into the ragging incident on Monday.

On the other hand, UP State Technical University officials said that there could also be other reasons behind the suicide. The three members of the inquiry committee were from Kanpur and they would talk to the family members of Anup and probe the circumstances in which he had committed suicide, they said adding that “we have done our inquiries here. But till date we do not know what actually happened with Anup.”

The officials said that Anup was not a lone case and hundreds of students were subjected to ragging every year and nobody committed suicide so easily.

They said that their intention was not to defend the seniors and justify the ragging. But since the boy took such an extreme step, the matter needed a thorough investigation. There could be a possibility that the boy was hyper-sensitive or was suffering from depression, they said.

CM orders for probe into ragging death

The Times of India
Lucknow, 15 September 2002

Even as UP State Technical University on Saturday constituted another inquiry into the death of B Tech student Anup Kapoor, who committed suicide on Thursday after being harassed by senior students in the name of ragging, officials here at the Institute of Engineering and Technology were still clue less about the culprits.

A team of Kanpur police has also arrived at the IET for investigations.

The state government also stepped in and sought an explanation from the IET authorities into the Anup case. Taking serious note of the incident, chief minister Mayawati ordered that punitive action should be taken against those found guilty.

The chief minister, during a Cabinet meeting, also sought suggestions whether there was a need to enact a new law to discourage such incidents.

With the chief minister’s secretariat taking a serious note of the incident, state government officials made incessant calls to IET officials all day inquiring about the incident, causing obstruction in the investigation process.

Interestingly, while teachers at the IET have been continuously on the job grilling the entire lot of senior and junior students since Friday, senior IET and technical university officials had to spend all day at the secretariat convincing bureaucrats that all was “adequately taken care of”.

Apart from the existing inquiry being done by the IET, on the directions of the government, UPSTU V-C Prof DS Chauhan constituted another four-member inquiry committee comprising three members from Kanpur, who will talk to family members of the deceased and submit their report within a week.

The three members are: director technical education, Usha Birji; director GCTI, Anita Nishkam and director HBTI, Kanpur, KP Sinha. The fourth member of the team is Prof SK Bajpai, head of the computer science department in the IET, who will provide inputs from Lucknow.

IET officials said that they were talking to every student for possible clues. A piquant situation arose when the police team from Kanpur started talking in “tough words” with teachers and charged them with not doing their job properly, which resulted in the tragedy. Teachers, however, strongly objected to it. Meanwhile, IET administration has expelled five second year students and suspended three others for a year for ragging.

Home > Ragging Deaths > The Anoop Kapoor Case

Sushil Kumar Pandey, Gorakhpur, 11 September 2003

2005-04-24T01:12:00.000+05:30

Ragging leads student to commit suicide

NewIndPress / ANI
Gorakhpur, UP, 13 September 2003

In an instance of severe ragging in colleges, a student committed suicide in Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday.

18-year-old Sushil Kumar Pandey was a first year student at the Madan Mohan Malviya Engineering college.

Pandey hung himself to death after he was forced to parade naked in the college by his seniors on the pretext of ragging.

The students blame the authorities for turning a blind eye to the severe problem of ragging in colleges and hostels, where freshers, as the first year students are called, are exposed to all sorts of physical and mental tortures.

"There was sexual harassment, naked parades and things like these. If authorities had taken some steps then probably this would not have happened," said Saurabh, a student.

The police questioned school management and students on Friday (September 12) but no arrests have been made so far.

"It is not possible for us to give a conclusive report immediately. We are talking to the boys and the college authorities and it's only after full investigation that we can give a concrete opinion," said investigating officer, police Inspector Ajay Shankar Rai.

The Supreme Court of India has banned ragging in colleges but it still continues unabated in several institutions due to laxity on the part of the authorities.

The move followed severe instances of abusive ragging turning into a nightmare for newcomers.

Recently, India's premier engineering school, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), suspended some hostel students who had resorted to ragging, forcing a fresher to quit and return to his native place, Patna.

Ragging has of late become an increasing social problem, and several students have ended up in hospitals with traumatic experiences.

Some students estimate that nearly 25 per cent of the students who apply and join engineering and medical courses, drop out due to an inability to cope with the severe ragging from senior students.

For the girl students, the problem is even more pronounced as it often borders on the obscene and vulgar.

Home > Ragging Deaths > The Sushil Kumar Pandey Case

Ragging Deaths

2005-04-16T01:32:00.000+05:30

Ragged to Death

This section will document some stories of ragging suicides, what drove the victim to commit suicide, and what happened to the case after that. These are stories of people who are no longer alive to tell the apologists of ragging just how much 'fun' ragging can be. Were the guilty punished? Were the anti-ragging laws enforced? Was the Supreme Court's order followed? And why does one commit suicide? What is it about ragging that makes people suicidal? We invite you to contribute articles and essays for this page.

Photo by P.V. Sivakumar in The Hindu, Hyderabad

Mohan Karthik, Chennai, 19 December 2004
'Following Karthik's death, his parents lodged a complaint with the Poonamalle police that the college, which failed to take any action despite their complaint, was responsible for their son's death.'

Ehsan Saba, Manipal, 17 August 2004
'Saba, a student of first year computer engineering in the Manipal Engineering College, died early this week when some senior students allegedly pushed him into the sea after he refused to jump in while being ragged.'

Sushil Kumar Pandey, Gorakhpur, 11 September 2003
"There was sexual harassment, naked parades and things like these. If authorities had taken some steps then probably this would not have happened," said Saurabh, a student.

Anoop Kapoor, IET Lucknow, 12 September 2002
'The note said that on some occasions, the seniors dragged the first-year students out from their rooms, took them to a room, asked them to strip down and play ''kabaddi''. It said the physical and mental torture of the first-year students did not end just there.'

Indu Anto: Suicide or Murder?
A collection of about two doxen news reports about the Indu Anto ragging death. Was it suicide or murder? The battle rages on in the courts, even as a filmmaker plans to put Anto's story on celluloid. The case remains the most high-profile ragging incident in recent memory; it led to the enactment of an anti-ragging law in Maharashtra.

Home > Research > Ragging Deaths > Index

Ragging and the Media

2005-04-16T01:16:00.000+05:30

Editing your copy

Why does a fresher so easily submit before his or her seniors? The answer could partly lie in the news reports that the fresher may have grown up reading: reports of suicides and violence as a consequence of ragging. It is thus very important to note how the media covers ragging. Newspaper coverage of the subject will be analysed and commented upon, with specific attention to the ways, if any, in which the media promotes ragging. Also, attempts will be made to find out what problems journalists face in exposing hostel ragging.

We will provide information and resources useful to journalists in covering the subject. By end of May 2005, we hope to bring out a Media Advisory on how to report ragging in 2005-06.

Should you want to contribute an article to this page, mail us.

JAM, do you have common sense?
Why, just why, does a so-called 'youth magazine' publish only pro-ragging articles?

And you thought college was all about freedom?
Anti-ragging measures curb the freedom of students, says an Economic Times article, without noticing that the fresher could also have the right to freedom that is often violated in ragging.

Why are Delhi newspapers promoting ragging?
The most glaring incident of promotion of ragging was in the Hindustan Times. The lead story on page one was, "Freshers complain Day 1 was too goody goody", accompanied with a three column photograph that showed a girl dancing in Kirori Mal College. The photograph was prominently headlined, in block capital letters, "HOW ABOUT A LITTLE RAGGING?"

And what is a "ragging scare"?

You have heard of a bomb scare, but what is a ragging scare? The Pune edition of the Indian Express reports on 4th May: "Ragging scare at SP College, student told to leave hostel". See our analysis of their report + a more reasonable report from the Sakal Herald newspaper.

The Times of India's "shocking repeat"

How the Times of India reported the SP College, Pune, ragging case.

Home > Research > Ragging and the Media: Index

Ragging and Women

2005-04-16T00:59:00.000+05:30

Feminism, anyone?

The atrocities committed in the name of ragging are unimaginable, but it is even more unimaginable that teenaged women can do such things to other teenaged women. How do we see this in the light of feminist discourses? Could gender-based repression and discrimination have a role in this? Does the structure of ragging, in both boys' and girls' hostel, have any relation with the structure of patriarchy? As we ask these questions, we hope you will join us. Your essay could be based on first hand experience in girls hostels and colleges, or based on interviews, or completely analytical. Mail it to us and we will get back to you.

The Beauties of Miranda
When Madhu Kishwar got elected as president of the Union in 1970, the two issues they began the year with were: An end to nasty and often obscene ragging of freshers by the seniors. And an end to the beauty contest.
[Miranda House, University of Delhi, Delhi]

My first day in the hostel was the worst day of my life
I had forgotten my unpleasant experience of ragging even though it lasted till only a few months ago. I thought I would rag my juniors mildly, but won’t make them go through what I have been. But when I heard of this Stop Ragging campaign, I tried to reflect back at the last one year in hostel.
[A privately run girls' hostel in Delhi]

Indu Anto: Suicide or Murder?
A collection of about two doxen news reports about the Indu Anto ragging death. Was it suicide or murder? The battle rages on in the courts, even as a a filmmaker plans to put Anto's story on celluloid. The case remains the most high-profile ragging incident in recent memory; it led to the enactment og an anti-ragging law in Maharashtra.

Home > Research > Ragging and Women > Index

Ragging and Sexuality

2005-04-16T00:43:00.000+05:30

Take off your clothes, sir

Why is so much of ragging sexual in nature? Why does a male senior wish to see the body of a male junior? Is sexuality being merely used as a tool of humiliation? Or could the senior be experimenting with his own sexuality? Such are the questions we wish to ask on this page. You are most welcome to contribute an article or two; it could be based on personal experience, interviews or analysis.

Love, thy art beautiful!

'I finally got up and said this was no way to rag someone and that making him take his underwear off would be stretching things too far. Don't know why but they listened to me and agreed that fine, they wouldn't make him strip completely.'
[Sri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi, Delhi]

Home > Research > Ragging and Sexuality > Index

Ragging News

2005-04-12T09:19:00.000+05:30

No news is bad news

Ever so often, The Stop Ragging Campaign receives emails and comments on the pages of this blog, earnestly telling us that ragging is “fun”, that surely, we can’t be against light banter? Such communication has the uncanny quality of invariably using similar syntax and adding the same disclaimers again and again: “Only some perverts bring a bad name to ragging;” “You can always say no to the senior;” “Ragging can be fun if it is not physical;” “The media over-hypes stray cases of bad ragging,” and so on.

However, our continuous monitoring of news reports of ragging around the country shows that ragging is invariably “physical”, meaning both violent and sexual. That freshers who say ‘no’ face a further backlash. And that the media downplays ragging incidents, considering them a routine activity, carrying a small report only when an FIR is lodged or a few students suspended. In fact newspapers rarely undertake follow-up stories even in the most serious cases. It is indeed troubling that what the law increasingly regards as a criminal activity is not considered worth investigation and in-depth reportage and analsyis by our fourth estate.

Academic year 2000-01
Academic year 2001-02
Academic year 2002-03
Academic year 2003-04
Academic year 2004-05
Academic year 2005-06
(links to be added)

Home > Ragging News > Index

'Ragging leads to closure of college' (Andhra Pradesh)

2005-04-11T22:36:00.000+05:30

By Our Staff reporter
The Hindu, 8 January 2005

SANGAREDDY, JAN. 7. The Siddipet-based Medak College of Engineering and Technology (founded in 2002) has been closed for the weekend due to ragging-related disturbances on the campus following harassment of a woman student in the college bus by a senior student.

It all began on January 1 when the senior student smeared cake on the junior student and misbehaved with her in the bus that ferries students between Siddipet and Hydearbad. Junior B.Tech students, who were afraid of revealing their identity, have said that when the senior student was having his way in the bus, no one dared to stop him because of his political clout. After a few days, he was beaten up inside the college premises.

While no one claimed responsibility for the incident, parents of all woman students, who had to travel the 90 km everyday in the bus, were afraid of sending their daughters to the college. With the parents descending on the college on Thursday and picking up a quarrel with the management, the Chairman of the college, Mr. Khurshid, decided to close the college till the tempers cooled down.

Ragging case: college clarifies

The Hindu, 9 January 2005

SANGAREDDY, JAN. 8. The Medak College of Engineering and Technology, which was in the news recently with regard to ragging, is organising a parents meeting on Sunday to create a healthy atmosphere on the campus. According to the chairman of the college, Syed Khurshid Ahmad, the college has already suspended the senior students who had misbehaved with a girl student on a Hyderabad-bound college bus. He clarified that the college was closed only for a day and had been working since Friday.

Home > Ragging News > 2004-05

The Principal Vs. PS Anoop & ors, in the Kerala High Court, 2001

2005-04-10T23:05:00.000+05:30

Using the Kerala Prohibition of Ragging Act 1998, the Principal of the College of Engineering, Trivandrum, suspended five students for physically assaulting a fresher in 2001. The students challenged their suspension in a lower court, which set it aside. The matter went to the Kerala High Court which upheld the Principal's decision, and set an important example in the state. We got this from here and are reproducing it as it is.

01 KLC-142

(Before K.S.Radhakrishnan & K.Balakrishnan Nair, JJ)
Monday, the 3rd December, 2001 / 12th Agrahayana, 1923

W.A.No. 2596 of 2001 (E)
-----------------------------------
Against the Judgment in O.P. 11842/2000

……………………………

The Principal : Appellant
Vs.
P.S. Anoop & ors : Respondents
……………………………

JUDGMENT (Full Text)

HEAD NOTES

4. We are of the view that the learned single judge was not justified in interfering with the punishment imposed by the Principal. A Division bench of this court in (2000 (2) KLT 11) had cautioned the students of Government Engineering College, Trivandrum for having indulged in ragging in the year 2000. We had to summon some of the offenders but did not take any action on the hope that the students would mend their ways. We are sorry to note that it never brought the desired results. The Bench expressed concern regarding wide-spread ragging in educational institutions. In many instances, authorities, in order to protect the image of the institution protect the wrong doers.

5. The State in order to avert the menace of ragging has enacted Kerala Prohibition of Ragging Act 1998 which cast a duty on the Head of Institution to prohibit ragging. Head of the Department shall not be mute spectator of such incidents. As soon as complaint is received he has to take action on the basis of the report. Section 4 of the Act states that whoever commits, participates in, abets or propagates ragging within, or without, any educational institution shall, on conviction be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years and shall also be liable to a fine which may extend to ten thousand rupees. Obligation is also cast under Section 6 of the Act on the Head of the Institution to conduct enquiry on receipt of complaint of ragging and if, prima facie, it is found true, suspend the student who is accused of the offence. Section 7 of the Act which says that if the head of the institution fails or neglects to take action in the matter specified in Section 6 when a complaint of ragging is made, such person shall be deemed to have abetted the offence of ragging and shall, on conviction, be punished as provided for in Section 4. Therefore, head of the institution has to be vigilant lest he may have to undergo punishment under Section 6 of the Act.

****to the decision of the apex court in Vishwa Jagriti Mission Through President v. Central Govt. Through Cabinet Secretary (AIR 2001 SCW 2871). In the aforementioned decision apex court has laid down guidelines for information of educational institutions. Apex court held that the application form for admission /enrolment shall have a printed undertaking to be filled up and signed by the candidate to the effect that he/she is aware of the Institution’s approach towards ragging and the punishments to which he or she shall be liable if found guilty of ragging. Similar undertaking should have been obtained from the writ petitioners/guardian of the writ petitioners. Principal and the College Authorities would take expeditious steps to give effect to the guidelines laid down by the apex court.

.......................................

Radhakrishnan, J:-

1. The Principal of the College of Engineering, Trivandrum is the Appellant herein. Writ petition was preferred by respondents 1 to 5 challenging Ext.P5 order passed by the Principal suspending them from the college with effect from 31.1.2001 to 31.5.2001. The order also stated that they would not be re-admitted to the college hostel in future.

2. Respondents 1 to 4 were final year students of the College of Engineering, Trivandrum and the fifth respondent was the second year student of the same college. One E.Liju, first year student of Mechanical Engineering of the college lodged a complaint of ragging by senior students of the college on the night of 29.1.2001. Father of Liju submitted a complaint to the Principal on 30.1.2001. Complainant Liju was later admitted to Taluk Headquarters Hospital, Neyyanttinkara. On receipt of the complaint from the father of Liju, Principal constituted an enquiry commission consisting of Dr.C.Sam, Professor of Civil Engineer as Convener and Professor A.Shajilal and professor T.M.Mohan as members. They submitted a report on 16.2.2001 stating that some unusual incident had happened to Liju on 29.1.2001 in the hostel. O.P. ticket produced from the Taluk Headquarters hospital would reveal that he was assaulted physically. Principal and Warden called Liju in person and recorded the statement on 22nd and 23rd of February 2001. Liju stated that he could identify the assailants from among group of photograph of students. He also identified fifth respondent. Fifth person was identified as John V. Thomas.

3. The Principal was convinced on the basis of the report of the enquiry commission as well as the statement recorded from Liju, that he was subjected to severe physical and mental torture, which would satisfy the definition of Section 2(b)(I)(ii) of the Kerala Prohibition of Ragging Act 1998. Principal accordingly passed Ext.P5 order suspending respondents 1 to 5 for a period with effect from 31.1.2001 to 31.5.2001. The writ petition was preferred against the said order. Writ petitioners moved C.M.P.No. 18942 of 2001 seeking permission to appear for second terminal examination which was to commence from 6.4.2001. Interim prayer was granted. However, learned single judge ordered that results would not be published and participation in the examination would be subject to further orders of this court. Writ petitioners filed C.M.P.No. 25444 of 2001 to permit them to appear for the other examinations. Learned single judge passed an order on 11.4.2001 permitting them to appear for those examinations on condition that the results would not be published without further orders. Original petition was later disposed of by the learned single judge regularizing the examination taken on the basis of the interim orders of this court. Aggrieved by the same Principal has filed this appeal. We heard counsel on either side.

6. In the instant case as soon as Principal received complaint from the student as well as from the father of the student the Principal constituted an enquiry commission consisting of three professors and it is on the basis of the report of the Commission and the statement recorded from the student the Principal decided to suspend the writ petitioners for a period of five months. As per the Act petitioners have necessarily to undergo the said punishment.

7. We are convinced that Principal was only discharging his statutory duty by initiating action on the basis of the report of the commission and in the best interest of the institution. We have therefore no hesitation to set aside the judgment of the learned single judge interfering with the orders of the Principal. We do so. However, we may direct the Principal to give writ petitioners opportunity to complete their course at the earliest. We also note the Principal has also stated that the petitioners can be given opportunity to appear for the internal examinations and do the laboratory work at the next immediate chance when the subject is offered. Principal has also stated that the students could attend to experiments and submit assignments only when a particular semester is on. Third petitioner can complete his pending laboratory work if he registers as per the University norms for the semesters when the particular courses are offered.

8. Before parting with the case, we may refer to the decision of the apex court in Vishwa Jagriti Mission Through President v. Central Govt. Through Cabinet Secretary (AIR 2001 SCW 2871). In the aforementioned decision apex court has laid down guidelines for information of educational institutions. Apex court held that the application form for admission /enrolment shall have a printed undertaking to be filled up and signed by the candidate to the effect that he/she is aware of the Institution’s approach towards ragging and the punishments to which he or she shall be liable if found guilty of ragging. Similar undertaking should have been obtained from the writ petitioners/guardian of the writ petitioners. Principal and the College Authorities would take expeditious steps to give effect to the guidelines laid down by the apex court.

The appeal would stand allowed as above.

Home > Ragging and the Law

Indu Anto: Suicide or Murder?

2005-04-10T13:32:00.000+05:30

Indu Anto

MUMBAI, 5 August 1998: Indu Anto (16), an eleventh standard arts student residing in the Sophia College hostel on Peddar Road, jumped to her death from the terrace of the two-storeyed building in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday morning, the police said. The girl's father alleged that she was being ragged by fellow students. Ms Anto was studying mathematics and logic at the college. She was the only child of her parents who live in Borivli. "We let her stay at the hostel since it would have been inconvenient for her to commute from Borivli to Sophia College everyday," her father, C.L. Anto, said.

Melissa D’Silva
one of the three accused

Student jumps to death from college hostel
The Times of India, 5 August 1998

Indu was ragged to death, say kin

The Indian Express, 6 August 1998

Anti-ragging drive launched in colleges

The Indian Express, 10 August 1998

Police rule out ragging

The Indian Express, 24 August 1998

The story as told by Indu Anto's diaries

The Indian Express, 11 September 1998

Anto controversy closed; verdict is suicide
The Indian Express, 4 May 1999

Act keeps a check on ragging, but only just

The Indian Express, 20 July 1999

Vengeance Shall Be Mine...
By Pradeep Shinde, Gunaah.com

The Final Diagnosis Confirms Ragging
Gunaah.com

HC orders fresh probe into Indu Anto's death
The Times of India, 7 April 2000

FIR against two girls of Sophia college in Indu Anto case
Rediff, 24 October 2000

Bail extended of accused in Indu Auto case
The Indian Express, 7 November 2000

Three year old suicide case re-opened
The Indian Express/PTI, 27 October 2001

Crime branch will probe college student's death
Mumbai Central

Two chargesheeted in Indu Anto case
The Times of India, 3 April 2002

Notice to Sophia College and two students

Nithyanand News, April 2004

Sophia student summoned to court
The Times of India, 3 April 2002

'I'm fighting for all parents'
The Times of India, 2 April 2002

'Whisky bottles were found in college hostel'
The Times of India, 23 July 2003

Court directed to decide on Indu Anto case
Mid-Day, 2 December 2003

Sophia College to be raided
Mid-Day, 15 June 2004

Cops, drama return to Sophia's

The Indian Express, 16 June 2004

College search does not yield register
Mid-Day, 16 June 2004

Hansal Mehta's inspiration

A film on Indu Anto?

Home > Ragging Deaths > The Indu Anto Case > Links

IIT-K: These moms and pops rock!

2005-04-10T11:40:00.000+05:30

By CHANDAN SEWANI

Senior students at IIT-K play parents to newcomers on campus
The Times of India, Kanpur, 11 June 2004

Dads and Moms, move over. For once, it's the turn of baaps and ammas to take care of their sons and daughters. Welcome to IIT Kanpur. Just before the new academic session, the baaps and ammas at this premiere engineering institute are working over time to ensure a smooth run for their children—-errr students.

For the uninitiated, baaps and ammas is not an oblique reference to concerned parents — it's how student guides attached to the Student Counselling Cell at IIT Kanpur are popularly known as.

Following in the footsteps of a 40-year-old tradition, these baaps and ammas help freshers adjust in the institute and, more importantly, make sure that they are not subjected to ragging.

"Freshers have a tough time adjusting to the new environment of the college. Not only do we make them feel at home, we also help them overcome problems on the academic front," says amma in the making, Prachi Srivastava, assistant coordinator for the undergraduate wing.

Similar views are aired by Subhash Kumar Bose, assistant co-ordinator for the post graduate wing. "It's during the first semester when most students face problems. We help them out by organising various computer and personality development workshops for them. The idea, of course, is to acclimatise them with the norms and rules of the institute and help them cope with their studies in a more focussed manner," says Bose.

That's not all. Much like concerned parents who take care of the monetary problems of their wards, the baaps and ammas at IIT bail out students facing monetary problems through a Student Benefit Fund. "The guides also make arrangements for separate classes for weak students," states Deepika Rastogi, a coordinator for the postgraduate wing.

Each group of five students has a baap or amma. "It is a voluntary service and those opting for it are carefully screened and selected by a panel consisting of a head counsellor, faculty counsellors, coordinators and assistant coordinators. There are various written tests, group discussions and interviews and the panel appoints one guide for a group of five students, baaps for males and ammas for females " informs head counsellor Dr Onkar Dikshit The essential pre requisites of guides is that they should be sincere, selfless and good listeners. They should be able to win the confidence of students and develop a good rapport with them. Besides, they should be available round the clock," adds Dikshit.

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External Links

2005-04-10T00:25:00.000+05:30

To add to this list, leave any website url as a "comment" on this page.

Traumas as Social Interactions

2005-04-06T14:34:00.000+05:30

By Dr. SAM VAKNIN

Snare of Memory
by Satish Gujral
(charcoal on paper; 1954)

("He" in this text - to mean "He" or "She").

We react to serious mishaps, life altering setbacks, disasters, abuse, and death by going through the phases of grieving. Traumas are the complex outcomes of psychodynamic and biochemical processes. But the particulars of traumas depend heavily on the interaction between the victim and his social milieu.

It would seem that while the victim progresses from denial to helplessness, rage, depression and thence to acceptance of the traumatizing events - society demonstrates a diametrically opposed progression. This incompatibility, this mismatch of psychological phases is what leads to the formation and crystallization of trauma.

PHASE I

Victim phase I - DENIAL
The magnitude of such unfortunate events is often so overwhelming, their nature so alien, and their message so menacing - that denial sets in as a defence mechanism aimed at self preservation. The victim denies that the event occurred, that he or she is being abused, that a loved one passed away.

Society phase I - ACCEPTANCE, MOVING ON
The victim's nearest ("Society") - his colleagues, his employees, his clients, even his spouse, children, and friends - rarely experience the events with the same shattering intensity. They are likely to accept the bad news and move on. Even at their most considerate and empathic, they are likely to lose patience with the victim's state of mind. They tend to ignore the victim, or chastise him, to mock, or to deride his feelings or behaviour, to collude to repress the painful memories, or to trivialize them.

Summary: Phase I
The mismatch between the victim's reactive patterns and emotional needs and society's matter-of-fact attitude hinders growth and healing. The victim requires society's help in avoiding a head-on confrontation with a reality he cannot digest. Instead, society serves as a constant and mentally destabilizing reminder of the root of the victim's unbearable agony (the Job syndrome).

PHASE II

Victim phase II - HELPLESSNESS
Denial gradually gives way to a sense of all-pervasive and humiliating helplessness, often accompanied by debilitating fatigue and mental disintegration. These are among the classic symptoms of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). These are the bitter results of the internalization and integration of the harsh realization that there is nothing one can do to alter the outcomes of a natural, or man-made, catastrophe. The horror in confronting one's finiteness, meaninglessness, negligibility, and powerlessness - is overpowering.

Society phase II - DEPRESSION
The more the members of society come to grips with the magnitude of the loss, or evil, or threat represented by the grief inducing events - the sadder they become. Depression is often little more than suppressed or self-directed anger. The anger, in this case, is belatedly induced by an identified or diffuse source of threat, or of evil, or loss. It is a higher level variant of the "fight or flight" reaction, tampered by the rational understanding that the "source" is often too abstract to tackle directly.

Summary Phase II
Thus, when the victim is most in need, terrified by his helplessness and adrift - society is immersed in depression and unable to provide a holding and supporting environment. Growth and healing is again retarded by social interaction. The victim's innate sense of annulment is enhanced by the self-addressed anger (=depression) of those around him.

PHASE III

Both the victim and society react with RAGE to their predicaments. In an effort to narcissistically reassert himself, the victim develops a grandiose sense of anger directed at paranoidally selected, unreal, diffuse, and abstract targets (=frustration sources). By expressing aggression, the victim re-acquires mastery of the world and of himself.

Members of society use rage to re-direct the root cause of their depression (which is, as we said, self directed anger) and to channel it safely. To ensure that this expressed aggression alleviates their depression - real targets must are selected and real punishments meted out. In this respect, "social rage" differs from the victim's. The former is intended to sublimate aggression and channel it in a socially acceptable manner - the latter to reassert narcissistic self-love as an antidote to an all-devouring sense of helplessness.

In other words, society, by itself being in a state of rage, positively enforces the narcissistic rage reactions of the grieving victim. This, in the long run, is counter-productive, inhibits personal growth, and prevents healing. It also erodes the reality test of the victim and encourages self-delusions, paranoidal ideation, and ideas of reference.

PHASE IV

Victim Phase IV - DEPRESSION
As the consequences of narcissistic rage - both social and personal - grow more unacceptable, depression sets in. The victim internalizes his aggressive impulses. Self directed rage is safer but is the cause of great sadness and even suicidal ideation. The victim's depression is a way of conforming to social norms. It is also instrumental in ridding the victim of the unhealthy residues of narcissistic regression. It is when the victim acknowledges the malignancy of his rage (and its anti-social nature) that he adopts a depressive stance.

Society Phase IV - HELPLESSNESS
People around the victim ("society") also emerge from their phase of rage transformed. As they realize the futility of their rage, they feel more and more helpless and devoid of options. They grasp their limitations and the irrelevance of their good intentions. They accept the inevitability of loss and evil and Kafkaesquely agree to live under an ominous cloud of arbitrary judgement, meted out by impersonal powers.

Summary Phase IV
Again, the members of society are unable to help the victim to emerge from a self-destructive phase. His depression is enhanced by their apparent helplessness. Their introversion and inefficacy induce in the victim a feeling of nightmarish isolation and alienation. Healing and growth are once again retarded or even inhibited.

PHASE V

Victim Phase V - ACCEPTANCE AND MOVING ON
Depression - if pathologically protracted and in conjunction with other mental health problems - sometimes leads to suicide. But more often, it allows the victim to process mentally hurtful and potentially harmful material and paves the way to acceptance. Depression is a laboratory of the psyche. Withdrawal from social pressures enables the direct transformation of anger into other emotions, some of them otherwise socially unacceptable. The honest encounter between the victim and his own (possible) death often becomes a cathartic and self-empowering inner dynamic. The victim emerges ready to move on.

Society Phase V - DENIAL
Society, on the other hand, having exhausted its reactive arsenal - resorts to denial. As memories fade and as the victim recovers and abandons his obsessive-compulsive dwelling on his pain - society feels morally justified to forget and forgive. This mood of historical revisionism, of moral leniency, of effusive forgiveness, of re-interpretation, and of a refusal to remember in detail - leads to a repression and denial of the painful events by society.

Summary: Phase V
This final mismatch between the victim's emotional needs and society's reactions is less damaging to the victim. He is now more resilient, stronger, more flexible, and more willing to forgive and forget. Society's denial is really a denial of the victim. But, having ridden himself of more primitive narcissistic defences - the victim can do without society's acceptance, approval, or look. Having endured the purgatory of grieving, he has now re-acquired his self, independent of society's acknowledgement.

Copyright: Dr Sam Vaknin

Related article: Ragging and the victim figure

Home > Research > Ragging and Society

Support us

2005-04-06T05:10:00.000+05:30

The work we have done so far has been on the basis of our own funds, which puts a limitation on expanding our activities. We would like to setup an office; have full-time employees who do not have the limitations that even dedicated volunteers do; have a representative in every state; hire legal counsel; organise press conferences and seminars to mould public opinion on the issue; have a comprehensive outreach programme; publish books and get a documentary made on the subject. In short, we have a long road to travel before we can establish a permanent monitoring and advocacy institution to eliminate ragging from India's educational institutions and give future generations of students a peaceful campus life that is conducive to learning.

A small contribution by you can go a long way. Donations can be sent by cheques, bank drafts or money orders the name of Society for People's Action Change and Enforcement (SPACE) to our address 8/102-D, Sector- 8, Indira Nagar, Lucknow - 226 016 (India). Alternatively, cheques or bank drafts may be directly deposited into our account at any branch of HDFC Bank in your city.

Our HDFC Bank account details are:

Name of account: Society for People's Action, Change and Enforcement
Account number: 2961450000061
Branch: Indira Nagar, Lucknow

Society for People's Action, Change and Enforcement (SPACE) is a Society registered in India under the Societies Act of 1860. Its accounts are audited anually and will be put up at www.stopragging.org.

Should you wish to meet one of us personally or talk to us on phone, just email us and we'll get back to you.

Many thanks for your support.

Sachin Agarwal

> Our volunteer Rohit Kaler has offered to sponsor the domain name, www.stopragging.org, for one year. That comes to Rs. 450. Thanks Rohit!

Home > Support us

SP College case: Lull after the storm

2005-04-05T05:03:00.000+05:30

Here's a follow up report on the SP College, Pune, ragging case, from the Sakal Herald. You can read here, along with our commentary, the original reports that appeared yesterday in the Herald, Indian Express and the Times of India.

The College's reluctance in expelling Bharadwaj makes us wonder what the law-enforcement authorities in Maharashtra are doing. Mr Education Minister, are you listening?

Lull after the storm

Bhardwaj not expelled, allowed to write paper in seclusion

By a staff reporter

The Sakal Herald, Pune

5 April 2005

TILAK ROAD: The day after the ragging incident at Sir Parshurambhau College Boys Hostel came to light, silence reigned at the hostel premises.
First year students took their examinations peacefully at the college and hostelites preferred not to talk about the incident. Bharadwaj took his examination in a separate room at the college’s mandali office.
Activists of the Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena were incensed at the ‘VIP Treatment’ given to Bharadwaj. They protested vehemently, demanding immediate rustication of the student. According to Vidyarthi Sena leaders, the college authorities had declared in a letter that Bharadwaj was to be officially rusticated on Monday as per University Regulations and he would not be able to appear for university exams this year.
In a letter, said to have been procured by Sena leaders, signed by Principal Madhav Pendse, the Principal accepts that the seating arrangement was ‘improper’ and Bharadwaj should have appeared for the exam with other students.
According to Prakash Dhamdhere, city Vidyarthi Sena leader, the college authorities should not have let Bharadwaj appear for the exam at all.
“If they did, there was no reason to let him appear in a separate room with only one supervisor. We demanded that the Principal should give a written promise to rusticate Bharadwaj and not allow him to appear for the examination. The Principal accepted our demand and also accepted that Bhardwaj should not have been allowed to write his paper in seclusion,” Dhamdhere said.
Meanwhile, Principal Madhav Pendse was not available for comment despite constant efforts to reach him.

Kudos again to the Sakal Herald for a very reasonable editorial on the subject:

Drop that ostrich act

College authorities need to be more approachable

The Sakal Herald, Pune

Editorial: 5 April 2005

When the lid was blown off the infamous ragging incident at ILS Law College, the lack of communication between the college authorities and students lay exposed. Two years, three well reported and hundreds of unreported ragging cases later, the situation hasn't changed. In the recent ragging case at Sir Parshurambhau College, the reaction of the authorities was typical and predictable. First came the denial, then, after the media coverage, admission of the incident, and finally, action against the 'culprits'. It only proved that it doesn't really matter how much Pune pundits discuss the need for a transparent and student-sensitive attitude among the authorities; students' issues always tend to get swept under the carpet.

College authorities somehow do not take cognisance of the gravity of the situation faced by students. Hurt by the apathy of college authorities, students turn to the admission mafia, politically-biased student organisations, anti-social elements... in short, anyone who can 'get things done', by hook or by crook. It is all the more ironic that this happens in a city like Pune, which takes a lot of pride in being an education hub. Mere numbers aren't enough - it is important that colleges give some thought to reforming the system that supports academic excellence.

Over the last couple of months, it has become distressingly clear that in times of extreme crises, students choose to rush to the youth wing of political parties or the media for succour. This was the case in the two recent cases of mass copying in the State Board exams. The school authorities in question, instead of acting on the complaint of the students, counselled them to keep quiet. Dismayed, the students approached the youth wing of some political parties. The aspiring netas stormed the offices of the board and embarrassed it into taking action.

If colleges want to maintain their integrity, authorities should learn to deal directly with students and treat the cause, rather than the symptoms, of problems. An institution does not acquire a bad reputation for acknowledging a problem, identifying its roots and working out a solution. Pune whole-heartedly supported ILS Law College principal Vaijayanti Joshi for dealing with the ragging issue with an iron hand. Students, parents and society at large, need responsive college and school authorities. Not ostriches.

News - Ragging and the Media
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The Times of India's "shocking repeat"

2005-04-04T19:00:00.000+05:30

Here's how the Times of India reported the SP College, Pune, ragging case.

S P college rusticates hostelite for ragging

PUNE: In a shocking repeat of the ILS law college ragging incident that occurred in the city two years ago, the reputed Sir Parshurambhau (S P) college on Sunday rusticated a student from the boys' hostel after another student complained of being ragged. The college also decided to investigate the role of three other students in the incident.

In a 'shocking repeat'? So the rustication of students is shocking; actual ragging taking place throughout the year is routine? And this one is not a repeat as the ILS (Indian Law School) had kicked out 26 students, not one, and that too permanently.

Sunil Vasant Mali, a first year bachelor of arts (FYBA) student, said he had been constantly ragged by four students, Nitesh Bharadwaj (from Bihar), Pranav Kanitkar, Chintamani Umrani (all FYBSc students) and Srinil Goswami, an FYBA student. Mali said the four had been constantly ragging him since January 1 this year. They would tease him and abuse his parents.

FYBA is a new acronym. Thanks! It'll definitely be of use to us.

Bharadwaj would barge into his room, at times drunk, and beat him up, Mali said in his complaint.

Mali claimed that Bharadwaj targeted him because he was a Maharashtrian and abused him for that. They ragged him even in front of his parents, he said.

Why didn't Mali or his parents file an FIR in the nearest police station?

Mali and other hostel inmates said he had complained to the hostel rector, Dilip Sheth, who just issued a warning to Bharadwaj and the other students, and did not take any action. The hostel houses around 200 students.
When quizzed about this, the rector said he had issued warnings to the students and had not taken strict action because "the students' future was at risk".

Wasn't the first year student's future at risk too? Just imagine if things had gone too far and he had left the college, wasted a year, or worse, committed suicide? And what about your future, Mr Principal and Mr Rector, as under the Maharashtra anti-ragging law you are culpable?

"Henceforth, we will take strict action on such complaints," he added. Principal Madhav Pendse said the college could not fathom the enormity of the problem and, hence, could not act accordingly. On Sunday morning, Mali met activists of the Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena (BVS), the student wing of the Shiv Sena, and submitted a complaint about the incident in writing.

Why would you take strict action "henceforth"? What is it that has changed now? Won't the future of senior students be at risk now?

In the letter asking for help from the BVS, Mali said things had reached such a head that he was considering quitting studies and going back to his native village of Wadgaon in Osmanabad. The BVS activists then met Pendse, after which the college administration swung into action, rusticating Bharadwaj from the hostel.

This sounds so civilised as compare to the Indian Express report which said that the Sena activists manhandled the senior in question.

Though he will be allowed to appear for the forthcoming exams, Pendse said Bharadwaj would be denied admission to the college for the next academic year. Bharadwaj was also asked to vacate the hostel by Sunday evening and barred from meeting Mali during the exams.

Poor senior! His future!

The role of the other three students in the incident would be probed and action would be taken accordingly.
Meanwhile, Pendse and the BVS activists led by Prakash Dhamdhere, Mahesh Mahale and Ganesh Satpute advised students to complain to the college authorities whenever they came across such incidents so that action could be taken before the situation went out of control.

It is clear that the Express was the only paper that sought to present the College in a relatively good light, shifting the blame on the Sena activists. See our commentary on the Express and Sakal Herald reports.

News - Ragging and the Media
research@stopragging.org
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And what is a "ragging scare"?

2005-04-04T03:58:00.000+05:30

Who's who? Guess, guess!

You have heard of a bomb scare, but what is a ragging scare? The Pune edition of the Indian Express reports today: Ragging scare at SP College, student told to leave hostel.

A first-year science student of Sir Parsurambhau (SP) College was asked by the authorities to leave the college hostel with immediate effect on Sunday, following a ‘ragging’ scare. However, college authorities termed the incident as a ‘one-to-one’ dispute between two students of the same batch. ‘‘There was no ragging as such,’’ clarified college principal Madhav Pendse.

You will find this to be a standard answer of the 'authorities' of any college. Not only are they afraid of spoiling the 'reputation' of their institution, but also the law. Maharashtra has an anti-ragging law which states that should an institution fail to curb ragging, its principal or director can also be arrested!

The incident brought on anxious moments for college officials, when Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena (BVS) activists descended on the college hostel and allegedly manhandled the ‘offender’ Nitesh Bharadwaj.

Wo! Very rarely is student unionism in India put to good use. But this manhandling business is not acceptable. The rule of the law must prevail. Politically aligned student unions can at times make matters worse; in this case, as being champions of a parochial Mahrashtrian cause. The student should have gone to the nearest police station.

Notice how the paper is concerned about "anxious moments for college officials" and not the anxious moments that the first-year student and his family must have faced.

It all happened when Sunil Mali, also a first-year science student, approached the BVS complaining of physical and mental harassment by Bharadwaj for the last few months. Mali claimed that his pleas to college authorities, including the hostel rector, failed to evoke any response.

"Also a first-year science student"? Which other first-year science student has the report talked about so far?

A group of BVS activists descended on the hostel on Sunday and allegedly manhandled Bharadwaj, while demanding that the college should act against him for ragging.

There is no smoke without fire.

The activists returned after Pendse assured a proper inquiry. ‘‘We have asked Bharadwaj to leave the college hostel immediately. Sunil’s elder brother too approached us and sought our permission to take Sunil home,’’ Pendse said.

It seems the fresher and his family are concerned about his safety. But did you notice that the first paragraph of the report had said, "A first-year science student of Sir Parsurambhau (SP) College was asked by the authorities to leave the college hostel." Now they write that the senior, Bharadwaj, was asked to leave. So confusing yaar. Do the reporter and the editor know what they are talking about?

He maintained that ragging cannot go on for such long periods, as alleged. Though, he said, there was a simmering dispute between Mali and Bharadwaj but none of the kind involving physical harm.

Ragging is outlawed sir, not just ragging that includes "physical harm". Are you waiting for a limb or two to be broken before you get your act together? And ragging can indeed go on for the entire academic year (even the annual exams!) in the slightly more barbaric hostels.

So why does the paper call it a "ragging scare", thus implying that there was no ragging? Is it that hard to find out if ragging was really taking place in that hostel?

By contrast, here is a more responsible report. This one makes no mention of the student activists 'manhandling' the senior in question.

S P student told to quit hostel for ragging

By a Staff Reporter
Sakal Herald, Pune:

S P College yesterday told a first-year BSc student to vacate his hostel room and ordered a probe against three others for ragging a first-year BA student.

According to a complaint lodged by BA student Sunil Mali with the college authorities, BSc students Nitesh Bharadwaj, Pranav Kanitkar, Chintamani Umbrani and BA student Shrinil Goswami harassed him mentally and physically since January 1. He alleges that the four used abusive language against him and sometimes, even manhandled him under the influence of alcohol.

Mali used to stay in room number 16 (ground floor) of the hostel on college premises, while Bharadwaj used to stay in room 105, which is on the second floor. Mali, who hails from Vadgaon, Usmanabad district, joined the college in his second term. He alleges that hostel rector Dr Dilip Sheth turned a deaf ear to his frequent complaints regarding ragging, forcing him to approach Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena on the eve of his final paper today. He says he was finding it difficult to concentrate on his studies due to the constant harassment.

Sena members, including Vice-President Prakash Dhamdhere and Ganesh Satpute, met hostel rector Dilip Sheth and college principal Madhavrao Pendse following Mali's complaint and got him to take action against Bharadwaj and the others.

Pendse told Bharadwaj to leave hostel immediately and ordered an inquiry against the others to ascertain their role in harassment. Bharadwaj will be, however, allowed to take his exam starting today, but would not be allowed admission the next year.

Students staying in the hostel told the Herald that it was basically a war of words between a Maharashtrian (Mali) and a non-Maharashtrian (Bharadwaj, who is from Bihar). They, however, could not explain why the same did not apply to Goswami, who hails from Assam, and Kanitkar and Umbrani, who are Maharashtrians. College authorities refused comment on the issue.

Unlike the Express, this reporter of the Sakal Herald seems to have taken some pains to find out what was going on. The innumerable colleges in the city of Pune face this problem every year: Maharashtrians are accused of being very intolerant of non-Mahrashtrians; the latter often have a cultural problem settling in.

Students said Bharadwaj and Mali got acquainted while watching the common TV and using common bathrooms. “They used give stares to each other whenever they used to bump into each other,” they added.
The rector said he was not aware of the gravity of the harassment and had ignored it thinking it was routine. He agreed that Mali lodged complaints with him on a couple of occasions, but he dismissed them as "such small rivalries among students are common".

You are clearly not fit for your job, Mr Rector!

“He was staying alone in room 16. After his first complaint, we paired him with a BEd student for support. But it proved of no use,” Sheth said, adding, "The harassment continued.”

The problem was not in his staying alone but in Nitesh Bharadwaj and others harassing him. It seems you didn't want to kick those seniors out of the hostel.

See our commentary on The Times of India's reportage of this incident. Also have a look at the Sakal Herald's follow up story and editorial on the issue.

News - Ragging and the Media

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A dangerous twist to a harmless practice: Khushwant Singh on ragging

2005-04-03T23:51:00.000+05:30

by KHUSHWANT SINGH

'By the time I joined college in England in 1934, the word ragging had disappeared from university vocabulary. On the contrary, new entrants were taken over by older students to be shown round the college and hostels.'

Reprinted from The Tribune, 28 July 2001:

True to our national character, we pick up the silliest customs of the West and give them an oriental twist. Among the harmless are celebrating birthdays with birthday cakes, with candles and singing "Happy birthday to you", attending New Year’s Eve parties, getting drunk and singing ‘auld long syne’. A later addition is celebrating St Valentine’s Day by sending cards declaring love and inserting ads in newspapers carrying amorous messages. However alien and silly they be in the Indian setting, they are harmless. Ragging new entrants in colleges is not. It was borrowed from England where new boys joining schools were taken over by seniors as fags and asked to do menial jobs like polishing their shoes and ironing their clothes. At times youngsters were also subjected to buggery. Some of the practice was carried to colleges.

Ragging in all its forms vanished from English schools and colleges a century ago. We Indians took it up and continue to indulge in it with sadistic zeal. In my days in the two Indian colleges I went to, it seldom went beyond quietly affixing placards reading ‘I am a first year fool’ on backs of new entrants or making them sing and dance. In hostels, they were often subjected to humiliations like forcing them to strip, masturbate and even satiate the lust of seniors. The victims often suffered trauma and were mentally maimed for life. College authorities usually turned a blind eye to these happenings and explained them as harmless ways of rubbing edges off newcomers. It took many tragic incidents for them to realise these were far from harmless — at times ragging induced victims to take their own lives. After one such incident when an engineering student of IIT Kharagpur committed suicide in 1991(the deceased’s father filed a petition), ragging was made a cognizable offence, punishable with a fine of Rs 25000 and three years of rigorous imprisonment. The University Grant Commission formulated rules which included expulsion from college to put down this unwholesome custom.

It came as a surprise to me that the practice of ragging is as common in girls colleges as it is in boys and takes equally sadistic forms, at times leading to suicides. I should have thought a simple word of warning by the Principal to all his students at the time of admissions that anyone caught ragging would be immediately expelled from college hostels would be enough. Apparently not. So the police has to be summoned and arrests made in centres of learning.

By the time I joined college in England in 1934, the word ragging had disappeared from university vocabulary. On the contrary, new entrants were taken over by older students to be shown round the college and hostels, told of extra-curricular activities in which they could participate. It was a most cordial welcome. About the only roughing up that took place once a year was by gangs of students from one college raiding the rival college and robbing or disfiguring its emblem. My college emblem was Leo, a red lion fixed above the entrance gate. The emblem of the London School of Economics was Phineas with a long beard. Kings’ College boys would suddenly storm into LSE, carry of Phineas and cut off his beard before returning it. A few days later LSE boys would raid Kings’ College, carry of Leo and return it after removing its testicles.

Ragging and Society

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Ragging and Memory

2005-04-03T15:46:00.000+05:30

Selective amnesia

A fresher goes through torture, harassment and abuse, and mostly resents it. Yet, why does he turn into a ragger himself the following year? What drives him to inflict the same injury on a fresh batch of students? It is often found that by now resentment has changed to an avowed insistence that 'I enjoyed being ragged'. What exactly is the role of memory in ragging? Why do some remember ragging as a bad experience while others remember the same ragging with romantic nostalgia? How do memories, real and imagined, public and private, affect the nature of ragging? The articles on this page, including the crucial evidence of first hand stories, seek to address these questions.

We will keep updating this page as and when we have new stories or essays pertaining to ragging and memory. If you have one, mail it to us.

Ragging and the victim figure

One advice liberally offered to freshers by agony aunt columns and retired uncles is, "You must decide how much is enough for you and draw the line there. Then say no to the senior." Freshers who do draw the line and rebel in one way or another, often find that moment of rebellion turn into a moment of epiphany. That impulsive, deferential moment decides the future of your social life in the hostel.

How I was ragged at IIT Delhi and why it was no joke
After so many years, Sujit Saraf can dispassionately list the 'forms of ragging’, but no one should be misled. When an eighteen year old boy stands naked to be inspected by ten leering animals, he shudders in the bottom of his heart.
[Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi]

The Masks of '91

'Freshers did not know who had suddenly come in, masked, beating them ruthlessly. A boy from Assam jumped from the second floor and broke his neck. He died after a few days, yet his parents thanked us for helping them out at the hospital by donating blood, etcetera. We did not know how to respond.'

[Motilal Nehru Regional Engineering College / National Institute of Technology, Allahabad]

Bare beginnings
"That Baku guy is sick. Though you think they would have done anything?” I said, striving for a cool I did not feel. “Who knows? Maybe not,” Ryan rotated a shoulder, “But you can never tell when guys get into mob mentality. Trust me, I have lived in enough boarding schools.” Excerpts from Chetan Bhagat's novel, Five Point Someone: What Not to do at IIT .
[Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi]

All's well that ends well

'These things however got over in about two months and soon these very freshers were being treated in canteens and K Nags food joints by these very seniors. The lack of resentment towards the seniors was surprising.'
[Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi, Delhi]

Life of a Bhutru

I am still in touch with the seniors who had ragged us. Many of them are in MNC's like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, L&T, and so on. Does India need such professionals?
[Regional Engineering College / National Institute of Technology, Rourkela]

The Summer of 2001
“You know why I left you?” he asked as we shook hands one last time, and without waiting for my answer said again. “Because we dark skinned people not generally respected by the fair skinned ones, but I felt you had different views… so you were spared.” After that he left.
[St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi, Delhi]

My first and last day in Delhi University

I still haven’t been able to forget that next half-an-hour or so, when I was trying to hide myself from people on the streets of North Campus. I was so scared and emotionally hurt that I took off the belt only after I had walked a good distance away from Kirori Mal College. And I never went back to KMC after that.
[Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi, Delhi]

Research: Ragging and Memory

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Ragging and the victim figure

2005-04-03T02:52:00.000+05:30

By Our RESEARCH DESK

A third year student of a college hostel in Delhi University's North Campus, who had rebelled against ragging in his first year and had got a couple of seniors in trouble, now says that ragging has its uses. He parrots the cliche, "Some amount of ragging can be useful," and explains, "Like fetching cigarettes for a senior on day one helped me get over my inhibition about being seen at a tobacco vendor's at home, lest my parents see me."

But a little interrogation by me and he admits the weakness of his argument. Yeah, yeah, in time he would have gone to the cigarette shop, with his seniors or otherwise, and being 'sent' to buy cigarettes as though you were a slave is not at all important to losing such an 'inhibition'. As the advertisement says, zor ka jhatka dheere se lagay - a tremendous shock inflicted gradually. But ragging ensures that such shocks become larger than they are, and can be devastating for some.

So when you complained against your seniors, were you boycotted in the hostel? "I wasn't," he says to my surprise, "I wasn't because I didn't feel boycotted." I ask him to explain further and all he had to say was: "I am a very jovial sort of person, you know."

Another student in another hostel, having rebelled against ragging, was both ostracised and felt ostracised. It took him some time to realise that several seniors and batchmates were simply not talking to him as they regarded him a 'sneak' and a 'sissy'. This person, apparently not as socially adept, reacted further, becoming completely anti-establishment; the establishment being the community of students who dominate the social life of the hostel.

The various ways in which the victim figure reacts are more complex than the usual sympathetic, somewhat condescending light in which we see the victim figure. In the two examples above, the first one pretends as if nothing ever happened, and moves on, greeting people with a smile, and the 'ice' is broken despite a deviation in the ragging system. In the second example, the student is introspective and contemplative. He asks himself, "What is my fault?" People around him tell him that his fault is that he is hypersensitive, socially inadept and timid.

While these may be true about him, it gives rise to another question: Is being hypersensitive and shy a crime? We ask this because ragging is a crime by law. A sociologist with his/her typically functionalist approach would not ask this question. Blaming the victim rather than the victimiser or the system that allows such victmisation is a standard trope in the public reactions to all kinds of abuse. Those who have worked in the areas on child abuse and rape will testify this. However, years of a status-quoist approach towards ragging by academics and society alike ensured that the need to outlaw the practice was felt only in the '90s. Psychologists and sociologists have all had their say on ragging. Why don't we look at institutionalised ragging from the perspective of human rights? Outspoken raggers and ex-raggers shout their cliched defense of ragging from the rooftops because they have to justify the act of abuse to themselves.

One advice liberally offered to freshers by agony aunt columns and retired uncles is, "You must decide how much is enough for you and draw the line there. Then say no to the senior." (As if the senior will take no for an answer.) Freshers who do draw the line and rebel in one way or another, often find that moment of rebellion turn into a moment of epiphany. That impulsive, deferential moment decides the future of your social life in the hostel. 'Rebellion', by the way, is not just simply abusing the senior on his face or complaining to the hostel warden. Rebellion takes place inside one's head: you tell yourself, "This is not fair, this is not done, I'm not game for it." This is opposed to telling oneself, "It's okay, it's momentary, I should be enjoying it, it's just a practical joke." In other words, how you receive ragging depends on how you want to receive it. That determines whether a few days later you can be categorised as a ragging 'victim'.

The victim figure likes to forgive and forget, and move on. Living with trauma is like being physically challenged. That is how all freshers psychologically orient themselves in the immediate post-ragging period. "Because ragging per se is a fact of life, the senior who harassed me had nothing personal against me, so I should become friendly with him." Once this happens, the fresher immediately though unconsciously forgets the harassment and abuse that he underwent, and soon those days of ragging are romanticised in booze parties which begin in the night and end in the morning. To see an example of such a psychological transformation over the course of a few months, read this 'outsider's' account of ragging at Kirori Mal College. Excerpt: "These things however got over in about two months and soon these very freshers were being treated in canteens and K Nags food joints by these very seniors. The lack of resentment towards the seniors was surprising." (In this story, also notice how the narrator, a guest at the Kirori Mal College hostel, presents himself as a completely passive observer, as though he had gone there precisely to write this account for us!)

One year is a long time in personal memory, and by the next academic session, when the fresher is a senior, he is found saying, "I enjoyed getting ragged last year by my seniors. I got to know them. We bonded very well. We are the best of friends in the world now. They helped me a lot." A second psychological transformation has taken place. The traumatic experienec of ragging has been forgotten so well that ragging is now genuinely seen as a constructive activity. There is now a desperate, defensive attempt to show ragging in a positive light, even when not asked to do so. And so he has no qualms ragging the new batch. This also means that we do not accept the theory that a fresher rags his freshers in the following year(s) in order to take revenge, or as a means of catharsis of his frustration at being ragged the previous year.

Here's one story where time had just begun to heal the psychological wounds inflicted by ragging when we asked the girl student to describe how she had been ragged. She had just finished her first year and the academic session 2004-05 was about to begin. She took a week to write the story, and this is how she ends it: "I had completely forgotten my unpleasant experience of ragging even though it ended only a few months ago. I had forgotten my pain, and I thought I would rag my juniors mildly, but won’t make them go through what I have been. But when I heard of this campaign, I tried to reflect back at the one year that have I spent in this hostel. I realise that this entire episode termed ‘ragging’ was the worst time of my life."

However, the fresher who had rebelled in that moment of epiphany is deprived of this opportunity to let time heal psychological wounds. That moment when you rebelled against ragging doesn't leave you alone. It has the potential to follow you day in and day out in your three or four years in college, because too many people have formed a prejudiced notion of you, that you are a sneak and a sissy. Retribution could also mean actual violence and not just ostracisation. At the very least, you would simply be marginalised because you never got to know your seniors anyway; their condition to "interact" with you was that they will rag you, and you did not accept that condition and escaped away, or 'sneaked', or simply refused to follow their orders.

Victim figures react in different, complex ways. The moment of epiphany, rather than the harassment and abuse of ragging, itself becomes the causative factor of trauma, and may be followed by any kind of reaction: depression, mental instability, sucidal behaviour or actual suicide. Or s/he may leave the hostel or the college itself, or may take to alcoholism and drug abuse. Or, like my first interviewee, may insist: "I was not boycotted because I don't feel boycotted. I am a jovial sort of person," thus giving time a second chance to heal his psychological wounds. The least reaction would be to turn anti-establishment like my second interviewee, the establishment being not the college or the college authorities but the students who dominate the communitarian life of the college or hostel. The nature and extent of the victim figure's reaction depends upon his/her own psychological strength intersected with the degree of the trauma afflicted upon him. In any case, the inability to have successfully negotiated ragging will be shown to him as a personal failure, thus reimposing the trope of blaming the victim. Peers, friends, teachers and family may treat him as a victim figure, thus making his ability to move on even more difficult. At this stage professional counselling becomes very important, but is rarely chosen or available.

Have a look at Aman Malik's story. His over-all theme - "I enjoyed getting ragged," as we said, means, "I successfully negotiated it in my head." Mark one sentence in his essay: "To be truthful, I quite enjoyed most of what happened during the rest of the period, barring two or three incidents that left a bad taste in my mouth, but more on them on some other occasion." We asked him to mention these in the story. He said he didn't want to. We asked him to describe how he ragged his freshers the two following years. He said he would some day; he's too busy.

Almost all defenders of ragging want to tell you how enjoyable it was getting ragged by seniors. They will hesitate to tell you what exactly they did by way of ragging their freshers. Urban India has been suffering from the problem of selective amnesia at a vast scale and we need an army of psychologists to deal with it.

Compare Aman's story with the account of Atul Prakash Singh, who had a brush with what is popularly called "mild ragging", meaning ragging that does not involve sexual abuse or its threat. Atul visited Delhi University to take admission, and even before he could fill the form, "seniors" started ragging him! He told himself: If this has begun even before I take admission, what will happen later? So he didn't even take admission and went back home. The moment of epiphany arrived a bit too early, and the writer has no regrets. As the comments left by insensitive bloggers on that page will tell you, it is again the victim who is being blamed.

In this incident in an engineering college in Allahabad in the early '90s, something called mass ragging ensured that the moment of epiphany with its lasting effects on one's psyche was experienced not by an individual fresher but by students of the entire hostel. Don't miss the comment that "Shreyas" has left in the end. This story will tell you how volatile ragging structures are; even the victimiser doesn't know when he is crossing the line, if a line can be drawn at all. Talking about ragging in an interview on TV, a college principal once said, "I have asked some of these people, 'Why did you do this?' And they said that they were surprised that the freshers did everything they were asked to," and so their demands kept increasing. It is clear, therefore, that moderating ragging to a permissible limit (if such can be defined in the first place) is impossible. The only solution then is to completely eliminate ragging, and replace it with smoother mechanisms for freshers to settle down and become part of the mainstream of their educational institution.

Ragging and Memory
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Board of Advisors

2005-04-02T05:28:00.001+05:30

We are grateful to the following for having kindly agreed to be on the Board of Advisors of the Stop Ragging Campaign, a human rights initiative of SPACE or the Society for People's Action, Change and Enforcement. Their support is invaluable to our work.

Sandeep Pandey
Social activist and recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award 2002 for Emergent Leadership, Lucknow.

Sujit Saraf
Filmmaker and playwright, California, United States. [Read his essay on ragging at IIT Delhi.]

Shabnam Hashmi
Human rights activist, co-founder of ANHAD [Act Now for Harmony and Development], Delhi.

Dr. John Dayal
Journalist, human rights activist and Chairman of the Board of Governors, Rajdhani College, University of Delhi, Delhi.

Harsh Mander
Social activist and former bureaucrat, Delhi.

Bobby Ramakant
Social activist, Lucknow.

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Report ragging

2005-04-02T05:00:00.000+05:30

report@stopragging.org

If you are undergoing ragging in your educational institution in India, there are several ways you can avoid it. Your seniors may tell you that reporting ragging is an act of cowardice; however, we think it's an act of courage to speak up against such an institutionalised form of abuse. A man in South Africa was so incensed at being thrown out of a train that he started a movement and changed the history of the world. And you want to give in before a bunch of bullying, bellowing seniors whose only claim to fame is that they were born a year before you were?

[1] Inform your warden, dean, principal or other authorities. They are bound by law to curb ragging. Tell them about the Supreme Court judgement.

However, keep this in mind: the authorities may reveal your name in public, directly or indirectly. Even the most minor indiscretion (on their part or yours) could lead to the revelation of your identity.

Which may not be a bad thing after all: you would be publicly seen taking a stand against ragging.

But then: the authorities may choose not to punish the guilty, or to create a mechanism that discourages ragging. In any case, it is likely that you may have to face a boycott, or even violent retribution from your seniors, and even your batchmates. We are not scaring you here, but this has happened to many others in the past. We strongly think that you should not take ragging lying down and speak up against it, no matter how and to whom.

Therefore, you may want to complain anonymously. However, anonymous complaints do not have a legal standing: if your institution does not act upon your anonymous complaint, you cannot ask it for an explanation in a court of law.

You may also want to consider if you want to complain about ragging in general, or if you also want to specifically name seniors who have been ragging you. The risk with the latter is that these seniors, upon being rebuked and punished, may be able to guess who the complainant was, and may harass you. So please also consider if this risk is worth taking. Note that your authorities may insist that you name some seniors; but if you don't want to, don't. If you want to, go ahead. Taking disciplinary action against raggers is only one way of dealing with the problem; apart from that, college authorities can take several measures, such as regularly going on rounds, even late in the night, and organising cultural activities that involve interaction between freshers and seniors in the hostel.

[2] You can directly write to higher authorities outside your institution. This can include the Vice Chancellor of your University, the Governor of your state, state government officials, the district magistrate or police authorities, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, local newspapers, etc. Their postal addresses, email IDs, phone and fax numbers can be found on the Net. We are preparing a directory of such contacts. (Help us in the section on your state.)

While writing to them, describe in detail as to exactly what has been happening at your institution in the name of ragging. Also consider whether you want to reveal your name: an anonymous complaint could be taken a little less credibly, especially at the local level. However, revealing your name is always a risk. You could reveal it and ask them to keep it a secret.

If you are in a medical college in Andhra Pradesh, you can report here. See how effective this measure of the Directorate of Medical Education of Andhra Pradesh has been.

[3] Should you wish to take the issue to the police and file an FIR (First Information Report), see here the sections of the Indian Penal Code under which you can file an FIR. Also keep in mind that the police may or may not take your complaint seriously. Unfortunately, there has been a 'convention' that the police does not interfere into the 'internal matters' of educational institutions unless there is grave law and order problem. It is likely that the police will take your FIR seriously if your state has an anti-ragging law in place.

If you are in an educational institution in West Bengal, please note that not only does your state have an anti-ragging law, but the IPC (Indian Penal Code) for your state has made ragging a criminal offence. West Bengal is the only state in India where you a fresher can walk in and file in FIR with "ragging" as the charge. (If you are based in Calcutta and can procure for us a copy of the anti-ragging act and the amended IPC, we would be very grateful to you.)

[4] From 1 June 2005 onwards, you can write to report@stopragging.org and we'll do for you what we've outlined in [2] above. We've done this before and achieved success as in two cases. We promise you that if you want us to keep your identity secret, we will no reveal it to anyone under any circumstances. However, we will not entertain anonymous complaints or complaints by phone; because if you cannot trust us, why ask us for help? Send us an email or a letter, with your real name, college, course, and most importantly, your phone number.

Ragging and the Law
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Love, thy art beautiful!

2005-04-01T16:31:00.000+05:30

By COVER BOY

This account here is purportedly fictional, as we found it in the 'short stories' section of the Gay Delhi website. However, only that part of the story has been excerpted by The Stop Ragging Campaign as was relevant to the theme of ragging, with the aim of generating thought on the possible links between ragging and homosexuality, or at least the implications of the emphasis on sexual abuse as a component of the institution of ragging.

The Sri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi

It was the first day after the summer break and all of us were dying to get to college cause now we weren't 'freshers' anymore and had made it to the second year. And we were definitely going to get our pound's worth in terms of ragging the new batch which was going to be exciting. I rubbed my hands in glee at the thought and joined my friends at the bus stop, waiting to catch the morning U-Special.

It was a warm sultry day, with overcast clouds and the promise of rain. But we were oblivious to it all and were instead awaiting the arrival of the new 'recruits' to college. The bus arrived and we boarded, the ragging beginning in earnest in the bus itself. There were at least a dozen newbies in there and they were already being meted out the initiation rituals by the seniors in the bus. We soon joined in and started to joke around, laughing when the freshers were made to propose to each other and dance on a 25 paise coin or don the dupatta of another and play pretend drag.

One of them caught my eye. He was around 18 years of age, freshly out of school with the clean scrubbed look of a preppy boy, wearing faded denims, which clung to his long muscular legs, highlighting the strongly developed quadriceps, and a black T-shirt which showed off his well developed arms. Tall, at 6 feet, with a slim, athletic body and long slicked back hair, he looked like he belonged between the pages of GQ rather than amongst a bunch of unruly immature seniors who were bent upon getting him to drape a dupatta around his waist and dance the ek, do, teen, Madhuri Dixit number. I watched him from the corner of my eye, quickly averting my gaze when he too looked towards me. But I couldn't help myself and before I knew it, my eyes were on him again. We exchanged a few glances but each time I looked away. You see, though I had known for a while that I was attracted to men, I had never done anything about it. Technically, both mentally and physically, I was the vestal virgin. Not due to lack of opportunities, but out of choice.

Suddenly I felt the bus lurch and stop in front of The Sri Ram College of Commerce or as us students fondly refer to it, SRCC. I was amongst the first to get down since I was near the exit and imagine my surprise when 'he' also disembarked. I beckoned him over and demanded, 'hey fresher, which college are you in?'. SRCC, sir, he replied.

This was great, he was in my college! I was destined to meet him. However, before I could talk any further, we were whipped up in a melee of friends greeting each other after the holidays, freshers being ragged to do the Bharatnatayam or sing songs from Amitabh Bachhan movies. I soon lost sight of him and wandered from one group of mates to another, laughing, joking, exchanging news and gossip.

After a few hours of this, we retired to the canteen to replenish our expended energies and ordered a few plates of samosas and cold glasses of nimbu paani. We were all on a high and were behaving like typical teenagers, celebrating our youth and boundless energy. Whilst speaking to one of my friends, I noticed that the boy from the bus was being led out by a group of 7 or 8 seniors who weren't day scholars but hostelers. This puzzled and perturbed me cause if they took him to the hostel, God alone knows what they may do to him. One has heard of horror stories of stripping and molestation in these places and therefore I was worried.

I decided to go along since I knew the boys who were taking him. I went upto them and laughingly said, 'hey let's get this fresher, guys'. They laughed and asked me to come along to their room at the hostel which was behind the main college building. I tagged along and managed to catch the fresher's eye and gave him a reassuring wink since by now, he had started to look a little worried.

Soon we were seated in one room, in a semi circle with the boy (whose name I learnt subsequently, was Vinay) in the centre standing and gyrating to some house music which was blaring out of the two-in-one in a corner. Vinay was definitely not enjoying this and I could sense his embarrassment but, of course, I couldn't say or do anything at this point since the rest of them were my seniors. At this point, one of them asked Vinay to take off his shirt. He looked as if he was going to protest when another one of them got up and made a threatening move towards him. Reluctantly, Vinay removed his shirt and I nearly gasped out loud. He was perfectly shaped starting from that beautiful face and adorable dimples, down to his long lovely neck, his perfect pectorals with taut dark nipples, rippling muscles, his six-pack, well defined and his laterals flaring out in a perfect V. He was a sight to behold and many of the others started whistling and making cat calls. I couldn't take my eyes off that perfect hairless torso, it's proportions so much in harmony that even a sculptor couldn't have done any better.

Of course, the inevitable followed. One of the seniors asked him to take his trousers off too. Vinay was, by now, in acute discomfort and I could see that he was having a tough time but I was powerless to do anything then. And to confess, a part of me wanted to see him without his trousers on. Slowly and extremely reluctantly, he took them off and stood there like Adonis, perfect in all his glory. His legs were long and tapered, beautifully muscled and perfectly shaped. His calves were bulging with muscular striations and his feet were most beautifully formed. He was wearing a pair of Y-front Calving Klein's which fit most snugly around his perfect butt and could barely hide the distinctive bulge of his ample manhood. I was transfixed and kept closing my eyes so that I could record this moment for posterity. The seniors were laughing and making obscene gestures to Vinay and then one of them suggested that he take his underwear off too.

I could sense that Vinay was about to break down at this humiliation and I finally got up and took a stand stating that this was no way to rag someone and that making him take his underwear off would be stretching things too far. Don't know why but they listened to me and agreed that fine, they wouldn't make him strip completely. I could see the gratitude in Vinay's eyes and I gave him a reassuring smile back in return.

[...]

The narrator eventually has a sexual relationship with the character of Vinay.

Read more first hand stories (or write one)

firsthand@stopragging.org

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To the Director, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad

2005-03-29T04:18:00.000+05:30

This page has moved to a new location.

The nature of ragging in hostels

2005-03-28T23:48:00.000+05:30

research@stopragging.org

In its landmark judgement in 2001 that has played a tremendous role in reducing ragging, the Supreme Court of India has defined ragging as: "Any disorderly conduct whether by words spoken or written or by an act which the effect of teasing, treating or handling with rudeness any other student, indulging in rowdy or indisciplined activities which causes or is likely to cause annoyance, hardship or psychological harm or to raise fear or apprehension thereof in a fresher or a junior student or asking the students to do any act or perform something which such student will not do in the ordinary course and which has the effect of causing or generating a sense of shame or embarrassment so as to adversely affect the physique or psyche of a fresher or a junior student."

While this may be legally adequate, it is not enough to explain what ragging really is, and how it has driven young men and women to the extent of committing suicide. The proposed research will attempt to explore the nature of the now-banned but continuing practice specifically in the following areas:

Ragging and Society
Despite the violence, the suicide cases and the grotesque stories that occasionally make it to the media, what is it that makes ragging politically correct in society? Why do we have so many people defending it? Does ragging fulfil any social functions? Does society abdicate any responsibilities by allowing ragging? What is the relation between an individual (fresher) and a society composed of seniors who wish to 'rag' him/her? Why does an attempt to understand ragging end up justifying it?

Ragging and Memory
A fresher goes through torture, harassment and abuse, and mostly resents it. Yet, why does he turn into a ragger himself the following year? What drives him to inflict the same injury on a fresh batch of students? It is often found that by now resentment has changed to an avowed insistence that 'I enjoyed being ragged'. What exactly is the role of memory in ragging? Why do some remember ragging as a bad experience while others remember the same ragging with romantic nostalgia? How do memories, real and imagined, public and private, affect the nature of ragging?

Ragging and Sexuality
Why is so much of ragging sexual in nature? Why does a male senior wish to see the body of a male junior? Is sexuality being merely used as a tool of humiliation? Or could the senior be experimenting with his own sexuality?

Ragging and Women

Ragging and the Media

Ragging and the Law

This brief section will document and examine anti-ragging laws, how they came into being, how effective have they been, and what changes are required in them.

Ragging Deaths

Methodology:

The research has two aspects: narratives of ragging, and analysis. For narratives we will depend upon (a) first hand stories submitted over the internet and (b) some interviews of hostel residents in general and ragging victims in particular that we will be conducting.

For analysis, we will approach psychiatrists, psychologists and sociologists who have have experience in the field, and have written about it. We will interview them and try to make their existing body of work available in the public domain.

Home > Research > Index

The Summer of 2001

2005-03-28T10:26:00.000+05:30

By AMAN MALIK

Aman Malik wrote this essay for The Stop Ragging Campaign in June 2004, just after he graduated from St. Stephen's College, Delhi. He is currently pursuing media studies at the School of Convergence, Delhi.

St. Stephen's College, Delhi

“It’s all about getting used to the attitudes of your seniors”, a co-passenger on the flight to Delhi told me. “Over time you get used to being woken-up at three in the morning, and once you stop having problems with fetching booze and cigarettes, it wouldn’t be much of a problem.”

So by the time I landed in Delhi, I had been thoroughly “briefed” on what to expect, not just by this co-passenger, but much before him, by my parents (who had both attended professional educational institutions and had seen hostel life), and also by friends (seniors among them). Further, in the months prior to joining St. Stephen’s College, I had browsed through resources on the institution. Most of these resources were replete with pieces by and on “legendary raggers” like Gen. Zia -ul- Haq, Kushwant Singh, K. Natwar Singh and their ilk. For instance, Khushwant’s “Blacksmith’s song”, Natwar’s week long suspension for ‘harmless ragging’ and how Zia ‘paraded’ people stark naked in the dead of night, was a part of college lore. At one place it was also mentioned how a former Principal (Principal Sircar) had once famously remarked in the morning assembly: “If any of you cannot bear being ragged, you might go to Hindu College (across the road from Stephen’s); if you are unable to face that even, then my boys you may take admission in Miranda House (the only college that allowed women in Delhi University back then).”

Hence, in this manner, I had “mentally prepared” myself for what possibly was in the offing.

St. Stephen’s College (SSC), Delhi has limited places in “residence”, or the hostel, called so simply because the establishment wishes to hold on to archaic traditions that add no real value to it or to the lives of its inmates in any way. Being lower down on the merit list, I was not offered a place in Residence for the first one week and so had to settle down in a “PG” (paying guest) accommodation. Thus for the first seven days, I was a day scholar and day scholars at SSC are hardly ever ragged as they are considered not worthy of being called “Stephanians” by the resident students, who are ironically in a minority.

On my eighth day in College, I was summoned to the Dean’s office for an “interview”, where I was told that since a few rooms were still vacant (as some students had not turned up despite having paid the due fees), I would be offered a place in Residence, on the condition that I promised to be a disciplined student. The offer was immediately accepted and the promise duly made. “You may check into L-10, Rudra North”, I was told.

My first day in Rez (short for residence) passed off uneventfully, but on the second day I got the first taste of ragging. Two seniors (they looked like ‘MA types’) summoned me and I was asked by one of them to get a cigarette from a room downstairs. I belong to a Western educated family and things like cigarettes and booze had never been a taboo. But at that moment, a kind of fear gripped me and I squirmed a little. I do not know till date what was the reason for my hesitation. May be it lay somewhere in all those instances (often hyped) that the aforementioned people had narrated to me about ragging; in retrospect I feel that I had been indoctrinated against ragging and I had become apprehensive (but not quite hateful) of the activity that I was experiencing only for the first time.

“Cigarette’s a bad thing… huh!” he said.

“No… err… I’ll…” was all I could conjure up in response.

“So, are you refusing me?”

“If you insist…I’ll… get it”

“You have no choice but to,” he replied sternly.

Eventually I had to go and fetch the cigarette but when I returned, the stern look on his face was gone and for the rest of the ragging period, that lasted till the Anda Tamatar Party (ATP), an event organized to signal a moratorium on ragging, he did not trouble me very much, except an occasional “request” to fill up water for him, which I did obligingly, as I had developed a deep sense of reverence for him (as he was one of those who did not trouble me very much). Having said this, it wasn’t until the ATP that Pankaj Yadav ‘officially’ 'gave' me his 'intro' and told me that he was an IAS aspirant. Till date I do not know why he ‘spared’ me; I did not dare to ask him for I did not want to invite his ire.

So this was my first tryst with ragging. ‘Ragging is after all not such a bad thing’, I said to myself as I took leave of Pankaj and his friend. I however was celebrating ahead of time for as it turned out, I had trouble ahead. But to be truthful, I quite enjoyed most of what happened during the rest of the period, barring two or three incidents that left a bad taste in my mouth, but more on them on some other occasion.

The same night - it must have been about one in the morning - a group of seniors knocked on my door. “Hey fachch… open up!” someone shouted. I undid the curtains and saw a group of about four seniors standing outside. ‘This is it!’, I thought, ‘I'm done’, and immediately froze. I opened hesitantly, greeted them and requested them to sit. I was alone in the room as my roommate was away (as he would be, for most of the first two terms for reasons he knew best). They asked me to introduce myself, and for about ten minutes, a conversation ensured, most of which I cannot recollect three summers later. After sometime, three of the foursome left the room, but one person who was tall and dark, stayed on. I had noticed that while all the others had been conversing with me and asking me all sorts of things, he had been sizing me up all this while, quiet for the most part.

“Where do you think I belong to?” he asked me.

“Somewhere down south.” I said without thinking.

“Why do you think so?”

“Because you are dark complexioned, and have a distinct South Indian accent.”

“How dare you call me a black! You racist son of a bitch!” he shouted back at me. I was not expecting such an onslaught, considering how the last quarter of an hour had gone. “I’ll fuckin' tear you to pieces. You better watch out.” And so saying, he started to get up and leave.

“Wait! At least allow me to explain, sir,” I said and added, “You’ve got me wrong.” He had by now left the room, and I was dead sure he wouldn’t listen. But to my utter surprise, he turned around and came back in. “Tell me Malik, be quick.”

“See, I am not a racist or anything,” I started. “All that I meant was the people from the southern part of the country are generally a little darker in their complexion - and that is why…and yes, your accent… that sounds fairly southish you know,” I added.

“Well, lemme tell you,” he said, “ I am not an Indian. Where do you think I am from?”

“Sri Lanka, is my guess.”

“Why Lanka?”

“For the same reason… you look southish, and so if you are not Indian, you would most likely be Sri Lankan.”

“What do you think of Lanka?”

“I think they are… I mean you guys are giving us Indians a run for our money in cricket… you have a good literacy rate… are fairly prosperous, open cultured and all that… and yes, I have heard that Colombo has eight or nine FM radio stations. That speaks a lot about your prosperity and technological advancement.”

“Hmm...”

“I know you have a few problems like LTTE and the like, but then every country has them, don't they?”

He looked impressed or so I would like to believe. He suddenly got up and gave me his ‘intro’.

We discussed general stuff and as it turned out, he was an Indian Tamil (I have forgotten his name though) who had passed out of College (History) a year ago and was here as he was passing through Delhi on a business trip. “Just wanted to get a feel of the ragging scene in College,” he told me.

“You know why I left you?” he asked as we shook hands one last time, and without waiting for my answer said again. “Because we dark skinned people not generally respected by the fair skinned ones, but I felt you had different views… so you were spared.” After that he left.

At close to three in the morning, I couldn’t make much sense of what he had just said so I went back to bed.

In the weeks ahead, I was to discover that casteism and regionalism had seeped into ragging as well. In fact caste and regional divides were strictly adhered to. For example people from the Northeast and those of the Jat community were never ragged and generally stayed together as a cohesive unit. This is why, my roommate, being a Naga, never had to face the humiliation of standing before a group of seniors (and quite often one’s own batch mates) and sing obscene songs and do other such despicable things. Then there were the Bongs and the Mallus, who although for the most part stayed amongst themselves, were not untouchables in so far as ragging was concerned.

Things went on rather ‘smoothly’ for a few days. During this period I was often called by my seniors for jobs that I really had no problems in helping them out with. At times I was asked to take the clothes to the dhobi (and was given a choice of taking them at my convenience) while at other times someone called me to help him set up his room, which I did without much hesitation; this way I got to know quite a few people, some of whom remain friends till date.

Indeed an “anti-ragging activist” (and saving their reverence, there are quite a few on the block these days) might think of me as someone lacking ‘self respect’ but I would do nothing to change his views on me. All I have to say on this issue is that when one’s head is on the line, activism is usually the last thing on one’s mind.

Nearly one month into the ragging period and I had not yet been sent to Ghanta Ghar (Clock Tower, which was about a kilometer and a half away form College) to fetch parathas. Quite frankly, it was an experience I had been looking forward to since the time I had learnt of this “tradition” and wanted to experience it myself. In fact I was quite dismayed by the fact that quite a few of my friends had already been sent to the Clock Tower (some of them multiple times) and as they claimed, they had become quite adept at this job, one that earned them the ‘goodwill’ of their seniors and entitled them to “parathas on the house” as indeed to ‘intros’.

But just as I was beginning to despair, I got my chance. It must have been past eleven that night (it was certainly past ten as all women had been locked up in their ‘den’) and I was returning to my room from somewhere. On the way back I was stopped by a couple of seniors, one of whom had a Vodka bottle and was visibly drunk. It did not take much effort to recognize that he was Wensie Mendis, the most vicious ragger on campus. Till that day I had somehow succeeded in escaping him, but that day, prospects looked grim.

“Hey, you! Come here you ‘spekie’ bastard,” he shouted at me.

‘O God, allow me to survive the night’ I muttered to myself, for Wensie’s reputation preceded him. I had been told of numerous occasions on which he had ragged people through the night, especially when he was drunk, and hardly did a night pass when he wasn’t. He held me by the arm and started walking toward Mukarji West.

“What course are you doing?” he asked.

“Physics,” I replied rather meekly.

“You’re doing Phheeseecs!! Ha! Ha!…Phheeseecs!” he said again and roared with laughter. My heart sank. ‘I am doomed,’ I said to myself, half saying it out aloud. Thankfully Wensie did not listen, but Rohan (Dutta) who was with him did.

“Lets send him to Ghanta Ghar, Wensie," said Rohan and then without waiting for Wensie’s reply took me aside. “Have you ever been to that place?” he asked. I shook my head and so he brought out a pen and a piece of paper from his pocket and made a neat sketch of the escape route out of College, and the path to Ghanta Ghar thereof. Then handing me over some cash, said, “Get us sixteen parathas. You can take that short guy from L-3 along if you wish… and ya, get as many for yourself as you want…or you both can even have them there itself.”

I did as was directed and knocked on L-3. A short guy, almost three-fourths my height opened up. I could see that he had been washing clothes- clothes seemed to hang everywhere in the room and the odor of detergent was all over.

“Good evening sir” he murmured as he opened the door, mistaking me for a senior. Fear on his face was palpable and I could make out that he had had a long day.

“Eh, chill yaar…I am your batch mate only…not a senior” I told him. I could see that he was greatly relieved to hear that.

“Oh…ok…Hi, I am Rahul… Rahul Pant…come in…”

“Hi!… I am Aman…Listen we have been ordered to fetch parathas from Ghanta Ghar.”

So I embarked on my first ever ‘adventure’. Believe me, never before had I escaped from anywhere in such a fashion leave alone wander on city roads at such unearthly hours. I cannot even begin to describe the thrill of breaking rules, which most of us in Rez considered draconian. We had to sneak out from right behind the Principal’s Residence, and were anyone to spot us, next morning we both would have been expelled- no questions asked.

At that hour, we couldn’t find a rickshaw from college to the Clock Tower, so we decided to walk the distance. Half way in our journey, we saw a Delhi Police patrol van coming toward us. Instinctively, I looked around and discovered that we were the only people on the desolate road, besides of course the Police wallahs themselves, and hence were liable to be questioned by them. And sure enough, as the patrol van came closer, it slowed down and finally stopped.

“Itni raat ko kahaan ja rahe ho,” a voice with a distinct Jat accent enquired.

“Sir, parathe khaane Ghanta Ghar ja rahein hain…bahut bhookh lagi hai, ” Pant replied.

“Senior ne bhejaa hai? Waise kaun college ke ho?”

“Sir Stephen’s se hain…”

“Arre, Steephhan ke ho… jaao jaao yaar…chal be, jaane de…padhne waale lagte hani..kyon dukhi karein bechaaron ko…” saying which he motioned to the man on the wheel to move. We both heaved a sigh of relief and kept walking.

Our destination was essentially a row of makeshift all-night dhabas whose clientale, besides students like us, included truckwallas and those returning from the night show at Amba cinema. First we had our fill and then got the stuff packed for them. Luckily, on the way back a rickshaw was available and we were happy to pay him nearly twice the usual fare as by now we were dead tired. After handing the stuff over, we went back to our respective rooms. Three years on, this experience remains etched in my memory as one of the most exiting I’ve ever had.

And in the days and weeks to come I would make more trips to the Clock Tower usually on ‘orders’ from seniors but at times on my own accord too. Such trips that I made on my own were made primarily to ‘escape’ ragging in general or particular seniors whom I was running away from. But at least on a couple of such escapades, I ran into the same guys I was trying to escape! That I faced severe ‘retribution’ for “daring to double cross” them, goes without saying; but thankfully, nothing very severe ensured.

Soon it was time for the Students’ Union elections followed by the college fest- Harmony. In the wake of such ‘serious business’ ragging took a back seat and sometime in the middle of September the ATP was organized, which unfortunately I could not attend as ragging had taken enough toll on my attendance schedule and hence I could not bunk lectures for the ATP, without facing my teachers’ wrath.

Epilogue: What became of them…
Pankaj Yadav made it to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) securing the fourteenth position nationwide. He is today posted in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

My Indian Tamil friend made many trips to college over the years that I was there, and each time we met we exchanged pleasantries; our subsequent meetings were so insignificant that it never became necessary for me to ask him his name.

Rohan Dutta graduated with a major in Economics and last heard, he was making tickets for a private airline.

Wensie Mendis graduated with a major in Philosophy and came back to Delhi University to do a masters.

Rahul Pant is working with a TV production company and will, in the years to come, become an established journalist.

firsthand@stopragging.org

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Ragging and the Law

2005-03-28T04:20:00.000+05:30

The Law is not an ass

You are a fresher getting ragged. What are your legal rights? Can you file an FIR? Do we especially need a law to prohibit ragging? Aren't the provisions of the Indian Penal Code already enough? What are the legal implications of the Supreme Court judgement against ragging? How many states have passed anti-ragging laws? What do they say? Have any convictions taken place for ragging? Such are the issues we will address on this page. We hope you will contibute to this page.

Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1997

Full text: Andhra Pradesh Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1997

Kerala Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1998

Assam Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1998

Maharashtra Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1999

West Bengal Prohibition of Ragging in Educational Institutions Act, 2000

The Principal Vs. PS Anoop & ors, in the Kerala High Court, 2001
Using the Kerala Prohibition of Ragging Act 1998, the Principal of the College of Engineering, Trivandrum, suspended five students for physically assaulting a fresher in 2001. The students challenged their suspension in a lower court, which set it aside. The matter went to the Kerala High Court which upheld the Principal's decision, and set an important example in the state. Full text of the judgement.

Full text: The Supreme Court order against ragging
'If an institution fails to curb ragging, the UGC/Funding Agency may consider stoppage of financial assistance to such an Institution till such time as it achieves the same. An University may consider disaffiliating a college or institution failing to curb ragging.'

Ragging and the Indian Penal Code
There are thirteen provisions of the IPC (Indian Penal Code) which can be used by a fresher who is being ragged to register an FIR (First Information Report) in the police station under whose jurisdiction-area the crime has taken place.

Home > Ragging and the Law

Ragging and Society

2005-03-27T22:54:00.000+05:30

Denial Mode?

"Ragging can be fun if it is not physical, you know." Yes sir, but a lot of ragging is indeed "physical", and what are we doing about it? Why are we instead busy defending ragging? Despite the violence, the suicide cases and the grotesque stories that occasionally make it to the media, what is it that makes ragging politically correct in society? Are we simply in a denial mode? Or does ragging fulfil any social functions? Or does society abdicate its responsibilities by allowing ragging to fulfil those functions? What is the relation between an individual (fresher) and a society composed of seniors who wish to 'rag' him/her? Why does an attempt to understand ragging end up justifying it? Is ragging a rite of passage to manhood/adulthood? Does that mean those who are not ragged don't become men/adults?

Such are the questions we hope the essays on this page will address. We invite you to write on them and mail your essay to us. We especially invite contributions from sociologists, psychiatrists and psychologists.

What should be the relationship between an
individual (fresher) and society (seniors) in a hostel space?

The Hostel as Home: Ragging and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

The college is a “community” rather than an association of individuals. The internal functioning and power dynamics of this community depend upon unwritten social codes. Such a community is anarchic in nature and has no place for individualism. By Our RESEARCH DESK

Traumas as Social Interactions
It would seem that while the victim progresses from denial to helplessness, rage, depression and thence to acceptance of the traumatizing events - society demonstrates a diametrically opposed progression. This incompatibility, this mismatch of psychological phases is what leads to the formation and crystallization of trauma, writes Dr. SAM VAKNIN.

A dangerous twist to a harmless practice
Ragging is one of those imports from the West which is not harmless like celebrating St. Valentine's Day; ironically, there is no ragging now in England, the country from where we got it, writes KHUSHWANT SINGH.

Rooting out ragging
The term "ragging" has made the routine harassment and violence that new students face into something normal. Such that while we may have laws that ban ragging, somewhere the idea that ragging is merely fun and mischief still dominates the way the issue is treated, writes Dr. PRATIKSHA BAXI.

Ragging needs to be studied by behavioural scientists
The proof of dominance for the senior is when the fresher breaks down. Therefore ragging has to hurt. “The fresher has to be stretched like a rubber band until he snaps,” and that is the point of the exercise according to one student, writes Dr. SHOBNA SONPAR.

Home > Ragging and Society: Index

Bare beginnings

2005-03-26T03:09:00.000+05:30

By CHETAN BHAGAT

Chetan Bhagat graduated from IIT, Delhi, in 1995 and went on to pursue MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad, graduating in 1997. He has been working in Hong Kong with a prominent US investment bank for the past six years, and has lately been making news for his novel Five Point Someone: What Not to do at IIT. The Stop Ragging Campaign reprints here with his permission excerpts from chapter one of the novel. We asked him if this was a true incident, and he said that it was ‘technically fiction’.

Well, I have to start somewhere and what better than the day I joined the Indian Institute of Technology and met Ryan and Alok for the first time; we had adjacent rooms on the second floor of the Kumaon hostel. As per tradition, seniors rounded us up on the balcony for ragging at midnight. I was still rubbing my eyes as the three of us stood to attention and three seniors faced us. A senior named Anurag leaned against a wall. Another senior, to my nervous eye, looked like a demon from cheap mythological TV shows - six feet tall, over a hundred kilos, dark, hairy, and huge teeth that were ten years late in meeting an orthodontist. Although he inspired terror, he spoke little and was busy providing background for the boss, Baku, a lungi-clad human toothpick, and just as smelly is my guess.

“You bloody freshers, dozing away, eh? Rascals, who will give an introduction?” he screamed.

“I am Hari Kumar sir, Mechanical engineering student, All India Rank 326.” I was nothing if not honest under pressure.

“I am Alok Gupta sir, Mechanical Engineering, Rank 453,” Alok said as I looked at him for the first time. He was my height, five feet five inches - in short, very short - and had these thick chunky glasses on. His portly frame was covered in neatly ironed white kurta-pajamas.

“Ryan Oberoi, Mechanical Engineering, Rank 91, sir,” Ryan said in a deep husky voice and all eyes swung to him.

Ryan Oberoi, I repeated his name again mentally. Now here was a guy you don’t see in IIT too often; tall, with spare height, purposefully lean and unfairly handsome. A loose grey T-shirt proclaimed ‘GAP’ in big blue letters on his chest and shiny black shorts reached his knees. Relatives abroad for sure, I thought. Nobody wears ‘GAP’ to bed otherwise.

“You bastards,” Baku was shrieking. “Off with your clothes.”

“Aw Baku, let us talk to them a bit first,” protested Anurag, leaning against the wall, sucking a cigarette butt.

“No talking!” Baku said, one scrawny hand up. “No talking, just remove those damn clothes.”

Another demon grinned at us, slapping his bare stomach every few seconds. There seemed to be no choice so we surrendered every item of our clothing, shivering at the unholy glee at Baku’s face as he walked by each of us, checking us out and grinning.

Nakedness made the difference between our bodies more stark as Alok and me drew figures on the floor with deeply embarrassed toes, trying to be casual about our twisted balloon figures. Ryan’s body was flawless, man, he was a hunk; muscles that cut at the right places and a body frame that for once resembled the human body shown in biology books. You could describe his body as sculpture. Alok and I, on the other hand, weren’t exactly what you’d call art.

Baku told Alok and me to step forward, so the seniors could have a better view and a bigger laugh.

“Look at them, mothers fed them until they are ready to explode, little Farex babies,” Baku cackled.

The demon joined him in laughter. Anurag smiled behind a burst of smoke as he extinguished another cigarette, creating his own special effects.

“Sir, please sir, let us go sir,” Alok pleaded to Baku as he cam closer.

“What? Let you go? We haven’t even done anything yet to you beauties. C’mon, bend down on all fours now, you two fatsos.”

I looked at Alok’s face. His eyes were invisible behind those thick, bullet-proof spectacles, but going by his contorted face, I could tell he was as close to tears as I was.

“C’mon, do what he says,” the demon admonished. He and Baku seemed to share a symbiotic relationship; Baku needed him for brute strength, while the servile demon needed him for directions.

Alok and I bent down on all fours. More laughter, this time from above our heads ensued. The demon suggested racing both of us, his first original opinion in a while but Baku over-rode him.

“No racing-vacing. I have a better idea. Just wait, I have to go to my room. And you naked cows, don’t look up.”

Baku raced up the corridor as we waited for twenty tense seconds, gazing at the floor. I glanced sideways and noticed a small water puddle adjacent to Alok’s head, droplets falling from his eye. Meanwhile, the demon made Ryan flex his muscles and make warrior poses. I am sure he looked photogenic but didn’t dare look up to verify.

Our ears picked up Baku’s hurried steps as he returned.

“Look what I got,” he said, holding up his hands.

“Baku, what the hell is that for...?” Anurag enquired as we turned our heads up.

In each of his hands Baku held an empty Coke bottle. “Take a wild guess,” he said as he clanged the bottles together, making suggestive gestures.

Face turning harder, arms still in modelling pose, Ryan spoke abruptly, “Sir, what exactly are you trying to do?”

“What, isn’t it obvious? And who the hell are you to ask me?” Baku choked.

“Sir, stop,” Ryan said in a louder voice.

“Fuck off,” Baku dismissed, disbelief writ large in his widened eyes at this blatant rebellion at this age-old authority.

As Baku put the bottles in position, Ryan abandoned his pin-up pose and jumped. Catching him unawares, he grabbed the two bottles and stamped hard on baku’s feet. Baku released his hands and the bottles were with Ryan, James Bond style.

We knew that stomp hurt since Baku’s stream was ultrasonic.

“Get this bastard,” Baku shrieked in agony.

The demon’s IQ was clouded by the events but his ears registered the command for action and he had just collected in response when Ryan smashed the two Coke bottles on the balcony parapet. Each bottle now was butt-broken, and he waved the jagged ends in air.

“Come, you bastards,” Ryan swore, his face scarlet like a watermelon slice. Baku and the demon retreated a few paces. Anurag, who had been smouldering in the backdrop, snapped to attention. “Hey, cool it everyone here. How did this happen? What is your name - Ryan, take it easy man. This is just fun.”

“It’s not fun for me,” growled Ryan, “Just get the hell out of here.”

Alok and I looked at each other. I was hoping Ryan knew what he was doing. I mean sure, he was saving our ass from a Coke bottle, but broken Coke bottles could be a lot worse.

“Listen yaar,” Anurag started as Ryan cut him short.

“Just get lost,” Ryan shouted so hard that Baku seemed to blow away just from the impact. Actually, he was shuffling backward slowly and steadily till he was almost flying in his haste to get away, the demon following suit. Anurag stood there, gaping at Ryan for a while and then looked at us.

“Tell him to control himself. Or one day he will take you guys down too,” Anurag said.

Alok and I got up and wore our clothes.

“Thanks Ryan, I was really scared,” Alok said, as he removed his spectacles to wipe snot and tears, face to face with his hero at last.

There is a reason why they say men should not cry, they just look so, like, ugly. Alok’s spectacles were sad enough, but his baby-wet blubbery eyes were enough to depress you into suicide.

“Yes, thanks Ryan, some risk you took there. That Baku guy is sick. Though you think they would have done anything?” I said, striving for a cool I did not feel.

“Who knows? Maybe not,” Ryan rotated a shoulder, “But you can never tell when guys get into mob mentality. Trust me, I have lived in enough boarding schools.”

Ryan’s heroics were enough to make us all bond faster than Fevicol. Besides, we were hostelite neighbours and in the same engineering department. They say you should not get into a relationship with people you sleep with on the first date. Well, though we hadn’t slept together, we had seen each other naked at primary meet, so perhaps we should have refrained from striking up a friendship. But our troika was kind of inevitable.

Here's another story about IIT Delhi

firsthand@stopragging.org

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My first day in the hostel was the worst day of my life

2005-03-24T18:08:00.000+05:30

By W

The author is an undergraduate student of a college affiliated to the University of Delhi, and a resident of a privately run girls' hostel. She wrote this account of her experience for The Stop Ragging Campaign in July 2004 on the condition that we do not reveal her identity.

Not being a resident of Delhi was already a disadvantage for me as a fresher at Delhi University, and my seniors at the girls’ hostel made things worse. The unfriendly seniors would snap at you on making the tiniest of mistake; making eye contact with them was a heinous crime.

I had never lived in a hostel and was unaware of any such thing as ragging. And so my first day in the hostel turned out to be the worst day of my life. We had to wish our seniors whenever we encountered them. This was mandatory. After leaving my luggage in the room, I came down to attend my mother’s phone call. This perhaps was the biggest mistake I made. I was stopped by a group of six girls and was asked to keep down the phone and instead attend to them. I told them I was speaking to my mother but one of them snatched the phone and put it down. The others looked at me piercingly. What followed was a bunch of abusive words, which hit me every time I think of that incident. “You have the audacity to speak up, you bl… fuccha!” (Fuccha = ‘first year’ + baccha.)

“You have a big attitude problem, babe, we’ll sort you out, just you wait,” they shouted to their hearts’ content and then asked me my name and whether I knew their names, courses and their respective colleges. I said I did not, which made matters worse. I was ordered to find out their names by dinnertime, otherwise I could forget about my food. I stood bewildered for a few seconds after the cyclone disappeared, and then ran for my life from the scene of the crime.

Surprisingly, after things got better (post-freshers’ party), we became good friends. The session in the hostel began in July, coinciding with the beginning of the new session at Delhi University. For the fear of being ragged, a majority of the freshers did not go to the dining hall for meals and even if some of them did manage to muster up enough courage to go, they would come back crying. It was an unforgivable crime for a fuccha to even think of entering the TV or the table-tennis room. Sleeve-less shirts, short skirts and shorts were banned for the first years not by the management, but by our seniors.

The incident about my first day in the hostel had earned me a bad name among the seniors. I could hear them hiss if I passed them by, “Yes! She’s the one, thinks she’s very smart, you know she spoke back, and uuuuooooo!”. This would instigate the other seniors and I would receive the pleasure of being personally invited to their rooms and be ragged. Being unpopular with my seniors, even the first years started blaming me for their ragging. I realised that it was useless to cry in my room throughout the day, and so I decided to go down, eat my meals and get ragged. I was also one of the bold l ot who dared to go and report ragging to the warden and the manager. But nothing happened, some girls were mildly scolded. They found out who had complained and issued a warrant on my name.

After the warden and manager left, my name was announced on the microphone (used mainly to announce for the girls to come and attend to their calls). When I came down there was a group seniors ready to pounce on me. I was scolded severely to be the one who had the courage to complain. Each one of them asked me their NCC (name, course, college), and to make matters worse they asked me absurd questions, like the spellings of their names, the names of their dogs, their boyfriends’ names, their boyfriends’ cell phone numbers — too foolish and too many to list. Any answer I would not know, they would start shouting at me. Finally, after grilling me for two hours, they let go of me.

I went back to my room and broke down, cried for hours, my roommates did sympathize but nothing seemed to work. When I told my parents about this incident, my mother seemed upset, but my father told me to face it. He said, “What you’ve gone through, never let your juniors go through the same thing, because you know exactly how they would feel.” Having taken all possible but futile measures in order to stop myself from being ragged, I decided to give in. My friends and family told me to just go with it, and so plunged into a group of first years that would be called daily by the seniors and be ragged.

Believe it or not, ragging is in a way ‘legal’ in this hostel; the administration was very much a part of it by doing nothing about it. They instead justified ragging with the ‘healthy interaction’ theory. Ragging was to be done until the time the third years got their farewell and the first years their freshers party. And to aid our ill luck this party took place in January 2004! So, from the beginning of the session in July, till our winter break two months before the exams, none of the first years could concentrate on their studies. The ragging fever subsided by December as the seniors were bored of ragging us, and some of them also became normal with us, and a few even decided to try their hands at friendship.

It was the coming of the New Year that spoilt it all. The third years wanted a farewell party desperately before the final exams, but they did not want to give the first years a freshers party, because they didn’t consider us worth a freshers party. But thankfully, the management interfered and made it clear: no freshers meant no farewell. So, our beloved seniors decided to oblige us with a freshers party, but there were certain conditions that followed.

All the first years were summoned to the dinning hall, one day, and one of the third years stepped forward and delivered a speech on a bond. I had heard about the concept of signing a bond in this hostel, which has certain conditions set by the seniors for the fucchas .The bond in a way ‘legalized’ ragging; it was meant to be an agreement for the last ‘interaction’ between the seniors and the first years. For a period of a week, from 10:00 p.m. till the choice of the seniors, the first year batch would daily report to the television room, where there would be a healthy “interaction” session. This seemed pretty simple, but along came the specialty of the terms penned down on that piece of paper, which even I had signed. All the first years had to wear tri-coloured suits (the dupatta, salwar and the kurta, each of a different, contrasting colour), apply thick coats of kajal, oil our hair, and make as many possible plaits in our hair.

We were given five minutes to discuss the matter, and so the first years came up with this absurd theory of going with the decision of the majority. The majority was in favour of signing the bond. When asked how many would be not signing the bond, only one person got up and had argued with the seniors; she was abused and asked to leave. The third years announced that this girl was not to be spoken to by any one in the hostel, she would not be a part of the freshers party; she was to be excommunicated. All signed the bond. We were told to report the next day to entertain ours seniors in comical attires and. In order to have sound sleep, all first years managed to borrow and arrange their next day’s outfits.

The next day, at 9:45 p.m. all first years stood in a straight line, clad in their ludicrous outfits, with full eye makeup and the required hairstyle, outside the TV room. We entered the TV room when ordered to do so, and were asked to be seated before the seniors. We were laughed at, but could not laugh, because we were objects of amusement and entertainment exclusively for our seniors, during the “happy hours” (the time during which we would be ragged every night). We all had made lists of the NCC’s of our seniors, and learnt them by heart. We were asked to first to narrate the NCC’s of all the girls present in the room, and after that, they started ordering us to do ridiculous, senseless and disgusting things.

Being accustomed to the abusive language, most of the things were not so much of a shock but at this stage. But I found this sadistic idea of taking revenge and eventually satisfying your ego, very dumb. If you have such feelings then you should be actually getting back at your seniors rather than make a batch of people younger than you in age suffer.

During this week, our seniors made us do hideous and absurd things. They would pick any one at random, or in a group, and make them do silly things which gave them immense pleasure. Some of the things which we were asked to perform were: have bath in front of them, mercifully with clothes; act as if you are constipated; act out scenes from movies; present the pole dance from the movie Kaante wherein a girl would be made a pole and the other would be the pole dancer; and the ‘mujra’ from “Devdas” was a favourite. We were made to swim on the floor, and sometimes even act as lifeguards saving lives. The worst situations given to be acted out were: act as if you are delivering a child, and after the delivery the husband’s and your reaction when he discovers it’s not his child; enact scenes of a honey-moon couple spending a night in a special suite. Imparting the best of their knowledge, our seniors gave us lectures on ‘hitching’, being a tradition of this hostel. How to stand while taking a hitch, what to say, how to sit in the car, these were some essential points that were touched upon.

Then there were ‘competitions’. In one competition, we were to hurl the worst known expletives at each other, and the one whose count of abuses exceeded the other, would win. I still remember this situation they gave us: imagine you are a pimp who has to convince the customer that his particular whore is better, and therefore fight with the other pimp, put him down and win his customer. Now all this seems so ridiculous and juvenile. Such senseless activities carried on for a week and then the freshers/farewell party ended this ragging drama forever, for our batch. Drinking, smoking, doping and some dancing were the main features of this party. After the party the third years called some of the first years to their room and now acted pretty friendly, saying they were always there for us, the shocking part came out when they specified the areas of help: “Drugs, cigarettes, liquor, clothes or boys - whatever you need just let us know.”

I had completely forgotten my unpleasant experience of ragging even though it ended only a few months ago. I had forgotten my pain, and I thought I would rag my juniors mildly, but won’t make them go through what I have been. But when I heard of this Stop Ragging campaign, I tried to reflect back at the one year that have I spent in this hostel. I realise that this entire episode, termed ‘ragging’, was the worst time of my life. But it seems that now I’ve grown over it, I don’t have that venomous and sadistic feeling each senior has in this hostel. I know I’ve had a bad experience, I know exactly how it feels to be ragged, and I will make sure my juniors do not go through any ragging at all.

Ragging and Women: First Hand Stories

firsthand@stopragging.org

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