[Reader-list] ragging

[Anand Vivek Taneja]

Dear Taran, 
i don't know about the scene now, and i can't speak definitively, but
three-four years ago, things were quite bad, especiallt in exclusively
male hostel spaces.

In the Regional Engineering Colleges in Tamil Nadu, for example, which
a classmate of mine joined,  the 'freshers' actually lived under
police escort for the first month of college... and making people piss
on electric heaters used to be qu the  nationwide(?) engineering
college favourite.

and even Delhi University's North Campus colleges have, or uptil
two-three years ago, had -  quite a history of institutionalised
sexually humiliating ragging, particularly in the boy's hostels.

Okay so maybe there are no dogs let loose at people's genitals, maybe
there are no photographs taken as evidence, but 'looking like mini Abu
Ghraibs' would not be an inaccurate description for some of the
sadistic ritual humiliations that define/used to define campus
initation.

I am currently hunting for an article I wrote three years ago on
campus ragging, while interning with tehelka.com - written while
living in a North Campus hostel. It's rather mild and watered down,
actually, but still pretty disgusting.

Tehelka and its archives are no longer online, but I shall try and
find the article and post it on the reader list soon.

Anand 


 

On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 05:48:50 +0000, TARAN KHAN <133344 at soas.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> quote from newspaper report that was part of the message sent by shivam
> ---
> "Students all over India continue to leave their
> colleges, destroy their careers, turn to drug abuse,
> suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders because of
> ragging. There are about 415 universities in India and
> thousands of hostels, many of which look like mini Abu
> Ghraibs" says Agarwal.
> -
> 
> Mini Abu-Ghraibs? Are you sure? Are you REALLY sure you want to say this?
> 
> taran
> 
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