[Reader-list] Ragging and the victim figure

[Stop Ragging Campaign]

Ragging and the victim figure

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. But ragging ensures that 
such shocks or jhatkas become larger than they are, and can make a 
difference of a lifetime.

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. And 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 ways 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? I ask this because ragging is a crime 
by law. A sociologist with his/her typically functionalist approach would 
not ask this question. Years of such a status-quoist approach by both 
academics and lay people ensured that the need to outlaw ragging was felt 
only in the '90s. 

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 at a point 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 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 most often likes to forgive and forget, and move on; 
living with trauma is like being physically challenged. This 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, 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

http://stop-ragging.blogspot.com/2005/03/alls-well-that-ends-well.html . 
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 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! And why does write it on 
the condition of anonymity? He doesn't want his KMC friends to know that he 
has anything by the name of The Stop Ragging Campaign'!]

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." 
There is 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 I 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.

However, the fresher who had rebelled in that moment of epiphany, is 
deprived of this opportunity to let time heal psychological wounds. That 
moment of epiphany when you rebelled against ragging doesn't leave you 
alone. It follows 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, a sissy. Or because you simply are marginalised 
because you never got to know them; because their condition to 'being 
friends' with you was that they will rag you, and you did not accept that 
condition and escaped away, or 'sneaked'.

Victim figures, as I said, 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, even suicide. Or s/he may leave the hostel 
or the college itself, or may take to alcoholism or drug abuse. Or, like my 
first interviewee above, may insist, "I was not boycotted because I don't 
feel boycotted. I am a jovial sort of person," thus giving himself a 
commendable second chance for psychological wounds to heal.

As an example, have a look at Aman Malik's story: 
http://stop-ragging.blogspot.com/2005/03/summer-of-2001.html

His over-all theme - "I enjoyed getting ragged," as I 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 doesn't want to. We asked him to describe how he 
ragged his freshers the following year. He said he will 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 very large scale and we need an army 
of psychologists to deal with it.

Compare this with the first hand account of Atul Prakash Singh [ 
http://stop-ragging.blogspot.com/2005/03/my-first-and-last-day-in-delhi.html],
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.

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 [ 
http://stop-ragging.blogspot.com/2005/03/my-first-day-in-hostel-was-worst-day.html].
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 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."

Here is an example of how the moment of epiphany had the lifelong effects on 
the psyche of not an individual fresher but an entire batch of students: 
http://stop-ragging.blogspot.com/2005/03/masks-of-91.html Don't miss the 
comment that someone has added in the end.

Reax?

Team SPACE

-- 
Society for People's Action, Change and Enforcement [SPACE]
The Stop Ragging Campaign | www.StopRagging.org <http://www.StopRagging.org>| 
info at stopragging.org
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