[Reader-list] Ragging and the city

[Stop Ragging Campaign]

Unquiet campus

Managed to get hold of SK Ghosh's book "Ragging: Unquiet Campus". The
gentleman was a senior police officer who took to writing books on
crime, and all has books had a foreword by the Chief Justice of India!
The book requires you to get past banalities such as the accusation
that pornography and having "clandestine affairs with young girls in
the locality" could have something to do with the sexual nature of
ragging. The book was written in 1993. Nobody would write that in
2005. But the rest of the book is indeed very useful. In the chapter
"Definition and History of Ragging", Ghosh digs up several
encyclopedias to find such details as "The Duke of Exeter is supposed
to be responsible for the introduction of this practice in England."
Ragging or similar practices existed not only in Oxford and Cambridge
in the seventeenth century, but also in "ancient seats of learning
such as Berytus and Athens."

In the chapter "Nature and extent: Indian campus", Ghosh lists several
incidents, reading which makes it apparent that the extent of ragging
has no doubt reduced now, even if ragging suicides continue to take
place. I was not surprised to read about freshers in medical colleges
being made to hug dead bodies in the lab as part of ragging. I had
also never heard about the practice of freshers paying cash to seniors
for ragging them. The justification was that since ragging is for the
fresher's benefit, why should the senior waste his time? What does he
get in return? So you might as well pay him a hundred bucks for each
'ragging appointment' - a princely sum in the eighties.

After a long survey of hazing in the US, there is a short chapter on
external issues that may determine the nature of ragging. For
instance, there have been quite a few instances of mass caste riots in
Bihar arising due to caste humiliation/discrimination being practised
as part of ragging.

Similarly, Madhu Kishwar writes how ragging was an instrument to
affect class discrimination in Miranda House (Delhi University) where
she was a student: http://www.sawnet.org/books/writing/beauty.html

It could be argued therefore, that the tensions of the city that
remain unresolved, are confronted afresh because of and within the
institution of ragging. Had there been no ragging, the lower caste
student and the upper caste student would happily go about their
business. They would not interact much with each other, but they would
still eat in the same mess.

This argument shows how ragging is often an instrument to follow
exclusionism (on the lines of caste / class / gender / region, etc.).
Now the apologists of ragging tell you that ragging is a means of
inclusion, of creating a community of hostel residents, of "getting to
know your seniors." Indeed, they're sometimes right.

In other words, anything that you say about ragging, it is very likely
that the opposite will also be true. It becomes difficult to make any
generalisations about ragging. Which is why Dr Shobna Sonpar's essay
on the subject is very insightful, and yet parts of it are very
problematic.

I am interested in seeing the different ways in which sociologists,
psychologists, psychiatrists, and human rights activists view ragging.
In these four approaches, the fissures are very clear. The sociologist
and the psychologist seem to explain away ragging, and thus even
justify it. The psychiatrist and the human rights activist will be
downright scornful of a statement like 'ragging is a rite of passage'.

Do have a look at the sections of the Indian Penal Code applicable to
ragging: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StopRagging/message/276 [Got
this from SK Ghosh's book.]

One needs to examine the idea of victimhood vis-a-vis ragging. See
Sujit Saraf's "How I was ragged in IIT Delhi and why it was no joke":
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StopRagging/message/64

Our website - www.stopragging.org - will be up some time in March.

I hope this post will generate some discussion, on or off this list.

Shivam

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