1. 28 July 2009: 19 girl students fine for ragging freshers at the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh. Link
2. 29 July: Law student in Pune, Neeraj Dubey, booked for extortion bid against fresher. Link
3. 29 July 2009: Three punished for ragging juniors at the Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (GADVASU) in Ludhiana, Punjab. Booked under bailable sections of IPC. Link This despite the college conducting a ‘introduction’ programme to acquaint seniors and juniors. Link
4. 30 July 2009: 10 Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, students caught ragging in Assi Ghat, fined Rs. 50,000; FIRs lodged. Link
5. 7 September 2009: Nursing students complain of ragging at a BHU hostel; amongst other things they were “taught manners”. Link
6. 9 September 2009: First year engineering student stripped and beten with sticks at CITM College in Faridabad, Haryana. Link 1 | Link 2
7. 15 September 2009: FIR against four seniors of BHU for forcing a fresher to ‘act like a male stripper’ outside university campus. The accused had also forced the fresher to part with Rs. 1,000 and his mobile phone. Link | Link 2
8. 18 September 2009: 15 agriculture students rusticated at Varanasi’s Udai Pratap Autonomous College. FIR lodged under the UP Anti-Ragging Act 2009. The four students say they had been subjected to mental and physical torture for three months. “They would snatch his money, lock him into a bathroom and beat him up. His bike would also often be snatched.” Two students sent to jail.  Link 1 | Link 2 | Link 3
9. 21 September 2009: At the MP Shah Medical ollege in Jamnagar, Gujarat, three students take a transfer to another college to escape ragging and a fourth lodges an FIR. The accused senior is rusticated for 2 years. The abuse continued after he had dropped out. Soon after, police trainees in Gujarat are educated about ragging and anti-ragging laws. Link 1 | Link 2 | Link 3
10. 23 September: Jadavpur University, Kolkata, penalises five students, expelling three of them so they can’t even take admission elsewhere. This was on the basis of a complaint to the anti-ragging squad by five students who said they had been subjected to physical and mental abuse. But the freshers soon claimed they had been forced to make a false complaint, resulting in another enquiry. Link 1 | Link 2
11. 27 September 2009: Inaction over ragging complaint leads to group clashes on eve of students’ union elections in Utkal University, Bhubaneshwar. Link

JNU revokes rustication order against raggers. Link

(More cases being added)

A student in Howrah was subjected to the things mentioned in the headline of this post, but it became a news story when the fresher tried to commit sucide by consuming poison. So the headline in the Times of India goes, “Howrah student attempts suicide after ragging“. A reader flipping through news reports could well think, another loser, another victim, another case. The attention is not on the victimiser, the perpetrator.

On Friday, Nayan was waiting at Uluberia station to catch a train home when four seniors grabbed him and took him to a house in the locality, says his uncle. Once inside, the door was barred and the torture began. Nayan was beaten and forced to smoke a cigarette. Then an unknown drug was forced down his throat. When he lay delirious, his wrists were slashed with a razor. Then, one of the seniors asked another to fetch an empty syringe, the FIR says. As Nayan desperately struggled, he was held down and air injected into his left hand.

Surely, the FIR named the four seniors? Why could they not be named in this news report?

The Times report also misses the point, mentioned in the Telegraph report, that the wrist slashing happened because Nayan Adak refused to obey orders to undress and dance. Ragging always does boil down to the fresher’s body, doesn’t it? The Telegraph and Express reports don’t mention names of the four accused either.

Eight years after the Supreme Court of India first banned ragging, Dande Devender Kumar has died of it. It is suspected he committed suicide by jumping onto the railway tracks, adding to the list of those who chose to die rather than live the humiliation of ragging. After hanging oneself on the ceiling fans, dying on the railway tracks is the second most favourite choice of ragging victims.Kumar also left a suicide note.

Kumar was a student of Vasavi Engineering College, Hyderabad, whose administration consoled his parents thus:

When his parents reported the matter to the college and threatened to file a police complaint, the college authorities allegedly begged them not to as it would spoil the careers of those involved. [CNN-IBN]

As for the parents:

“He had been complaining for long. We hoped that the college authorities would take note of it but it did not happen.” [The Hindu]

But what were the parents doing?

News reports: CNN-IBN, The Hindu, Times of India, Press Trust of India, The New Indian Express, ANI

…not all but some juniors are targeted, as they are perceived as weak, vulnerable and pliant maybe in terms of gender, religion, caste, class and ethnicity. In the case of Aman, it was between modernity and local conservatism. Aman was smart, good looking, having a charismatic personality (won many prizes in the college academic and cultural activities) and, above all, he used to speak English with a tinge of accent (he studied abroad for sometime). All these qualities, particularly the last one, made him vulnerable and weak in the eyes of local goon-students. Being modern and progressive, I realised during my discussion with the medicos there, has its own flip-side, so much so that it renders the putative ‘support structures’ of modern civilised society ‘attack-structures’ for those who dare to think and do things against the conservative mores, culture and lifestyles. [Link]

I am writing this letter on behalf of myself (Ms. Anisha Shekhar) and my two friends Mr. Raja Nandy and Mr. Abhijit Das. We were first year MBA students at P. C. Chandra School of Business[ PCCSB], Kolkata, affiliated to Punjab Technical University [PTU] from September 2008 to January 2009. All three of us had to leave the institute due to unbearable mental agony and physical torture inflicted on us by our seniors as part of Ragging.

All the juniors were subjected to harsh ragging by seniors. The principal offenders are Bitopan Borah (Roll No.: 720824005), Joydev Shah (720824012), Debanuj Borah (720824008), Subhankar Pal (810824005). Juniors were often asked to strip their clothes and then lighted cigars were thrown on their bare bodies. The four seniors mentioned above often landed in girl’s hostel (near 1A market, salt lake) in inebriated state. Raja Nandy was punched in the eye by Joydev Shaw. Some juniors including Abhijit Das, was hit and poked with iron sticks in their private areas.

Other forms of Ragging going on at PCCSB are:

· Juniors were asked and made to answer vulgar questions.

· Juniors were forced to drink country liquor.

· Juniors were coerced to do acts with sexual overtones.

· Juniors were forced to look at pornographic movies & pictures.

Complaining to college authorities about these perverted acts was in vain, and they turned a deaf ear to our complaints. The then Administrative officer Mr. Gautam Dan & Admission officer Mr. Jitendra Gadhvi, threatened juniors not to disclose anything about the ragging to outsiders, including PTU officials.

Mr. S. Banik, Director, PCCSB mentioned that all PTU officials are corrupt, so there is no point raising the issue to PTU. Mr. S. Banik even commented to our parents that he has paid around Rs 1,00,000/- in cash to Mr. Gautam Banerjee, Regional Head, PTU for marketing purposes of UCPL Group.

Later, we came to know that PCCSB takes donation (around Rs 50,000/-) from the rich students who involve themselves in ragging. So the college is not in a position to take action against offenders.

We have lost one academic year and have paid Rs 74,000/- (Rs 20,000 + Rs 54,000/-) as fees. We have made subsequent requests to the present Administrative officer, Mr Biswajit Sen to refund a portion of our course fees, but without any response.

PCCSB is bringing disgrace to the esteemed PTU. Kindly take appropriate action from your end against the offenders mentioned in this letter and also against PCCSB authorities, according to the National Anti-Ragging Act, to stop recurrence of such incidents in future.

If needed after proper investigation, consider disaffiliating P. C. Chandra School of Business [LC : 824] for failing to curb ragging and non-compliance to university rules and regulations.

It may hereby be mentioned that we are soon going to start appropriate legal action (both civil and criminal) against PCCSB, with PTU being made a party.

Yours sincerely,

ANISHA SHEKHAR

Amann’s father suggested creation of an anti-ragging database: Centre

Government plans to put in place the mechanism in about a week

New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Human Resource Development has began work on developing a model for the crisis-centre helpline to enable ragging victims across the country to seek immediate help.

Amicus curiae and Additional Solicitor-General (ASG) Gopal Subramaniam gave this information before a Bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat and A.K. Ganguly hearing petitions relating to cases of ragging in Dr. Rajendra Prasad government Medical College, Himachal Pradesh, and College of Agricultural Engineering, Bapatla, in Andhra Pradesh.

The two cases were referred to the R.K. Raghavan Committee, which submitted its report to the court. The ASG said the recent incidents of ragging — one in Coimbatore and the other in Goa — had also been referred to the Committee for probe.

The ASG, in his status report, referred to the Raghavan Committee’s findings and said the father of Amann Kachroo had sent a proposal to the government on creating an anti-ragging database.

Mr. Gopal Subramaniam said: “Amann’s father [Dr. Rajendra Kachroo] suggested creation of a database of students and ragging complaints, which will ensure effective monitoring and prevention of ragging. This methodology also involves setting up a crisis-centre hotline, wherein students affected by ragging can call for help.”

The ASG said that “the Ministry of HRD has already commenced work on developing a model for the crisis-centre helpline and the anti-ragging database. The Ministry has sought the assistance of Educational Consultants India Ltd. as a consultant in this project.” He said the government proposed to put in place the mechanism in about a week.

Mr. Gopal Subramaniam said the Ministry, in consultation with the UGC, the MCI, the AICTE and other similar regulatory bodies should set up a central crisis-hotline and anti-ragging database in the manner suggested by Dr. Rajendra Kachroo to the Raghavan Committee and the UGC. “Once the database/crisis hotline is operative, State governments should amend their anti-ragging statutes to include provisions that place penal consequences on institutional heads who do not take timely steps in the prevention of ragging and in punishing those who resort to ragging. .”

Alcoholism

The Raghavan Committee, in its report on the death of Amann, said alcoholism on the campus, failure of college to constitute an anti-ragging squad and implement the recommendations to prevent ragging were the reasons for the incident. It also blamed the MCI for not taking immediate action to put down the menace.

The court posted the matter for Thursday asking the Himachal Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh governments to file their response to the report.

Similar reports:


SC ordered Centre to setup anti-ragging website

Indiaedunews.net, April 21, 2009

New Delhi: The recent incidents of ragging in colleges leading to deaths of the victim or their attempt to commit suicide have instigated government to take a stern step in this matter.

To curb the menace of ragging, Centre has decided to setup an anti-ragging helpline in the form of a website for harassed freshers within a week’s time.

Additional Solicitor General (ASG), Gopal Subramaniam stated this in the Supreme Court on April 20 as the Raghavan anti-ragging committee’s report on Kachroo’s death was presented.

Amann who intimated his parents regularly regarding the trauma he is going through in the hostel had insisted his parents not to take any steps in this matter with the hostel authorities as it may aggravate the situation more.

“This apprehension on the part of Amann led to his untimely tragic death,” the committee’s report said.

Two more incidents of ragging – one in Goa and the other at Coimbatore where attempts were made to spike the eyes of the fresher have also been referred to the Raghavan committee for inquiry.

An anguished bench ordered the Himachal State Government to respond to the report and suggestions of the ASG within two days. The matter has been further postponed for its next hearing on April 23.

No matter whatever may be the response of the BJP government under Prem Kumar Dhumal, the Raghavan report acted as a revelation to many about the atrocities freshers encounter in the medical colleges across India.

The report even criticized the MCI for not taking appropriate steps to enforce implementation of anti-ragging measures in medical colleges.

In the Amann incident, MCI rather acted irresponsibly by handing over the anti-ragging guidelines to the Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College, Tanda, “after the demise of Amann Kachroo over the phone,” the report said.

*

Ragging spirit flows on college campuses

The Indian Express, Prabhakar Rao Voruganti, 21 Apr 2009

NEW DELHI: Rampant alcoholism is responsible for the spate of ragging incidents in the country, Additional Solicitor- General Gopal Subramanium told a Supreme Court Bench comprising Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice Asok Kumar Ganguly.

Subramanium told the Bench that a Central agency would be set up in a week as a watchdog to prevent and monitor incidents of ragging in educational institutions.

The concept to set up a Central agency with its website having a helpline is the brainchild of Rajender Kachru, father of Amann Satya Kachru, a first-year MBBS student of a medical college from Himachal Pradesh who died due to ragging last month.

Rajender Kachru has treated the personal tragedy as a motivation for doing social service, Subramanium told the Bench. Appearing as an amicus curie, Gopal Subramanium said that a sub-panel of the Raghavan Committee constituted by the apex court on ragging has come out with this finding.

A press report appeared that the Rajendra Prasad Medical College at Tanda t own in Himachal Pradesh where Aman Kachru died due to ragging, would be closed down.

With that the students exhibited a rare unity and did not divulge much information on ragging saying it was only one rare incident, he told the Bench.

Another reason for the spurt in ragging incidents is that the wardens are living outside the campus and not in the hostels. This has led to unrestrained drinking in the hostels, the amicus curie said.

The sub-committee found that the approach of college managements to such incidents is casual.

*

Alcoholism behind ragging: SC panel

The Tribune, 21 April 2009, R Sedhuraman, Legal Correspondent

“The demon of ragging haunted the juniors persistently in classes, college premises as they were under the continuous wicked vigil of senior students.” This summarises the findings of a Supreme Court appointed inquiry committee that went into the death of Aman Satya Kachroo, a first year student of Dr Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College, Tanda, in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh, on March 8 this year.

“Alcoholism on the college campus is the main reason that generated violence leading to the serious form of ragging that was seen in the Aman episode.” This was the near unanimous response from all quarters (college administration, teachers, non-teaching employees, students, civil authorities, police authorities and the public), the committee said in its report.

The report, read out before a Bench headed by Justice Arijit Pasayat, has held a whole lot of people responsible for not checking ragging — right from the Chancellor (Governor), down to the level of the Vice-Chancellor, the Principal, the district administration, police and students, both seniors and juniors. Even the security guard at the hostel was found wanting in his duty.

The voluminous report, the operative part of which runs into 22 pages, has suggested appointment of full-time wardens at college hostels with appropriate communication facilities. The apex court Bench, which also included AK Ganguly, posted the next hearing for April 23.

The inquiry committee, which comprised Dr AK Agarwal, Dean, Maulana Azad Medical College, and Dr Rajendra Prasad, Principal, Ramjas College (both in Delhi), had associated Tanvir Aeijaz, Assistant Professor of Ramjas College with it.

Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium, who is amicus curiae in the case, apprised the court of the report, while senior counsel Altaf Ahmed and Bimal Roy Jad represented the HP government and Aman’s father, Prof Raj Kachroo.

The Governor being the Chancellor of Himachal Pradesh, to which RPGMC was affiliated, and the Vice-Chancellor were responsible for monitoring incidents of ragging in the colleges, but there was no monitoring cell at these levels.

“Had the activities of RPGMC, Tanda, or other institutions in the state been monitored at the Chancellor’s level, the scenario would have been completely different. The VC was expected to seek weekly reports from its affiliated institutions/colleges, which was also not being done.”

The attitude and role at the university and state levels towards the issue of curbing the menace of ragging was “rather casual”. Also, the role of the Medical Council of India (MCI) was rather “strange and irresponsible as is evident from the fact that the guidelines framed by them were made available to RPGMC, Tanda, after the sad demise of Aman Kachroo.”

*

A Supreme Court panel, constituted to probe into the ragging and subsequent death of medical student, Amann Kachroo, has blamed rampant use of alcohol in institutions for a spurt in ragging incidents.

The panel comprising Dr. A K Agarwal, Dean, Maulana Azad Medical College, and Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Principal, Ramjas College has also indicted the administrative staff of Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College (RPGMC) for Kachroo’s death. The first year student succumbed to injuries inflicted on him by his seniors during a ragging session in the hostel on March 8.

The panel has further sought immediate inquiry against suspended college principal Dr Suresh Sankhyan for failing to implement Supreme Court directions against ragging. Keeping the “seemingly violent history” of RPGMC in mind, it has urged the court to post police on the campus until the college administration manages to enforce discipline.

According to the panel the college’s anti-ragging committee never met and its staff were not even sensitised to the menace of ragging. “The college administration could not properly bring about a stable and disciplined atmosphere in the college,” the report stated.

While reading out contents of the “shocking report” before a special bench headed by Justice Arijit Pasayat, additional solicitor general (ASG) Gopal Subramanium said there was an immediate need to introduce de-addiction measures at educational institutions.

Subramanium, who is assisting the court in the matter, suggested constitution of a special committee having eminent psychiatrists or psychologists, a documentary-maker and an educationalist, to recommend urgent and mandatory mental health measures to be implemented at all the education institutions including schools.

The ASG said the committee should also immediately examine the problem of alcoholism on RPGMC campus and suggest immediate de-addiction measures. The court was also informed about the panel’s finding against the role of Medical Council of India (MCI). The panel has raised doubts over MCI’s sincerity in curbing ragging in medical colleges and sought a probe into it.

*

Amann was ragged to death by drunk seniors

Hindustan Times, Bhadra Sinha, 21 April 2009

A Supreme Court panel, constituted to probe into the ragging and subsequent death of medical student, Amann Kachroo, has blamed rampant use of alcohol in institutions for a spurt in ragging incidents.

The panel comprising Dr. A K Agarwal, Dean, Maulana Azad Medical College, and Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Principal, Ramjas College has also indicted the administrative staff of Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College (RPGMC) for Kachroo’s death. The first year student succumbed to injuries inflicted on him by his seniors during a ragging session in the hostel on March 8.

The panel has further sought immediate inquiry against suspended college principal Dr Suresh Sankhyan for failing to implement Supreme Court directions against ragging. Keeping the “seemingly violent history” of RPGMC in mind, it has urged the court to post police on the campus until the college administration manages to enforce discipline.

According to the panel the college’s anti-ragging committee never met and its staff were not even sensitised to the menace of ragging. “The college administration could not properly bring about a stable and disciplined atmosphere in the college,” the report stated.

While reading out contents of the “shocking report” before a special bench headed by Justice Arijit Pasayat, additional solicitor general (ASG) Gopal Subramanium said there was an immediate need to introduce de-addiction measures at educational institutions.

Subramanium, who is assisting the court in the matter, suggested constitution of a special committee having eminent psychiatrists or psychologists, a documentary-maker and an educationalist, to recommend urgent and mandatory mental health measures to be implemented at all the education institutions including schools.

The ASG said the committee should also immediately examine the problem of alcoholism on RPGMC campus and suggest immediate de-addiction measures. The court was also informed about the panel’s finding against the role of Medical Council of India (MCI). The panel has raised doubts over MCI’s sincerity in curbing ragging in medical colleges and sought a probe into it.

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA

CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION

I.A. No. _____ OF 2009

IN

CIVIL APPEAL No. 887 OF 2009

IN THE MATTER OF:

University of Kerala      …Appellant

Versus

Council of Principals of Colleges & Others   …Respondents

AND IN THE MATTER OF:

A.A. Rahim        …Appellant

Versus

Council of Principals of Colleges & Others   …Respondents

AN APPLICATION FOR DIRECTIONS ON BEHALF OF THE AMICUS CURIAE

It is respectfully submitted:

1. On 16^th March, 2009, the Amicus Curiae filed I.A. No.15 of 2009 complaining about the death of Amann Satya Kachroo, a student who was pursuing the professional studies in MBBS at Dr. Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College, Kangra, Himachal Pradesh.  This Hon’ble Court on 16^th March, 2009 took the said application on board and passed an order as per minutes.

1. It is submitted that as far as the affidavits filed by the Registrar, Government Agriculture Engineering College, Bapatla; Director General of Police, State of Andhra Pradesh; Chief Secretary, State of Andhra Pradesh and the Principal Secretary, State of Andhra Pradesh in the Agriculture Department are concerned, they admit that one Ms. N. Triveni, B. Tech. First Year student attempted to commit suicide by consuming hair dye.  On account of medical attention, she was saved.  It may be noted that the incident took place on 27^th February, 2009.  It may also be noted that this Hon’ble Court was pleased to pass an order seeking an explanation upon the application of the Amicus Curiae on 16^th March, 2009.  In the affidavit filed by the Registrar, Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad a statement is said to have been narrated by Triveni to her father on 12^th March, 2009.  It is further described that the father lodged a complaint with the Bapatla police against plan of her seniors and thereafter an offence under Section 309 IPC was altered to Section 4(1)(ii), (iii) read with Section 7(1) of the Andhra Pradesh Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1997.  It is interesting to note that the Ladies’ Hostel Warden made a complaint without setting up the full facts of the case and a case was actually registered against Triveni vide FIR No.48/2009 under Section 309 IPC.  It is also interesting to note that it was after this Hon’ble Court was pleased to intervene in the matter on 16^th March, 2009, that Ms. Triveni stood discharged from the hospital on 20^th March, 2009.  It may also be pointed out that the Registrar claims that the said five accused girls were suspended on 13^th March, 2009.  It is stated in the said affidavit that the criminal case is now under investigation.  The said affidavit, while affirmed on 27^th March, 2009, gives only bare details pertaining to the follow up of the enquiry in relation to the five accused girls and is silent as to whether any steps have been taken to expel the said girls from the institution.  It is further submitted that the affidavit of the Director General of Police, Andhra Pradesh has based itself entirely on the investigation record and report of the Superintendent of Police, Guntur District.  It may be pointed out that although the investigation of the case was taken out on 28^th February, 2009, the case which was obviously attempted to be set up in collusion with the Hostel Warden was that the victim was depressed.  It is also interesting to note that the Sub Inspector of Police did not record the statement of the victim from 27^th February, 2009 upto 13^th March, 2009.  In fact, it was the father of the victim who submitted a petition stating that his daughter had regained her consciousness and had written down the names of the person who had ragged her.  It is stated that the police altered the memo and added Sections 4 and 7 of the Andhra Pradesh Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1997.  It may be interesting to note that the section relating to abetment of suicide was, however, not added.

1. It is respectfully submitted that in a matter of this kind, investigation cannot and should not take very long and a charge sheet should be submitted before the competent court at the earliest. In fairness, the Director General of Police took charge only on 23^rd March, 2009. He is, however, silent on the status of the investigation as on the date of the filing of the affidavit, that is 27^th March, 2009.  The affidavit of the Chief Secretary of the State of Andhra Pradesh sets out the relevant provisions of the Andhra Pradesh Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1997 and reference to the punishments under Section 4 of the Act.  It may be noted that under Section 7(1) of the Andhra Act, it is stipulated that if the head of the educational institution fails to expeditiously enquire into the complaint of ragging or neglects to suspend the students in the circumstances, such person would be deemed to have abetted the offence and shall be punished with the punishment provided for the offence.  It is important to note that neither the Principal nor the Hostel Warden is being charged under Section 7(1) of the Andhra Pradesh Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1997.  It is also relevant to note that even though detailed guidelines have been framed by the Government as early as on 31^st August, 2006 and 9^th November, 2006, in reality, teachers and administrative staff do not ensure that the institution is free of ragging.  The Principal Secretary to the Government of Andhra Pradesh in the Agriculture Department states in her affidavit that a high level committee was constituted to conduct a detailed enquiry and to submit a report.  However, the status of the enquiry by this high level committee is not clearly depicted.
2. In the meanwhile, as far as the Himachal Pradesh case is concerned, the father of Amann Satya Kachroo, Dr. S. Kachroo, has attempted to initiate a civil society movement against ragging.  The said Dr. Kachroo has made available information to suggest that Dr. Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College has been seriously afflicted with the scourge of ragging.  It is learnt that in 1999, a 2^nd year student, Vishal Chandel, was beaten up and kept inside the hostel for three days.  The case was deliberately not reported and hushed up.  It is also reported that the relatives of the victim met the Health Secretary of the Government of Himachal Pradesh who informed that 33 students have been expelled.  In fact, no action was taken against the accused.  It is also further reported that a show cause notice was issued to Dr. Sankhayan, who was the incumbent principal of the said medical college when the Amann Kachroo incident took place.

1. It is also learnt that in 2002 in the same institution, a student by the name of Neeraj was found dead in the hostel and the postmortem was conducted in a hurry and the matter was closed.  Dr. Sankhayan was the Hostel Warden at the time.  In 2004, a junior student was stabbed in his stomach with a broken bottle and none of the guilty persons were brought to book.  In 2006, four students were compelled to drink alcohol and were beaten up. They were taken in a bus and dropped 53 miles away.  The bus met with an accident.  No action was taken even though one of the students became disabled.  The said Dr. Sankhayan reportedly hushed up the matter.

1. It also appears that the students of the said medical college have not restricted their violent activities to the college campus.  Allegedly, the students have beaten up a shopkeeper, that is, one Shyam Sunder in 1998.  The incident was reported to the police yet no action was taken.  In 2004, the students beat up people in the local Ram Lila Maidan with iron rods and bamboo sticks and yet the college did not take any action against the students.  In 2006, the students barged into a marriage party at a place called Maror, where they beat up people and yet no action was taken.  In 2006, the students damaged the college canteen and the owner Naresh Soni suffered physical injuries, yet no action was taken.

1. It is also learnt that the Additional District Magistrate, Kangra has completed his magisterial enquiry on 28^th March, 2009.  The magisterial enquiry, it is reliably learnt, has come to the conclusion that ten incidents of ragging and acts of indiscipline have taken place in/since 2001.  It is also reported that the college authorities acted in a casual manner.  It is submitted that the said report be directed to be brought on record.

1. It is in these circumstances that the Applicant herein prays to this Hon’ble Court to direct as follows:
   1. a CBI enquiry be conducted into the affairs of the said Dr. Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College;
   2. Dr. Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College be directed to restrain Dr. Sankhayan from discharging any functions until further orders;
   3. an enquiry be conducted against the said Dr. Sankhayan by the State Government of Himachal Pradesh under the chairmanship of a retired Judge of this Hon’ble Court or of a Hon’ble High Court at the earliest;
   4. the State of Himachal Pradesh be called upon to submit an explanation into the circumstances in which the said Dr. Sankhayan was appointed as the Principal of Dr. Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College;
   5. the University Grants Commission, Ministry of Human Resources Development, Government of India, as well as a panel of three eminent doctors to determine the criteria for selection as Principals of Medical Colleges as well as a similar committee of three eminent engineers to suggest how Principals of Engineering Colleges should be selected;
   6. grant prayer in terms of the constitution of a special committee consisting of three eminent psychology/psychiatrists to evolve mental health guidelines in relation to ragging which would later be incorporated in the school curricula, public media distribution as well as counseling centres for parents;
   7. infrastructural facilities be provided to  Raghavan Committee including a secretariat;
   8. an online  database be set up by the Ministry of Human Resources Development, Government of India or through a joint initiative between the Union Government as well as an NGO (public private partnership) to maintain a website including gathering all relevant information pertaining to ragging, and to create a web page on the internet, which would:

• (i)store relevant details / particulars of students;

• (ii) which would include a statement from the Principal of the concerned college/institution undertaking that he/she will ensure and undertake all possible steps to prevent ragging;

• (iii) play videos of ragging so as to educate the public of the dangers of ragging;

• (iv) have an interface facility, wherein students would be able to make complaints in respect of ragging incidents;

1. 1. UGC and Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India to establish a call centre at Delhi, as a pilot measure, so that anybody would be able to access the call centre and complain about incidents of ragging;
   2. the Raghavan Committee to frame a simple and transparent procedure for penalizing institutions which permit ragging on their premises/campuses, as well as steps to be taken against administrative heads including quick and transparent procedures for expelling students.
   3. the Andhra Pradesh police, and specifically the Superintendent of Police of District Guntur, to complete the investigation into Ms. Triveni’s case within a period of thirty days from today and file a charge sheet in the court of competent jurisdiction against the accused persons, should an offence be made out;
   4. the committee appointed by the Andhra Pradesh government to complete the enquiry in relation to incident of ragging of Ms. Triveni and proceed to act in accordance with law and take such punitive action including expulsion of the students from the institutions; and
   5. any other order(s) this Hon’ble Court may deem fit and proper in the circumstances of the case.

Filed by:

Dated:       .3.2009    (GOPAL SUBRAMANIUM)

AMICUS CURIAE

This time the defenders of ragging are silent. Who knows, maybe some of them have changed their views and are now lighting candles at Jantar Mantar. There are no TV debates calling ragging fun. This time no one is arguing that a murder case should not be used to defame the socially productive ‘tradition’ of ragging. This time nobody is asking how boys will become men unless they are ragged, and nobody is calling the victims sissies.

What has changed? Have the chickens come home to roost? DPS, Gurgaon, Kashmiri Pandit — have the defenders shut up because the victim was a ‘person like us’? Is that all it needed, the life of a metro-bred boy rather than a small-town loser? Has the debate, that should have been settled with the Supreme Court’s 2001 ban, finally been settled 8 years and two dozen deaths later?

It sounds crude but it’s true: Aman Kachroo was lucky to be murdered than forced to commit suicide like most others. Had he committed suicide, the world would have been blaming him rather than his seniors. Nine out of 10 ragging suicides are by freshers who hang themselves from the ceiling fan of their hostel room, rarely leaving a suicide note. In all these cases, the victim is blamed. Must be depression. Exams? Relationship? Family discord? But since Aman was literally lynched to death, the standard template can’t be used this time.

Ragging continues because society at large wants it to continue despite legal injunctures. In an essay where he recounts ragging in Delhi University, Amitav Ghosh writes, “There were nights when we slept in drainpipes around Pandara Park rather than go back to college to face our seniors.” The rest of the essay convinces you that had it not been for ragging he wouldn’t have become the writer that he is!

That’s the manner in which selective amnesia is applied. Such mythmaking is then reflected in TV debates, newspaper features, and in the portrayal of ragging in films such as Munnabhai MBBS. The images you get to see are not of young bodies hanging from fans, eyes bulging and tongues popping out, but those of day-scholars singing and dancing in the canteen.

The most important arena of legitimising ragging is the oral passing-on of stories of parents to children, from alumni to students. A practice that teaches you to submit, to be subjugated and humiliated rather than to refuse orders becomes a ritual.

And so it is that when a student commits suicide, the first response of many is that if hundreds of other students in their same hostel didn’t commit suicide, why did this one? The ensuing victim-blaming makes sure ragging survives. The media’s focus on ragging ‘cases’ rather than the everyday goings-on in hostels also makes sure that the cases are seen as exceptions. The student who drops out, or becomes mentally unstable, or is ostracised by his/her hostel community for complaining are not highlighted. Even the family and peers begin stereotyping them as ‘shy’ and ‘timid’.

In 2002, Anoop Kumar committed suicide in a Lucknow college because his parents won’t let him drop out and return home to Kanpur. He had told his parents that he couldn’t even tell them what he was being subjected to. It was the shame of sexual abuse. It’s amazing that a society that does not approve of homosexuality looks the other way at sexual ragging. His parents regretted their stubbornness just as Aman’s parents regretted not taking their sons protestations seriously.

The regret of Aman’s parents is just as well the regret of the defenders. For the first time, contempt notices have been issued to principals and the University Grants Commission is pretending to wake up. The evidence is so strong that the four seniors could make history by being the first to be convicted of ragging death. Most of all, when a new government comes to power, it will hopefully look into the Raghavan Committee’s 50 recommendations and, at the very least, amend the Indian Penal Code to make ragging an offence.

(An edited, shorter version of this article by me appeared this past Sunday in the Hindustan Times.)

After collecting signatures till 1 June, a print will be posted to the Prime Minister’s office.

12 Mar 2009,

PTI / The Times of India

GUNTUR: A student of agriculture engineering attempted to commit suicide after her hostel mates allegedly made her dance
nude as part of ragging today, police said.

The 20-year-old student of the Government Agriculture Engineering College in Baptla town here consumed pesticides after senior girls in the hostel, she was staying with forced her to dance in front of them without clothes, they said.

She was rushed to hospital where she regained consciousness tonight and narrated her tale of woe to her parents and media.

The police have registered a case of ragging.

Aman Satya Kachroo, left-most, in his school days. Photo by Vaibhav Chhabra via Facebook

Before he died of brain haemorrhage (and not cardiac arrest as the papers incorrectly claimed), Aman Satya Kachroo wrote a note about who beat him up. In the note he named the four accused who are all now in jail. The note reads like a dying declaration and is signed by 12 witnesses. It seems unlikely that even one of the 12 witnesses will have the courage to say in court that they saw the lynching happening before their eyes. Even as they came down to Gurgaon for the cremation, they must have been getting calls from their parents, ‘Beta, just say you didn’t see anything. Why get into these court hassles and potential threats from the families of the accused?’

Even so, the evidence against the four is probably the strongest ever and with the state government determined to punish the accused, it is only a matter of time before they are given rigorous imprisonment. They evidence may not have been so strong had Rohit Dhar, Aman Kachroo’s uncle who reached there as soon as he was informed of the death, allowed Dr Suresh Sankhyan to conduct the post-mortem and write the crucial post-mortem report. Sankhyan who? Same gentleman who happened to be the principal of the college, the same gentleman who didn’t take action over the repeated ragging complaints from freshers! Having presided over a fresher’s death, he wanted to write the post-mortem. Well, because this was the only medical college in Tanda. Mr Dhar must be lauded that even in a state of grief he had the presence of mind to drive the body to Dharamshala and made sure three doctors did the post-mortem.

However, the police in Kangra have another problem at hand. They don’t mind arresting the Suresh Sankhyan, but they don’t know what provision of the law they can do so under! The Supreme Court said in 2001 that principals will be held responsible for not being able to curb ragging, but in 2009 the Himachal Pradesh police don’t know under what provision they can arrest former principal Sankhyan. This is a classic example of how Public Interest Litigation is not, is NOT, a substitute for legislation, notification of laws and setting up a due legal procedure from the police station upwards. That’s not at all a fault of the courts though – why doesn’t Himachal Pradesh have an anti-ragging law? Actually, it did pass an ordinance in 1992 and has elapsed since no one bothered to pass it as a law. The ordinance had a provision against principals and wardens who do not curb ragging: jail for six months. If only this ordinance had back then been made into a law, Sankhyan could have been arrested and a strong message sent out to obstinate Principal types across the country whose wont it is to think that they are the law.

That is the story of anti-ragging legislation at the Himachal Pradesh level. At the central level, a hitherto unreported fact has emerged, which is that the Supreme Court of India did ask, orally, the central government to pass an anti-ragging law in the ongoing suo moto PIL. This was reported yesterday in the Indian Express by Manish Chibber:

…the Union Human Resource Development Ministry has never shown eagerness to come up with a law at the national level.

The Home Ministry too didn’t act on a suggestion of the Supreme Court which, in May 2007, wanted a section to be added to the Indian Penal Code (IPC), making ragging a punishable offence…

…a bench of the apex court had said that apart from ragging, abetment to ragging, criminal conspiracy to rag, causing injury, wrongful confinement, use of force, assault as well as sexual offences should also be included in such a section of the IPC. It also wanted the burden of proof in ragging cases to lie on the accused — not the victim.

[...]

Sources in the Home Ministry said that “preliminary discussions” were held on an anti-ragging law after the apex court ruling but “nothing concrete” followed as senior Ministry officials felt that the Supreme Court guidelines were “adequate in dealing with the problem.” The issue was also discussed with state governments to elicit views and to push them to bring about their own anti-ragging laws. Other than a few states like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal, most don’t have anti-ragging laws. [Link]

So we have a bizarre situation where the Supreme Court wants the Government to to amend the IPC to make ragging an offence, but the Government feels the Supreme Court orders are enough. Will these lazy bureaucrats please hang their heads in shame?

And not just in the home and HRD ministries but also in the states. The RK Raghavan committee mentions in its report that while seven states have so far passed anti-ragging laws, only two, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have notified them. In other words, Maharashtra, Kerala, West Bengal, Assam and Chhattisgarh have not even cared to notify their laws, so they remain pieces of paper. This is the height of bureaucratic indifference. So many bureaucrats, so many governments, have been this efficient.

The committee report also notes, “In terms of the purpose of the various State laws, we find that other than the Chhattisgarh Act, no other State legislation is intended to prevent ragging – the others only seek to prohibit.” See pages 21 and 22 of the report, as well as the tabulur analysis of the seven state laws in pages 182-183 (2 MB .pdf file here).

We need an all-India anti-ragging law. The Parliament of India has to pass it. NOW.

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There’s a candlelight vigil, be there or elsewhere:

Location: Jantar Mantar, Delhi
Time: 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Date: Satarday, 14th March

(Cross-posted at Kafila.)

*

Update: Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam, who is I think the amicus curae in the ongoing case, says he will ask the Supreme Court to take note of the case and charge the Principal and Vice-Chancellor with “contempt, inaction, negligence and failure.” But who will charge whom for lack of implementation of the SC orders on ragging?And Himachal Pradesh has an anti-ragging ordinance too. (The ordinance had expired in 1998, I gather, as it had nott been turned into a law within six months)

*

I don’t know why this report does not use the word lynching, because that is what seems to have happened at the Dr Rajendra Prasad Medical College, Tanda.

I hope I am not committing contempt of court here by mentioning that the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India had first banned ragging in May 2001. Eight years and two Supreme Court-appointed committees later, the celebrated Public Interest Litigation method of reforming India did not come to the rescue of Aman Satya Kachroo. (It is not clear whether he spelled his surname as Kachroo or Kachru.)

What the Supreme Court process did do, instead, was to make the state governments and the HRD Ministry lazy; they gave up passing and implementing anti-ragging laws. The few states that did, most of them, as the Raghavan committee shockingly found, have not notified them!

The Union HRD Ministry has also not taken any steps to either pass a national anti-ragging law or amend the Indian Penal Code to make the “ragging” a punishable offence.

The problem, as always, is that of implementation. The SC’s 2001 order, based on the Unnikrishnan committee report (.pdf here) had said that it is the responsibility of college principals and directors to check ragging. That’s where the buck stops. But the order had not specified what it would mean to not follow that responsibility! What happens to a principal in a case like this, where he was clearly and deliberately negligent? Under what law do you charge him?

Secondly, the order had said that it would be the responsibility of affiliating/funding agencies to make sure colleges affilaited to or funded by them are following anti-ragging measures. Even today there arev colleges, even in Delhi University, who do not follow the details of the 2001 SC order, such as forming an anti-ragging committee in college and making it accessible in person or through phone at any time of day and night. You can read what seems like an excellent order here; the loophole here is that since the measures mentioned sounded illustrative they weren’t taken seriously. Most importantly, nobody ever asked UGC et al as to what they had done to implement the order.

But these affiliating and/or funding agencies – mainly three: UGC (University Grants Council), AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) and the MCI (Medical Council of India)- didn’t do much apart from notifying the institutions under them about the SC order. Many secretaries came and went, students kept dying of ragging, some cases of rape and alleged murder even, and finally in 2007 the Supreme Court again took suo moto notice of the fact that ragging was still on!

This time the SC set-up a committee headed by former CBI chief RK Raghavan. In the second meeting of the committee, they invited me along with a few people to make presentations, and subsequently hired some of us as consultants. I remember going on and on in my presentation that the problem was implementation, and if only the first committee’s recommendations and the ensuing SC order of 2001 were implemented in letter and spirit, there wouldn’t be the need for this committee. I remember the first question I was asked after my presentation was about the need of an all-India anti-ragging law to be passed by the Parliament. I said absolutely. This was the single-most important thing that was needed. Everyone agreed. Although everything that makes for ragging is covered by the Indian Penal Code, the police does not think this way.

The committee submitted its report in May 2007 (.pdf here). The illiterate Delhi media took a copy of the recommendations chapter of the report and hyped it as though it had already become the law of the land. The problem that the illiterate media faced was that there were 50 recommendations! The committee had put in almost everything they had been suggested. So every paper/TV channel highlighted some of the recommendations. Some missed out the most crucial one – that the IPC should be amended and ragging made a cognisable offence. This would mean that a fresher like Kachroo can go to a police station and be taken seriously about a ragging complaint – if you know what Indian police is like you can imagine how they tell freshers not to fear, everyone gets ragged, it is okay.

The Supreme Court has not said anything about this particular recommendation so far, and those against law-by-PIL would say that it should not. The HRD ministry, and state governments, are mum on the question of outlawing ragging and implenting and monitoring anti-ragging measures because they hink that the Supreme Court, like god, is taking care of it. Why increase our work?

So what the Supreme Court has done this time round is issue this order:

(1) The punishment to be meted out has to be exemplary and justifiably harsh to act as a deterrent against recurrence of such incidents.

(2) Every single incident of ragging where the victim or his parent/guardian or the Head of institution is not satisfied with the institutional arrangement for action, a First Information Report must be filed without exception by the institutional authorities with the local police authorities. Any failure on the part of the institutional authority or negligence or deliberate delay in lodging the FIR with the local police shall be construed to be an act of culpable negligence on the part of the institutional authority. If any victim or his parent / guardian of ragging intends to file FIR directly with the police, that will not absolve the institutional authority from the requirement of filing the FIR.

(3) Courts should make an effort to ensure that cases involving ragging are taken up on a priority basis to send the correct message that ragging is not only to be discourages but also to be dealt with sternness.

(4) In addition, we direct that the possibility of introducing in the educational curriculum a subject relating to ragging shall be explored by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and the respective State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT). This aspect can be included in the teaching of the subjects “Human Rights”.

(5) In the prospectus to be issued for admission by educational institutions, it shall be clearly stipulated that in case the applicant for admission is found to have indulged in ragging in the past or if it is noticed later that he has indulged in ragging, admission may be refused or he shall be expelled from the educational institution.

(6) The Central Government and the State Governments shall launch a programme giving wide publicity to the menace of ragging and the consequences which follow in case any student is detected to have been involved in ragging.

(7) It shall be the collective responsibility of the authorities and functionaries of the concerned institution, and their role shall also be open to scrutiny for the purpose of finding out whether they have taken effective steps for preventing ragging and in case of their failure, action can be taken; for example, denial of any grant-in-aid or assistance from the State Governments.

(8) Anti-ragging committees and squads shall be forthwith formed by the institutions and it shall be the job of the committee or the squad, as the case may be, to see that the Committee’s recommendations, more for particularly those noted above, are observed without exception and if it is noticed that there is any deviation, the same shall be forthwith brought to the notice of this Court.

(9) The Committee constituted pursuant to the order of this Court shall continue to monitor the functioning of the anti-ragging committees and the squads to be formed. They shall also monitor the implementation of the recommendations to which reference has been made above.

[The full interm order is here.]

This was in an interim order of the Court in May 2007, nearly 2 years ago. That has not been able to prevent Kachroo’s murder. I have no doubt that more ragging deaths will take place. You can read here a critique of the interim order by me.

If only Aman Kachroo had been able to call a helpline number or email somebody, anonymously, and write that this kind of ragging was going on, and a fact-finding team had immediately visited his college, not only could the death have been prevented but also possibly Kachroo could have enjoyed his college life without even the mandatory ostracisation that freshers who speak up against ragging have to face in their college and hostel. The setting up of such a helpine on the model of Childline was one of the recommendations of the Raghavan committee. But can the Supreme Court set up something like that? Surely, that is the domain of the executive and not the judiciary. An HRD Joint Secretary is Member Secretary of the Raghavan Committee, but the HRD won’t do anything because, well, the SC is looking into it.

To model the helpline around Childline was suggested by HRD Joint Secretary Sunil Kumar himself, but that would need identifying and funding NGO’s to do that. The Coalition to Uproot Ragging from Education is ready, but the HRD forgot about this and the SC had no comment.

So two things needed to prevent ragging: a law and a helpline. Simple.

*
So what should Kachroo’s family do, to get justice for his death and also to contribute to the larger anti-ragging cause to prevent such deaths?

1) I think it is important that they hire a good criminal lawyer and sue the Principal, Suresh Sankhayan, on criminal charges. In at least one case that I know, the director of the educational institution was arrested. Don’t know what happened thereafter. It is important that negligent Principals be put behind bars; it will drive home the point to principals and institute directors that even if they personally think ragging is okay, the law does not think so.

2) Another party to be sued in this matter is the Medical Council of India, whose responsibility it is under the Supreme Court orders (both 2001 and 2007) to disaffiliate institutionsthat are unable to curb ragging. This implies that they have to go around checking, and they haven’t done that.

3) It is obvious that the seniors who lynched Kachroo to death have to be given exemplary punishment. But it reminds me of the case of Pon Navrasu of Annamalai University in 1996. The then Vice Chancellor’s son, his body was hacked into many pieces by a senior named John David. Given 36 years’ jail by a sessions court, he was freed by the High Court for want of evidence. Evidence is a big problem in ragging cases, and the only conviction we know of was a ragging-rape case recently. This was achieved after a lot of hardship, and six were even then acquitted. That’s why it’s important to have a good lawyer and to collect evidence pronto.

4) In the Kerala case, controversies over which led to the SC taking notice of the prevalence of ragging despite the 2001 ban, the Kerala Nursing Council had de-recognised the School of Medical Education, where the rape had taken place after an exam in the name of ragging. This is the only example of de-affiliation. This is important, and Kachroo’s parents should push for this in the case of Dr Rajendra Prasad Medical College, Tanda. Students who are studying there and are not involved in ragging should be accomadated in other medical colleges. This is a price that institutions must pay for not being able to curb ragging. They must be dissolved altogether, as is the case with hazing in the US where fraternities and sororities unable to end hazing are just shut down.

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Apart from this legalistic discussion, I have to say that part of the blame goes to Aman Kachroo’s family itself, even if this is the wrong time to say this, because like typical Indian parents they didn’t take his ragging complaints seriously. If even a ragging victim’s family does not take the issue seriously until he dies, you can imagine how seriously society at large thinks of ragging as a problem. Let it also be said that they are not the first parents who will always rue their indiscretion, and perhaps not the last.

(Cross-posted at Kafila.)

A year later, Honey remembers this and tears still roll down her eyes. But apparently her friends have tried to teach her how “not to be a softie”.

It isn’t a co-incidence that women’s ragging seeks to ‘prepare’ them for a “man’s world”. In this story by  Voz interior (aka Manju), ragging at the beginning of the year is used to set the tone of college life, a bit like describing the forest scene before unfurling the plot.

The weeks went by and ragging was in full flow in the college. Though it was banned the seniors had their way of tormenting the juniors and keeping themselves out of trouble. The bus rides were worse; juniors were called to the back of the bus and made to do crazy things.

What these “crazy things” were is left to the reader’s imagination; the assumption is that we all know what happens by way of ragging. The space of the bus is thus established as a place of negotiation of power, a place where the statutory ban on ragging does not apply. Having established the mechanism of ragging as the channel through which relationships are initiated, we move to character development.

From what Honey and Renu learnt in these weeks, Raj was very famous for his ragging tactics, and by now he had become the person that Honey feared the most. Sensing the fear, Raj did rag Honey in the strangest of ways. He called her to the back of the bus and asked her to sing. She sang, but Raj did not seem satisfied. All he said was, “I’ll be back on Monday. You will sing for me then”.

So the same Raj who proposes to Honey at the end of the year, his story began with ragging. In the above excerpt, the male senior is an object of fear; but what exactly were the ragging “tactics” that made him famous are not known. These are again left to the imagination, perhaps because going into them would delay the narrative’s movement into the plot, but it also serves the purpose of creating a fear of the unknown.  Raj is the alpha-male who ’senses’ the fear, but that doesn’t make him sensitive. He actualises the fear, ragging Honey in the “strangest of ways”. This building-up of a foreboding of violent ragging, however, turns into a mere sing-a-song damp squib. This anti-climax of the only ragging episode narrated serves the purpose of showing how Honey was unnecessarily afraid of harmless ragging. Her fault, her weakness! Raj leaves her that day with the threat that it wasn’t over yet, but the narrator then jumps into making Raj Honey’s rakhi brother!

But before that another male character was briefly introduced, and once again portrayed as a virile man whom Honey hangs out with. With this detour we are well past ragging and into ‘college life’.

She admired him a lot and had taken him for an elder brother she never had. She even tied him a Rakhi on Rakshabandhan, a Rakhi that Raj said meant so much to him.

Post-ragging, the elder male who was to be ritually feared becomes the ultimate protector – a rakhi brother. The sexual tension throughout this relationship is palpable but unsaid; now, with the rakhi, it becomes complicated. While Raj is portrayed from Honey’s eyes, we don’t hear from him until he pops the question. He does so only on the last day of college.

The interaction between the sexes is first mediated through the ritual theatre of ragging, controlled by a implicit but vague threat. What song could Honey have possibly sung if not a Bollywood number about love and longing? Doing so is considered embarassing precisely because of the context of sexual repression that forces the relationship, post-ragging, to don a brother-sister avatar. By making Raj a a rakhi brother, Honey pre-empts the question of desire. This pre-condition becomes the context of the relationship.

Ragging is thus the ritual entry point into the male-female relationship, where the male is to be either a brother or a husband. In either case he must cause pain before the relationship can be negotiated. In the latter case Honey has the agency to reject the offer with tears. In the former, however, the sweet bitterness of ragging must lead to a relationship, even if it is as forced as the knot of a rakhi.

The moral of the story is that Honey must not remain a “softie”. She has to learn surviving a man’s world – be it ragging or (a)sexual betrayal.

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Update on 22 October: While the author of the post deleted the entire blog a day after the above analysis, the full text of the post could be retrieved from the RSS feed. I’m pasting it below as it becomes impossible to understand my analysis without reading the primary text.

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The longest journey of my life: Day 0 – Year 1

From a now-deleted blog called “The journey of the inner voice….” written by “Voz interior (aka Manju)”

Honey was a jovial, outgoing and happy-to-go-lucky person. A hard-core Bangalorian at heart, she was trying her best to fit into Coimbatore.

“Here I go!” she taught as she climbed the steps of the college bus. It was her first day. Renu was by her side. Renu was Honey’s friend from school. Honey and Renu had chosen their college together. The ride to college was uneventful, except for the seniors looking strangely at the new comers.

Entering the class, Renu and Honey chose to sit in the first bench. A very young and kind – faced woman entered the class, who they later learned was Mrs.Malathi, their class adviser. Honey took an immediate liking to her.

The first day rushed off with nothing much to do. By now the feeling that they were in college had sunk in and Honey got to know many of her class mates. As soon as the last siren sounded, Honey and Renu rushed to the bus, to avoid fighting for seats.

The seats soon filled up. Raj entered the bus.

Raj was a tall, thin and fairly good-looking final year fellow. He took a seat behind Honey and Renu and began chatting away with his friends. Every now and then pausing to see what the infants at the front were doing. When Raj’s stop came, he got down, stood by Honey’s window and smiled at her. Unsure of what to do Honey smiled back, while Renu snickered.

*********************************************************

The weeks went by and ragging was in full flow in the college. Though it was banned the seniors had their way of tormenting the juniors and keeping themselves out of trouble. The bus rides were worse; juniors were called to the back of the bus and made to do crazy things. From what Honey and Renu learnt in these weeks, Raj was very famous for his ragging tactics, and by now he had become the person that Honey feared the most.

Sensing the fear, Raj did rag Honey in the strangest of ways. He called her to the back of the bus and asked her to sing. She sang, but Raj did not seem satisfied. All he said was, “I’ll be back on Monday. You will sing for me then”.

It was on that Monday when Honey met Keshav. Keshav was a tall, dark, stunningly handsome guy who was in the same year as Honey. Honey became very good friends with Keshav. They spent all the time in the bus together chatting, cracking jokes and singing.

Honey also befriended Raj. She admired him a lot and had taken him for an elder brother she never had. She even tied him a Rakhi on Rakshabandhan, a Rakhi that Raj said meant so much to him.

*********************************************************

Almost half way through the year, Renu drifted away from Honey. They were put in different classes. Keshav and Honey became quite close friends. Raj was into his project but always made sure he had time for Honey.

End of the first year was near and it was time for Raj to leave college. On the eve of graduation, he took Honey out. Honey was sad that he had to leave, but she was happy because he was starting a whole life.

Everything went on perfectly that day, when out of the blue Raj said, “Will you never be mine?”

“What do you mean?” Honey asked.

Raj did the unthinkable, he proposed to Honey.

That blew the whole day. Honey was in tears, and ran away from Raj, never to com back. Sensing what he had done, Raj moved away and never came back.

It was all over the college, in a matter of days. Renu along with Kiki had spread the rumors around in an extremely twisted way. Keshav believed them too. He confronted Honey. When she denied the rumors and tried to explain what had really happened, he had left. Honey’s tears did not bring Keshav back….

*********************************************************

“OI! Why are you crying?” Diya asked.

“What?… Oh! Nothing. I was just thinking of something.” mumbled Honey. Diya had broken her stream of thoughts. Wiping her eyes, Honey realized that it was almost break time. The lecturer had left.

“You okay?” asked Diya, looking very concerned.

“Yeah! Let’s go”, said Honey and she got up and walked out of the class. Diya followed her. Walking down the corridor, Diya looked at Honey. She was oddly silent all of a sudden.“That’s one year down. Renu, Keshav, Kiki and Raj sure taught her how not to be a softie. She’ll soon get my point.” thought Diya, as she hurried to catch up with Honey.

Now The girls Start commenting on me. i could hear “he’s cute” hahaha.. Finally they ask my One last Question. Guess???? ……

Whom do you Find the Most prettiest among us??? haha..

i was dumb struck with that question.. didn’t know what to answer, they were my seniors. I just kept blushing..and with my head down i simply pointed to the girl who asked me the question…i was again asked the same question with “See properly and tell us”…after a few seconds and their force, I look at the girl group and :-SS …looking at so many girls i point out at a smiling girl ..and the crowd suddenly says “AAAAhh Ashwiniiiiii” and laughs…one of the wardens saw this Group standing near the cafe. Sitting the warden the group disperses and yeah.. my super senior come to me and says !!! “they found u very Handsome, hats y all this happened…..NOW DONT FLY TOO HIGH” hahahahahahaha…we finally return to the junior hostel and the news spread like wild fire..

And his next day in the hostel, and how he handled ragging like a pro even as a “tall guy” was sweating, and the memory of that day five years ago leads to this conclusion:

Even today i can Never for get that day,the sunlight,the room,Those ppl ,wonderful seni0rs…and yeah,Even today i can sense the voice and noise ,the comments passed ,Questions asked,taunts,the LAUGH the present SID had given,all are still fresh in my Heart..”GOLDEN DAYS”..I now understand the meaning of “STUDENT LIFE IS GOLDEN LIFE”..Those times spent in Hostel can never get away from my heart.its so fresh and green even today i cant believe that it was 5 years ago. [Link]

Wasn’t there a single thing about the ragging that he didn’t like, that cannot be romanticised? And the narrative of the Tall Guy Who Was Sweating, will he tell us his ragging story? Or is it not romantic enough to be told, not mach enough to be bragged about?

5.01 Based on its interactions and the elaborate methodology followed by it, the
Committee is convinced that the society at large considers ragging as a
definite menace. We are equally convinced that softer options have not
worked and therefore it is time for tough measures. The Committee’s
recommendations, in terms of actions necessary, fall in six levels, namely,
schools, higher educational institutions, district administration,
universities, State authorities and Central authorities. At each level, we
recommend that the active involvement of media and the civil society is
essential in tackling the problem of ragging.
5.02 At the School level, the Committee recommends that on the same lines as
topics on environment education were introduced in the school
curriculum, the National Council of Educational Research and Training
(NCERT) and the respective State Council of Educational Research and
Training (SCERT), should devise methodologies and content for
introducing Human Rights education of which awareness against ragging
should be a compulsory part. Where inputs in Human Rights already exist,
the same should be reviewed to ensure that awareness and exposure to the
evil of ragging are highlighted in the syllabi. In the lower classes, respect
for human rights, consciousness against violating others’ rights, and
respect for privacy, diversity and equality should be discreetly grafted into
the lessons and exercises right from the primary and elementary stages of
schooling in order to inculcate the desirable value system from the
formative years of every child.

5.03 At the secondary and senior secondary stages of schooling, every school
should be required to arrange regular and periodic psychologicalcounselling
sessions for every student till the time he/she passes out from
the school. Parents and teachers should also be involved in such sessions.
Every year there should be a certain number of mandatory counselling
sessions with experienced psychologists. The Committee was informed by
experts that 20 counselling workshop/sessions were desirable each year.
Since it may not be immediately possible to avail the services of a vast
number of trained psychologists, it is recommended that the B.Ed. and
Teacher training programmes should be mandated to provide for antiragging
and human-rights appreciation inputs so that every teacher is
equipped to provide at least the rudiments of the counselling approach.

5.04 What would be desirable is that the school leaving certificate and the
character certificate categorically mentions the status of the student in
terms of his/her behavioural pattern; which should be mandatory to be
submitted at the time of admission at the institute of higher learning. This
certificate should mention whether the student has displayed persistent
violent or aggressive behaviour or any desire to harm others. It is
recommended that each State should create a pool of professional
counsellors at the level of the district, who visit each and every school in
every state to fill the obligation stated above. The District Institutes of
Educational Technology (DIETs) should be reoriented for the purpose.

5.05 The Committee endorses the view that bullying and corporal punishments
at the school level legitimize ideas of power abuse, harassment, violation of
dignity and privacy, and as such may prepare the ground for ragging at the
college level. Bullying is a phenomenon in which the students tease and
humiliate other students in various ways. Corporal punishment has been
banned by some states viz. Goa, Delhi and Tamil Nadu. Therefore,
teachers at the school level must be made conscious of this fact. The
curriculum for B.Ed. and other teacher training courses, as well as inservice
training courses for the teachers, should include topics on
sensitization against corporal punishment and checking of bullying
amongst students.

5.06 At the level of the Higher educational institutions, it should be mandatory
for the student at the time of admission to submit documentation in
respect of (i) the school leaving certificate/character certificate which will
include a report on behavioural pattern; (and, in due course include the
report by a professional counsellor). The institution may thereupon keep
intense watch upon a student who has a negative entry in this regard. (ii)
an annual undertaking to be signed by each student, whether fresher or
senior, and his/her parent(s) jointly stating that each of them have read
the relevant instructions/regulations against ragging, as well as
punishments, and that if the ward has been found guilty he/she will be
proceeded against. The UGC Committee (1999) had also recommended so
and the directions of the Apex Court also included this. While endorsing
these recommendations, we emphasize specifically the following: First, we
strongly recommend that such an undertaking should be provided in
English as well as in the vernacular (mother tongue of the parent); second,
the undertaking should be furnished at the beginning of each academic
year by every student; third, the undertaking should be obtained every
year from each student admitted to the hostel; and finally, the undertaking
should be appended to a brochure containing the guidelines and other
relevant instructions in regard to ragging and consequences of indulging
in ragging – so that there is no denial of the responsibility on the one hand,
and there is also a clear understanding of the requirement by all
concerned, including parents who may be otherwise deficient in their
facility with the English language. Merely getting an undertaking signed
from students and parents, without linking it with the information
relevant to ragging in our opinion would be ineffective, and hence our
modified recommendations.

5.07 We feel that it is extremely important that this requirement of a binding
undertaking is complied with by all institutions, and some superior level
bodies must cross-verify and vouch that there is strict compliance thereto.
This has to be ensured by the affiliating university and also verified by
bodies such as the National Assessment and Accreditation Council
(NAAC), the UGC Expert Committees, including those which visit
institutions for recognition under section 2(f) and 12(B) of the UGC Act,
AICTE’s Committees, and Committees of other statutory councils or
authorities such as the Medical Council of India (MCI), the Dental Council
of India (DCI), the Nursing Council of India (NCI) etc. At present these
bodies appear to perceive ragging merely as a disciplinary issue in which
the regulatory authorities have little or no role, and in the context of
curbing the menace of ragging appropriate directions must be given
defining their role and responsibility. Indeed, without the active
involvement of the multitude of bodies and authorities, a continuous vigil
cannot be maintained. We are constrained to remark that while ensuring a
ragging-free environment in campuses has a direct bearing on the
standards of higher education, none of the bodies responsible for
coordinating/ establishing or maintaining standards of higher education
(technical and medical etc. included) with whom we interacted, radiate the
confidence that they consider the continuing practice of ragging as
contributing to lowering of the standards.

5.08 The University Grants Commission and the statutory bodies such as the
AICTE, MCI, DCI, NCI, ICAR as well as affiliating universities and
Directorates of Higher, Technical, Agricultural and Medical etc. Education
of State Governments, must make it mandatory and ensure that each
institution compulsorily incorporates in the ‘prospectus’ and in other
admission related documents, the earlier directions or any future
directions of the Apex Court and/or of the Central or State Governments
as applicable, so that candidates and their parents are sensitized in respect
of the prohibition and consequences of ragging. Non-compliance with the
directives against ragging in any manner whatsoever shall be considered
as lowering of academic standards by the errant institution. The regulatory
authorities must proceed against such errant institutions by imposing the
prescribed penalties already provided under their respective
statutes/regulations etc. which they would otherwise have exercised in
matters of lowering of academic standards.

5.09 Just as there ought to be disincentives as mentioned in paragraph 5.08
above for failure to prevent ragging, there should be incentives to
institutions for curbing it. By way of incentives, the Central Government,
State Governments, University Grants Commission and other funding
bodies such as the AICTE and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research
etc. should provide special/additional annual financial grants-in-aid to
those of the universities and colleges, which report a blemish-less record
in terms of there being no incidents of ragging. These bodies should also
institute another category of financial awards or incentives for colleges or
universities which take stringent action against those responsible in
respect of ragging incidents. This would overcome the present problem of
institutions covering up incidents for fear of adverse impact on reputation.

5.10 The Committee notes that while there have been some isolated efforts at
publicizing the concern and ban in respect of ragging, it could not come
across any meaningful advertisement campaign through the various news
media, either nationally or regionally, despite the 2001 direction of the
Apex Court. This indicates a general apathy and a failure to sensitize
society. The entire approach to ragging appears to be viewed as a seasonal
issue, to be attended to only during the admission time and put on the
back-burner after the heat and dust of admissions settle down. We
recommend that there has to be a concerted effort on the part of Central
and State Governments as well as the universities in publicizing the ills of
ragging and in sensitizing and building public opinion.

5.11 We have described the need to launch effective advertisement campaigns
at the national and regional level – the Central Government through the
Directorate of Audio Visual Publicity (DAVP) and the State Governments
through their Directorates of Information or Public Relations have the
primary responsibility in this regard. This apart, multi-pronged
campaigns have to be launched and sustained by universities as well as the
institutions, locally. Extensive publicity must be undertaken by the
institution by means of creative posters, audio-visual aids, by holding
counselling sessions, workshops, painting and design competitions among
students and other methods as it deems fit. We came across a number of
initiatives by institutions, one such effort forms the back cover of our
report.

5.12 The Committee recommends that it is critical that institutions promote a
sense of confidence among every student entering the portals of higher
education. It is important that the natural anxiety among the ‘freshers’ is
addressed by institutional authorities. We recommend that there should
be a clear gap of one to two weeks between the date of joining of ‘freshers’
and the seniors, classes for the seniors should commence later. This would
enable the ‘freshers’ to familiarize themselves with the campus
environment and adjust to the sudden changeover from schools to higher
education. In addition, this period would be critical in building and
consolidating a definite sense of bonding among the ‘freshers’ who would
be better equipped to deal with the seniors with confidence acquired
during the interim. It must be ensured that senior students are not allowed
to enter the campus, including the hostels, under any pretext. The only
exception to this rule may be for a few senior students who have been
appointed by the institutional authorities for assisting in the orientation
programme. We recommend that it should be mandatory for institutions
to inform parents of senior students to send their wards only on the due
date and not earlier. This system is in practice in some institutions and the
Committee recommends that this must be implemented in all institutions.
We further recommend that every university – whether established by
Central law or State law or declared by the Central Government as an
institution deemed to be university – must compulsorily amend its
relevant Ordinances or bye-laws to ratify the schedule of the first two
weeks described above as well as in the following paragraphs. We
acknowledge that in some professional programmes – medicine and
engineering in particular – there could be some practical difficulties in
ensuring that senior students are not present on the campus when freshers
join, however we feel that if the respective Councils make a sincere effort
to adapt their academic calendar suitably this should not be such an
insurmountable problem.

5.13 We further recommend that social events such as ‘welcome parties’ or
‘freshers” day celebrations in honour of ‘freshers’ is a sound tradition that
needs to be encouraged by institutions. However, what is lamentable is
that such events which often mark the ending of ragging and beginning of
bonhomie among seniors and ‘freshers’, is scheduled only after a
prolonged bout of ragging. Therefore, we recommend that in every
institution, the ‘freshers” day or ‘ welcome party’ shall be concluded within
the first two weeks of the beginning of the academic session, that is not
later than one week after the commencement of classes for the seniors in
the context of our recommendation in 5.12 above. In any such event,
celebrating the ‘freshers” day or party, college faculty must be present and
must ensure that no ragging or untoward incident takes place on the
occasion.

5.14 We also recommend that every institution should engage or seek the
assistance of professional counsellors at the time of admissions to counsel
‘freshers’ in order to prepare them for the life ahead, particularly for
adjusting to the life in hostels. The Committee feels that preparing
students in this manner would enable them to cope with the stresses of the
hitherto unknown life in the campus.

5.15 The Committee recommends that each institution, and where required the
affiliating university, should lay down a calendar of events and activities to
facilitate and complement familiarization of juniors with the academic
environment of the institution. This calendar must be automatically
ratified under the relevant Ordinances of the affiliating university. There
should be an introductory interaction with faculty members, members of
the staff and senior students as was suggested by the UGC Committee
(1999) as well. The breakup of the orientation programme should be as
follows: (i) the head of the institution must address all fresh students on
the first day of the academic session, and the address must amongst other
issues educate them about their rights against harassment of any kind
including ragging; and all faculty members must invariably be present on
the occasion; (ii) the second orientation programme for fresh students
should be held for each course/class, during which all the respective
departmental faculty must be present. The main purpose of this
orientation would be to inculcate a sense of bonding and a feeling of
fraternity among the freshers, as well as to develop an affinity towards the
teaching faculty; (iii) the third orientation programme for fresh students
should be conducted at the level of the class/section/division; (iv) one or
more counselling sessions must be arranged through out the first week as
part of the orientation sessions, during which a professional counsellor
should address ‘freshers’ and motivate them to confidently deal with
strangers/seniors; (v) during this week each institution should organize
cultural events, sports and other activities, for ‘freshers’ to get to know
each other; there should be very little or no ‘serious’ academic activity
which digresses from the familiarization and sensitization programmes
chalked out by the institution; we also recommend that the UGC and other
funding bodies must make special allocations for the purpose of enabling
institutions to engage counsellors and organize various events that
contribute to the building of confidence among the ‘freshers’. (vi) the
institution must not only work out a variety of alternative methods of
interactions, but should also publicize the details of the orientation
programmes described above.

5.16 We recommend that on the arrival of senior students after the first week or
after the second week as the case may be, further orientation programmes
must be scheduled as follows (i) joint sensitization programme and
counselling of both ‘freshers’ and seniors by a professional counsellor; (ii)
joint orientation programme of ‘freshers’ and seniors to be addressed by
the Principal/Head of the institution, and the anti-ragging committee; (iii)
organisation on a large scale of cultural, sports and other activities to
provide a platform for the ‘freshers’ and seniors to interact in the presence
of faculty members; (iv) in the hostel, the warden should address all
students; may request two junior colleagues from the college faculty to
assist the warden by becoming resident tutors for a temporary duration;
and, the UGC and other funding bodies should provide financial grants for
meeting the expenditure on resident tutors (v) It is strongly recommended
that as far as possible faculty members should dine with the hostel
residents in their respective hostels to instill a feeling of confidence among
the fresh residents.

5.17 The Committee agrees with the views expressed by student leaders of
various ideological affiliations with whom it interacted that a thriving and
active students’ association of comprising of genuinely enrolled students
helps in minimising incidents of ragging, as each competing student group
during elections to the student body would have a vested interest in
‘protecting’ target group of fresher voters from being subjected to ragging
by others. As a matter of fact, it was repeatedly brought to the notice of the
Committee that one of the reasons for engineering and medical or
professional colleges being highly ragging prone is due to the absence of
genuine student election activity. Although much can be said in this
regard, including the evidence that ragging has slowly spread to other
types of institutions as well, we recommend that the reforms in student
body elections approved by the Hon’ble Supreme Court on the basis of the
recommendations of the J.M.Lyngdoh Committee should be implemented
expeditiously and the students’ union election must be held within 15 days
of the beginning of the academic session. This will undermine the nexus,
reported in some places, between campus politics and ragging.

5.18 We recommend that every institution must have an Anti-Ragging
Committee and an Anti-Ragging Squad. It is essential to have a diverse
mix of membership in terms of levels as well as gender in both the Anti-
Ragging Squad as well as the Anti-Ragging Committee. The Anti-Ragging
Committee at the level of the institution should consist of the
representatives of civil and police administration, local media, Non
Government Organizations involved in youth activities, representatives of
faculty members, representatives of parents, representatives of students
belonging to the freshers’ category as well as seniors, non-teaching staff
and should be headed by the Head of the Institution. The Anti-Ragging
Squad, in contrast, should be a body with vigil, oversight and patrolling
functions and should appropriately be a smaller body which should be
nominated by the Head of the institution with such representation as
considered necessary to keep it mobile, alert and active at all times. The
Squad may be called upon to make surprise raids on hostels and other hot
spots and should be empowered to inspect places of potential ragging. The
Squad should work under the overall guidance of the Anti-Ragging
Committee. The Squad should not have any outside representation and
should only consist of members belonging to the various sections of the
campus community.

5.19 We recommend that there should also be a ‘Mentoring Cell’ in each
institution to oversee and involve senior students as Mentors for the
‘freshers’. The Mentoring Cell should be formed at the end of every
academic year where applications should be invited from students to join
the Mentoring Cell as Mentors for the succeeding academic year. There
should be as many levels or tiers of Mentors as the number of batches in
the institution. The Anti-Ragging Squad of the institution and the
Head/Principal should be involved in selecting the first level of Mentors
who would be chosen from among the batch of students immediately
senior to the ‘freshers’. A diverse mix of Mentors would be desirable who
would be selected at the ratio of one student for a certain number of
‘freshers’. It has been observed that a ratio of 1:6 is optimal. There should
be a hierarchy of Mentors, that is, for every group of six Mentors chosen
from the 2nd year or the batch immediately senior to the ‘freshers’, there
should be one second level Mentor. Then there would be one third year
student per six Mentors of the second level and so on. At every level of
Mentors, there should be a Faculty Adviser. The warden and faculty would
directly deal with the highest level of Mentors, which is not to say that they
would not interact with the other tiers of Mentors, but such interaction
would be more indirect. Every Mentor at the first level should be allowed
in to the hostel when ‘freshers’ join and, ‘freshers’ and Mentors should be
introduced to each other. The Mentors would help ‘freshers’ in settling
down. This makes sure that ‘freshers’ have some seniors to fall back on
without the fear of ragging and would serve by way of “peer counselling”.
This model has been implemented in some places and has been successful.
The third year Mentors and the faculty in-charge should oversee the
working of the Mentoring Cell and make sure that the Mentors don’t
misuse their powers.

5.20 We also recommend that anonymous random surveys must be conducted
by each institution, across the entire 1st year batch of students (‘freshers’)
every fortnight during the first three months of the academic session in
order to verify and cross-check whether the campus is indeed free of
ragging or not. The institution may design its own methodology of
conducting such a survey. It is extremely important that the institution
does not compromise the anonymity of the whistle blowers.

5.21 The job requirement for the warden calls for a dedicated cadre of trained
and specially qualified professionals. In a situation of shortage of teachers
in higher education, sparing academics for the duties of wardens also
needs to be reviewed. We feel that it is unfair to thrust this specialized
responsibility on teachers and other academics who have to discharge the
functions in addition to the demands of teaching or research. This is not,
however, to suggest that academics can not discharge the obligations of
the warden, indeed a large number of them are already doing it
successfully, but this arrangement is not desirable in all cases. We
recommend that the UGC and other regulatory bodies should lay down the
eligibility of the post of warden reflecting both the command and control
aspects of maintaining discipline, as well as the softer skills of counselling
and communicating with the youth outside of the class-room situations.
The post of warden must carry the necessary incentive to attract the right
type of eligible candidates, and motivate the incumbent.

5.22 We recommend that in the light of the increasing number of private
commercially managed lodges or hostels outside campuses, such hostels
and management must be registered with the local police authorities and
permission to start such hostels or register them must necessarily be
recommended by the Heads of educational institutions. It should be
mandatory for both local police, local administration as well the
institutional authorities to ensure vigil on incidents that may come with in
the definition of ragging. Managements of such private hostels should be
responsible for non-reporting of cases of ragging in such premises. Local
authorities as well as the institutional authorities should be responsible for
action in the event of ragging in such premises, just as they would be for
incidents within campuses. The Committee also recommends that besides
registering private hostels as stated above, the towns or cities where
educational institutions are located should be apportioned as sectors
among faculty members, as is being done by some institutions, so that they
could maintain vigil and report any incidents of ragging outside campuses
and en route while ‘freshers’ commute.

5.23 The Committee respects the autonomy of academic institutions and
believes that to the extent possible incidents of harassment of ‘freshers’ by
seniors should be dealt with under the prevalent ordinances or statutes
and the procedures prescribed thereunder or under the provisions of the
relevant State law. However, where the victim or his/her parent/guardian
is not satisfied with the action taken by the Head of the institution or by
other institutional authorities, or where the Head of the institution is of
the opinion that the incident ought to be so reported, it must be
mandatory for the institution to file a First Information Report with the
local police authorities. Such reports should also be made to the civil
Authorities (such as Sub Divisional Magistrate, Deputy Commissioner or
District Magistrate), the higher Police Authorities (Commissioner or
Superintendent of Police or his Deputies) and also to the media for wider
dissemination. In incidents of extreme sensitivity or grave consequences,
such reports should also be made to the appropriate State Authorities.
Media reports may at times kindle the interest of civil society activists and
Non Government Organizations, whose involvement in tackling incidents
of ragging or the prevention of such incidents must be welcomed and not
looked upon as any hindrance. Universities and State or Central
Governments should also encourage institutional authorities to share
information in respect of ragging, rather than sweeping any incident under
the carpet; we believe that reporting information about incidents of
ragging contributes to the prevention and recurrence of such incidents,
while attempts to cover up only result in more unreported incidents taking
place and matters getting out of control for the authorities. The Committee
expects the sub-divisional, district and divisional or State level authorities
also to share information rather than prevent access to information for the
media and the civil society.

5.24 The Committee recommends that institutions must adhere to complaints
in regard to ragging or any suo motu information in respect thereof, which
its authorities may come across promptly, and all relevant and necessary
action must be attended to with great despatch. The complaints or
information in regard to ragging could be oral or written and even from
third parties and the confidentiality of the source of information must be
protected at all costs. Remedial action must be initiated and completed
with in the week of the incident itself so that complaints do not linger on
and allow either interest in pursuing the matter to vane or enable the
culprits to tamper evidence or influence witnesses.

5.25 The Committee recommends that preventing or acting against ragging
should be the collective responsibility of all levels and sections of
authorities or functionaries with in the institution i.e. administrative head,
teaching faculty and non-teaching employees and not merely that of the
specific body constituted for prevention of ragging. In case of any incident
taking place all the sections must co-ordinate with the sense of moral
propriety and share the responsibility and accountability.

5.26 The burden of proof must, in the opinion of the Committee, lie on the
perpetrator and not on the victim to prove that ragging did not take place.
As mentioned earlier in the previous Chapter, dealing with the
Observations of the Committee, we did not come across any significant
instance of implementing the earlier directions of the Apex Court in regard
to collective punishment in those cases where the perpetrators could not
be identified. Nevertheless, the concept of collective fines or punishment is
a time-tested method of making both active as well as passive participants
or abettors pay for the crime and therefore we recommend that collective
punishment must continue to be in force, with a more effective monitoring
at higher levels.

5.27 Wardens must be accessible at all hours and therefore it is important that
they be available on telephone and other modes of communication -
therefore, we recommend that wardens must be issued mobile phones by
the institutions and the details of their telephone number must be widely
publicised. Similarly, the telephone numbers of the other important
functionaries – Heads of institutions, faculty members, members of the
anti-ragging committees, district and sub-divisional authorities and state
authorities where relevant, should also be widely disseminated for the
needy to get in touch or seek help in emergencies. The Committee
recommends that brochures or booklet/leaflet distributed to each student
at the beginning of each academic session for obtaining undertaking not to
indulge or abet ragging, shall contain the blueprint of prevention and
methods of redress.

5.28 At the level of the District, we recommend a District level Anti-Ragging
Committee, which should consist of the Heads of Higher Education
Institutions as members. It should be headed by the District
Collector/Deputy Commissioner/District Magistrate and should also have
the Superintendent of Police/ SSP of the District as member. The
Additional District Magistrate should be a member-secretary of the
Committee, which should also have representation of the local media and
district level Non Government Organizations actively associated in youth
development programmes, as well as representatives of all student
organizations. The District level Committee should hold preparatory
meetings during the summer vacation meetings to take stock of the state of
preparedness of each institution and their compliance with the policies
and directions or guidelines of the appropriate bodies, the
university/State/Central authorities; and the Apex Court’s guidelines in
regard to curbing the menace of ragging. We have already emphasized on
the need for publicity campaigns, summer months may be appropriate to
launch such campaigns. Some of the role expectations from the District
level Committees have already been mentioned in the preceding
paragraphs dealing with activities at the level of Schools as well as higher
education institutions and therefore are not being repeated.

5.29 We have thought through the suggestion that the District level Committee
should function as some sort of an appellate forum to the action taken by
the institution level Anti-Ragging Committee. We feel that this is neither
necessary nor desirable. It is not necessary in the context of the
recommendation that we propose to make in respect of the scheme of
penalty later in this Chapter. It is not desirable from the point of view that
such a mechanism lends an extra-campus dimension to the tackling of
intra-campus disciplinary matters. All matters of discipline within
teaching institutions, in our opinion, must be resolved within the campus
- except those impinging on law and order or breach of peace or public
tranquillity, all of which should be dealt with under the penal laws of the
land; fortifying of which is being suggested by us later on.

5.30 At the level of the University, we recommend that there should be a
Monitoring Cell on Ragging, which should coordinate with the affiliated
colleges and institutions under its domain. The Cell should call for reports
from the Heads of institutions in regard to the activities of the Anti-
Ragging Committees, Anti-Ragging Squads, Mentoring Cells at the level of
the institution, the compliance with instructions on conducting orientation
programmes, counselling sessions, the incidents of ragging, the problems
faced by wardens or other officials. It should also keep itself abreast of the
decisions of the District level Anti-Ragging Committee. This Monitoring
Cell should also review the efforts made by institutions to publicize antiragging
measures, soliciting of undertaking from parents and students
each year to abstain from ragging activities or willingness to be penalized
for violations; and should function as the prime mover for initiating action
on the part of the appropriate authorities of the university for amending
the Statutes or Ordinances or Bye-laws to facilitate the implementation of
anti-ragging measures at the level of the institution.

5.31 At the State level, we recommend that there should be a Monitoring Cell
at the level of the Chancellor of the State Universities, who may also
coordinate with those of the Central Government institutions located in
the State in which the Governor has a defined role under the relevant law.
Governors, in their capacity as Chancellors of State Universities, can
leverage the influence of their office to ensure that the State Government
as well as the university authorities are suitably instructed to be alert in
regard to ragging. The involvement of Governors would also ensure that
the autonomy of institutions of higher learning is not compromised. In
addition, Governors of States are associated with Central Universities in
their role as Chief Rector/Chancellor etc. and can oversee the function of
coordination where required vis a vis the office of the President of India in
his capacity as the Visitor of the Central Universities and also the Central
Government in the Ministry of Human Resource Development. The State
level Monitoring Cell should receive periodically, and at such frequencies
that it may lay down, status reports from the University level Monitoring
Cells and District level Anti-Ragging Committees.

5.32 The Heads of institutions should be required to submit, to the Vice
Chancellor of the University, weekly reports during first three months of
the reopening of the institution and there after reports each month on the
status of compliance with anti-ragging measures. The Vice Chancellor
should submit fortnightly reports of the University level Monitoring Cell to
the State level Cell under the Chancellor. The fortnightly reports as well as
the weekly reports should be compulsorily shared with the media, so that
‘nil’ reports if any are also in the public domain. Wide publicity, including
mandatory hosting of information on the institutional web-site, should be
given to such ‘nil’ reports so that the media acts as a ‘watchdog’ for feed
back and citizens exercise their Right to Information, in case false claims
are made by institutions with a view to protect their “reputation”.

5.33 At the National level, we recommend that the University Grants
Commission should be responsible for coordinating and monitoring the
anti-ragging movement across the country and should constitute a Board
for Coordination consisting of the following : (i) representative of the
AICTE (ii) a representative of the IITs (iii) a representative of the NITs (iv)
a representative of the IIMs (v) a representative of the MCI (vi)
representative of the DCI (vii) a representative of the NCI (viii) a
representative of the ICAR (viii) a representative of the Veterinary Council
and such other representatives as have to do with higher education and are
not represented in the categories mentioned above. The Committee has
already expressed its disappointment that despite the passage of over six
years since the directions of the Apex Court, neither the UGC nor any of
the statutory authorities in the different sectors of higher education have
focussed their attention in dealing with the menace of ragging. The UGC
should constitute an institutional mechanism – such as a Cell within the
Commission to provide secretarial support for collection of information
and monitoring. There should be no delay on this account for any reason,
the Cell should be carved out of its existing secretariat and should
coordinate with the State level and University level Committees for
effective implementation of anti-ragging measures. The UGC and the other
statutory authorities should intervene wherever their existing guidelines
or academic instructions come in the way of implementation of the
recommendations being made in this report. The Commission and the
other funding bodies should also provide adequate funds to universities
and colleges for carrying out the mandate of curbing incidents of ragging.
It should coordinate with the other statutory authorities (AICTE, MCI,
DCI, ICAR, NCTE, NCI etc) so that timely instructions are sent by such
authorities for enabling or mandating institutions to prevent and prohibit
ragging as well as to take action against institutions that tolerate or do not
report incidents of ragging. The UGC and the other funding agencies
should also work out a mechanism of providing grants-in-aid where
institutions successfully prevent occurrence of ragging or where stern
action is taken by institutions against ragging incidents.

5.34 The UGC and the statutory bodies must issue the necessary guidelines or
regulations prescribing the qualifications and eligibility of persons for
holding the post of wardens in hostels. They should work out a suitable
scale of pay for the post of wardens and also assist institutions to create
sufficient number of posts in the cadre of wardens during the XI th Plan
period for which allocations should be provided by the Commission. Just
as the UGC must ensure that every hostel in the academic institutions
must have a professional warden as stated above the AICTE, MCI etc. and
State Governments should be responsible for the appointments of the
respective Cadre of wardens. The necessary facilitating amendments must
be carried out in the statutes of universities and other institutions for the
purpose of creating the new Cadre. The UGC may also consider
encouraging universities to start specialized courses and programmes of
study in Hostel Administration.

5.35 One class of institutions not covered under our recommendations above is
that of the institutions deemed to be universities, which come under the
purview of the UGC and the Central Government. These institutions,
commonly referred to as “deemed universities” consist of constituent units
which impart all types of higher education including professional
education in engineering, medicine etc. Ragging is stated to be as
prevalent in several of them as in other public institutions or universities
established by legislatures of States or by Parliament. Monitoring the
status of anti-ragging measures and prevention of incidents of ragging in
these institutions would logically be the responsibility of the University
Grants Commission’s national level Monitoring Cell. It should be ensured
that the directions in regard to the setting up of Anti-Ragging Committees,
Anti-Ragging Squads, Mentoring Cells recommended by us in respect of
institutions are complied with by the constituent units of deemed
universities as well. The anti-ragging mechanism at the level of such
constituent units of deemed universities must coordinate its activities vis a
vis the district level mechanism recommended by us in earlier paragraphs.
Similarly, each deemed university should constitute the university level
monitoring cell which should coordinate the anti-ragging activities at the
level of the constituent units and should also report to the Monitoring Cell
at the UGC.

5.36 Compliance with anti-ragging measures recommended and required to be
brought in to effect by institutions of higher education, universities as well
as deemed universities, should be adequately recognized by the UGC and
other statutory authorities while earmarking financial assistance to them
as well as while according them academic recognition or while granting
expansion in capacity of seats in various branches of study or while
sanctioning new programmes of study.

5.37 What should be the role of the State Governments and the Central
Government in the efforts to curb the menace of ragging? We recommend
that the responsibility of generating mass awareness and public opinion
against ragging is a function which the appropriate Governments through
the machinery at their disposal and through intelligent use of the media as
well as cooption of civil society activists can accomplish efficiently. We
recommend that there should be media advisory committees at the level of
each State Government and at the national level with the Central
Government which should chalk out campaign strategies and prepare
effective messages for propagation. The Press Information Bureau of the
Central Government should cull out all reported incidents of ragging and
forward the same to the MHRD / UGC for monitoring – the fact that the
Committee had to depend on the assistance provided by Non Government
Organizations for documentation in regard to the reported incidents of
ragging over the years, points to the absence of any centralized mechanism
to monitor such incidents in an authentic manner.

5.38 Non Government initiatives in anti-ragging movement need to be
supported in order to bring about qualitative improvement and efficient
outcomes. The Committee recommends that the Government of India, and
State Governments support such organizations to widen and intensify
their activities. They could be helped to launch awareness programmes
either on their own or in collaboration with the media related efforts of the
Central or State Governments. Such efforts by the civil society may
encourage parents and other well-wishers of ‘freshers’ to exercise various
rights including the Right to Information for ascertaining the real situation
in our campuses.

5.39 Similarly, the Directorates of Information and Public Relations of State
Governments should ensure that there is widest possible publicity to antiragging
measures adopted in each State or what is prescribed under
national guidelines. In States with anti-ragging laws in place, the
responsibility of enforcement also lies squarely with the State
Governments, including the responsibility to make rules under the Act.
There is a larger reason for launching a sustained media campaign to
sensitize the public, with less than 10% of the population in the relevant
age group of 18 years to 23 years enrolled in all sectors of higher
education, due to the low access to higher education, even less in
professional colleges, lower still in hostels, the public at large being too
distanced from the problems that beset higher educational campuses. The
problem of ragging may therefore seem too exclusive to most and too
remote to happen to oneself – precisely why it needs to occupy centre
stage in public debates on higher education.

5.40 Yet another role of the Central Government, through its agency for
censoring and certifying films, would be to ensure that appropriate
directives are in place so that films which have a deep impress on young
minds do not eulogize ragging; we recommend that such directives should
be issued by the Centre Board of Film Certification, similar to the
instructions on alcoholism, smoking or in regard to vulgarity.

5.41 We also recommend that the policy in regard to migration of students
from one university or institution to another whether in the same State or
outside the State needs to be reviewed by the UGC and the appropriate
statutory authorities. While victims of ragging would find it helpful to be
‘evacuated’ from a notorious institution, the misuse of such a facility by
students trying to gain transfer to institutions of their choice, pretending
to be victims of ragging can also not be ruled out. This issue needs to be
approached with circumspection. Also, it is not necessary that the
institution to which a student victim of ragging is migrated would be less
trouble prone than the one being left behind. In any case there has to be a
case to case approach based on the merit of each.

5.42 We recommend that the National Assessment and Accreditation Council
(NAAC) or other accrediting bodies should factor any incident of ragging
while accrediting institutions in different grades. Thus an institution
which has been unable to prevent ragging or where incidents of ragging do
not abate should be given a negative rating appropriately so that its overall
grading is affected.

5.43 The committee recommends that at the national level, the UGC should
fund a toll-free Helpline which could be accessed by students in distress
owing to ragging related incidents. The Ministry of Communication and
Information Technology should facilitate the establishment, infrastructure
and operation of the proposed Helpline. Any distress message should be
simultaneously relayed to the Head of the Institution, warden or officer of
the Hostels, District authorities including the Superintendent of Police,
and should be web-linked so as to be in the public domain simultaneously
for the media and citizens to access it. A genuine message of distress from
the victim of ragging should make it obligatory for the Head of the
institution and civil authorities to initiate action on the lines already
suggested by us.

5.44 Timely communication being the key to attending to distress signals from
victims of ragging, we recommend that access to mobile phones as well
public phones should be unrestricted in hostels and campuses with
reasonable restrictions on the use of mobile phones in class rooms or other
prohibited places in the Campus through the use of technology (using
jammers) rather than banning the use of cell phones by students. If
necessary the UGC or the universities/institutions should issue
appropriate instructions in this regard.

5.45 The Committee recommends that rather than subjecting each incident of
ragging to a different penal treatment under various sections of the Indian
Penal Code, a new section should be added to the IPC, making ragging a
punishable offence on the analogy of section 498A dealing with cruelty
towards women (against dowry related incidents). We have already
explained that ragging is an offence with a multiplicity of ingredients, each
of which constitutes an offence punishable under the existing provisions of
the Indian Penal Code. We further recommend that the Indian Evidence
Act should also be suitably amended on the analogy of section 113A of that
Act, to shift the burden of proof on those accused of ragging.

5.46 We recommend that a comprehensive definition should be included by
way of explanation in the proposed new section on ragging in the IPC, and
all the punishable ingredients namely, abetment to ragging, criminal
conspiracy to rag, unlawful assembly and rioting while ragging, public
nuisance created during ragging, violation of decency and morals through
ragging, injury to body, causing hurt or grievous hurt, wrongful restraint,
wrongful confinement, use of criminal force, assault as well as sexual
offences or even unnatural offences, extortion, criminal trespass, offences
against property, criminal intimidation and attempts to commit any or all
of the above mentioned offences against the victim should be
incorporated thereto, prescribing appropriate punishments in respect of
one or a group of offences.

5.47 The Committee believes that there can not be a half way house in dealing
with the menace of ragging. Mild and soft approach to ragging, even
though required, has clearly not worked so far in curbing the menace. For
example, punishments in the form of cancellation of admission,
suspension from attending the classes, withholding/withdrawing
scholarships, fellowship and other benefits, individual or collective fines,
debarring from appearing in any test/examination and other evaluation
process, withholding results, debarring from representing the institution
in any national and international meet, tournament, youth festival, etc,
suspension/expulsion from the hostel, rustication from the institution for
periods varying from one or more semesters, expulsion from the
institution and consequent debarring from admission to any other
institution – all exist. The existing punishments can not be substitutes for
the penal provisions of law, but only in addition to the punishments that
must be handed out under the Indian Penal Code. We see no reason why
enrolment in an institution or an academic programme should immunize
perpetrators of heinous crimes which otherwise attract the penal
provisions of law if committed by an adult citizen outside the academic
precincts. Our message to the academic community is to ensure good
governance which will respect human dignity by all concerned. It would
indeed be sad if the penal provisions of law were to be used as a matter of
routine to enforce deterrence in campuses.

5.48 Times have changed since the Hon’ble Supreme Court’s caution of treating
those indulging in ragging not as criminals and advising restraint in the
use of the police force. While the intervention and presence of police in
campuses is to be avoided normally, considering the alarming proportions
the severity of ragging has grown to, we recommend that even as every
possible measure to prevent ragging is taken on the lines recommended by
us in the preceding paragraphs of this Chapter and such action is taken at
every level – that of Schools, Institutions, Districts, Universities, States
and finally at the national level – even as every possible strategy should be
adopted to sensitize the public against the evils and ills of ragging through
the use of the media and the civil society at each of the levels described by
us; the time has come to treat every single incident of ragging, however
isolated or “mild” or “positive” it may appear, with the heaviest hand
possible. In support of our argument we could come across no judicial
pronouncement better than the one in the matter of Thiruvananthapuram
Government Engineering College Vs State of Kerala [WP (C) 656 of 1998;
2000 (2) KLT 11] in which Arijit Pasayat, CJ (as his Lordship then was)
writing for a division bench of the High Court of Kerala held;
“..What was intended to be in good faith and provide untainted fun
is now characterized as physical torture with a sadistic tendency
and sexual perversions. There are few reported cases of loss of life
also. One thing is clear that ragging, which was originally thought
of to be a mere joke, has crossed bounds of decency and had
entered the arena of physical and mental torture. It needs to be
dealt with iron hands…”

5.49 We recommend that the punishment to be meted out has to be exemplary
and justifiably harsh to act as a deterrance against recurrence of such
incidents. We therefore recommend that every single incident of ragging,
where the victim or his parent/guardian or the Head of institution is not
satisfied with the institutional arrangement for action a First Information
Report must be filed compulsorily by the institutional authority with the
local police authorities. We believe that the institutional authorities would
become aware of such incidents through one of the many channels already
identified by us – the anti-ragging squads, anti-ragging committees,
mentoring cells, distress calls redirected by the Help Line, by NGOs, by the
media and so on. Any failure or negligence or deliberate delay on the part
of the institutional authority (comprising of the Head of Institution, the
Warden etc.) to file an FIR with the local police, on the dissatisfaction of
the victim with the institutional redress mechanism or suo motu by the
Head of institution, should render the negligence culpable. Needless to
add that every victim or his parent/guardian of ragging can also file an FIR
directly with the police, but failure on the part of the victim to do so should
not justify the delay, or neglect or failure on the part of the institutional
authorities.

5.50 We recommend that the Criminal Procedure Code should be amended to
ensure that cases involving ragging are tried on the fast-track so that there
are no delays in dealing with such matters, keeping in mind the academic
priorities of students who may be required to depose before the courts to
assist the prosecution while the matter is sub judice.
-0-

S U P R E M E C O U R T O F I N D I A

RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS
Petition(s) for Special Leave to Appeal (Civil) No(s).24295/2004
(From the judgement and order dated 24/06/2004 in WP No. 30845/2003 of the HIGH COURT OF KERALA AT ERNAKULAM) UNIVERSITY OF KERALA Petitioner(s)

VERSUS

COUNCIL, PRINCIPALS’, COLLEGES, KERALA & ORS Respondent(s)

(With appln(s) for intervention and modification and directions and impleadment as party respondent and with prayer for interim relief and office report)

WITH SLP(C) NO. 14356 of 2005

(With appln.(s) for exemption from filing O.T. and c/delay in filing counter affidavit and office report) W.P.(CRL.) NO. 173 of 2006 (With appln.(s) for directions and exemption from filing O.T. and urging addl. ground and with office report) SLP(C) NO. 24296-24299 of 2004 (With prayer for interim relief and office report) Date: 16/05/2007

These Petitions were called on for hearing today.

CORAM : HON’BLE Dr. JUSTICE ARIJIT PASAYAT HON’BLE MR. JUSTICE S.H. KAPADIA

Mr. Gopal Subramaniam, A.S.G. (A.C.) Mrs. Sushma Suri, Adv. Mr. Abhishek Tewari, Adv. For Petitioner(s) Mr. R. Sathish,Adv. Dr. Sushil Balwada, Adv. Mr. Satbir Tillania, Adv. Mr. Anil Karnwal, Adv. Mr. Prashant Kumar, Adv. Ms. Pooja Dhar, Adv. Ms. Ratna Kaul, Adv. for M/s AP & J Chambers, Advs. For Respondent(s) Mr. Ranjit Kumar, Sr.Adv. Mr. E.M.S. Anam,Adv. Mr. Fazlin Anam, Adv. 1 Mr. P.V. Dinesh, Adv. Mrs. Sindhu T.P.,Adv. Mr. P.V. Vinod, Adv. Mr. Sandeep B.K., Adv. Mr. KH. Nobin Singh, Adv. Mr. David Rao, Adv. Mr. S. Biswajit Meitei, Adv. Mr. Manoj Swarup, Adv. Ms. Lalit Kohli, Adv. for M/s. Manoj Swarup & Co., Advs. Mr. T.V. George, Adv. Mr. M.P. Vinod, Adv. Mr. Ajay K. Jain, Adv. Mr. Sjith P., Adv. Mr. K.R. Sasiprabhu, Adv. Mr. Ajit Kumar Sinha,Adv. Mr. M.K. Michael, Adv. Mr. M.K.D. Namboodiri, Adv. Mr. V.G. Pragasam, Adv. Mr. Shivaji M. Jadhav, Adv. Mr. Radha Shyam Jena, Adv. For Res.1-3 & 5 in WP 173/06: Mr. Soli J. Sorabjee, Sr.Adv. Ms. Vibha Datta Makhija Mr. Manish Kumar, Adv. Mr. Ansar Ahmad Chaudhary, Adv.

UPON hearing counsel the Court made the following O R D E R

We have perused the Report of the Committee constituted pursuant to this Court’s order to suggest remedial measures to tackle with the problem of ragging in educational institutions.

An elaborate report has been submitted by the Committee headed by Dr.R.K. Raghavan.

According to the Committee, the following factors need to be focused to tackle with the problem:

(a) Primary responsibility for curbing ragging rests with academic institutions themselves.

(b) Ragging adversely impacts the standards of higher education.

(c) Incentives should be available to institutions for curbing the menace and there should be disincentives for failure to do so.

(d) Enrolment in academic pursuits or a campus life should not immunize any adult citizen from penal provisions of the laws of the land.

(e) Ragging needs to be perceived as failure to inculcate human values from the schooling stage.

(f) Behavioural patterns among students, particularly potential ‘raggers’, need to be identified.

(g) Measures against ragging must deter its recurrence.

(h) Concerted action is required at the level of the school, higher educational institution, district administration, university, State and Central Governments to make any curb effective.

(i) Media and the Civil Society should be involved in this exercise. The Committee has made several recommendations.

For the present, we feel that the following recommendations should be implemented without any further lapse of time.

(1) The punishment to be meted out has to be exemplary and justifiably harsh to act as a deterrent against recurrence of such incidents.

(2) Every single incident of ragging where the victim or his parent/guardian or the Head of institution is not satisfied with the institutional arrangement for action, a First Information Report must be filed without exception by the institutional authorities with the local police authorities. Any failure on the part of the institutional authority or negligence or deliberate delay in lodging the FIR with the local police shall be construed to be an act of culpable negligence on the part of the institutional authority. If any victim or his parent / guardian of ragging intends to file FIR directly with the police, that will not absolve the institutional authority from the requirement of filing the FIR.

(3) Courts should make an effort to ensure that cases involving ragging are taken up on a priority basis to send the correct message that ragging is not only to be discourages but also to be dealt with sternness.

(4) In addition, we direct that the possibility of introducing in the educational curriculum a subject relating to ragging shall be explored by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and the respective State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT). This aspect can be included in the teaching of the subjects “Human Rights”.

(5) In the prospectus to be issued for admission by educational institutions, it shall be clearly stipulated that in case the applicant for admission is found to have indulged in ragging in the past or if it is noticed later that he has indulged in ragging, admission may be refused or he shall be expelled from the educational institution.

(6) The Central Government and the State Governments shall launch a programme giving wide publicity to the menace of ragging and the consequences which follow in case any student is detected to have been involved in ragging.

(7) It shall be the collective responsibility of the authorities and functionaries of the concerned institution, and their role shall also be open to scrutiny for the purpose of finding out whether they have taken effective steps for preventing ragging and in case of their failure, action can be taken; for example, denial of any grant-in-aid or assistance from the State Governments.

(8) Anti-ragging committees and squads shall be forthwith formed by the institutions and it shall be the job of the committee or the squad, as the case may be, to see that the Committee’s recommendations, more for particularly those noted above, are observed without exception and if it is noticed that there is any deviation, the same shall be forthwith brought to the notice of this Court.

(9) The Committee constituted pursuant to the order of this Court shall continue to monitor the functioning of the anti-ragging committees and the squads to be formed. They shall also monitor the implementation of the recommendations to which reference has been made above.

Post these matters in September, 2007 for further directions on the recommendations received from the Committee.

I.A.No.5/2007 in S.L.P.(C) No.24295/2004:
Issue notice.

Response, if any, by the University shall be filed within four weeks.

Rejoinder, if any, within four weeks thereafter.

Mr. Gopal Subramaniam, learned amicus curiae shall also indicate his views.

Writ Petition (Crl.) No.173/2006: List this petition separately in September, 2007. (N. Annapurna) (Madhu Saxena) Court Master Court Master 5

Despite that rather forbidding title, I think I can take the liberty to begin with a personal anecdote. In any case, this is not a sociological report or a research article, and can claim the authority of neither: the piece is far more an attempt to gauge the fuller implications (only dimly sensed then) of some things I went through/saw/heard about in my first few months in college. It is an attempt to somewhat illuminate that very complex and enigmatic phenomenon, sexual ragging — that is, the few forms of it I came across — not diluting its fundamentally inegalitarian and cruel aspect but seeking to ground its role in terms of larger social structures and processes. That, I feel, can not only enhance our understanding of its complex (dys)functionality but inform and hone attempts at counteraction.

In my first day in college, after being duly lodged in my room in the ‘residence’ (in St Stephen’s College, Delhi), I was summoned to interact with a certain senior student of my block (it was a male block, and this story — as the purview of the article — involves ragging within males). He informed me that I would have to become acquainted with the customs and ‘traditions’ of the hostel. Apparently, it was exclusively meant for men who liked others of the same sex — and the rite of initiation was something called ‘lifting’. For those not into ragging parlance, the process entails stripping a junior followed by squirting soap, cream or shaving gel on the genitals, in public. Often, juniors are also asked to dance in couples, pose in sexual positions with each other or seniors, and be even photographed doing so — none of which are strictly speaking ‘lifting’ but which may take place in the same extended session.

For someone who believes in sexual choice and freedom (though not ‘out’ at that stage), this was unexpected behaviour. Here was what seemed to be an overt celebration of something socially tabooed, yet it was not as much the finding of an enabling alternative space/activity, as yet another repressive norm by itself, forced on each unsuspecting fresher.

What I soon discovered was that this was actually very homophobic behaviour, that is, accompanied by a simultaneous and seemingly paradoxical fear and loathing of homosexuality or homosexuals beyond parodical enactment. And as I will try to show, it works to enforce ‘compulsory heterosexuality’, that is, establishing heterosexual as the norm for all, and homosexuality as deviant.

Sexual ragging is also linked to masculine identity formation — one still hears that age-old excuse for ragging, toughening and maturing a ‘boy’ to be a ‘man’ — which actually initiates him into a system of inter-male relations, hierarchical within itself yet privileging men as a whole and excluding/disempowering women2. In this article, I attempt to explicate the precise dynamics of this process as specific to lifting and related sexual ragging.

But lifting, along with the other forms of sexual ragging it often accompanies, is by no measure a unilateral or simple activity — masculine identity formation, homosocial acceptance, social and sexual hierarchies, homosexual fantasy, role-playing, voyeurism, exhibitionism — all inform its dynamics. Above all, it is situated in the anxiety-laden intersection between gender identity and homosocial group formation on one hand, and sexual behaviours/roles, desires/fantasies on the other.

Lifting: its gender/sexuality politics

In keeping with arguments defending other kinds of sexual ragging, lifting is touted as an activity that is essentially fun — it apparently involves defiance and is anti-authority, and thus a part of adolescent self-assertion that is implicitly, therefore, a harmless vent. This makes it appear simultaneously attractively defiant and ultimately not threatening to the establishment (local college authority to the macro-level of patriarchy) in any way.

The activity takes place in closed rooms, supposedly hidden from college authorities, and involves an aura of illicit sexual behaviour. This picture of lifting glosses over the power inequation, as it is presented as fun for all, and not for the seniors at the expense of the juniors.

However, the pleasure in lifting is located not so much in contravening socially acceptable behaviour, as much as making and seeing others break them. Thus, besides being obviously and fundamentally unequal in agency, it does not actually challenge sexual norms as much as use them to victimize and inflict.

To carry over from the point: The conventional discourses of sexuality and sexual behaviour, and in extension, of masculinity, are sustained: breaking the norm makes one vulnerable, and involves exposure and ridicule. Thus, partaking pleasure in this consolidates the seniors’ own position within the norm, not against it. The parody of homosexuality reinforces heterosexual masculinity as normal, thus enforcing uniformity of sexual and gender identity in preparation for the heterosexual adult world all of them are to enter shortly.

I do not suggest any single correspondence between homosexuality and gender identity (we have both gender-conforming and gender-defying discourses of male homosexuality — homosexuals need not necessarily be seen as effeminate.)

But if ragging (among boys) is linked to masculine identity formation, that is, the giving and gaining of a (male’s) position and selfhood in a patriarchal and hierarchical socio-economic system, the notion of masculinity refers centrally to sexuality and sexual behaviors. ‘Masculine’ entails its own appropriate sexual behaviour/role, with corresponding privileges in patriarchy. Sexual roles that invite anxiety are those that involve (or are thought to involve) passivity, vulnerability, lack of control — e.g. the ‘bottom’ role in gender-dissonant discourses of homosexuality (those which construct homosexual(s)/ity as divided into active/passive and parallel this with masculine/feminine.)

However, the category of homosexuality is also vulnerable as a whole, as heterosexual masculinity defines itself as against the homosexual, which becomes a somewhat arbitrarily mapped category of perversion, effeminacy and all the other horrors that cut into the social status, mental normalcy, and physical capability thus conflated with masculinity.

This double anxiety over passivity and deviant sexuality informs the dynamics of lifting. Passivity and exposure, with the ultimate threat of emasculation, are inherent in the very act of getting stripped, and having gel sprayed onto the genitals. The symbolic implications of phallic reduction, so strongly suggested on the physical level of the shriveled, wet penis, are more fully fleshed out in enactments of sexual poses.

The junior, then, is forced into sexually passive and/or ‘deviant’ behaviour (more precisely, enactments of such), which weakens him and strengthens the overseeing seniors’ position in relation to him. One may see seniors posing in ‘superior’ sodomitic poses with juniors, but even more frequent are juniors being made to pose among themselves: thus, both sexual passivity and ‘deviance’ as categories are conflated and relegated to externality (as opposed to possibilities in themselves) by the seniors. Internal or psychic fissures, thus, are projected to be resolved in the external fissured situation that ragging entails.

But it is not only a position of victimhood for the junior, it is also a sort of ‘compulsory opportunity’ that he is confronted with — to hide his embarrassment, endure the exposure, and thus resist the weakened role. Thus a process of recognition and initiation is set up, into the male ‘fraternity’ within the college and the larger patriarchal structure outside: with its corresponding collusion of hierarchy and privilege. Conversely, deviating means not only a denial of such entitlement but also the lack of access to the other viable position within patriarchy, if comparatively powerless: that of women.

The hierarchy is not only between male and female, but within males as well (though preserving their privilege as a group). Homosocial bonding, in larger society but also in college or, is a complex interplay of hierarchy and friendship, subordination and entitlement. One can invoke classic psychoanalytic theory, where such tension is the crux of masculine identity formation, the oedipal tug-of-war between admiration/aspiration and rebellion/rejection in the son-father relationship. I do not suggest that sexual ragging involves an exactly similar hierarchised binary — senior-junior interactions are much too numerous and fleeting for that — but that interactions here are analogous in nature, or perhaps homologous (i.e. part of a chain of pairs, which vary but build upon the same basic structure.)

The binding agent, which permits and perpetuates its existence, is not just the senior’s brute force, but desire on the part of the junior — homosocial desire proceeding from the inferior position to that of the superior — with the junior’s discursive3 acceptance of inter-male hierarchy as part of masculine identity, the admiration of role models, and aspiration to entitlement within the structure. Pleasure, however, is located in the reverse configuration to desire: pleasure deriving from the seniors’ own consolidation of identity using the juniors as foils.

It is easy to ‘gender’ this structure, so to speak: if the senior is masculinised, the junior is correspondingly feminised until, through his endurance of exposure and embarrassment, he is entitled to an equal masculinity. The junior is both a (severely restricted) agent in a discourse of masculine development and growth, and a foil to the seniors’ masculinity. He has to aspire to and enter their alliance. Gender deviance and sexual deviance (homosexual = feminine/effeminate) are usually simply made parallel in such a scenario.

I have sought to make clear that the process of masculine socialisation, though taking place under lopsided distribution of agency, takes place only on a mutual common ground of discourse. This explains why it is so hard to escape lifting, or to challenge it. Thus sexual ragging is so intractable and enduring for anyone wishing to challenge its hold on the freshers on grounds of violation, cruelty, or abuse. Countering it, therefore, requires countering the very premises it rests upon.

Hierarchy : Solidarity / Fantasy : Ritual

Tackling the uneasy, anxiety-causing overlaps between sanctioned homosocial desire (see previous section) and the dangerous realm of homosexual desire — this is the other problematic that informs the nature and function of sexual ragging. One can fruitfully refer to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s analysis of masculine homosocial bonding as fraught with anxieties and paradoxes, demanding intensity and physicality, aspiration and admiration, but simultaneously targeting any sign of homosexual affiliation, perceived or real.

This gives 19th century England with rise to ‘homosexual panic’, something Sedgwick situates as setting in among men in the psychologisation and secularisation of homosexuality as a category, coupled with much sharper vigilance and punitive retribution, social and legal. This categorisation infiltrated Indian society during colonisation and is still very much extant, even if it has been countered somewhat in the west.

One way of relating lifting to homosexual panic is to interpret it as serving as a manner of purgation for the senior, allowing a camouflage (a cloak, so to say) as well as a vent for impermissible fantasies of desire and arousal. The rigidly enforced hierarchy, then, serves to avert interrogation, and armours against the vulnerability that desire entails, and the anxiety the consciousness of desire produces. In fact, the very possibility of desire is enough cause for uneasiness in the sharply vigilant atmosphere of homophobia.

This uncomfortably close contact that homosociality (as in a hostel) involves is therefore discomfiting for both seniors and juniors, but the hierarchy homosociality entails has different effects. For the junior, it is a strong spur to desire4, but at the same time acts to curb it: along with which come the inevitable subversive tensions of hierarchy, the attraction of rebellion against and displacement of the seniors. For the senior, hierarchy can be both a protection from and a reaction to homophobia, and so enables desire, but in a very different equation. No side, however, is strong enough in position to be ever too far from the “quicksand” of inter-male desire.

Lifting, to me, therefore seems to involve a way to handle homosexual panic by transforming scenarios of desire into ritual: a group ritual of ‘solidarity’ and ‘fraternisation’, that retains the appropriate hierarchy but wards off the threat of homosexual association inherent in that hierarchy (for both seniors/juniors) through the fragile illusion of homosocial bonding.

At this point, it would not be inappropriate to dwell on some of the interesting similarities between lifting and initiation rituals. The maintenance of secrecy, the dichotomy of exclusion from/ inclusion into a group, a set ritual and procedure which is gradually revealed to the initiate, the test of the initiate’s resistance and endurance — these are all archetypal patterns of initiation rituals which are replicated to varying extents in lifting. The process is much more arbitrary, much less structured in case of lifting — and the other aspects discussed previously impinge on it.

Moreover, the aura of initiation rituals is often deliberately (and a trifle bathetically) exuded by seniors in serio-comic intimidation — my hostel had, through its ‘history’, acquired and flaunted the tag of a homosexual association (Allnutt North Gay Men’s Association), and we juniors were told that there were rituals and procedures to be followed to be its members (some, like an annual Feb 14th dinner, had an existence beyond ragging.)

In any case, the aura of subversion, forbidden activity, secrecy — consciously put-on though they may be — effect a delicate balancing of hierarchy and the appearance of solidarity, the maintenance of which is for the vested interests of both sides. With the attractive lure of being anti-authoritarian (against administration/parental expectation etc.), sexual ragging can (simultaneously) assume the aura of subversion, the function of the vent, and the security of hierarchy. (Hierarchy signifies both security and subordination for the juniors as it implicitly portends entitlement and masculine privilege for them.)

Could juniors, then, enjoy it — at least in less severe cases? Most of the boys of my year I came to know claimed that though it was intimidating at first, it would become a lot of fun when one was in it. The solidarity myth acts to counter the tensions of subordination as well, and is the first step to entitlement — to be in the group with so-and-so senior, who has so-and-so as girlfriend, or scored such-and-such in the last examination…

Voyeurism/Exhibitionism

The politics of voyeurism is clear, that of exhibitionism maybe less so. To be the voyeur is usually the privileged position of the senior, and the viewer:viewee relation is an extension of control over the situation, the junior and the junior’s body, in a way similar to that of physical ragging. In another sense, however, juniors can be voyeurs, too — viewing with intent interest the spectacle of other juniors in ragging, reporting and finding out what happened to so-and-so — voyeurs metaphorically even when not literally. Voyeurism here becomes the overt expression of the comparison/competition dynamics fostered in the homosocial system.

In nude photographs, photographs displaying one’s body, or sexual poses — exhibition by seniors may not so much be the confident exaltation of power-in-the-body, as the knowledge that one would not encounter a challenging gaze. But exhibitionism can have interesting subversive implications for juniors. To cite a photo I came across (taking during the ragging period) — it had a group of juniors simulating oral sex with each other, grinning and clearly posing for the camera. Here was the simultaneous humorous flaunting of ‘superior’/active roles, and parodical rejection of ‘inferior’ roles, both hinged on the power of exhibition — the vulnerability of exposure in ragging was thus countered by invoking it but transforming it into display. Unfortunately, I do not know when, where and by whom the photo was taken — that is, what the external conditions under which this happened were.

Carnivalesque After some familiarity had already been established between a particular senior-junior group, especially among those hailing from the same community – as among Bengalis, lifting sometimes took interesting turns. Strictly speaking, this would still be ragging as the seniors would decide time and place and enforce the juniors to come, and the reigns would still be in their hands. However, in such a case the interaction is further complicated by the direct play and negotiation of roles by seniors.

While ALL sexual ragging involves negotiation with accepted discourses of sexuality and their own identity for not only the juniors but also the seniors, here, in particular, the typical confrontational position of senior/junior seems to be broken down somewhat. Even seniors take part in the ‘ritual’ voluntarily. Another recurrent impression is of role-playing becoming game: with people posing as couples in changing sexual configurations, dancing together naked, even playing grabbing/avoiding games.

Do I go too far in detecting elements of the carnivalesque? Sometimes, the senior vacillates between the superior role of the overseer of freshers who enact, and a participator/enactor himself. Thus, we have a mutual and somewhat mobile negotiations of binaries like senior:junior, man(boy):woman(girl), active:passive, homosexual enactor:straight observer, viewer:viewee. All of these are power-relations; the ritual, in this case, proceeds paradoxically through game, play, and destabilisation. It is a play with gender/sexual roles — but one with the eventual result of reinforcing existing ones, once the session was over — in the typical subversion-containment pattern of the carnival.

Conclusion?

What is the utility of this article today, when sexual ragging is said to have declined in Delhi University, or when in any case the correct approach in dealing with ragging is usually thought to be stringent administrative prohibition? A lengthy analysis does not serve much purpose if the attempt is just to stop the overt manifestations of a complex phenomenon through legislation and retribution. I am not suggesting that the college authorities must not punish a senior who, say, strips and traumatises a junior. But if I have listed the various patterns, implications and possibilities within sexual ragging it is to show that these are continuous with social processes and discourses external to the immediate college environment, and thus will never entirely die down — merely change forms — unless counteractive action also works apart from the administration-student system, and tackles broader issues of masculinity, patriarchy and heterosexism among students and in society.

Otherwise, we might just be left with a proteus that retracts or even seemingly disappears in these times of awareness and Supreme Court rulings, but reappears in ever new forms once the vigilance dies down — as it will.

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

By Dr SAM VANKIN

(“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 Vankin

]]> http://stopragging.org/2005/04/06/traumas-as-social-interactions/feed/ 0 Shivam Vij http://stopragging.org/2005/03/22/how-i-was-ragged-at-iit-delhi-and-why-it-was-no-joke-1987/ http://stopragging.org/2005/03/22/how-i-was-ragged-at-iit-delhi-and-why-it-was-no-joke-1987/#comments Tue, 22 Mar 2005 16:12:22 +0000 Shivam Vij http://stopragging.org/?p=55 ]]> By SUJIT SARAF

[This article was written by Sujit Saraf for StopRagging.org in March 2005. He  is a film-maker and playwright who lives in California. He has been associated with IIT Delhi both as a student and an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He is author of the novel The Peacock Throne.]

I went to IIT Delhi in the fall of nineteen eighty seven. I had been living in Delhi for two years but I was still a small-town boy from Bihar, intimidated by tall buildings and a steady stream of traffic. Even now, after television and the internet and all that, I meet people in my town who, when told about my college and career, respond- ITI? ek hamaare yahaan bhii hai.

When I arrived at my hostel inside the IIT campus, I found a notice posted in the lobby, saying ‘Ragging is banned in the Institute.’ I had come with horrible stories of ragging in mind, told by friends, relatives and well-wishers. My father, whose knowledge of college life was thirty years out of date, wrote me in a letter that I was to ‘take care to avoid rigging in IIT’. I remember he mis-spelt the word, and he seemed to think my participation was voluntary. I entered the hostel, was given my room, and transferred my luggage into it. I was on my knees ten minutes later with a leash around my neck, announcing my name at the top of my voice and reciting the hostel pledge, which granted every senior the right to fuck me in the arse, then bust it into eight thousand pieces, mash some pieces into a bharta, and feed the rest to the dogs of the hostel warden.

It sounds funny now, even to me. We did many things in that one month that now appear harmless and amusing. We stood on benches in the dining hall and recited the national anthem, we crawled on all fours and barked like dogs, we marched backwards in unison, we wore our clothes inside out, we ranerrands for our seniors, we brought them cigarettes and Campa Cola, wecleaned their rooms and made their beds, we did push-ups in thestreet, we barked and shouted and whispered and lived our livesaccording to the prescriptions of boys barely a year older than us.Finally, we dropped our trousers so they could look at our penises. We held one another’s penises and estimated their lengths, we formed long human trains – each train car holding the penis of the car in front -and whistled our way through hostel corridors at top speed, turning left and right in response to semaphores controlled by our seniors. We formed human pyramids, simulated orgies, stripped naked, then wore our underpants over our pants, turning ourselves into ‘The Phantom’ of comic books.

After so many years, I can list these ‘forms of ragging’ dispassionately, 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. Brutality and oppression remain just that, no matter the name chosen for them, no matter the circumstances in which they are exercised.

Who were these seniors, and why did they humiliate us so? They seemed powerful then, but they were boys like us, older by a year or two or three. They had endured similar humiliation in their time. Their seniority in the hostel gave them, for the first time in their lives, power over other human beings – power to command fear, subjugate and humiliate.

They exercised this power with abandon, and they had developed countless theories – from the facetious to the philosophical – to support their sadism. Ragging forces you to stay up late, they said, and this is useful when you must prepare for difficult examinations. Ragging breaks the ice between seniors and juniors. Ragging brings the freshman – or the ‘fachchaa’ – into intimate contact with peers and seniors, and this turns the hostel into a home. Ragging helps the freshman break out of his shell and lose his inhibitions. And finally, said our seniors sententiously, ragging teaches you humility. It prepares you for the ‘real’ world.

Presumably, if you have been insulted a sufficient number of times in college, you will have acquired the virtue of patience when your boss insults you in the real world. Like a well trained dog, you will not bark and lose your job. Instead, you will wag your tail, look the other way, and pretend the abuse was meant for someone else. Our seniors proclaimed – and some actually believed – that they had acquired this wisdom through age and experience, and they were now anxious to pass it down to us. Many were genuinely surprised that we were not grateful for this favour.

These arguments did not wash with us, of course. I was supposed to come closer to my peers after our mutual penis-measuring ceremony. Shared humiliation was supposed to draw us close together. Instead it boxed us into shells. It destroyed our first foray into adulthood. It robbed us of valuable moments in our lives. It turned our first month in college into a nightmare.

As our first year passed, so did memories of our humiliation. Life in the hostel became pleasant once we realized we could walk about with our pants on, and did not need to spring to attention whenever a senior passed us. Six months later, ragging was an amusing episode inour past. Twelve months later, most of us firmly believed it was our duty to pass on the wisdom we had acquired through age and experience. We ragged the next class of freshmen ferociously and methodically, and were genuinely surprised that they were not grateful for this favour.

Some people in my batch forced a freshman to sit on a corn-cob and had him smoke a cigarette with the lit end inside his mouth. That incident became a ragging ‘case’, drew much attention, lead to the expulsion of the raggers, and incited a short-lived signature campaign to defend the raggers as boys having fun. I began a ’stop ragging’ campaign that died quickly when neither my batch-mates, nor the freshmen I was trying to save, appeared enthusiastic. For my batch-mates, the logic of ragging was irrefutable. They now had happy memories of their own initiation into hostel life, and could not remember ever having disliked it.

For freshmen, getting ragged for a month was a rite of passage that would ensure them free books and the patronage of someone powerful. It was easier to ‘get it over with’ than be ostracized (so they were told) for the rest of their stay in the hostel. When they were led on leashes, some had ingratiating smiles on their faces. My seniors were wrong. I never managed to strike a friendship with any of them, unable to forget the moments of humiliation.

When I left IIT, everyone I counted as a friend was someone I had met after the ragging period. After travelling the entire world, working at many jobs in many capacities and passing through many stages in life, I have never found any use for the education my seniors so generously imparted tome. I was never called upon to suffer humiliation in silence, bark like a dog to break the ice with my peers, managers or sub-ordinates, or insult my co-workers to gain their confidence.

But of course, my seniors had no inkling of the real world themselves. They were newly pubescent boys who fancied themselves to be men. After all the pretentious talk of their responsibility to make men out of us, their entire exercise of power came down to the scrutiny of a shrivelled-up penis, of a modest teenager brought up by conservative parents standing naked amidst ten soulless boys, trembling in horror, his pants wrapped about his ankles. Ragging is a case study for Sigmund Freud, nothing more.

I have often wondered why ragging never comes to an end, in spite of all the noise made about it among professors, politicians and the parents of boys who suffer it. IIT had, in my time, a disciplinary committee of professors whose job was to police ragging by making surprise visits to hostels. They drove in a tell-tale white Maruti van, whose arrival was announced by a freshman posted at the entrance long before the professors had time to open the doors, get out of the van and lumber into the hostel.

The wise professors would find a group of seniors giving an intense tutorial to freshmen on academic life in IIT, and go home to sleep in peace. The disciplinary committee – whose very name made it ridiculous, because we called it ‘disco’ – spent its time discussing cases of ragging, fixing proportionate punishment, deciding what was ‘mental ragging’ and what was ‘physical ragging’ over endless cups of chai in somnolent meetings. Like all other committees, its function was to manage ragging – not stop it – and to prevent incidents of ragging from ballooning into ‘cases’.

Like all other committees, it was also inept at its job, so we had one or two ‘cases’ every year which made their way into newspapers, caused much heartburn, and resulted in the expulsion of those who had ‘overstepped the bounds’, after which everyone was satisfied that something had been done.

I do not want to over-simplify the situation. Even if the faculty at colleges were sincere about stopping ragging, and even if they had the support of student representatives, it is unlikely that ragging will completely stop. Educational seminars, sensitization classes and information dissemination may help but, as the all-forgiving cliche insists, boys will be boys. I remember how we sniggered at such lectures, how little respect we had for all attempts to discipline us, and with what ridicule we regarded the notice saying ‘Ragging is banned in the Institute’.

Years later, when I went back to teach in IIT, I asked my students – all freshmen – whether they were being ragged in their hostels, and if I could do anything to help them. We have no such thing nowadays, I was told. Your time is now gone, they said, as are the problems of your time. I knew they were lying, and there was little I could do about it.

Ragging is not an exclusively Indian phenomenon. We have no monopoly on brutality. Hazing rituals are common in the ‘Greek societies’ on American campuses. My room-mate at Berkeley nearly died at an initiation ritual in his fraternity, where he was made to drink many glasses of vodka in a short period of time. There is a very important difference between hazing in Greek societies and ragging in Indian college hostels. Membership to a Greek society is voluntary. Those who study at a university do not have to become members, and most do not. Those who study in IIT must become members of hostels – this may have changed since my days – and suffer the humiliation that comes with it.

Aside from the Greek societies, however, there is little or no raggingin the dormitories on American campuses. At my dormitory in Berkeley, we went on an overnight retreat and had coffee-socials to break the ice between newcomers and old-timers. We ate together, chatted, played racquet ball and squash, watched football games, and these brought us closer.

The very concept of ragging was unknown. I cannot say this with certainty, but this may be because American college students are much closer to adulthood. Many are already in their twenties, most have to earn their way through college or take loans to pay for their education, and almost all are on their own. Their attitude to college is very different from that of Indian boys, who have been dispatched to the campus by loving parents, borne on a cushion of money and support that they did not earn.

A college campus cannot exist completely outside the system that enfolds it. The prevention of ragging through draconian rules may be impossible. You cannot imprison freshmen into a hostel of their own, forbid contact between freshmen and seniors, or electrocute seniors who humiliate a freshman. Many of the frustrations that a student expresses through ragging are really brought by him from the world outside the campus. Given a chance to release those feelings, he will.

The reason there is little or no ragging on American campuses may just be that college students are adults, and are treated as such. They do not spring up with a ‘Sir’ when professors walk in, they are encouraged to argue and protest, they live in relatively free environments where the only restricted activity is that which harms others.

If Indian students were shown the same respect, they may begin to find ragging juvenile. There remains no reason, in the twenty first century, to segregate voting-age adults into unisex dormitories. Boys and girls should live in the same hostel. They should come to their hostels and leave them as they please, with no curfew hours. They should be allowed to mix freely, speak freely, and enjoy every privilege an adult is entitled to. They are eighteen, they can take care of themselves. Should they violate rules or break the law, they should receive proportionate punishment. These ideas may create conditions that make ragging redundant and allow it to wither away.

[This article was written by Sujit Saraf for StopRagging.org in July 2004. He  is a film-maker and playwright who lives in California. He has been associated with IIT Delhi both as a student and an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He is author of the novel The Peacock Throne. An abridged version of this essay was published in Tehelka.]

There have been interesting responses to this article: Annie Zaidi | Sunil Deepak | Saurabh Nanda | Jaya Jha

A fresher at MNREC (now known as the Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology), Allahabad is asked to ride a buffalo. The seniors gleefully look on as a visibly tense boy mounts the buffalo. The buffalo, not willing to be a part of the act, shrugs and the young boy falls on his head and dies of haemorrhage. That’s how fatal ragging can become. And often it is too late to realise that ragging is not fun anymore.

I was a part of the same institution from 1988 to 1992 as a student of mechanical engineering. MNREC had a very ‘strong tradition’ of ragging. It all started on day one – with boys wearing white shirts, white trousers and black shoes. The sheer ‘maturity’ of this tradition can be seen in the details – the third button, from the top, of the white shirt was red so that a fresher always looked at it, walking or talking. A forced mark of respect! The girls wore white salwar kameez and black shoes. Their well oiled hair adored red ribbons. And all of this for three long months – of endless days and nights! And in this entire period whenever we met a senior, anywhere, we had to bend down at 90 degrees as a mark of respect. Not doing so conveyed that we were being rude and were rewarded with slaps and kicks. Throughout this period ragging continued, day in and night out. Walking towards the classes or returning back was always a terrifying experience.

Our regional, caste and class affiliations added another dimension to the ragging saga. A year before I joined college, the boys from the hills had some conflict with the folks from the Meerut region. I belonged to the hills so any senior from Meerut who walked past me simply slapped me as a chore. This happened with most of us from the hills. Likewise, the hill seniors bashed juniors from Meerut. Boys from lower caste, tribals and minorities too got a raw deal. This was my first encounter with ‘India’ that I was not exposed too. For me, caste and class till then had existed only in the textbooks.

Stripping, enacting vulgar postures, dirty talks about female members of one’s family, slapping, kicking, beating… it was all so commonplace and I hated every moment of it. But I did not know that the worse was yet to come.

The end of this obscene three months period was marked by something called ‘mass ragging’. On a chosen day, the second year students, all masked, would suddenly raid the junior hostel with iron rods and hockey sticks. In the riot that followed, they would randomly bang the doors and kick them open and then beat up the juniors black and blue. It was not so random though as selective targets were mercilessly assaulted. Seniors from our hometown had forewarned us about this event, so we struggled tooth and nail to keep the door closed. Many others did the same but not all were so lucky.

Time passed and we were soon second year students. The first decision we made was not to mass rag, thankfully! As we did not do it to our juniors, they in turn did not do the same to their juniors. But when we were in our final year, we had a surprise in store for us. The then second year students, out of the blue, had decided to reinstate the horrifying tradition of mass ragging. A small group of 15-20 students stormed the junior hostel. Caught unawares, and completely blank about this legendary MNREC tradition, the juniors panicked. They had no idea where these masked men descended from. While some were getting beaten up ruthlessly, others ran for cover. In this chaos, few of them jumped from the first floor and broke their bones. The saddest case was that of a boy from Assam who jumped from the second floor and broke his neck.

The guys who conducted the inhuman raid, unaware of injuries, collected all the juniors, got them to strip and walked them over to the main hostel area. In the silence of the night we were alarmed by the sound of hundreds of hesitant and scared footsteps, as they passed by the final year hostel. We were aghast. Shocked, we ran for rescue. Meanwhile, some sane second year students rushed towards the junior hostel to calm down the panicking juniors only to find this guy with a broken neck. While some took the boy to the hospital, others started searching for the guys responsible for this incident. We had a tough time but eventually we caught hold of a lot of them, except for perhaps the kingpin and some smart ones who had good friends to help them wriggle out of this mess.

The criminal night was followed by sickening and pathetic arguments of the college professors who wanted to sweep the incident under the carpet. ‘Lets save the college reputation’ was their one line argument. I wonder if they would have toed the same line if the victim was their own. But this was their habit perhaps as I saw a similar reaction from them when a police cop tried to rape a college student. The faculty simply refused to act. And to top it all, they virtually defended the act by saying something as stupid and derogatory as – “The ants will come where there is sugar.” The enraged students had then taken the law in their own hands and forced the college and the police to take action. In fact few radical ones had even planned to eliminate the principal who was supposedly close to the family of the culprit.

The boy who broke his neck in mass ragging died after a few days. His devastated parents stood, with folded hands, thanking us students for helping them out at the hospital. It was a shocking moment of truth and no one knew how to react. Meanwhile, after pressure from the students, the college authorities had hesitatingly initiated disciplinary action and lodged an FIR with the police. One boy was expelled from college while two others were rusticated for two years. Some five more were thrown out from the hostel. But that’s about it! A murder was committed and the murderers virtually walked away free, without any punishment from the law.

I guess the rusticated students would have joined some other college, finished graduation and may be working somewhere now – as government officials, businessmen or private sector executives. The irony would be to find one of them serving as a cop! Forget feeling guilty about it, I wonder if they still remember this. Or they, in their drunken spell, wear the memories of this incident as some sort of war decoration!

While a slap in a metropolitan college gets reported in the media, murders in smaller cities go unnoticed. I have heard of numerous such incidents in the engineering colleges spread across the country.

To look back is not easy and to forget, impossible! The ghosts linger on. As a first year student I had vowed never to rag anyone. As a second year student, I avoided ragging in general. I sat with few freshers and quizzed them for half an hour or so, only to befriend them. I guess I was acting more as a helping hand.

But it is rightly said – power corrupts!

I was quizzing a young boy from my native area and found him slow in his responses. My biased perspective of good, right and smart slowly rode over my sanity and before I could realise, my hand landed on his cheeks. Suddenly I was cold to the sound of the slap which I had hated as a ‘victim’. As a tormentor, I did not feel the pain. I thought I was right thing because I had a reason. And I felt the same, a few times more. But little did I know that a murder with a reason still remains a murder.

Before I could realise and tie the up the loose ends of my sanity, the ragging period was over. An irreparable ridge had been created which I too did not try to bridge, mainly because of my own feeling of guilt. I hardly interacted with the boys in question and later in life, got to know that they disliked me and also cherished a dream of bashing me up. I don’t know if it’s too late to say sorry! I don’t know if the ‘sorry’ makes any sense now. ‘Better late than never’ somehow does not seem to be fitting in and I sit wondering – what if we met again!

The year I joined College, in 1973, the word among us freshers was that the most terrifying ragger in College lived in Rudra Court, in L9. Terrifying because he wasn’t the usual kind of bullying, bellowing senior.

No, he was to them as the panther is to the elephant, the scimitar to the war club, the rapier to the broadsword. He was bearded, they said, and soft-spoken, so stealthy that you never sensed his presence until he had you square in his sights. No one could actually remember being ragged by him, but everyone knew someone who knew someone…..

In those days, ragging was a serious business: there were nights when we slept in drainpipes around Pandara Park rather than go back to College to face our seniors. It was an atmosphere in which legends battened and grew.

As it happened I succeeded eluding the legend of L9 for a couple of weeks. And then my luck ran out. I was ‘nabbed while attempting to abscond’ as the Indian Express used to say.

“What are your interests fachchey?” growled the legend of L9.

I decided to take a chance: once, while slinking past his door, I had heard a record playing inside.

“I like classical music sir,” I stuttered.

“You do, do you?” he said. “Follow me.”

I was led inexorably into L9; an ancient gramophone was turned on, a record was picked carefully out of a sleeve and placed on the turntable. “Okay miserable fachchey”, he said. “Tell me what this is.”

With the first bars I breathed a sigh of relief. “Emperor Concerto sir”, I said. “Beethoven”.

He paused and then, without giving anything away, he took the record off the turntable and replaced it with another.

I knew this one too; Pastorale, 3rd movement. Another followed; I got it wrong. But I guessed right again with the fourth.

The legend stuck out his hand, “I’m Rukun Advani”, he said. “Let’s go to Maurice Nagar and have a cup of tea.”

Chaiwallas lined the Maurice Nagar bus stop at that time. Some even provided benches. Rukun and I sat talking for hours, while the buses roared past. After that our walks to Maurice Nagar become a night time ritual; something to look forward to through the day. They continued for years (Rukun stayed on in Rudra North for his MA).

As I remember them, the two staples of our conversations were literature and music. My memory is possibly inaccurate in this regard. No matter: in my mind Maurice Nagar will always figure as my own, private Montparnasse.

This friendship, launched so fortuitously in Rudra North, was renewed over and over again in the next few years: in Cambridge, London, Europe, Delhi. Twenty-three years later, Rukun remains one of my closest and most valued friends.

In my second year I lived through this in reverse time, as it were. I was now in L9, having inherited it from Rukun, who’d moved upstairs. One afternoon, walking back to my room, I found a fresher standing on the Rudra Court steps looking, as freshers so often do, like a space alien waiting to be beamed up to his craft.

“Fachchey”, I yelled, “What are you doing standing there like that?”

“I’m looking for the Shakespeare Society sir”, he said.

“You mean Shake Soc.”

“Yes sir”, he said, “Shake Soc sir.”

“Follow me fachchey”, I said. I led him to L9 and made him read out passages from King Lear.

“What’s your name fachchey?”

“Mukul Kesavan sir”, he said.

We became fast friends and have remained so ever since. Mukul was a day scholar so he couldn’t come to Maurice Nagar often. But he did when

he could.

Where is this leading?

Did these friendships have anything to do with my writing? I don’t see how it could be otherwise. Rukun was my first critic; it was because of him that the first piece I ever published saw the light of day. It was he who launched me on what I think of as my Literary Career by finding me a job at the Indian Express. But I couldn’t have taken the job if Mukul and his family hadn’t given me a room to live in.

As far as I am concerned those conversation at Maurice Nagar have never ceased, on or off the page. I find it hugely reassuring that we are all writers now. It is an inescapable fact that all around the world, literary movements have always been sustained by such friendships, by these lifelong conversations, by the kinds of instinctive, almost atavistic loyalty and gratitude that I feel towards Rukun and Mukul (and so many other University friends who, although they have not yet written books of their own, will, I am sure, go on to do so). Literary movements, whether in Calcutta or Vienna, Paris or Rangoon, have always sprung out of these moments, when certain people happen to cross each others’ paths at certain times. There is no explaining why these moments happen when they do; nor should one try. For my part I am just glad that I was present at one.

But does this mean that there is such a thing as a ‘St Stephen’s School of Writing?’ I don’t know. Sometimes I feel we sustained our conversation against (rather than because of) the then prevailing ethos of the College. In any event, I don’t feel that it’s my business to answer this question.

Once on the lawns of Rudra Court I got into an argument with a Philo Soc Type. He won, of course; he won by quoting Wittgenstein, as Philo Soc

Types do.

“Whereof we do not know”, he said, “thereof we should not speak.”

It was the most important lesson I ever learnt on Rudra Court.

[Amitav Ghosh studied History in St. Stephen's (1973-76), and went on to take a D.Phil. in Social Anthropology from Oxford. He is the highly acclaimed author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In an Antique Land and The Calcutta Chromosome. His latest publication, ‘Countdown‘, a critique of the Indian nuclear tests was published in 1998. Reproduced from here.

Before :- Dr. A.S. Anand, CJI. with R.C. Lahoti and K.G. Balakrishnan, JJ.
Writ Petition (C) No. 656 of 1998. D/d. 3.8.2001

Vishwa Jagriti Mission through President – Petitioner
Versus

Central Government through Cabinet Secretary – Respondents
For the Appearing Parties :- Mr. Mukul Rohtagi, Additional Solicitor General, Ms. Lalita Kohli, Ms. Kavita Wadia, Advocate for Mr. Maninder Singh, Mr. Ajay Sharma, Mr. B.V. Balram Das, Ms. Sushma Suri, Mr. Sidharath Bhatnagar, Mr. Gaurab K. Banerjee and Mr. Prashan Kumar, Advocates.
Constitution of India, Articles 14 and 226 – Ragging in educational institutions – Incidents of ragging crossing limits of decency, morality and humanity – States making it a cognizable offence cannot cure it – It must be dealt with within the institution by exercise of disciplinary authority so that the students who want to learn should not remain under constant fear – Institutions must provide proper guard and police force if required to assist the guards – The management must take a responsibility to curb ragging and to generate confidence in the mind of students – The universities and the States providing funds to such Institutions must keep watch and control over the managements – The managements not taking proper steps to curb the same must face dis-affiliation and stoppage of grant – Steps to be taken suggested to be followed strictly. [Paras 13 to 23]

ORDER

R.C. Lahoti, J. - Pursuant to our order dated 3.3.2001, the University Grants Commission has filed written submissions/guidelines. An advance copy has already been supplied to the learned counsel opposite.

2. This public interest litigation highlights a menace pervading the educational institutions of the country which in spite of efforts made by the Central Government, the University Grants Commission, State Governments and some of the educational institutions is unfortunately showing an upward trend. The petitioner seeks directions of this Court so as to curb the menace of ragging.
3. The pleadings are complete. Inasmuch as the petition involves dealing with an issue which is likely to affect a large number of students and relationship of the students inter se belonging to different age-groups and coming from different social and cultural background as also the relationship of the students with the institution, the petition needs a detailed hearing. The issues arising for decision cannot be dealt with through a legalistic approach only; sociological and psychological facts shall have to be kept in view. However, all the learned counsel appearing in the case have submitted that the Court is shortly closing for summer vacation and by the time it re-opens most of the educational institutions may have become functional and therefore it would be in public interest if some guidelines by way of an interim order are laid down by this Court. Accordingly, we have heard the learned counsel for the parties.
4. In exercise of the jurisdiction conferred by Article 32 and Article 142 of the Constitution we issue the following guidelines :-
5. This Court views with concern the increase in the number of incidents of ragging in educational institutions. Some of the reported incidents have crossed the limits of decency, morality and humanity. Some of the States have acted by enacting legislations and making ragging as defined therein a cognizable and punishable offence. However, we feel ragging cannot be cured merely by making it a cognizable criminal offence. Moreover, we feel that the acts of indiscipline and misbehaviour on the part of the students must primarily be dealt with within the institution and by exercise of the disciplinary authority of the teachers over the students and of the management of the institutions over the teachers and students. Students ought not ordinarily be subjected to police action unless it be unavoidable. The students going to educational institutions for learning should not remain under constant fear of being dealt with by police and sent to jail and face the courts. The faith in the teachers for the purpose of maintaining discipline should be restored and the responsibility fixed by emphasising the same.
Broadly speaking Ragging is :
6. Any disorderly conduct whether by words spoken or written or by an act which has 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.
7. The cause of indulging in ragging is deriving a sadistic pleasure or showing off power, authority or superiority by the seniors over their juniors or freshers.
8. Ragging can be stopped by creating awareness amongst the students, teachers and parents that ragging 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.
9. Anti-ragging movement should be initiated by the institutions right from the time of advertisement for admissions. The prospectus, the form for admission and/or any other literature issued to aspirants for admission must clearly mention that ragging is banned in the institution and any one indulging in ragging is likely to be punished appropriately which punishment may include expulsion from the institution, suspension from the institution or class for a limited period or fine with a public apology. The punishment may also take the shape of : (i) withholding scholarships or other benefits (ii) debarring from representation in events (iii) withholding results (iv) suspension or expulsion from hostel or mess, and the like. If there be any legislation governing ragging or any provisions in the Statute/Ordinances they should be brought to the notice of the students/parents seeking admissions.
10. 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. A similar undertaking shall be obtained from the parent/guardian of the applicant.
11. Such of the institutions as are introducing such a system for the first time shall ensure undertakings being obtained from the students and their parents/guardians already studying in the institutions before the commencement of the next educational year/session.
12. A printed leaflet detailing when and to whom one has to turn for information, help and guidance for various purposes, keeping in view the needs of new entrants in the institution, along with the addresses and telephone numbers of such persons, should be given to freshers at the time of admissions so that the freshers need not look up to the seniors for help in such matters and feel indebted to or obliged by them.
13. The management, the principal, the teaching staff should interact with freshers and take them in confidence by apprising them of their rights as well as obligation to fight against ragging and to generate confidence in their mind that any instance of ragging to which they are subjected or which comes in their knowledge should forthwith be brought to their knowledge and shall be promptly dealt with while protecting the complainants from the harassment by perpetrators of ragging. It would be better if the head of the institution or a person high in authority addresses meetings of teachers, parents and students collectively or in groups in this behalf.
14. At the commencement of the academic session, the institution should constitute a proctorial committee consisting of senior faculty members and hostel authorities like wardens and a few responsible senior students: i) to keep a continuous watch and vigil over ragging so as to prevent its occurrence and recurrence, ii) to promptly deal with the incidents of ragging brought to its notice and summarily punish the guilty either by itself or by putting-forth its finding/recommendation/suggestions before the authority competent to take decision.
15. All vulnerable locations shall be identified and specially watched.
16. The local community and the students in particular must be made aware of dehumanising effect of ragging inherent in its perversity. Posters, notice boards and sign-boards-whereever necessary, may be used for the purpose.
17. Failure to pr-event ragging shall be construed as an act of negligence in maintaining discipline in the institution on the part of the management, the principal and the persons in authority of the institution. Similar responsibility shall be liable to be fixed on hostel wardens/superintendents.
18. The hostels/accommodations where freshers are accommodated shall be carefully guarded, if necessary by posting security personnel, and placed incharge of a warden/superintendent who should himself/herself reside thereat, and wherein the entry of seniors and outsiders shall be prohibited after specified hour of night and before except under the permission of the person Incharge. Entry at other times may also be regulated.
19. If the individuals committing or abetting ragging are not identified collective punishment could be resorted to act as a deterrent punishment and to ensure collective pressure on the potential raggers.
20. Migration certificate issued by the institution should have an entry apart from that of general conduct and behaviour whether the student had participated in and in particular was punished for ragging.
21. 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.
22. The Universities and the institutions shall at a reasonable time before the commencement of an academic year, and therefore at such frequent intervals as may be expedient deliberate over and devise such positive and constructive activities to be arranged by involving the students generally so that the seniors and juniors, and the existing students and the freshers, interact with each other in a healthy atmosphere and develop a friendly relationship so as to behave like members of a family in an institution. Seniors or juniors should be encouraged to exhibit their talents in such events so as to shed their complexes.
23. We make it clear that these guidelines are only illustrative and are not intended to come in the way of the institutions and authorities devising ways and mean to curb and ragging. If there are local laws governing ragging they shall be implemented and knowledge and information about such laws shall also be disseminated. Ragging if it becomes unmanageable or amounts to a cognizable offence the same may be reported to the police. However, the police should be called in or allowed entry in the campus at the instance of the head of the institution or the person in charge. We expect the police also to deal with such incidents when brought to its notice for action by keeping in mind that they are dealing with students and not criminals. The action of the police should never be violent and be always guided by a correctional attitude.
24. The UGC shall bring these guidelines to the notice of all educational institutions. Publicity may also be given by issuing press notes in public interest by UGC and Central Government.
List after summer vacation.
Order accordingly.

————RSL/4————