The recent horrific ragging of a student of the ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education’s Business School in Hyderabad (IBS), amplified by its communal undertones, reflects a dangerous trend in the country’s higher educational institutions, where values are irremediably on the decline under the nose of super cool gurus.
Basically, it was the result of a tiff between a 19-year-old boy (victim of ragging) and a girl student, both Hindus and from the same BBA-LLB first-year batch. Going by the victim’s police complaint, the girl had labelled him a ‘paedophile’ because they have a three-and-a-half-year age difference and he did not want to engage in sexual activity with her.Their rift snowballed into a campus controversy as the miffed girl chose to share with her seniors screenshots of the boy’s private chat with her, including a sacrilegious comment on Prophet Muhammad. Subsequently, around a dozen college mates, mostly Muslim, subjected the boy to dehumanizing torture.
The incident took place on November 1. Immediately the student wrote a three-page letter to IBS authorities. He followed it up with another detailed report, naming the offending students, on November 3. A right-wing politician’s tweet on November 12 threw the spotlight on the ragging incident, which had been swept under the carpet by the college authorities. His tweet made people as well as the authorities sit up and take notice because, apart from posting a video clip of the ragging with clinching evidence, he drew attention to the communal angle in it with a snide remark on the MP under whose constituency IBS is situated. Until then, shamefully the college authorities did nothing! Eight faculty members, including six belonging to the anti-ragging squad, have since been arrested for failing to act on the victim’s complaint. The police earlier booked 10 students, including a minor, in connection with the case. Five of the students were arrested subsequently.
Curiously, though the student had mentioned in his complaint that he was sexually assaulted by the accused seniors who had forced him to chant religious slogans such as ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ‘Jai Mata Di’, the Shankarpally Police censored the communal angle in its FIR. The students in question were charged under section 307 (murder attempt), 342 (wrongful confinement), 450 (trespass), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 506 (criminal intimidation), read with section 149 (unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object) of IPC and sections 4 (1), (II) and (III) of the Prohibition of Ragging Act of 2011.
The Supreme Court has mandated notification of anti-ragging regulations and the formation anti-ragging committees in every higher educational institution. Still, anti-ragging committees are paper tigers. For, they are never constituted properly.They do not have representatives from non-profits, civil society, local media and the police.These panels are often packed with those cherry-picked by the heads of institutions.
The history behind the SC guidelines makes painful reading. In March 2009, Aman Kachroo, then first-year student of the Rajendra Prasad Medical College and Hospital in Himachal Pradesh’s Tanda town, died after being severely beaten by inebriated seniors in his college. An autopsy revealed that the 19-year-old died of a brain hemorrhage. In 2010, four senior students involved in the ragging incident were convicted of murder and jailed, but were released in 2014 for good behavior. Following Kachroo’s death, in May 2009, the Supreme Court directed all educational institutions to adhere to anti-ragging regulations. Accordingly, the University Grants Commission’s regulations were notified in June 2009.
These regulations recommend an anti-ragging committee in every institution, a monitoring cell at the university level for coordinating with all affiliated colleges and institutions as well as a monitoring cell at the level of the Chancellor of state universities. Besides, according to AICTE guidelines, every single incident of ragging must be reported to the local police by the institutional authorities.
As per the UGC’s 2009 regulations (as modified in 2016), ragging may include any act of physical or mental abuse (including bullying and exclusion) targeted at another student (fresher or otherwise) on the ground of colour, race, religion, caste, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, appearance, nationality, regional origins, linguistic identity, place of birth, place of residence or economic background. Ironically, these days ragging cases cover the gamut of the foregoing categories as an increasing number of students are itching for sadistic pleasure derived from dehumanizing treatment of their juniors, while the faculty members and managements of colleges are worried only about the reputation of the institution concerned. The trauma of the ragging victims does not count!
According to UGC’s anti-ragging cell, between 1 January 2013 and 30 April 2022, 832 complaints of ragging were recorded in Uttar Pradesh (UP), followed by 666 in MP. Medical colleges accounted for most of the ragging cases, with 126 cases being reported from those in UP and 101 from those in MP. The pandemic triggered a spike in online harassment. According to the anti-ragging cell, 511 cases of ragging were reported across the country in 2021, compared to just 219 in 2020 — courtesy pandemic.In 2019 and 2018, the numbers of reported cases were 1,070 and 1,016 respectively.
Union Minister of State for Education Annapurna Devi told Parliament on 20 December 2021 that 2,790 complaints of ragging had been received from students since 2018. Action had been taken in 1,296 of these cases (about 47 %).The ‘action’ included letting off students with a warning in 616 complaints, suspension of students in 620 cases and rustication of the accused students in 17 cases.
Nationwide, the real numbers are masked by underreporting or misreporting –like in the IBS case. Students are led to believe from Day 1 that ragging or hazing is a rite of passage. When a specific incident takes a serious turn, there is firefighting at the institutional level to chill it. Our educational institutions today are antithetical to the nation’s ancient Gurukuls. Ragging is inevitable if the gurus choose to be cool.
