Ragging in institutions of higher education is rampant across India. The dictionary describes the word as ‘to engage in rough play, ‘tease’, and ‘play rough jokes on’. Often the rough play is rougher than mere ‘rough’. Negativity is the biggest curse of India. We have young people who are not actually young in spirit and soul. The youth is lack luster. The youth doesn’t have the necessary hope, enthusiasm and positive gush. The youth lacks the very essence of youth. There are many factors like intoxication, unemployment, and compartmentalization of society responsible for this dull state of Indian youth. Ragging is also one factor affecting potentially bright young people. It’s more tragic because it demoralizes the talented. Ragging generates the cycle of negativity. It robs a young mind of a sense of self-respect. It generates fear psychosis. It produces a cynical, dirty-minded, bitter, and battered youth, eager to take revenge the next year. It’s a perfect system of chain reaction.  

The curse of ragging is more serious than it is often visualized to be. President Patil has taken up this cause time and again. Many sober and sensible Governors of various Indian states have also issued strict dictates. But the problem has percolated down the surface. It starts by compelling the fresher to use dirty and abusive language. It goes on to compel the poor fresher to listen to ‘your mother’, ‘your sister’ stuff; then comes obscene gesturing. There are naked parades in the hostels at the dead of the nights. It’s, in fact, quite scary to imagine what our young people go through in order to become graduates.

The Indian society at large is insensitive to this cancer of ragging in our institutions of higher learning. The common Indian often laughs when ragging is mentioned. From nudity, ragging graduates to physical torture, public disgrace and mental torture. I’ve seen many people asking, ‘How many fists?’ It means that how many public slaps have been borne by you in your ragging.

Another boy, son of a colleague reported that in a National Institute of Technology, ten freshers were forced to sleep together in one bed. It indicates to again very horrible trends of forcing behavioral patterns. The horror stories are endless. We’ve all heard of young people committing suicide as a result of ragging. In extreme conditions, when the fresher is unable to protect her/his self-respect, disastrous, irrevocable incidents happen. Parents, teachers, students and educational administrators need to be educated. Wardens alone can solve 80% of the menace. The dragon in the name of a senior also knows that s/he has secured a place in a professional institute with much labor and s/he cannot afford to lose that admission to a professional institute. I’ve also seen a so called omnipotent senior begging and crying  and licking feet of a junior when the junior reported the horror of ragging to watchful administration of a medical college. An FIR had been lodged. 

Ragging generates a sense of helplessness in freshers. A hostel means captivity. There is a prevalent sense of fear. ‘Don’t move alone; go in groups; don’t go out after it’s dark; never go when seniors call you to a lonely spot; keep heads down; keep very short hair’ – these are common sentences floating among freshers. This is how we welcome our future generations into colleges; into the dirty world of adulthood. There have been so many champions of noble causes fulfilling their mission; why it doesn’t work for these young and helpless youngsters? Why a young mind has to be forced to believe that all that was taught in school was wrong? The quotes of Gandhi and Lincoln were wrong. The schoolteacher was wrong. Patriotic and idealistic poems were wrong. The only ‘guru’ is the rascal ‘senior’. Why a fresher can’t be allowed to sleep timely, if s/he wishes to. Why the adult world has to be so cheap, vulgar, drugged, boozed, corrupt and unhealthy? Why can’t someone pray? Why can’t someone be allowed to maintain the good qualities of childhood? Don’t all great people say, ‘Keep the child alive in you’? 

The psychological impact of ragging is far too deep for us to gauge normally. It creates an evil adult. It inculcates distrust. It teaches suspicion. It kills innocence.

Sports facilities, openness, psychological help centers, aware administrators, and informed parents can eliminate this artificially created tragedy in our society. Even caste angles have been reported. One boy in an engineering college was brutally beaten. With each thrash, the words came, ‘How are you feeling, Thakur saab? How it goes, Zamindaar Saab?’ In fact, seniors of the reserved categories were doing social justice to a young, poor fresher! These are very true, very real and alas! very common incidents. 

Crime has no caste, no category. Ragging should be put at par with rape in the book of law. Speedy and exemplary punishment can solve the issue for ever. We need sensitive leaders who understand psychological trauma of confused, pained, roaming, restless, young minds. The silver lining is that it is not an incurable disease. There are oases in the desert where dynamic institutional heads have kept this curse away from their boundaries.     

Related:  Ragging a Menace by Dr. Asha Choubey