Ragging and the victim figure

By Our RESEARCH DESK

A third year student of a college hostel in Delhi University's North Campus, who had rebelled against ragging in his first year and had got a couple of seniors in trouble, now says that ragging has its uses. He parrots the cliche, "Some amount of ragging can be useful," and explains, "Like fetching cigarettes for a senior on day one helped me get over my inhibition about being seen at a tobacco vendor's at home, lest my parents see me."

But a little interrogation by me and he admits the weakness of his argument. Yeah, yeah, in time he would have gone to the cigarette shop, with his seniors or otherwise, and being 'sent' to buy cigarettes as though you were a slave is not at all important to losing such an 'inhibition'. As the advertisement says, zor ka jhatka dheere se lagay - a tremendous shock inflicted gradually. But ragging ensures that such shocks become larger than they are, and can be devastating for some.

So when you complained against your seniors, were you boycotted in the hostel? "I wasn't," he says to my surprise, "I wasn't because I didn't feel boycotted." I ask him to explain further and all he had to say was: "I am a very jovial sort of person, you know."

Another student in another hostel, having rebelled against ragging, was both ostracised and felt ostracised. It took him some time to realise that several seniors and batchmates were simply not talking to him as they regarded him a 'sneak' and a 'sissy'. This person, apparently not as socially adept, reacted further, becoming completely anti-establishment; the establishment being the community of students who dominate the social life of the hostel.

The various ways in which the victim figure reacts are more complex than the usual sympathetic, somewhat condescending light in which we see the victim figure. In the two examples above, the first one pretends as if nothing ever happened, and moves on, greeting people with a smile, and the 'ice' is broken despite a deviation in the ragging system. In the second example, the student is introspective and contemplative. He asks himself, "What is my fault?" People around him tell him that his fault is that he is hypersensitive, socially inadept and timid.

While these may be true about him, it gives rise to another question: Is being hypersensitive and shy a crime? We ask this because ragging is a crime by law. A sociologist with his/her typically functionalist approach would not ask this question. Blaming the victim rather than the victimiser or the system that allows such victmisation is a standard trope in the public reactions to all kinds of abuse. Those who have worked in the areas on child abuse and rape will testify this. However, years of a status-quoist approach towards ragging by academics and society alike ensured that the need to outlaw the practice was felt only in the '90s. Psychologists and sociologists have all had their say on ragging. Why don't we look at institutionalised ragging from the perspective of human rights? Outspoken raggers and ex-raggers shout their cliched defense of ragging from the rooftops because they have to justify the act of abuse to themselves.

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One advice liberally offered to freshers by agony aunt columns and retired uncles is, "You must decide how much is enough for you and draw the line there. Then say no to the senior." (As if the senior will take no for an answer.) Freshers who do draw the line and rebel in one way or another, often find that moment of rebellion turn into a moment of epiphany. That impulsive, deferential moment decides the future of your social life in the hostel. 'Rebellion', by the way, is not just simply abusing the senior on his face or complaining to the hostel warden. Rebellion takes place inside one's head: you tell yourself, "This is not fair, this is not done, I'm not game for it." This is opposed to telling oneself, "It's okay, it's momentary, I should be enjoying it, it's just a practical joke." In other words, how you receive ragging depends on how you want to receive it. That determines whether a few days later you can be categorised as a ragging 'victim'.

The victim figure likes to forgive and forget, and move on. Living with trauma is like being physically challenged. That is how all freshers psychologically orient themselves in the immediate post-ragging period. "Because ragging per se is a fact of life, the senior who harassed me had nothing personal against me, so I should become friendly with him." Once this happens, the fresher immediately though unconsciously forgets the harassment and abuse that he underwent, and soon those days of ragging are romanticised in booze parties which begin in the night and end in the morning. To see an example of such a psychological transformation over the course of a few months, read this 'outsider's' account of ragging at Kirori Mal College. Excerpt: "These things however got over in about two months and soon these very freshers were being treated in canteens and K Nags food joints by these very seniors. The lack of resentment towards the seniors was surprising." (In this story, also notice how the narrator, a guest at the Kirori Mal College hostel, presents himself as a completely passive observer, as though he had gone there precisely to write this account for us!)

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One year is a long time in personal memory, and by the next academic session, when the fresher is a senior, he is found saying, "I enjoyed getting ragged last year by my seniors. I got to know them. We bonded very well. We are the best of friends in the world now. They helped me a lot." A second psychological transformation has taken place. The traumatic experienec of ragging has been forgotten so well that ragging is now genuinely seen as a constructive activity. There is now a desperate, defensive attempt to show ragging in a positive light, even when not asked to do so. And so he has no qualms ragging the new batch. This also means that we do not accept the theory that a fresher rags his freshers in the following year(s) in order to take revenge, or as a means of catharsis of his frustration at being ragged the previous year.

Here's one story where time had just begun to heal the psychological wounds inflicted by ragging when we asked the girl student to describe how she had been ragged. She had just finished her first year and the academic session 2004-05 was about to begin. She took a week to write the story, and this is how she ends it: "I had completely forgotten my unpleasant experience of ragging even though it ended only a few months ago. I had forgotten my pain, and I thought I would rag my juniors mildly, but won’t make them go through what I have been. But when I heard of this campaign, I tried to reflect back at the one year that have I spent in this hostel. I realise that this entire episode termed ‘ragging’ was the worst time of my life."

However, the fresher who had rebelled in that moment of epiphany is deprived of this opportunity to let time heal psychological wounds. That moment when you rebelled against ragging doesn't leave you alone. It has the potential to follow you day in and day out in your three or four years in college, because too many people have formed a prejudiced notion of you, that you are a sneak and a sissy. Retribution could also mean actual violence and not just ostracisation. At the very least, you would simply be marginalised because you never got to know your seniors anyway; their condition to "interact" with you was that they will rag you, and you did not accept that condition and escaped away, or 'sneaked', or simply refused to follow their orders.

Victim figures react in different, complex ways. The moment of epiphany, rather than the harassment and abuse of ragging, itself becomes the causative factor of trauma, and may be followed by any kind of reaction: depression, mental instability, sucidal behaviour or actual suicide. Or s/he may leave the hostel or the college itself, or may take to alcoholism and drug abuse. Or, like my first interviewee, may insist: "I was not boycotted because I don't feel boycotted. I am a jovial sort of person," thus giving time a second chance to heal his psychological wounds. The least reaction would be to turn anti-establishment like my second interviewee, the establishment being not the college or the college authorities but the students who dominate the communitarian life of the college or hostel. The nature and extent of the victim figure's reaction depends upon his/her own psychological strength intersected with the degree of the trauma afflicted upon him. In any case, the inability to have successfully negotiated ragging will be shown to him as a personal failure, thus reimposing the trope of blaming the victim. Peers, friends, teachers and family may treat him as a victim figure, thus making his ability to move on even more difficult. At this stage professional counselling becomes very important, but is rarely chosen or available.

Have a look at Aman Malik's story. His over-all theme - "I enjoyed getting ragged," as we said, means, "I successfully negotiated it in my head." Mark one sentence in his essay: "To be truthful, I quite enjoyed most of what happened during the rest of the period, barring two or three incidents that left a bad taste in my mouth, but more on them on some other occasion." We asked him to mention these in the story. He said he didn't want to. We asked him to describe how he ragged his freshers the two following years. He said he would some day; he's too busy.

Almost all defenders of ragging want to tell you how enjoyable it was getting ragged by seniors. They will hesitate to tell you what exactly they did by way of ragging their freshers. Urban India has been suffering from the problem of selective amnesia at a vast scale and we need an army of psychologists to deal with it.

Compare Aman's story with the account of Atul Prakash Singh, who had a brush with what is popularly called "mild ragging", meaning ragging that does not involve sexual abuse or its threat. Atul visited Delhi University to take admission, and even before he could fill the form, "seniors" started ragging him! He told himself: If this has begun even before I take admission, what will happen later? So he didn't even take admission and went back home. The moment of epiphany arrived a bit too early, and the writer has no regrets. As the comments left by insensitive bloggers on that page will tell you, it is again the victim who is being blamed.

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In this incident in an engineering college in Allahabad in the early '90s, something called mass ragging ensured that the moment of epiphany with its lasting effects on one's psyche was experienced not by an individual fresher but by students of the entire hostel. Don't miss the comment that "Shreyas" has left in the end. This story will tell you how volatile ragging structures are; even the victimiser doesn't know when he is crossing the line, if a line can be drawn at all. Talking about ragging in an interview on TV, a college principal once said, "I have asked some of these people, 'Why did you do this?' And they said that they were surprised that the freshers did everything they were asked to," and so their demands kept increasing. It is clear, therefore, that moderating ragging to a permissible limit (if such can be defined in the first place) is impossible. The only solution then is to completely eliminate ragging, and replace it with smoother mechanisms for freshers to settle down and become part of the mainstream of their educational institution.

Ragging and Memory
research@stopragging.org
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