[IE] Precious Welcome

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As the new academic session begins in colleges across the city, hundreds of freshers are discovering that the demonised and much-feared ritual of ragging can be a whole lot of fun
Premankur Biswas

The class was already in progress when Anupam Chatterjee walked into the room. Flustered and anxious, this first year student of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University, settled himself in a corner while a genial looking girl addressed the class in the first day of college. Introducing herself as a senior, the girl urged them to forge a friendly bond with her batchmates. As Chatterjee concluded that he has the good fortune of having helpful seniors, suddenly someone among the freshers protested. Threatening to sue the poor senior, much to the horror of Chatterjee and his classmates, the guy aggressively walked up to her, only to break into peals of laughter. Before Chatterjee even knew what hit him, the seniors announced that this was a prank played on the hapless freshers. The aggressive ‘junior’ was in fact a histrionically-blessed senior, who was planted among them. “I don’t think we were ragged. On the contrary, I believe it was an innovative way of breaking the ice,” claims Chatterjee.

The horror stories of ritualistic physical and psychological abuse of freshers in colleges and institutes are slowly but surely giving way to genial “breaking ice” sessions. Ragging in city colleges, it seems, is redefining itself as a novel way of socially inducting newcomers into the group.

“With the strict anti ragging UGC circular making rounds of colleges, most colleges have coined their own rules. We believe that healthy relationship between the seniors and juniors should be encouraged,” claims Mamata Ray, principal, Presidency College.

Father PC Mathew, principal of St. Xaviers College, agrees. “Young men and women who walk in through the gates of a college are mostly confused and scared. To exploit their confusion by subjecting them to mental and physical abuse is criminal. I believe that interaction between juniors and seniors builds a healthy and fruitful relationship, which is mutually beneficial.”

It is this very spirit that has encouraged institutes like Satyajit Ray Film And Television Institute (SRFTI) to organise programmes like ‘Fresher’s Orientation Night’. “Every year we have an elaborate orientation with our juniors. In such sessions we encourage the juniors to talk about themselves and their reasons for joining the institute. In a specialty institute like ours, we need to have a dynamic relationship between students. We also need to find out if they are serious about their future here. The programme therefore is more of a counseling session,” asserts Avishek Ghosh, a second year student of SRFTI. However, a little bit of fun is involved, where the “seniors playfully tease the juniors,” adds Ghosh.

Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, takes things a step forward. The country’s premier management institute has a systematic approach to ragging, it seems. “The whole process of orientation is initiated before the semester. Through online forums like Orkut and Yahoo, a healthy relationship between the seniors and juniors is forged. By the time the students finally join the institute, they have ‘mentors’ who take them under their wings and help them tackle day-to-day problems,” claims Sugato Dutta, a second year student of IIM Kolkata. The healthy relationship is formally solemnised with a grand “freshers welcome feast” which include “games, food and lots of fun,” adds Dutta.

The current situation in many of these colleages is a far cry from the power politics that defined the senior-junior relationship in Bengal Engineering and Science University at Shibpur even a decade ago. “We were subjected to bizarre forms of torture. I remember a particularly burly senior who would terrorise me everyday into copying pages and pages of notes for him. If that was not enough, we were made to perform ridiculous tasks like finding a pregnant mosquito or stand on one leg in a filthy tank,” states Rajarshi Nandi, a former student who passed out in the early 1990s.

Nandi’s successor by a decade and a half, Rohit Murarka, a 3rd year student of BE College, has a different tale to narrate. “I was aware of the dubious reputation of the college when I joined it. To my utter surprise I found things quite to the contrary. We were welcomed warmly by our seniors and there was no hostility. The only bit of ragging that we were subjected to was random requests to sing,” says Murarka.

Nandi sums up. “We were told that the rigorous ragging we were subjected to was to toughen us for the big bad world. Today things are different. People are more conscious, aware and sensitive. Things have taken a turn for the better. Wish we were spared the suffering though.”