OTHER CHURNINGS

Students protest for many reasons and their protests take many forms. But when a students’ body decides to hold back teachers and administrative heads, including the vice-chancellor and pro-vice-chancellor, for almost 27 hours in protest against the steps being planned to prevent ragging, it raises some disturbing questions about education, student politics and the addictive culture of bullying. In Jadavpur University, some teachers were stopped and forced to sit on the ground while their students shouted slogans around them. Those inside, including the VC and the pro-VC, were held all night and through most of the next day, until they were escorted out by other teachers. None of this was without jostling, with a few teachers at the receiving end.
In terms of visible student violence, this may seem nothing more than a couple of displays of extraordinary disrespect towards teachers. But the truly alarming dimension of the incident lies in the less visible violence, the ruthlessness with which senior teachers were kept confined throughout a night and day. And the reason was not a perceived injustice, but a means to control ragging that the students felt would be to their disadvantage. Not because they want to rag, but because segregating the first year students’ hostel block might help their political rivals. The anti-Communist Party of India (Marxist) body of students held their senior teachers to ransom, only because they feel that the first year students’ segregation would give the Student Federation of India a chance to establish its power. The teachers are willing to address the students’ problems, but the students want that this should be given in writing. More than the level of distrust and breakdown of communication, what is noticeable is the unreasoned violence that has erupted among those who are supposedly among the cream of West Bengal’s youthful talent. The state has become used to a terrible tradition of bullying and physical terror — its outcome is the destruction of rationality, any sense of proportion and of the values that education is supposed to inculcate.
The violence on the grounds of the Seth Sukhlal Karnani Memorial Hospital has similar roots. The SFI and the All India Democratic Students’ Organization are fighting for ascendancy over new entrants with stones and rods and sticks. The doctors of the future are busier with hurting than with healing. The distrust that has become part of educational institutions with the CPI(M)’s gradual entry into education at all levels is having a different manifestation in the Bengal Engineering and Science University, where the conflict is between the teachers and the management. The deadlock over examination scripts is a late outcome of the disturbances in Besu last March. Even the hint of a shift in old power equations generates violence. The violence in these institutions seems to be the refraction and reflection of this other churning.