Yet Another Ragging Death in India

Why Isn’t the Ban on Such Bullying in Colleges Not Being Enforced?

Laws become meaningless when they are not enforced. This is the case with ragging, which was banned by India’s Supreme Court in 2001 but is still widely practised by senior students in colleges throughout the country.

Ragging at times is so humiliating that it has even driven some of its victims to suicide. In the latest of such instances, a first-year biotechnology student at an engineering college near Chennai killed himself last week in what is believed to be a result of intense ragging.

Unfortunately, this did not receive the media coverage it deserved. Only the Mumbai Mirror appears to have carried the report and even that did not have much information. Read about it here.

In Kerala it is so rampant that junior students dread going to college during the first few days of their initiation into university education. Mumbai Mirror carries a shocking report here.

There is also a site that lists some of the ragging-related suicide deaths -- http://www.stopragging.org/category/suicides/ .

Junior Pisser Kaattaan Yul Brynner: Ragging was common during my days at the Madras Christian College (MCC) in the 80s. All newcomers to MCC were given the tag of “junior pisser kaattaan”. So if a senior student asks a newcomer for his name he has to prefix it with this tag. I don’t know the origins of this prefix.

I remember when I stepped into the college on my first day a senior came up to me and told me that for the rest of the day my name would be Yul Brynner (a top Hollywood star then). With the dreaded prefix, of course! Soon after, one guy summoned me and popped that inevitable question. The moment I told him that my name was “Junior Pisser Kaattan Yul Brynner” there was laughter all around. “Come on baldie, now enact a few scenes from The Ten Commandments,” commanded one guy.

But it was all great fun at the MCC. Ragging never exceeds the limits and from day 2 the very guys who bullied you are among your best pals at the college.

Check out information about Yul Brynner here.

But ragging that humiliates new students to the point of driving them to death is shameful, to say the least, and needs to be stamped out with a sense of urgency. The ban must be enforced without any exception.

–G Joslin Vethakumar