Girls and Ragging (And what people choose to ignore)

I am writing this post because a variety of current media reports in Tamil Nadu suggest that ragging is something that only senior male students subject the first-year/fresher students to. Senior female students (especially in hostels) harassing the first year hostel girl students is a reality that is never taken up seriously or discussed. I am a hardcore feminist, but that does not mean that I am going to proclaim that all women are incapable of being mean.

I have no personal experience of staying in a hostel, or being a first-year student in a professional engineering or medical college. But I have heard friends share their experience. And two-three weeks back, a cousin of mine who’s joined her first year MBBS at the Mohan Kumaramangalam Government Medical College Salem narrated  her experiences of pain and humiliation. Third-year medical college girl students staying in the hostel would come to the rooms of first year students at nine in the night, and begin ragging which would go on up to midnight. Sessions involved simple name calling,being ordered to catch a mosquito, walk like ducks, wear weird clothes to college (black pants, yellow top, red duppatta), to the utterly revolting exercises of asking girls to name their sexual organs, or to hug a pillar and make love to it as if it were their lover.

On my cousin’s behalf, we made complaints even with the anti-ragging cell, we sent follow-up emails. Few boys were suspended for similar ragging in the same university, but no action was taken against the girls. There was no inquiry. And filing actual complaints with the police is difficult, because students fear to expose themselves, and also because they don’t know the names of the senior girls as yet. My cousin was strong enough to have us there for her, she was strong enough to resist some of the bullying. I am just scared for girls who would succumb. Entering a professional course involves so much of hard-work and talent, and there can be no greater tragedy than getting tortured and traumatized in a place where one spends the best years of their life. There is so much of promise on paper, but such little implementation.

Thanks to:Meena Kandasamy