The (NOT So) Cool Menace of Ragging
By: Vishesh Raina
Tags: Offense, College, Strong, Bullying, Ragging

Illustration credit: freepik.com

“Ragging is a part of offence, not of academics”

Yes! Let it be clear to everyone reading this: ragging your juniors doesn’t come in as a right once you become a senior. It is simply a deplorable and perverted show of power and control and one of the worst messages that could be passed on to the on-looking youth.

Well, ragging can to a certain healthy extent be fun as it helps seniors gel-up with the freshmen and helps breaks the ice between the two groups. This ‘healthy’ ragging in-fact helps strengthen bonds between seniors and juniors as it the best means to get really intimate really fast. Such mild forms bejewel the charm of college life and raise the excitement manifold.

But once the lines are crossed i.e. when it gets to the point of decimating one’s self-esteem and mental order is when it a huge chain of problems gets triggered.

Those problems caused due to such uncouth ragging include:

Mutilation one’s esteem for life and destroy one’s self credibility.

2. Shattering the confidence with which one enters a new institution in the future.

3. One might even show heavy absenteeism or in extreme cases, even withdraw from college, severely disturbing one’s career.

4. Embarrassment on large scale.

5. Unwelcome tensions leading to various psychological disorders.

6. After experiencing this evil of ragging, a student develops a feeling to avenge his ‘unjustified harassment’ and derives inexplicable sadistic pleasure in ragging his juniors on his turn. So the vicious trend goes on and students continue to suffer.

7. The situation sometimes turns so bad that it compels the victim to even commit suicide.

On a personal note, if I may share my experience from life of when I was feeling ragged or bullied — I can remember clearly how having to go through the mutilation of self-esteem can literally numbs your mental state of being. You feel like you aren’t yourself anymore — like your free flow of thought is killed. I can remember how I was even afraid to occupy public stages or volunteer to take up positions of responsibility while the thought of being watched and judged constantly crept at the back of my head.

Well, and if I bring this to a relative scale — I think I’d rather classify this as a little step above ‘healthy ragging.’ I can only imagine how tormenting this act could be in its apex.

Give it a thought, why on earth should one bear the brunt of all the problems that this horrendous act brings along? Only to act as a tool to satisfy a senior’s barbaric pleasure? Is it justified? Would your conscience really permit it?

If you are a person brought up with humane values, you’d simply say “the question doesn’t arise in itself”

And if you are not? Well, then let me provide you with the statistic that 92% of all ragging happens in well established, high-quality educational institutions! It’s happening is by no means justified and one ought to be seriously punished if caught targeting a poor soul with unquestionable potential otherwise!

To substantiate this read with a fact: Had it not been for his elder brother Dinesh, Suresh Raina would have returned home in Muradnagar and a glistening cricketing career would have been nipped in the bud, due to ragging. You can now see for yourself the gargantuan losses an unjustified act such as this could incur.

All in all, I believe it should be made well established that ragging is equivalent to a full-fledged crime and the bitter truth is that ragging, whether liked or not, even after being banned, has now become a culture. It has turned into a customary practice in colleges today. Almost every college has it noticed or unnoticed and not much has really been done to overcome it.

For one’s own armory let this be remembered that the World is harsh anyway, but one has to stay strong, fearless and open! There is always someone out there to help you out — it’s just you who has to take that first step to stand for yourself.