The philosophy behind ragging,

and why it still works.

By Donnie Ashok September 23, 2013 Uncategorized3 Comments
There is a reason, a philosophy behind everything in this earth, sometimes it
just takes us a little time and resource to find those reasons.

Why does ragging exist? When did it start? Can it end? If Yes, how? If No,
why?

Definition
Ragging is a type of detrimental interaction that takes place between the
seniors and the new comers of a college. It resembles the practice of hazing
in the American colleges for it is not an initiation. Doing chores for seniors,
hurling insults at the juniors is what it includes along with many other
humiliating activities. Colleges in India have had a lengthy history of
Ragging which does not exclude the reputed institutes among Engineering
and medical and other professional colleges. Over the years, Ragging has
earned itself a sinister reputation, the reason being, numerous complaints
from those who have been its victims, at times inflicting serious injury upon
them as well as causing death. Stringent laws have been promulgated to
tackle this menace of Ragging.

Origin
Ragging isn’t a recent trend, actually it had started a long time back, i.e.
about 3 million years ago when mammals started appearing on the earth, and
is an offshoot of the thing known as territoriality .
[1]
Territoriality is what occupiers of an area do to protect their interests in the
area. Dogs are known for violently staving away aliens to their land
irrespective of the species. Lions can’t tolerate members of same sex occupy
a same piece of land, as it inevitably leads to conflict and threat to their
offsprings and chances of reproduction.

Apes and other human ancestors are known to violently torture and tear away
genitals of intruders, leaving them dying and impotent.

Observation
After staying in the hostel and having an allegiance with an university for a
year or more we develop some methods and standards of interaction among
ourselves, and it gives rise to a culture unique to the university.

Now after a year or so, some new faces come up defiling this sacred code of
conduct and paying no heed to the erstwhile occupiers of the place i.e. the
territorial masters. This invoke animal instincts in the territorial masters.

Having a territory for so long and now new entities come and throng the
place, it can’t be acceptable. Rights and duties evolved a lot later in the
timeline of human development, but the first place is still occupied by our
instincts.

Now to establish the supremacy of the animals who used to live here from a
prior time, some recourse is taken. The newcomers have to know the masters
of the place and establish a hierarchy. If they accept it easily, then they are
slaves; if they don’t accept they will be outcasts and dealt with harshly.

There are different levels of ragging and it completely depends on the amount
of control a person can have on his animal instincts. For e.g.

Level 1. Seniors who have certain achievements in life, and are sophisticated
in their ways will basically ask the junior to introduce himself in Hindi while
taking care of the minute details, some may ask about G.K. and current
affairs, while some may ask about latin phrases generally used in law. These
seniors are generally the good people and later become friends or mentor.

Level 2. Seniors who have deadlines approaching will get juniors to type a
considerable number of pages or tell them to paraphrase some research work,
failing which the junior might get referred to Level 3 people. These people do
not torment others generally.

Level 3. Song & dance; spiderman & superman; doing indecent acts which
are funny.

Level 4. These seniors receive negative feedback from their juniors, and they
have a feeling that some juniors are arrogant or aggressive and needs to be
taught a lesson. They will tease and torment until the junior breaks down.

Level 5. These seniors never received a compliment from anyone in life, they
are unhappy with everything in life, they derive pleasure by abusing the
juniors and making their lives difficult.

Level 4 & 5 people are not normally found in law universities.

Conclusion
The only good thing about ragging is that it eventually stops. Along with the
acceptance of the older animals as the superior race the ragging stops when
its objective is fulfilled.

That may take some protracted length of time in some exceptional cases, but
it doesn’t continue forever, as there is regular source of newcomers.

Ragging crosses all limits of humanity and legality when accidents and
mishaps occur in the name of fun and ‘teaching-of-a-lesson’.

Sadly, ragging can’t end. It will exist even in the mildest form, but it will
never end. I know people who promised to themselves that they will put an
end to it; but when the time came – the relative lawlessness and the
idiosyncrasy among his juniors made him call some of them to his room and
teach them a lesson; on how to interact in the common bathrooms, in the
common mess, and in the campus; the lessons were quite harshly put
forward.

A deeper reasoning behind its continuity is that, ragging is a form of social

interaction having roots hard-coded into our minds. We can’t bear the fact
that somebody come running into our house, without taking our permission,
play the t.v. and enjoy all the goods of our house. There is a process to
everything.
It however ends the moment when the seniority of the seniors is accepted by
the juniors and they are ready to act as slaves for a year or more until there is
fresh supply.