Let’s face it, violence is literally everywhere around us
Many years ago, while preparing for the National Eligibility Test (NET) from one of those unpalatable ‘guidebooks’, I had come across a question that referred to an aggressive social event. The four multiple choices that followed asked us to shed light on the larger ‘reason’ undergirding the occurrence, one of them arguing that ‘we as a society have often been violent’. As much as I wanted to select that option, the answer-sheet proved it to be wrong. And yet, even after more than a decade, I cannot help but mull its validity, notwithstanding the essentialism that the statement might connote to some. For, violence is literally everywhere around us, and in us too.
As Indians, however, we are often quick to dismiss this reality. Two opinions frequently rise up as defence: one, that coming from the land of the Buddha and Gandhi, there is no truth to our inherently violent character; and two, that things are far worse in ‘such and such country’ (by which fanatics usually imply an Islamic nation), which should only make us feel ‘more proud’ of our ‘peace-loving’ heritage. Both of these perspectives are of course simplistically convenient positions at best, and laughably apathetic viewpoints at worst.
I was compelled to dwell on the matter after recently encountering a spine-chilling viral video of a couple of seniors mercilessly ragging a junior student at a private university in Solan (Himachal Pradesh). In it, the junior student is seen refusing alcohol upon being ordered by his seniors, as a consequence of which he is both slapped and belted multiple times by an uncontrollably angry man. The latter is seemingly placated once the junior relents under excruciating pain. The only ‘positive’ thing about the video was that it got made in the first place (almost secretly, it appears), though I worry for the one who recorded.
Out of the many contexts that we associate with arenas of violence, the field of education strikes as particularly poignant and deeply depressing. Despite the rise of legislations, committees and rule-books over the years forbidding inhuman acts like the above, we are routinely confronted with instances that make us question our humanity. Only last year, a viral video of a school principal in Uttar Pradesh exposed her ordering primary class students to ‘slap’ a seven-year-old Muslim boy turn by turn. Around the same time, in the city of Kota, known for its coaching centres, the increasing frequency of student suicides by hanging from the fan forced the authorities to take cognisance. But instead of delving into the root causes, the administration offered the preposterous solution of installing spring-loaded fans in student-residences, making a mockery of the matter.
Indian popular culture has done an honest if underrepresented job in portraying such horrors. Films such as ‘Rockford’ (1999), ‘Taare Zameen Par’ (2007), ‘Noblemen’ (2018) and more recently an aptly titled web-series ‘School of Lies’ (2023) have explored the dynamics of pedagogic cruelty and sadism in different ways, exposing the hypocrisy of distinguished boarding schools’ commitment towards ‘excellence’ and ‘progress’.
‘School of Lies’ especially presents a nuanced portrayal of the many levels of aggression that exist in these supposedly ‘best’ schools, where not only teachers but students themselves bask in the air of superiority over their juniors, brutally punishing them at will.
Eminent writer Pankaj Mishra also illustrates the banality of such violence in his novel ‘Run and Hide’ (2022). In what might rank as among the most harrowing descriptions of ragging in contemporary literature, the novel’s opening pages show three IIT-Delhi freshmen from the 1980s engage in perverse sexual acts forced upon by seniors. A disturbing emphasis on caste underlines the whole ordeal, with the students being doled out demeaning activities in accordance with their backgrounds. But the persecution leaves none untouched. “After four hours of this,” writes the narrator, “punctuated by deafening and spine-chilling screams from elsewhere in the hostel, where other freshers were being ritually humiliated, we returned to our room… [but] our ordeal continued a few more nights”.
In all of these examples and the many thousands that occur every day, what repeatedly gets demonstrated is a complex acting out of a troublesome legacy of entitlement, patriarchy, personal trauma, and an unwavering allegiance to ‘hierarchy’ in the country’s social set-up. This hierarchy refuses to recognise the individual dignity of children, young adults and adults as well. While bullying endures in the West, too, it largely disappears at the university level. The Wikipedia entry on ‘ragging’ highlights this parochial form of cruelty as being almost entirely endemic to the countries of South Asia, especially India.
Social commentator Santosh Desai remarked that in our country, “instinctively, we feel little need for equality, [for] everyone knows who stands where”. The Solan incident is yet another episode where the desire for aberrant superiority unleashes in the most vile form. Tellingly, the video also shows another senior bragging about the extensive beating that he too received in his time. This reminded me of Mishra’s novel, where a Dalit character’s ragging doesn’t make him automatically empathetic; instead, it turns him into a harasser as soon as he reaches seniority.
In here lies the most worrisome win of violence: victims becoming victimisers, almost as a rule of thumb. Unless we learn to dissect and treat this equation in all its intricacy, such incidents shall only continue to rip apart our social fabric.
— The writer is a historian,
artist and cultural critic
