Ragging in Educational institutions in India - Know its Law and implications

Everybody says that school life is the best time of a person’s life which is actually true but the only point is everyone understands that only when they leave school. When a person is in school or when a child is going to school, all they want or dream of is going to college. School students think that they are obligated to right now, and they have to do what teachers or parents ask them to and especially they don’t have much except studies and college life is cool and relax and tension free. They believe that they will be free to do whatever they want once they get into college. When the time starts coming for their college happiness of getting to be free is there but then fear grabs them days before their college. The fear of being ragged by the students or seniors. The moment they are going to join college they hear and read about ragging which scares them. In this blog, we will discuss ragging meaning. What ragging should be? What happens if a person rags on someone? What does raggedy meaning?

Ragging Meaning: Ragging means when any senior or person with power makes juniors or freshers or anyone subordinate to them do something or not do something or abuse them physically or verbally is ragging. Ragging usually takes place in various universities or colleges but sometimes it happens in certain offices as well. In universities or colleges whenever any new students join the colleges the senior things or in the name of culture bully those students, they abuse them, they make them do something which might be vulgar or something which the new students might not be comfortable in doing so. This is called ragging.

One of the examples that seniors ask the juniors to do is to wear raggedy. Raggedy means clothes or something which is dirty or not good or clothes which are torn. Sometimes when ragging happened in the hostels especially in the medical girls’ hostel, they torture the girls on the rag. Girls on the rag meaning when the girls are on their periods.

History of Ragging: Ragging is the concept that used to follow in European Universities, but later it started in other countries and universities as well. The European Universities used to make practical jokes on the new students but later it started turning ugly. At that time making jokes on the students were not supposed to humiliate them but to lighten the mode of the new and young students and to break the ice between the junior and senior students but now they rag students for their own entertainment and to humiliate the students.

How Seniors Rag their Juniors: Seniors rag them in different ways now they are treating them badly in order to show that they are seniors, so juniors are supposed to obey them and follow their orders, basically they want to show that they have power and position. Ragging can be done in the following ways:

1. Clothes or Apparel: This type of ragging can be funny but can be humiliating as well, it depends on the intention, in this type of ragging the juniors or new students are told to wear either a specific dress code for fun or specific clothes for humiliation. For example, girls are told to wear proper ethnic clothes with braided hair, or they are told to wear some dirty clothes, etc.

2. Introduction: This type of ragging is less of ragging and more about opening up. Some students are very delicate and sweet. They hesitate to talk to new people and especially in new places, so to provide them the self-confidence they are told to give their introduction. But sometimes this introduction told to give by the seniors is to bully the students which are again wrong.

3. Verbal abuse or action: It means the juniors or new students are told to abuse someone or they were being abused by the seniors or to either sing or speak any dialogue etc.

4. Sexual abuse: This is one of the very serious types of ragging where the seniors asked personal questions or questions related to someone’s or their body or sometimes told them to strip or kiss etc. It happens with both male and female students.

5. Pranks or jokes: Seniors ask the juniors to act or mimic or perform for fun and entertainment, it can be done to make fun of the juniors or just for everybody’s fun including the junior, and did not mean to hurt anyways.

6. Ragging in hostels: Hostels are the most common place for ragging, the seniors order their juniors to do some tasks like polish the shoes or dance, or clean the room. It can happen from light mode to very dirty mode.

7. Drug abuse: Sometimes the seniors force the junior to drink or get high by using drugs, this is another very serious way of ragging because this could lead them to be addicted to it, which spoils their life and career.