My student days got over before the Supreme Court strictures on ragging were in place. So I had my first experience of ragging in 1976 at the college hostel in Kollam where I joined for Pre Degree (now known as Plus 1). My second experience of ragging was two years later when I joined for B.Sc. (Zoology) at a college in Thiruvananthapuram. After just two months, I quit this course to join the B.Sc. (Horticulture) course at Thrissur in 1978.
With the experiences of my second session of ragging still fresh in my mind I was prepared in my inner being to face my third session of ragging at Thrissur. I knew what to do and what not to do to minimise my victimization. I had mastered the art of faking the humility of a dove while being wise as a serpent! There were various items in the ragging menu: imaginary chair until one collapses, lying under the mattress of seniors for hours picking bed bugs (saving some in your pocket so that you could reach the target assigned by the seniors in the second round), weird haircuts and shaves, crawling form one end of the hostel corridor floor to another end half naked and doing many other things that are better left unsaid. Lighter in comparison were the class time assignments from seniors to bring back personal details of girls, delivering love letters, obtaining signed commitments in reply, etc. Failure to comply was a sure invitation to verbal / physical abuse and thus making me eligible for higher options in the ragging menu.
That year some of my classmates had to be hospitalized for injuries they received during ragging. When all this came to light, some of the senior students were suspended from college. The senior students then went on strike demanding that their colleagues (the suspended students) be taken back. The seniors came to us, juniors to get our signatures on a statement that we had never been ragged.
I weighed the options before me. As the authorities had already suspended a few senior students, I knew the seniors would, now, not be bold enough to go beyond limits. If I choose to defy their demand, I could probably pave the way for establishing my identity as being a student with a difference. Having counted the cost, I refused to sign the statement and as expected I was immediately subject to special doses of ragging. But as I had predicted, this turned out to be a defining moment for my identity and a turning point in my campus life. I was noted. The very next day, I was forcefully made to squat cross-legged in front of office of the head of institution. I was garlanded and supposedly on Satyagraha demanding that the suspended seniors to be taken back! Of course, the authorities could make out that my Satyagraha was just another drama enforced by the seniors!
In the days that followed, the issue got resolved with undertakings being given by the parents of the suspended students; the strike was called off and classes resumed. The Fresher’s day took place uneventfully with mixed feelings. But with myself having been catapulted to the position of one who dared to defy the seniors, I was now bold enough to assert my identity as a Child of God. On the evening of the Fresher’s day, I dared to fix a notice on the Students Notice Board: ‘Tabernacle Hour: Invited to study the Bible’. That was the beginning of an evangelistic student group in the college which in the years to come had made many students come to know the Lord Jesus Christ and serve Him in the many years after their student life.
When I became a senior student, I opted to be an anti-ragging activist. I interviewed the then Vice Chancellor of the Kerala Agricultural University, the hostel secretary and some student leaders and published a printed handout on Ragging that was distributed among the seniors, first year students and their parents. I used it to testify of my different position.
If my experiences of ragging have done any good to me, it was only that they gave me the opportunity to take up the cross and follow my Lord Jesus Christ during my campus life, and thus trained me in bearing reproach for His sake.
It is now more than 30 years since my last and eventful experience of ragging. Today some of those who ragged me in 1978 are still working with me as Professors in the same University. Do they have a special place in my heart and memories? Yes, they do, but for the wrong reason! I still carry the scars of the vulgarity with which they had depreciated the dignity of human life by the demands of their deprived minds. I do not have any problems in my working relationship with them. I have forgiven them with the payer that Jesus Christ prayed on the cross: ‘Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do.’ But I am convinced that ragging can never accomplish the purpose it is purported to achieve. Respect can never be demanded. It has to be earned. Jesus Christ said: "Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. (Mathew 7:
