Joe Shearer
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I no longer think so.
Running an educational institution with hostel facilities in a diversified environment is a daily walk over egg-shells. Sometimes slightly bruised egg-shells. These are young men and women who are not always self-restrained, not always inclined to speak softly to keep other people calm. They are excitable, given to extremely dramatic displays of emotion, and to taking extreme positions on any issue. The result is often an altercation, sometimes violence.
What we have been trying to do on our own campus, with a student population that is heavily weighted towards one community, is to ensure that nothing extreme is done, nothing gets out of hand. The idea is to pinch things in the bud.
In doing this, we are not always democratic. We do not allow our students all the privileges that they themselves would enjoy just outside the campus, outside the gates, under the supervision and watch of the civilian police (as opposed to the campus watch-and-ward staff). Our students need to maintain a higher degree of self-restraint, a greater control over their tongues, than citizens in general. There is no process of grievance redressal through the judiciary; instead, we have a series of student committees that run things: the disciplinary committee, the prevention of sexual harassment committee, and so on.
We believe that we have to take these extra precautions, and impose these additional restrictions on our hostel residents, to a lesser extent on our day scholars. We think so because the parents and guardians of these young men and women have entrusted us with their safety and security, and it is necessary for us to go that extra mile to live up to these expectations that have been reposed in us. In doing so - this is ironic, even painful, and in some ways illegal - we actually impinge on their democratic freedom. Many of the students are over 21; they are considered rational adults and they should truthfully speaking be allowed those exact freedoms that they are allowed under the constitution. That they are denied this in an attempt to add a layer of security and safety to their natural environment is a matter of great pain, besides being illegal and unconstitutional, but I would rather we did this than face the prospect of a violent incident, or several violent incidents.
In the light of what we ourselves do, it is difficult not to feel sorry for the institution involved. They have to face the imminent problem of violence breaking out on campus; of injuries to students in their care, of removal of students not injured, but whose parents fear for their life and limbs; to intrusion of external elements who want to intervene, both politicians and rowdy elements; to hostile and slanted newspaper and media reports, affecting their image and their long-term viability as institutions of learning; to police intervention, if matters appear to be particularly outrageous; to a host of other consequences, imaginable and unimaginable. What are they to do? They did what I would do in the same circumstances: nip things in the bud by isolating trouble-makers and provocateurs; even expel them temporarily; fend off criticism from external people, especially right-wing political parties by filing an FIR and pointing to the measures taken, including expulsion; quelling retaliatory impulses within the other students, again, by emphasising the actions taken, and by hinting not very subtly that the same will happen if anyone takes to retaliatory violence.
The Kashmiri students in question would have had quite different experiences in off-campus society. For one, they would not have been supervised so closely; they might have done more than they did on campus; the reactions might have been far less restrained and the reactions might have been handled with less firmness than on campus, leading to greater damage and severe physical consequences. On campus, they were allowed less freedom than outside; they were also ensured greater safety, relatively speaking. They chose to express their freedom to its fullest constitutional availability, with no thought to the consequences, or perhaps with a mischievous intention among one or more of them to provoke the consequences and create a fuss. It is difficult to believe that they were wholly innocent of the furious reaction they would provoke, and that they were caught entirely by surprise.
Much of what I have said will be criticised, and rightly so. Institutional authorities have no business interfering with the basic human rights of a citizen, and they have no business taking unilateral action, never mind the provocations of one side. They really cannot expel students for expressing a partiality for a sports team. Having said that, it is sadly a feature of south Asian culture and society, perhaps even more, that young people are considered wards, even after they attain their majority. Wards of their parents, at least until they marry, wards of the college or university as long as they live on site and if they participate fully in campus life during college hours. As long as we have this protective attitude and as long as young idiots choose to create problems from whole cloth, we will continue to have precisely this kind of trouble on campuses throughout the country.
Sorry, but that's the way it is.
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