More than corporal punishment

A news story that is generating heat lately is the suicide of a 13-year-old schoolboy in Kolkata. Rouvanjit Rawla, a Class VIII student of La Martiniere for Boys, committed suicide on February 12 this year. He hung himself in his Alipore home. Four days earlier he was caned and humiliated at his school by his teachers.

While the broadcast media is baying for the principal’s blood (the case came to prominence as Rouvanjit’s father filed an FIR accusing the school principal, Sunirmal Chakravarthi, for the death of his son) and the alumnus of the school has come out in defence of the institution (and through that the principal) before rushing into judgment there are certain questions which need to be asked.

The principal could take the moral responsibility for the death (as he has confessed that he ‘mildly’ caned Rouvanjit on February 8) and step aside till the enquiry is over. One version of the story goes that the teachers ganged up against Rouvanjit and interrogated him. These allegations are plausible because at times teaching staff can get into such acts (all of us have examples to cite). A National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) enquiry reveals that Rouvanjit was not a ‘teacher’s student’ who would blindly follow the words of a teacher. He had a mind of his own and questioned decisions to understand the rationale behind it — not the kind of student La Martiniere teachers preferred. The fact that he was a popular student, who earned the respect of his peers, did not go down well with his teachers, especially his English teacher, Partha Dutta, who allegedly refused to let Rouvanjit sit in his class for more than two months. If the final verdict nails the teachings staff, all the teachers involved in the ‘interrogation’ should face the maximum punishment the law awards.

Sunirmal Chakravarthi’s explanation that he ‘has been punished for his act’ as the ‘managing committee has issued a warning’ is an insult to the Rawla family. A black mark in Chakravarthi’s service records is no countermeasure to the mistake he has committed. Being the principal of the institution he should have led by example and not joined the chorus of teachers who might have felt ‘threatened’ by the zest of a 13-year-old boy.

There was a period of four days between the day the principal caned him and the day Rouvanjit committed suicide. During this time, he also attended school. There is not much information as to what happened in these intervening days. To squarely blame caning as the reason why Rouvanjit took his life is pushing the argument a bit too much. I, like many others, spent a considerable part of my schooling life in boarding school. Caning and spiteful words were common and almost everyday someone or the other got a good drubbing. If all students were to take the easy way out we would have had mass suicides.

The school, no doubt, has failed to deal appropriately with a high-school boy who might have been mischievous. Even so, harassing a boy because he is mischievous is not justifiable. Though caning is not a way of disciplining, educational institutions resort to it in the belief that it is good for the student. On the one hand there are parents who complain that their ward is disobedient and on the other the administration demands better grades. Teachers are caught in the middle and have little option but resort to the best-known technique they are familiar with – instil fear. And what better way to do this than the ultimate sceptre of power in a classroom – the infamous cane. A reason for this could be that we don’t usually get the crème of minds as teachers. Yes, teaching is a low-paying and often thankless job these days. For many, teaching is just a stopgap arrangement till something more lucrative comes their way.

At this time it seems that it was not just the failure of the school, but also the people at home who perhaps failed to gauge that all was not well in the life of their son. If the boy was having a tough time in school, did he not complain about it to his parents? If he did, what was the approach of the parents? If he did not, why did he not fall back on his family when his school was failing him? Didn’t they sense that their son was under immense pressure? Why were the warning signs, if any, not noticed and acted upon? It cannot be a black and white situation the media is making it to be. And if Rouvanjit had not resorted to the extreme step, today, he would have been one among the many students in the country who bear with this unjust practice of disciplining.

At this juncture, one cannot help but see an irony in the opening sentence in the webpage of the school Rouvanjit used to study: ‘La Martiniere has one of the most distinguished history of any school in Kolkata, or in fact, India’.

cherian@expressbuzz.com