In this season of high emotion and revisiting of very painful experiences such as the collective trauma over the Bhopal gas tragedy, one particularly poignant and painful articulation was that of Ajay Rawla, the father of Rouvanjit Rawla, who committed suicide after being caned by his principal at La Martiniere School, Kolkata. Ajay Rawla wrote in a recent article in this newspaper, “… the heaviest burden on earth is the weight of the coffin of a child on his father’s shoulders…” Simple words, but it is difficult to imagine more heart-rending emotion.
The dread of tragedy befalling children is a spectre that is the worst nightmare of any parent. Children fall ill, get hurt, run away, die in accidents and each event is intensely painful. But it is difficult to imagine the trauma of parents whose lovely healthy happy cheerful baby commits suicide, after being repeatedly caned, punished and humiliated by his teachers. As a parent, a human being and a citizen I find it impossible to believe that teachers can possibly bring themselves to humiliate and harass a 13-year-old boy no matter what offence he might have committed. After all, we are talking not about a home for delinquent boys or a correction centre but a high-end, even historic, school for privileged children. In Rouvanjit’s case, it is nobody’s case that the child was any kind of major offender or that he had committed any serious offence. In those circumstances, what could have possessed the teachers and the principal to cane the child? Was it some perverted sense of power or was it something far more sinister? It is very important for the truth to come out.
In the flurry of reports and debate that immediately followed upon the incident I read some remarks made by a Delhi teacher. She talked about children who urinate repeatedly upon other children’s school bags, and children who torment physically challenged classmates. She felt that in such incorrigible cases it would be useful to administer corporal punishment. However, a moment’s reflection will convince any reasonable person that even in such cases of extreme bad behaviour on the part of children, corporal punishment will only aggravate the situation and is unlikely to improve any part of the problem. The offender is likely to get more resentful and behave worse, and the victim is only likely to suffer more. The only person likely to benefit is the impatient teacher who has vented his temper upon the student in his charge.
Of course, the Delhi teacher was talking about extreme examples and schools that cater to particularly disturbed children, something which is as remote to La Martiniere as the moon. In a school like La Martiniere, it might reasonably be expected that children who study there come from affluent and well-adjusted homes, as indeed did Rouvanjit, and the whole concept of discipline would only relate to educational or other minor misdemeanours. It is for this reason that the incident at La Martiniere has shocked the conscience of the nation.
The attitude of the principal of La Martiniere was cynical and arrogant. When he came on television shows, sporting a fake sounding public school accent and talked in clipped tones about how he had caned Rouvanjit, “but without intent to hurt”, I wanted to slap him for his complacency. He showed absolutely no remorse or regret and certainly no compassion for the child and his family. The management of the school, too, came out very badly taking a technical stand and sounding not just callous but also completely insensitive to the trauma the child must have undergone at the hands of three heroic teachers who jointly tortured him, as well as the eternal suffering of his family. Possibly, the most cruel blow of all came from the chief minister of West Bengal who simply brushed aside the entire issue as if it were of no consequence whatsoever. It is not politics, but my anguish, which prompts me to add that Rouvanjit and children his age are not a votebank and cannot vote and it was perhaps for this reason that the chief minister did not feel it necessary to take this issue seriously.
The Supreme Court of India, and at least two high courts, have handed down judgments declaring corporal punishment unlawful. Various states in our country have enacted laws to this effect. Internationally, most civilised countries have banned corporal punishment in their schools. We in India have the pernicious provision Sections 88 and 89 of the IPC, which say that any act done in good faith for the benefit of the child, by his or her guardian and not intended to cause death is permissible. These are the provisions that allow teachers, guardians, and sometimes even parents to literally get away with murder. The time has now come to take a serious look at these provisions and amend them suitably.
Several articles and news reports have appeared where eminent people have talked almost nostalgically about having been “mildly caned” or pinched or knocked on the head by a strict teacher and some have even felt that such disciplining might have helped them become better persons. But that was in a gentler time when perhaps the teacher had an almost organic connect with his students and enjoyed a different relationship. Those days cannot possibly be compared with modern times, in this age of information, where children have not only become far more aware and sensitive but are also far more exposed to great pressures and demands making them emotionally fragile, while being informed and driven to succeed.
Today’s children need to be handled with far greater care and sensitivity and perhaps it is time we recognised that teachers first need to be sensitised to the emotional needs of their charges before they accept the responsibility of imparting education to them. Unless there is zero tolerance for harassment and exploitation of children by misguided or frustrated schools and teachers, our schools will cease to be institutions where quality education is imparted to our children and become killing fields where children are harassed and their future destroyed.

Jayanthi Natarajan is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha and AICC spokesperson. The views expressed in this
column are her own.