The strange case of Sampurna Lahiri (17), a student of Alipore Multipurpose Government Girls’ School for ten years, who was refused admission in the school’s higher secondary study programme despite passing the class X school leaving exam in the first division, attracted many headlines in Kolkata’s dailies last month (July). Lahiri was denied admission because the school’s principal Jayanti Roy didn’t want to “risk spoiling the homely environment of my institution”.
Sampurna’s disqualifying sin was that she had signed up for a beauty pageant, won and had been awarded a product modelling contract. “Students pursuing modelling or acting careers simultaneously with academics cannot be allowed admission into this school, as that would disturb the concentration of other pupils,” explained principal Roy.
Not that the beauty pageant was a downmarket event organised by a fly-by-night events company as is increasingly the norm. It was staged by Sananda, a popular women’s Bengali language monthly published by ABP Group (the state’s largest vernacular media publisher) with a National Readership Survey 2006 certified readership of 848,000 copies per month.
Over 4,000 teenage girls had competed in this year’s pageant and Sampurna made it to the top ten which won her a modelling contract. However, instead of congratulations, she received a rude surprise. “On the day of admission, I went to the school with my parents and a clerk asked me to meet the principal. She told my parents that I would be given admission only if I rejected the modelling contract,” she recalls.
Principal Roy’s outdated puritanism has shocked the teachers’ community. Says Krishna Damani, director of South Point High School: “We encourage students interested in modelling, acting, etc. However, the school is strict about attendance and academic performance.” Adds Heena Gorsia, honorary general secretary, Bhawanipur Gujarati Education Society College: “We are proud of our students who have made it big as models or actors. We have always extended full support to them.”
Even the Left Front government of West Bengal dominated by the CPI-M (Communist Party of India-Marxist) party has taken a pro-Sampurna stand. Says Debasish Sarkar, secretary, WB State Higher Secondary Education Council: “It’s not right for the school to deny admission to a deserving candidate.”
School education minister Partha Dey sympathises with Sampurna but is non-committal about government intervention. “It’s unfortunate that the girl was denied admission. As far as our guidelines are concerned, we haven’t prescribed any rule that denies admission to a student on the ground that she is a participant in modelling or acting assignments.” Evidently as its name indicates, the Alipore Multipurpose Government Girls’ School is owned and run by the state government.
Nevertheless principal Roy is adamant. “Modelling would hamper her studies. I cannot allow this in school. Had this been a college, I would not have objected,” she says.
Kolkata’s most widely read english language daily (readership 2.5 million), The Telegraph, deemed the issue big enough to write an editorial (July 15) on it. “The puritanism directed at Ms. Lahiri is the sort that unthinkingly associates the work of models and actors with sexual immorality and a kind of ‘bad’ commercialism. This mix of ignorance and prejudice, when it becomes part of the ethos of higher education, could severely constrain and complicate the personal and professional lives of young women, apart from perpetuating wrongheaded and damaging stereotypes regarding certain professions. And it is particularly dangerous when heads of educational institutions, wielding power and influence over the lives of young people, come to embody such attitudes.”
Confronted by the adamantine stand of principal Roy, Sampurna has voted with her feet and has been accepted into class XI of the Barisha High School, south Kolkata which doesn’t regard product modelling a disqualification. The great majority within Kolkata’s bhadralok (middle class) believes she has done the right thing by sticking to her stand.
Sujoy Gupta (Kolkata)