Media frenzy, the irate belligerence of urban India’s upper middle classes’ newly acquired sensibility and the righteous indignation of the National Centre for the Protection of Child Rights following the caning of class VIII La Martiniere student Rouvanjit Rawla in February this year is bewildering. All these constituencies seem to have accepted that there’s a direct linkage between the caning of Rouvanjit and his tragic suicide four days later — a cause-and-effect relationship not proven or accepted by this prestigious school’s board of governors or its alumni association. The over-reaction to mild caning seems incongruous, inconsistent and testimony to the double standards prevalent in urban upper class India.
It can’t be denied that violent chastisement is rampant in India’s schools. Reports of abuse of children constantly appear in the press and other media, not necessarily as ‘breaking news’, but as a steady stream of information routinely reporting often permanent disability and even death, imposed upon hapless children by rogue teachers. But the line between formally delivered punishment and abuse seems to have disappeared, and corporal punishment and abuse have somehow become indistinguishable. The difference has been blurred in a haze of borrowed psychological babble which if true, would make most Indians over 40 who scho-oled in India or even Eton College (UK), dysfunctional adults, lunatics, criminals and/or sexual deviants. Abuse of children must end, but paradoxically it may require well-organised disci-plining in schools to attain this laudable objective.
By general definition, corporal punishment in a school setting entails physical reprimand of a student with intent to cause pain, but not injury. The blinkered polarisation of the pro and anti corporal punishment camps tends to overshadow the circumstances that necessitate this recourse. The trendy ‘ban corporal punishment’ and the die-hard ‘pro corporal punishment’ lobbies must arrive at a realisation that there may be situations in which infliction of exemplary formal corporal punishment will do more good than harm. Yet to argue the case for formally administered punishment is not to endorse arbitrary use of fists, canes, straps and slaps which besides being illegal and immoral, serve no purpose at all. If Indian society can condone snapping a man’s neck at the end of a noose as justifiable in some circumstances, surely formal caning can be — and should be — administered to make the point that grave misbehaviour will result in painful consequences and that wrong-doers must face the music.
Therefore if a student bullies, beats, cheats, plays truant, copies, deals drugs, indulges in forcible sex or commits other heinous offences which impact the safety and well being of other children, any school principal worthy of the design-ation has to act. If corporal punishment is legal in 20 states of the US there must be something to be said in favour of it.
In a systematic review of literature produced on corporal punishment, researchers John Lyons, Rachel Anderson and David Larson of the National Institute of Healthcare Research, USA, found that 83 of the 132 identified articles published in clinical and psychological journals were merely opinion-driven, devoid of empirical evidence. They also found that their conclusions were flawed because of grouping of the impact of abuse with formal caning.
It is not the intention of this writer to extol corporal punishment. It is an attempt to extricate it from the quagmire that wrongly lumps it with abuse. Cavalier teachers who misuse their authority to indiscriminately hurt, demean, injure and even maim children, must be punished. But blanket legislation proscribing corporal punishment necessitates review because the teacher’s role is reduced to that of a dispenser of school or board syllabi, a regurgitator of prescribed curriculums, not responsible for chaotic classroom situations.
Punishment in schools must be assessed keeping in mind the Indian ethos. Children in greys and blazers, school tie and pin still touch a teacher’s feet while entering an examination hall. The teacher as ‘guru’ is not a concept lost in the archives of tradition nor is the fact that many teachers look upon those they have taught with love, pride and life-long affection.
But a school is not a factory (contrary to some chain schools that tend to operate as such). As in any institution there are lazy, laid back, disobedient, disruptive, disturbed and unconcerned students. They too have to be addressed. In most schools in India a clip on the ear, a thump on the back, or six of the best are corporal punishments which don’t distract a student from his work. Seldom is it the intent of a teacher to rip off an ear, dislodge a vertebra or displace a collar bone while inflicting corporal punishment.
We must acknowledge the reality that every school consists of individuals. Each child is different. The reticent must be protected, the bully controlled, the shy must be shielded and the boisterous jock monitored. A mere frown of disapproval is sufficient for most, an afternoon of detention can have the intended effect on others, but for an incorrigible minority corporal punishment formally administered is a necessary and effective deterrent.
(Robindra Subba is director of Himali Boarding School, Kurseong)