Ragging, DU style

Ragging is a state of mind. Cheap thrills and a different kick altogether; ragging is a window to the future. A window, where one comes to know who is going to be your Man Friday for the entire year or who would be the college president after three years. You find your friends and foes while ragging a junior or in Delhi University’s jargon “fachcha”.

The college ragging during day time, when day scholars are there, is simple and done mostly to impress on girls. Yes, unwritten code in North Campus is that day scholars cannot rag a hostler. Only students from same department can do some “introductions” in a lighter vein. However, the hostels of the colleges in the North Campus at night are the hotspots for ragging.

Right from making a guy strip off and make them run to another college and pee on its boundary to making a junior stand on a platform while their hands raised is a normal routine every year for the fachchas who join the hostel. There’s another unwritten code in hostels that is religiously followed in DU is never rag hostlers from the north east and vice versa. Raggings in DU starts from day one and finishes on the day hostel seniors throw a fresher’s party generally happens in July end or in September. After that friendly fachchas are roped in for the DUSU election work. The Mass ragging is generally a fun thing and none of the juniors are assaulted physically barring few slaps, etc.

There are few smart blokes who try and enter the hostel after the fresher’s party. However for them ordeal is tough as their ego goes for a six as fachchas who have undergone ragging by seniors are invited to rag their smart brethren. It’s simply gross.

Now any hostel in North campus has two types of hostel residents. The first are the legal ones and the second types are the illegal residents. Generally the joke in Hindu College was that though hostel has 200-odd legal residents, food was cooked for 450 residents as illegal were more than the legal ones. Same was the case during our time in the hostels of KMC, Hansraj or Ramjas. There have been lores of these illegal residents in each of the colleges. Prominent among them was one Mr Bhakuni, who though was a student of KMC but was staying in the Hansraj hostel for more than a decade.

So the illegal residents are a real menace because they know for them sky is the limit in ragging. They cannot be punished by the college where they are staying or doing ragging. At times they can be ruthless. In Hindu hostel there was a student from a respected school in Nainital. The boy was a topper but he enrolled himself in Hindi Hons course although his best of four percentage in class XII was 96. Hostlers were stunned when they came to know about this and thus he was the prime target of serial raggers. In just couple of intense ragging sessions in a gap of three days was enough for him to decide that this college was not for him. He left the College. Whatever happened to him in this session just simply cannot be written. He was mentally interrogated and then stripped off and made to do different stuff which was just gross.

In another instance of Hansraj hostel, a guy from Siliguri and another one from Meerut were ragged for almost three hours. Their ordeal was so bad that when asked to do fellatio on each other, they went ahead for it only to be stopped at the last moment. This time the raggers were not seniors but the fachchas, who were ragged for three months, posing as seniors. Since the two joined after the fresher’s party, so it was customary that the fachchas ragged their peers.

There also have been instances when some juniors are given ‘training’ in ragging. A public school pass out from Shimla who joined St Stephen’s, was ragged in Hindu College hostel prior to his joining the Stephen’s hostel. His ragging was arranged by a senior from school who was staying in Hindu College. Although his ordeal lasted for three hours, but later he became friends for the rest of life with his tormentors from the other college. In fact he found a den in Hindu College hostel during the ragging season in St Stephen’s.