Sarah Khan (pseudonym) is a student of the International Relations department of Bangladesh University of Professionals. Like an average freshman, she was excited to start a new chapter of her life at university. However, something strange happened soon.
Seniors sent a text message to the department's messenger group that contained some bizarre rules and regulations that a junior must follow. And this is a common phenomenon seen across most departments of public universities.
Among the many questionable rules, two caught her eye - juniors must, at all times, regardless of the person's religion, greet a senior with salam; they must send a specific text that contains their name, current address and home district, name of previous institutions from where they passed SSC and HSC, etc., before adding a senior to social media accounts.
Violation of these rules will result in dire consequences, which include ostracisation of the whole batch by a senior batch!
In an instant, like millions of other first-year students, Sarah realised a gruesome reality - everything she was told till then was a fabrication of the truth.
Universities are meant to be a platform where individuals bask in the pursuit of knowledge while upholding and celebrating diversity in terms of background, age, colour, and, more importantly, philosophy. But something aberrant and dubious has plagued Bangladesh's environment for higher studies - seniors' tendency to enforce their ideologies into the personal lives of juniors.
These tendencies translate to vile actions of different degrees that traumatise the juniors. The seniors in question masquerade the actions as ice-breaking, teaching manners, upholding institutional culture, and forming bonds between seniors and juniors. They refuse to term these as ragging because of their negative connotation.
Sayem Khan (pseudonym) is a freshman at the Food and Nutrition Department of Mawlana Bhashani Science and Technology University. He was coerced to measure an entire room using one-third of a match stick. His refusal would result in consequences such as severe mental abuse and bullying. The event instilled fear in Sayem at a scale that his university now makes him feel unsafe and anxious.
Other complaints from several students include being forced to do assignments for seniors, collecting cigarette filters from the ground, humiliatingly dancing at the command of seniors, answering personal questions, and the unfortunate list goes on and on.
Whether the most common phenomenon of these, being forced to give salam to seniors irrespective of religion and wish, destroys the entire philosophical purpose of salam in Islam is a point worth pondering.
But why are these seniors so desperate to enforce respect from the juniors? Why can't they believe in the philosophy of courtesy and collaboration?
Nafisa Kabir Rhyin, a third-year student at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Dhaka University, has an answer, "People who don't feel important (because of a lack of skill set or knowledge) in places where it matters tend to force respect from places where they think they might get away with it."
"Because these juniors won't oppose them owing to the high-power gap and other cultural circumstances. It all boils down to how insecure the seniors are that they need to force respect from others to feel validated, even if it's at the cost of inhumane approaches like fearmongering, harassment and bullying," she added.
Lack of accountability and authority's regulation in these matters may pave the way to other extreme forms of ragging like violent physical and mental abuse.
Rhyin adds, "Whether such behaviour will evolve into a violent form of ragging entirely depends on whether the environment facilitates it. The environment is an accumulation of the university's legislation, implementation of the legislation, and university culture in general."
The seniors in question claim that such behaviour helps to form a life-long bond with juniors, which is more beneficial for the juniors. How much of it is true? Does such a form of relationship have any utility at all?
Sibbir Riyan, a final year student at IBA, DU, completely disagrees, "I was in cadet college. Having experienced all forms of ragging first-hand, I believe ragging and similar behaviour do not help juniors get closer to seniors. If it did, we would inflict mild or severe ragging on our love interests or friends just to get closer, wouldn't we?"
So how can juniors form the 'beneficial life-long bond' if they don't subscribe to this violent senior-junior dynamic? Sibbir believes such a bond can be built through mutual respect and fraternisation.
"You don't say salam to pay respect or rag your friends to get closer, do you? Similarly, he remarked that juniors can build a good relationship with their juniors by maintaining healthy communication, adding value to their lives, and participating in similar interests," he remarked.
At an age when global educational institutions are aspiring to build a knowledge-driven inclusive society, the universities of Bangladesh are creating a quicksand that consumes the youth, the future of Bangladesh.
The excruciating cries of Abrar Fahad's death can still be silently heard in every educational establishment in Bangladesh, loudly reminding us of the woes of helpless students.
All these incidents culminate into a toxic cycle, where the victims become perpetrators later. The cycle is vicious enough to result in the death of the dreams and ambitions of millions of students, causing emotional deaths that don't make it to the final statistics.
The writer is a second-year student at IBA, University of Dhaka.
