“Doing politics” with death is not a new phenomenon. Political parties have, for decades, used the dead to highlight rivals’ “crimes” of commissions and omissions and to showcase a range of rivals’ shortcomings including neglect and callousness. By so doing political parties try to cash in on the tragic situations for their own ends which is to eventually rake in the votes. It is therefore not surprising that political parties have decided to make the unnatural death of a Jadavpur University student, a political issue. West Bengal’s top political parties, each, while condemning the incident, have nevertheless, started the blame game.
What transpired on the night of Thursday, August 10 and the circumstances under which the first year student of the college’s Bengali department died, according to police, is still emerging and a week after the freshman reportedly fell from the fourth floor balcony of the boys’ hostel in which he was staying, nine arrests have already been made and more arrests are likely. According to the police, which is trying to piece together a clear account based on the statements of those who were arrested and interrogated as well as others, he was a victim of ragging. Often euphemistically referred by the perpetrators of this heinous crime as “initiating” the newcomers into the institute, ragging, in spite of being legally banned in most academic institutions in accordance with the law, is by all accounts still “rampant”. A student of Jadavpur University’s Arts Faculty told this correspondent, “When I first joined, I was made to carry a political placard protesting something or the other which I had no idea about and all of us were asked to march a short distance carrying these. It was not a very serious form of ragging unlike the physical and mental torture which many students in different colleges and universities are put through but it was ragging none the less.”
The young boy who died last week was apparently subjected to intense ragging by his seniors and even a group of alumni who continued to occupy hostel rooms.
As far as the state’s political parties are concerned, protest rallies have been planned by Opposition parties demanding an investigation. They allege gross negligence by the administration. Denying culpability and expressing shock over the Oppositions’ attempts to “politicize” the tragic incident, leaders of the ruling party, have visited the house of the victim in the suburbs.