- Break the Chain movement to eradicate ragging in Sri Lanka
Ragging has long been an ingrained part of our university culture and is yet another one of our “traditions” that does a lot more harm than good. Having been through similar experiences in their respective universities, UN Sri Lankan Youth Delegate 2019/20 Gangulali de Silva Dayarathna and Varners Law Firm legal intern Minul Muhandiramge co-founded “Break the Chain”, an islandwide youth movement to eradicate ragging from higher educational institutions in the country.
“I was an undergraduate at the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo, and in my first year at uni, I actually had to face an incident related to ragging,” Dayarathna told us. Of course, she was one of the brave ones that took action and informed her administration who enforced different measures for it to stop. But, the unfortunate fact is that not many do this; that’s why, even in a faculty that was labelled as an “anti-ragging faculty”, Dayarathna still faced the unpleasantries of uni life. Even though her experience may not seem like much to some people, she was on the verge of dropping out of uni: “I decided that I need to voice my opinion on it and ensure that it does not happen in the next few years to come.” She kept spreading the word, and in her third year, she did a project with a club at the faculty going by the hashtag #stoptherag and tried to create awareness within the university premises.
She garnered many accounts from students about their horrible experiences with ragging, but of course, change never happens without backlash. “Because of this, the project came to a halt unexpectedly, but after I represented Sri Lanka at the UN, I felt that I needed to do something again,” Dayarathna explained. She learned that she needed to take a bottom-up approach, so after looking into it, she realised that the ideal crowd to address are school students – specifically those that are doing or about to finish their A/L’s and are looking to enter university. “They need to be given an idea of why ragging happens and what they should do if it happens,” commented Dayarathna.
Muhandiramge, on the other hand, has never personally experienced ragging but has seen many people go through it. In his university, one had to volunteer to go through the ragging process, and a lot of students actually volunteered for it, which utterly confused Muhandiramge. What a lot of people don’t realise is that ragging is an exploitation of how vulnerable university students have to feel in order to force themselves into getting into the ragging culture.
The why’s and how’s
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Break the Chain Co-Founder Minul Muhandiramge[/caption]
“When you enter university, to join the uni culture, a sub-culture of ragging was created as an integration procedure,” explained Muhandiramge on the topic of why ragging happens. On Muhandiramge’s first day of University, he was running late to a mandatory programme and he ran into a girl, who was sobbing because she couldn’t find the examination hall that the programme was being held at. “The reason why it’s so overwhelming when you enter university is that there are no support structures, as most people enter from various parts of the country. Once you lose your support structure, that leaves you very vulnerable, so as soon as a senior approaches you and tells you that you need to be part of ragging to find another support structure, most people would cling to the opportunity,” Muhandiramge explained. Most would be bribed with the promise of making friends, or entering the social areas of the premises, and succumb to the ruthless process of being ragged. In some cases, a university may have an anti-ragging policy, so seniors will tell students that there is no ragging happening, gain the students’ trust, and then manipulate them into thinking that they’re not being ragged, and what they’re going through is normal.
Adding to this, Dayarathna informed us that ragging also happens because the perpetrators want to create a sense of unity in the batch, spreading the vibe that everyone is in it together. “This reasoning operates on a basis of inferiority that is in the mindset of most of the raggers. Especially in the context of state universities; we see a diverse range of students coming from all over the country with different social backgrounds, economical backgrounds and opinions,” commented Dayarathna. Instead of embracing these differences, she informed us that raggers use this to fuel the mindset that they are all one batch. In order to enforce this, the raggers ask students to wear a certain uniform or give out a similar code of dressing; for example; telling girls to braid their hair or boys to wear white clothing. By creating the appearance of equality, they try to create a mentality of equality among the students but what ends up happening is that they target individuals who don’t fall for this trap and attempt to bring them down mentally. For girls, this happens in the form of verbal harassment, but there is physical harassment that happens as well, we learnt. According to Dayarathna, the problem with this is that instead of uplifting students, it is by bringing down students who may be capable of great things: there is nothing wrong with being different.
Muhandiramge also added that ragging is based on the idea that one’s individuality comes secondary to ragging, for example; if a student is good at certain things, they are not allowed to showcase their talent, or if they speak a different language, they are not allowed to speak it.
Raising awareness
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Break the Chain Co-Founder Gangulali de Silva Dayarathna [/caption]
Dayarathna told us that sadly, even if a student does attempt to take legal action against ragging, the entire batch will not stand with them because they are scared of the raggers, and also the sense of unity that these raggers have perpetrated works in the raggers favour, thus no one will come out with the truth. Recently, Dayarathna informed us that a student died by suicide, and his suicide note stated that there were three people that significantly ragged him. However, there was no way to take action against it because no one from his batch was willing to reveal who ragged him.
In the last three months that Break the Chain has been operating, they have done some significant campaigns against ragging. Currently, they have covered around a thousand students from all around the country, been to a few state universities and hosted one to two webinars each weekend to raise awareness. Dayarathna told us that they plan webinars ahead of schedule, as the organisations they collaborate with are essentially the ones that rake in the audience.
Another thing that Dayarathna observed during her years in uni was that some students don’t know they are being ragged. A senior asking them to adhere to a particular dress code, or carry a certain book or file, or collectively sing a song or run around the campus, does not seem out of the ordinary for some students. “They can’t identify a scenario like that to be an act of ragging; they think it’s just part and parcel of the university experience. This is why it is important to create awareness on the acts of ragging,” Dayarathna commented, adding that during their webinars, they explain how and why it happens and inform them of legal provisions that are in place to protect them against ragging and encourage them to do so as well.
Most importantly, Break the Chain offers universities suggestions on how they can replace ragging with alternative activities that will cultivate unity and a sense of togetherness.
Break the Chain also explains to students in school that ragging is not the only way to integrate themselves into uni, instead it is used as a means to propagate violence and establish patriarchy. Break the Chain aims to create students that know how to handle ragging, even before they enter university, and therefore give them the potential to stop it altogether.
One good thing that has come out of the pandemic is that most students weren’t exposed to ragging, due to classes being online. About two batches didn’t have to face it, so there was a break in the chain, so to speak. Muhandiramge took this break to create awareness now to make sure the next batch doesn’t engage in ragging so this vicious cycle stops. In the case that it continues, Muhandiramge aims to create awareness on how they can deal with it and what legal action they can take. He also observed that the reason why ragging has continued for so long is that students simply don’t know how to face it, so filling in these gaps of knowledge is the best way to go about bringing change.
Both Dayarathna and Muhandiramge commented that they are incredibly grateful for their team: “We do a lot of research before a session, and we host them in all three languages, where the team plays a massive role in making it successful.” Dayarathna also added that most of their team has experienced the horrors of ragging, and now have a background in legal education, which will help legitimise the cause.
They have more webinars planned every weekend, until 13 September, so keep an eye on their socials to know more.
Instagram: @break_the_chainsl
