Kerala students expelled for hugging exposes more rot in our education system
If "hugs are one of the reasons God gave us arms", the moral police in India surely knows how to break those limbs.
Nearly four months ago, a school in Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram expelled two students – a girl and a boy. Their crime: hugging each other, that too, in front of other students during an arts festival on August 21.
According to various news reports, the two even apologised to the vice-principal, but the school still decided to suspend them some time later after their "hugging photographs" appeared on Instagram.
What's more, on December 17, the Kerala High Court upheld the decision of the school. Justice Shaji P Chaly couldn't agree with the school more over the "compromising positions" that naturally hurt the school's reputation.
“I find that various photographs were posted on Instagram in various compromising positions, and if it had the effect of publicity, the issue hampers the reputation of the school,” Justice Chaly said in his order.
While the school now has reportedly decided to reconsider the expulsion of the Class 12 boy, the girl, who was his junior, has received no such information from the school.
The school authorities have asked the boy to meet the principal on January 3. The boy, who had been pleading to be allowed to sit for his board exams, believes there's finally a ray of hope.
Reacting to the development, principal of St Thomas Central School, Sebastian T Joseph, said: “I have strongly recommended the CBSE to condone his attendance shortfall and consider the case on sympathetic grounds and let him write the exams. We don’t want to spoil his one year.”
While the principal sounds very generous, what he didn't care to explain is the fact the "attendance shortfall" happened because the school expelled him, not because he chose to sit at home for months. So, in case the CBSE decides not to make a concession for the boy and he loses one academic year, it is the school which is to be blamed.
Also, nobody is saying anything about the girl's future?
According to this report in The Hindu, the girl, as accused by school authorities, "had not submitted her transfer certificate and paid the fee to complete the registration for Class 11 in time and thus was not their student".
She, however, said: “They kept me away from classes and did not complete the registration, and are now trying to make it seem that I am not their student.”
She also raised a point: If she were not a student of St Thomas Central School, why was she made to appear before the school inquiry commission?
“They wanted me to give in writing that he forcibly hugged me. If the school was ready to take me back then, why can’t they do so now?” she was quoted as saying by the same news report.
What actually happened
The girl and the boy in question reportedly hugged each other in front of other students during an arts festival. According to the boy, it (the hug) was friendly and congratulatory in nature. Obviously, their school found it more than friendly.
According to the school, the students shared a “prolonged hug” which lasted for over five minutes and therefore it was not congratulatory. (Of course, it's highly unbelievable that the country has still not made "legal guidelines" as to how long a hug can or should last.)
In any case, they even apologised for the "crime", but who cares.
But as soon as the photos of the hug appeared on Instagram, the students were suspended. This matter would have been laughable had it not jeopardised the career of the two young students. It took a much serious turn after the boy and his father decided to approach the court hoping for justice. But on December 17, the Kerala High Court upheld the decision of the school.
While the much-maligned hug has now been officially termed as compromising position, it doesn't matter to the school, court or any other moral police what happens to the career of two young students.
The court also dismissed the boy’s contention that his Instagram account was private and that the school authorities had hacked into it, which was illegal. In doing so, the court made it legitimate for school authorities to peep into the private lives of students.
We don't need no education
While the prospect of losing a precious academic year is worrisome, equally troublesome is the fact that moral policing has been "legitimised" by the Indian society for far too long now. That Indians can't even tolerate something as innocuous as a hug (and call it a compromising position) says a lot about the kind of progress we claim to have made.
It's not surprising that an education system which promotes rote-learning, a society that judges a student’s worth by what s/he manages to achieve in three hours, now want to become their moral guardians as well.
While co-ed schools for long have been trying to ensure that they have complete control over the young minds of girls and boys studying together, educationists, on the contrary, are supposed to encourage free and modern thinking.
But perhaps moral policing comes naturally to schools and its teachers. In a country where sex education is still considered a taboo subject, a hug unfortunately becomes a legal issue.