Law schools as victims

IN Regional Media | 20/04/2013

‘Hyderabad Girls Caught Nude and Drunk in Rain Pub’ – the title could not have been more salacious, and the voiceover could not have made a stronger attempt at appealing to the febrile pitch of moral policing.

The male voice in the CVR News video (http://ht.ly/k3LFM ) says that promiscuous girls of NALSAR (National Academy of Legal Studies and Research, which happens to be one of India’s premier law schools) wait for the weekends to indulge in debauchery, and had the temerity to insouciantly answer back when the well-meaning and ‘concerned’ media remonstrated with them.

There are two other videos. This StudioN one  (http://ht.ly/k5ELM ) is titled ‘Drunk Girls Hulchul’ and carries a caption ‘Beware of Girls!’. The one by NTV (http://ht.ly/k5FNI ) is titled ‘Drunken Girls on Road: Case filed against Rain Pub at Banjara Hills’. Cumulatively, they seek to paint a grim picture – how female students with loose morals frequent certain dens of vice and the detrimental effect it has on society. The flurry of speculation and discussion that is set off takes some weird turn, like extortion rackets flourishing to keep such joints and bars ‘in check’, or an organisation representing a section of Scheduled Castes lashing out at the perversity of the ‘upper class’.

What could be the underlying, insidious reason(s) behind such ‘media assaults’?

These attacks by the media, the number of which is alarmingly scaling north, seem to be concentrated only in certain education hubs, such as Mangalore (home to the Manipal group of institutions), Hyderabad and Pune (home to the Symbiosis Group of institutions; though nothing ‘sensational’ has happened here till date, it would not reflect wishful thinking to harbour apprehensions.) It is common knowledge that most of the students here come from a certain affluent socio-economic background (since the course fee at institutions is quite high), and with a particular kind of cosmopolitan cultural sensibility. This sensibility ignores taboos sought to be passed off as ‘morality’ by certain sections of society and fringe groups masquerading as moral guardians and custodians of Indian tradition (remember the Sri Ram Sene thugs?) Since voyeurism and class bias can count as the primary emotional traits of the populace, it was only a matter of time before the media would try to feed off this potent mix like a vulture feeds off carrion.

Hence, certain stereotypes are built up and reinforced. Like: students from so-and-so place, pursuing so-and-so course, are ‘fast’ or unruly, or lack sufficient moral grounding. There are examples galore. In my interactions with students from Symbiosis, I have come to know what an uphill task it is to find accommodation. How many of them, despite spending a couple of years in the city, are still struggling to come to grips with the constant snickering of the ‘conservative’ denizens of Pune. If one approaches the police for help, one is subjected to the same attitude: guilty without trial.

These stereotypes then form a very fertile base for the cultivation of cultural vigilantism, as the trials and tribulations faced by Naveen Soorinje (http://ht.ly/k5LQS) in the Mangalore home-stay case demonstrate only too clearly. Nothing very different from the cultural apartheid and accompanying violence that students from the North-east face in Delhi.

Law schools as victims

While it is undeniable that many institutions of learning – colleges for mass communication, fashion design, liberal arts, etc, all have been at the receiving end of this vicious prejudice, and in many places the students have faced much more ferocious violence than those at NALSAR, I shall look at the law schools specifically since this not the first time that a particular national law school and its students have faced such victimisation. 

It has been only a few months since the fangs of insinuation and calumny were bared at the gang-rape victim of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru.  For the sake of brevity, I shall refer to the complaint lodged to the Press Council of India by the students’ association (http://ht.ly/k3MpV) and a blogpost by an NLSIU alumnus (http://ht.ly/k3NhT ) which protested against the media’s brazen violations of  journalistic ethics and breach of privacy bordering on the malicious.

Prior to that, when the Supreme Court had appointed a committee under Justice (retd) K T Thomas to review the academic standards at NLSIU, the Times of India had gone to town making unsubstantiated ‘allegations’ apparently made by the committee without even a cursory attempt at verification (http://ht.ly/k3NQq ). More pernicious were the references to the law school being a sort of den of vice – with students ensconced in sex, drugs and alcoholic bliss. Renowned alumnus like Shamnad Basheer (http://ht.ly/k3OmD ) had taken strong  exception to this unwarranted intrusion into the deeply private domain of students’ lives and conduct (subsequently it was revealed that that the Committee had not made any such observation !)

My understanding is this: while society (including the media, of course) has warmly embraced the rich yields (read: the plum jobs and unprecedented starting salaries) fostered by ‘new’ types of educational institutions – after all, the ‘law school’ phenomenon is still relatively new to the Indian legal education scenario, it is a long way from acknowledging the ‘cultural’ changes and aspects that such institutions are harbingers of. The pedagogy adapted and practised, general background of the students, the way they go about their lives at law school (which, not so long ago, had been praised by the PM as ‘islands of excellence’ (http://ht.ly/k3PEI) – these are a paradigm shift, a breath of fresh air, from the antediluvian model which has deeply entrenched itself into public consciousness. And it is trite that whenever something radically new comes up, and threatens to shatter the stranglehold of mediocrity, trenchant criticism and solipsistic scepticism are the first spontaneous reactions from people. And it does not take too long to plunge into the personal, and from there onwards, it’s a freewheeling drive on the highway of moral preaching and policing.

The sordidness of this is accentuated by the fact that the law schools are located at considerable distance from the heart of the city (especially NLSIU and NALSAR), and the population in that area has quite a provincial mentality, hence the constant ‘judging’ of students on the parameters of morality and decency (whatever these terms might mean to the ‘judges’) becomes all the more rife.

I can testify from my own experience. I am a graduate of The National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata which is reputed to be one of the trendsetting law schools in the country. We were based at Beliaghta, an area in the suburbs of Kolkata. Whenever we used to go out for walks, or even to purchase provisions, or return late at night (without violating the university’s discipline or rules), the local peoples’ tongues used to go on a wagging spree. Most of us hailed from backgrounds where most of the societal taboos were conspicuous by their absence, and every one of us have immensely benefited from the ambience of cosmopolitanism and liberalism which play a stellar role in making law school education an experience to cherish. Never ever did any student have any run-in with the law, nor was there a ‘scandal’.  

Pernicious effect on education

It is an undeniable fact that there are things beyond the syllabus and the faculty which go on to make institutions of higher education what they are. The values inculcated, the mores and norms practised within and outside the campus – all these play an indispensable role in what is heralded as the best ‘law school education’.

Sadly, our society is slow to awaken and become receptive to such concepts and ideas. That is not what one should be perplexed or vexed about, for that seems to be par for the course in India. Rather, what is galling is the media’s attitude as detailed in the previous paragraphs. So much for the Fourth Estate’s self-serving (and hollow) claims to being messengers and drivers of change, when all it does is to add liberal grist to the rumour mills, and in the bargain, do education a great disservice. Another type of heckler’s veto altogether.