The regularity with which violent clashes are breaking out between north and south Indian students on the campuses of Tamil Nadu’s private deemed universities in particular, is beginning to alarm the academic community in this southern state which prides itself for its liberal academic traditions. The main theatres of these often bloody clashes are the state’s 29 private deemed universities which admit students from across the country, with the majority from Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Assam and other northern states with weak higher education infrastructure. For instance, Annamalai University, Asia’s largest unitary residential university which boasts 17 hostels and 27,000 students on campus with a majority of engineering students from north India, is acquiring notoriety for campus violence.
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Quarrels usually begin in college hostels where students from diverse backgrounds are obliged to live in cramped conditions, and spill over into classrooms with violence some-times spreading from campus to campus. Increasingly, institu-tional managements are obliged to suspend classes to the detriment of thousands of students.
Private varsity academics in Chennai ascribe this phenomenon to wide differences in the socio-cultural backgrounds of students from the north and south. “Differences of language and culture create communication gaps and animosities between north and south Indian students. Temperamentally, students from the south are mild and inhibited while those from the north are loud, aggressive and express them-selves freely. Moreover, they also tend to be intolerant of minor inconve-niences in the hostel, expressing anger and frustration spontaneously. Colleges should counsel students on behavi-oural norms at the time of admission and take strict action against trouble makers,” says Baby Thomas, assistant professor, School of Management Studies, Hindustan University which admits students from across the country and eight foreign countries.
Although petty quarrels among indigenous students are not uncommon in the state’s government universities and colleges where admission is heavily caste determined, students fighting on parochial and linguistic lines represents a more dangerous trend. But to some extent this phenomenon is the outcome of excess capacity in higher — particularly engineering — education in Tamil Nadu. Every year 35,000 seats fall vacant in the state’s 400 self-financing engineering colleges with admissions available for the asking in the 29 deemed varsities, some of whom send agents to recruit students from the northern states. However, few of them conduct orientation programmes for northern students or bother to acquaint them with local customs and propriety norms. But after the recent student clashes at Vel’s University, Chennai, the management has taken steps to enforce discipline through a new mentorship programme for students from outside the state. The Chennai-based Hindustan University has also begun student counseling programmes apart from keeping parents informed about their wards’ progress and behaviour.
“Unfortunately values and manners receive scant attention in schools across the country. Therefore all private varsities should conduct programmes on basic citizenship education, appreciation of cultural diversity, tolerance of different cultures, and promote social harmony and peaceful co-existence. Playing gracious hosts, participating in north Indian festivals and making out-of-state students feel at home, is not only good manners but good business practice which will prepare students for work in the emerging national and global markets,” says Dr. D. Jayalakshmi, former professor of sociology at Madras University and currently registrar of the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development in Chennai.
This is sound advice which Tamil Nadu’s institutional managements would do well to heed. If not, they’ll not only lose business, but also cost Tamil Nadu its reputation as one of India’s most educationally advanced states.
Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)