Kool School

Alumni of a certain age hark back 20 years to the last instance when St Stephen8217;s College experienced scandal. In a midnight prank that...

Alumni of a certain age hark back 20 years to the last instance when St Stephen8217;s College experienced scandal. In a midnight prank that went monstrously public, a few 8220;gentlemen8221; in 8220;residence8221; broke into the 8220;ladies common room8221;, coloured the walls with sexist graffiti, broke open a few lockers and left some garments hanging outside as their calling cards. In the following days that shook 8220;College8221;, the absolutely dreaded happened: the media feasted on the story, the LCR breach made it to page one for a week, and charges of male chauvinism in India8217;s premier college led to the banning of its student community8217;s favourite indulgence, practical jokes and dark humour. Kooler Talk a student publication driven by pun and innuendo and Practical Joke Week were outlawed.

As the college on Delhi8217;s Ridge closed in on itself, Emergency-like restrictions on big gatherings and outsiders were imposed. Stephanians found themselves amongst only their own, and huddled into whispered discourses on the value of 8220;chick-charts8221; in College8217;s traditions and this late stirring of feminism on the campus. Suddenly in that short spell of surreal isolation a sense of bliss was tangible.

For a college that prides itself on giving to India so many men and women in high public office, St Stephen8217;s has always been edgy in dealing with the world outside. Its folklore, its monikers, its mythology, its attitudes, all accentuate a sense of difference. To refer to the 8220;Mess8221; as dining room, the 8220;Residence8221; as hostel or its 8220;Cafe8221; as canteen would be to invite withering scorn. Freshers are fattened on apocryphal stories of intruders being identified by designer clothes and gold necklaces. Arguments rage at the commencement of each academic year on whether Stephen8217;s should join up with the Delhi University Students8217; Union and how other colleges gang up in cheering the non-Stephanian in sport ties. The point: to be a Stephanian, one must first appear to be one, dressed down and nose-in-the-air aloof.

At its best, this difference makes for a unique engagement. As a former student, Gopal Gandhi, wrote recently: 8216;8216;If St Stephen8217;s meant something special to me, it was this, that it enabled and encouraged you to think for yourself, speak for yourself, and do both mindful of the other person being rather more important in the scheme of things than yourself. Not least because 8216;others8217; were more numerous than 8216;your8217; kind. But let not the others8217; strength 8212; numerical or otherwise 8212; overawe you into silence or petrification.8217;8217;

Steeled into separateness, Stephanians then set forth to be of assistance. The college sets great store by social service. And having personally disengaged from electoral politics, students issue invitations to public persons to come and speak to them as marks of honour. The Stephanian8217;s place in the scheme of things is drilled through authorised historiography. Upon admission even as a Stephanian acquires an obsession with GREs and IAS, a race begins to memorise milestones from College8217;s glory days 8212; that attack by a Stephanian on Viceroy Hardinge in 1913 that fetched a death sentence, C.F. Andrews8217; role in fetching Gandhiji back from South Africa, those Stephanians who enlisted in Naxalism8217;s earliest days, Zia-ul-Haq8217;s devotion to old Sukhia at the Dhaba, College8217;s relocation up the architectural chain 8212; from a small heritage structure near Kinari Bazaar to the vicinity of St James8217; Church to Walter George8217;s stone and brick spread on the Ridge.

This lingering on the successes of its alumni gives Stephen8217;s an extremely exaggerated confidence in its eminence. But it is this very sense of uniqueness that serves as a prism to project its periodic crises as urgent and far-reaching debates in higher education 8212; from the limits to quotas in minority institutions, to women8217;s right to access all the programmes in co-ed colleges, to 8212; now 8212; accountability in admissions procedures and secular and theological domains in education.

Alas, this common cause only brings back the point: the situation without is not that different from that within.