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Journalism of Courage
High school is a uniquely formative experience. The years spent in high school are like that when the mind roams freest through thickets of ideas,opportunities,possibilities,rebellions,intimations of selfhood. But high school,given those years of young adulthood,is not just a time. It is not even just an institution that provides pedagogic and developmental guidance. It is also a refuge. These are years when many students start discerning between the rights and wrongs impacting their lives for which they can hold persons and institutions to account,when they gain a measure of how much independence over their selves they can and should acquire. These can be difficult rites; and the school is a key source of escape,stability and succour.
Ruchika Girhotras experience was extreme,taking on a high official in a system and city configured for the powerful to wing their way. But in a what-if scenario,she could have come out of it strong,empowered and vindicated. She tried,as we now know,but just a few years later killed herself. The man accused of molesting Ruchika and then victimising her and her family,S.P.S. Rathore,is now likely to be charged with abetment to suicide. But what of her school? Sacred Heart School,it has now been confirmed by a magisterial inquiry,expelled Ruchika soon after she charged Rathore with harassment. The school,one of Chandigarhs most prominent and playground for the bureaucratic citys charmed children,still sticks to the line that it was a mere procedural technicality. But scrutiny of the school records shows that delay in paying tuition fee is rampant,and no one else has been taken off the rolls for this. The inquiry concludes that the expulsion was done in a selective,arbitrary,biased and unwarranted manner.
