A cane in hand

A COUPLE of days after the Delhi High Court banned corporal punishment in schools, I enquired of my senior South Indian friends if they had heard of kothandam of which I had only a vague memory. This was a savage punishment meted out to errant school boys. They were hung upside down and thrashed. In another version, they were hung upside down over red chillies which were lit. The boys suffered, both from the beating and the pungent smell of the burning chillies.

I had no idea if this kind of punishment was practised in the past. If so, it was before my time. But in the schools where I studied, corporal punishment did exist in several forms. Boys were punished for disobedience, not doing home work, for being naughty in class and for overall dullness. Most teachers used the cane or the foot-ruler. While corporal punishment for minor mistakes was carried out within the class, the headmaster himself wielded the cane in the general assembly if the student had been particularly obnoxious. But this happened only rarely.

I was educated in ordinary schools where most of the students were poor and from the villages. These schools did not insist on uniforms. The boys wore dirty shorts, torn shirts or dhotis. They used excess oil on their hair and most of them stank. Obviously, their parents could not afford clean clothes and decent footwear. Corporal punishment differed greatly from school to school and teacher to teacher. Some teachers did not need the cane. At Madurai's American College High School, where I spent one year, one Tamil teacher had long, sharp nails with which he would pinch the ear lobes of students. The experience must have been quite painful. The students squirmed in pain and their ear lobes often bled.

Slapping was quite common. One Maths master went around the class asking mental problems. Those who answered wrongly were slapped soundly on the cheeks. The slaps sounded harsh but clearly they were less painful than the ear lobes being pulled by sharp nails. Another favourite form of corporal punishment was the kuttu on the head where the clenched fist of the teacher was brought down with considerable force on the heads of the students. The kuttu had different effects on different boys. If the boy had a cropped head with plenty of hair, it did not pain much. But if he had shaved off his hair to sport a kudumi, well, the kuttu which landed on the mottai thalai (hairless section of the head) could bring tears.

More painful than this was the killu (pinch). The teacher caught hold of the flesh behind the arm near the armpit between his thumb and index finger and squeezed. Well, that could hurt, particularly if the teacher had long nails. As the unlucky student went on squirming, the teacher went on squeezing the flesh.

Very few teachers carried canes to the class room, but made free use of the wooden foot-rulers which were used in the geometry class. For neglecting the studies or being naughty in the class, the foot-ruler came down heavily either on the palm of the hand or more painfully on the knuckles.

Public caning was the prerogative of the headmaster. He used the cane on the students who were guilty of stealing stuff from others, or bullying other boys . The headmaster of the Madurai school caned a boy severely on the legs for writing nasty anonymous letters about one of the fellow students. This was done before the entire school.

We divided the teachers into those who practised corporal punishment and who did not. We even knew when the storm would be coming. While studying in Christ King Convent in Tambaram, one of the teachers used the foot-ruler severely on certain days when he had his head shaved. It must have been a painful process and he took it out on his students. At the Tindivanam school, where I spent just three months, the drawing master was quite nasty on the days he had quarrelled with his wife. This secret was let out by a classmate who lived close to the teacher's home. He used to warn the rest of the class, "Jakirudai! Inniki Saar pondatti kitte sandai potirukar" (Beware, Sir had quarrelled with his wife). The warning was always true.

Let me admit that I was never once caned during my school life. Not that I was a great student or anything like that. I was known as the "collector mavan" (collector's son) and that position helped. At the same time, looking back on my school days, I could honestly say, I was fairly good in studies and was never a trouble maker. A couple of times I suffered the indignity of being asked to stand up on the bench for 10 minutes or so. This was better than ending up with bloody knuckles.

Accounts from friends and from books revealed that caning was quite common even in prestigious public schools in India and abroad. The cane came down harshly on the bare buttocks of boys who had misbehaved. Later in their lives, the boys were able to laugh over it and bore no grudge towards teachers who had wielded the cane.

There was just one exception, though this was in fiction. The hero of William Buckley's thriller, God Save the Queen, Bradford Oakes was an American boy who was caned severely by the sadistic headmaster of a British public school. The scars remained for long and he thirsted for revenge. Later, he became a CIA agent and, during an assignment in London, came close to the British Queen with whom he had a passionate love affair. As Oakes made love to the Queen, he felt he had redeemed the indignity he had suffered at the English public school.

Well, most students who had been caned at school did not extract such exotic revenge. Corporal punishment, unless it led to permanent injury, was part of the growing-up process. The Delhi High Court judgment may have come a bit too late. These days quite a few students from Delhi and neighbouring areas are quite capable of beating up their teachers.

V.GANGADHAR

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