The Mandal report seems to have touched a peculiar chord among the youth, one that brooks no easy explanation. More than 159 people have attempted suicide; 63 have died. Not that this has shaken the Government. Smug in its electoral arithmetic, it has refused to concede an inch. The student agitation on its part lacks both organization and base. It is a spontaneous, chaotic affair that draws sustenance from tragic acts of suicide. India Today examines the phenomenon.

The despair is unbearable, which is probably why they reacted and chose to immolate themselves and, with it, the pain they were suffering from. No pain is as great as the one they are suffering within.” – Psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar

When he set himself ablaze to protest against the implementation of the Mandal Commission report, little did Rajeev Goswami realize that his act would put to torch the north of India. No matter.

Spur of the Moment

“Mummy, have my photographs appeared in any of the newspapers or not?”

On a Sunday morning, Monica Chadha, 19, slipped out of the one-room apartment in south Delhi where she was watching a video with her mother and five sisters, went to the terrace, and set herself ablaze.

The class XII student had been affected by the self-immolation attempt of a Hoshiarpur girl. In fact, an hour before setting herself on fire she had spoken of her wish to do so. And her mother had said: “Go to V.P. Singh’s house and tell him what you feel. Death is not the answer.”

Battling for life with 90 percent burns, she still exhorted her aunt: “Aap bhi bolo na, V.P. hai hai.” A home bird, Monica was not keen on taking up a job. But she was clearly media conscious, and charged by the growing protests.”

What is almost as important as putting an end to the spate of self-immolations is the answer to one question: why did they – these callow youngsters, most barely out of their teens and sometimes floundering in them – protest in so incendiary a fashion?

When the answers come, they will come in a swarm. Meanwhile, psychoanalysts and social scientists are putting forward various explanations that are still nebulous because of a lack of time and material to study.

The department of psychiatry in Chandigarh’s PGI is shortly due to begin a study of 20 suicide cases to go into the psychological profiles of the suicide victims and the reactions of their parents.

Interestingly, an initial survey seems to suggest that more than 50 per cent of the parents seem to be glorifying the incendiary acts of their children. What is also obvious is that dying in flames is probably the most dramatic way to make a point – jettison the Mandal Commission report and let the country go ahead as it was before the pyres were lit.

“One thing that is special here is adolescence,” says Kiran Bhatia, a Delhi-based counsellor for emotional problems. She feels that at this age the youth are volatile and react much more sharply, and Mandal simply sparked off already pent-up feelings.

Says the counsellor: “In addition to the intense frustration and adolescent energy that are let loose came the blow that opportunities for the future were on the verge of disappearing.”

Fatal Idealism

“V.P. Singh, you can see that it is not just boys but also girls who are making sacrifices.”
Shama Gupta, 16, of Chandigarh burnt herself to death soon after hearing the news of another girl’s suicide on television. An introvert, she was the second of four children in a middle-class family.

For some days she had been keenly listening to reports about students who, because of reservation, failed to get jobs despite good marks.
A firm believer in equal rights for women, Shama wrote in her suicide note: “V.P. Singh, you can see it is not just the boys but also the girls who are making sacrifices.” The family is proud of her ‘sacrifice’.

So compelling is the need to make the Government realise its folly that even 13-year-old Chetan Gautam, who had many years to go before the effects of the Mandal Commission brouhaha would have hit him in the face, set himself on fire. Was he mature enough to understand the implications of the Government’s mulishness?

Or was he acting out of frustration that might have had its seeds in his relationships at home and at school? Or was everything simply the result of the addled hormones typical of the pubertal?

What is the point, he is reported to have asked. “I won’t get a job even if I happen to get 70 per cent marks. Somebody with just 30 per cent will get what is my due.”

Anil Kumar, a 10th class student from village Tekri in Haryana, who suffered 18 per cent burns and is now out of hospital, says: “I will not go back to school. Why should I study? What for?” Kumar threatens to “do it again” because “maybe the second time round, the Government might react”.
Along with the concept of personal sacrifice the one important catalyst that probably spurs on the young is the overwhelming media publicity that comes in the wake of every immolation attempt.

Says Dr D. Mohan, head of the psychology department in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS): “The otherwise lost souls started finding mention in newspapers. In an epidemic, the degree of exposure you get overtakes pain, the thought of death or even rational thinking.”

“The children reacted to V.P. Singh as to an unjust father.”
Sudhir Kakar, Psychoanalyst

“Mandal just sparked off pent-up feelings.”
Kiran Bhatia, Counsellor

He isn’t exaggerating. The first question that Monica Chadha, 19, asked her mother a day after her suicide attempt was: “Has my photograph appeared in the newspapers?” This clarity of desire even with 90 per cent burns speaks volumes for her motives.

It is, however, possible that Monica Chadha is in a minority. The immolation epidemic which broke out in northern India is because, as Dr Mohan points out, “more and more people identified with what they believed was a cause”.

He is of the opinion that peer group pressure was strong, and most of those who attempted suicide found a cause in what was otherwise a “normless and rootless environment”.

Of the six people in Chandigarh that India Today spoke to, four had attempted suicide only after having heard on television about another person having taken recourse to it. Saroj Saini, 15, for instance, swallowed naphthalene balls after hearing on TV that Rajeev Goswami had burnt himself.

“I wanted to be the first girl to do it,” she told her relatives. Similarly, Shama Gupta of Chandigarh, who died of burns in the last week of September (the first such case in Chandigarh), torched herself after hearing on TV that a Chandigarh girl had consumed poison.

These deaths were little more than attempts at joining the list of martyrs and of earning accolades from peers and parents. And parental approval of anti-Mandal protests has been evident in the fact that parents have joined the rallies, sloganeered, and brickbatted.

But as Kiran Bhatia explains: “No parent ever thinks their own child will be the next victim.” Monica’s mother, Malti Chadha, listened intently to her husband’s views on how harmful the Mandal report is but just laughed when her daughter told her that she too felt like giving atmadaan (self-sacrifice). And that any psychologist will tell you is a clear warning signal of a desire to commit suicide.

As is Anil Kumar’s statement that he will immolate himself again. Or Chetan Gautam’s: “The struggle is not over yet. I have to do more.” Every suicide is always a cry for help. A form of dialogue.

Worse, parental and social deification has been forthcoming. S.S. Chauhan’s father touched the feet of his son, saying sombrely: “He has sacrificed his life for the sake of the country.”

Such an attitude probably prompted a number of the suicide attempts. Says Sarita Verma, whose 20-year-old son, Saurabh, is lying comatose with 62 per cent burns in Indore’s Choithram hospital: “He should not have done it, but he did it for the country.”
Yet most psychiatrists feel that you have to be peculiarly imbalanced to attempt suicide. Those who immolated themselves came from ordinary backgrounds and were in no way leaders or performers or achievers.

Blaming the Politicians

“I will not get all right. I did not take this step to get okay. I did not take this step to live.”

An evening student in New Delhi’s Deshbandhu College, Surinder Singh Chauhan, 22, had little reason to end his life: he had a job, as a clerk in the Defence Ministry. Motherless, he lived with his father, a sister and two brothers. Money was not a problem at home.

His neighbours say he was a cheerful person but after Rajeev Goswami’s self-immolation attempt, he grew serious and began spending time with student protestors. On September 24, he torched himself in full view of by-standers, sustaining 98 per cent burns.

His suicide note read: “The responsibility for my death lies with those people who consider reservation a vote bank, people like VP, Paswan, Yadav and so on.”

Says Indore psychiatrist J.W. Sabhaney: “The attempt to burn oneself in full public view is actually an attempt to seek attention, which has been denied in other spheres of life – school, college or society at large.” Sabhaney feels such people are ready-made potential suicide risks and this agitation has just provided the final spark.

But there are psychologists who feel just the opposite, that it is usually the brighter, more intelligent youth who are more frustrated, and are liable to resort to terminal forms of protest. Explains Dr Mohan, head of the psychology department at AIIMS: “Aspirations lead to greater frustration. This in turn spurs you into action.”

Kiran Bhatia qualifies this: “More so, when you feel that value of knowledge will take you nowhere. The pressure of being brilliant and not making it leads to intense psychic turmoil.”

Those attempting immolation were also spurred on by the availability of a clear focus for their anger and frustrations: Prime Minister V.P. Singh. Chetan Gautam and Anil Kumar did not scream with pain but instead shouted “V.P. Singh gaddi chhodo” and “V.P. Singh murdabad,” as soon as their kerosene-doused clothes began to burn.

Monica Chadha yelled “V.P. Singh hai hai”, even as the flames rose six feet above her. Sushil Kumar of Haryana before he consumed poison and died wrote a note saying: “Only V.P. Singh is responsible for my death.”

In Pathankot a Class XI student, Narinder Kaur, hanged herself from a ceiling fan. Her suicide note requested that her eyes be donated to the prime minister “so that he can see better for himself the misery the report had brought upon the student community”.

Making a Point

“There is no other reason but the mandal commission report which made me take such a step.”
When the Deccan Chronicle carried an anonymous letter from a student threatening to set himself ablaze at Abid’s, the city shopping centre in Hyderabad, the report was dismissed as a joke.

But the writer, Susarla Vamsee Mohan, 20, was serious. Mohan had done a computer course after finishing school. The elder of two sons of a poor Telugu Brahmin family, Mohan and his brother depended on the earnings of their widowed mother Leelavathy Sastry.
Their father, a temple priest, had died when Mohan was only three. He burned himself to death, apparently to dispel the prime minister’s notion that the agitation had not spread to the south.

It was V.P. Singh’s ‘stubbornness’ and the reiterations of his commitment to the Mandal Commission’s implementation that further fanned the flames and led to more attempts. Kakar says the children were reacting against V.P. Singh, who as prime minister is like the head of the country and symbolises fatherhood.

And like children rebel if they see their brothers or sisters being favoured, they saw V.P. Singh as being unjust and his reservation policy as being an act favouring some children, thus making them unequal.

A fall-out of the deaths – there have already been five in Uttar Pradesh too – is a fillip to a movement that may have otherwise died out for want of finances and organised political support. And since individual acts of defiance do not need props, the movement all over the north smacks of the kind of riotous anarchy that can unhinge any government.

The only state in which the agitation has been organised is Bihar, one of the most politically conscious states in the country. Explains former MP C.P. Thakur: “The youth of Bihar had rejected the Congress(I) and had supported V.P. Singh. They dreamed of a bright future but, like a bolt from the blue, their hero declared something that was anathema to them. They were ill-prepared for the shock. So, first, they resorted to violence out of anger and are now acting out of pure frustration.”

A frustration that is, tragically, scorching the present even before the future arrives.

– Harinder Baweja with N.K. Singh in Indore and Kanwar Sandhu in Chandigarh