Ishaan Nag – My diary of the human society.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a psychological experiment conducted for 6 days  by American psychologist Phillip Zimbardo. In the experiment, a prison environment was simulated, and volunteers signed up either as the imprisoned or the jailers. The experiment aimed to investigate the effect of social expectations and imposed roles of authority on individuals. Among the selected volunteers, half were assigned as prisoners while half were assigned as prison guards randomly. The volunteers designated as prison guards were ordered not to abuse the prisoners and were made to wear mirrored sunglasses. The prisoners were subjected to several practices which sought to harm their dignity, in order to simulate a prison environment.

The prisoners rebelled against the  guards on the second day. The guards made a system of rewards and punishment to contain the rebellion, and sprayed fire extinguishers on the prisoners. Over the course of the experiment, the guards became increasingly abusive, and used increasingly cruel tortures on the prisoners, such as forcing prisoners to simulate sexual situations with each other, taking food privileges away and forced the prisoners to insult one another. The volunteers sunk more and more into their imposed role of tyranny as well as submission, as the prisoners were reported to not even considering their own rights and dignity. The experiment became increasingly fatal, and thus, on ethical grounds, was prematurely terminated after only 6 days, as for many prisoners the situation became fatal, with the prisoners experiencing extreme mental and emotional degradation, one of the prisoners reportedly becoming hysterical in Dr. Zimbardo’s office.

This haunting experiment is but a mere glimpse on the capacity for cruelty humanity has, regardless of one’s usual behaviour, perspectives, values and morals. A random  sample of volunteers uniformly sank deep into the traits of their respective, imposed roles of submission and tyranny. The experiment reinforced the claim that “evil”, tyrannical behaviour was often a result of situational context.

I feel that the roles we, as humanity in general, have associated with different social classes, professions and positions. To be the police is to be authoritarian, to be a politician is to be amoral and “weasely” at best and criminal at worst. To be a manual labourer, scavenger, or one of the several trades is to be “lowly”, submissive, and dismissive of when addressed towards with the pronouns indicating the least formality and in some contexts, respect, at least in India. Of course, like with every case, this generalization also possesses exceptions, but in general, does seem to hold true. Their reputation matches their reality. My focus is how students, the generation which carves the society, politics, progress, regress and even the future of a nation, fare with this generalization, with special emphasis on student, especially student union politics.

Of course, student unions, like most labour unions, are in theory a great way to prevent oppression and pursue the common interest of a group united in its class and societal role. Student unions are a great idea in incorporating democratic values in the new generation of a country. These unions enable students to have a voice in the administration of educational institutions, check exploitation, give a platform for representation of various groups of students, and provide an opportunity for resource allocation and aid, financial or mental, much like a cooperative.

The voices of student union members in most major universities is one advocating self-expression and of democracy. The same goes for student bodies in school. Yet, once a member does occupy a position of leadership, the voice of freedom changes into one of autocracy, one for liberation changes into one of absolute control. In fact, The Independent People’s Judicial Inquiry Commission led by  Justice P K Shamsuddin  has found that most student unions in the state of Kerala are autocratic; most colleges with such unions have  Idimuris, which are rooms where union office-bearers beat up those opposed to them, comparable to the jailers in the Stanford Prison experiment

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student union and student wing of the RSS had established itself as a pro-democracy and anti-authoritarian students union during the Emergency period, and along with the NSUI (student union affiliated with the Indian National Congress), was one of two dominant student unions in the Delhi universities. Its anti-establishment rhetoric reached a peak with the arrest of former ABVP union leader and later Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley during the Emergency period in India in the 70s. Yet, as it dominated the union positions in the universities of Delhi in recent years, it has abandoned its commitment to democracy and free speech with alarming readiness, with its intolerance of opposing ideas symbolized by simplistic attacks of labelling opponents as “anti-nationals”. The union which once, when not in power and endangered by authoritarian rule, sought to counter autocracy and a silencing regime, turned out to be the very same thing it sought to destroy. It has become the union which has suppressed the voice of detractors, the advocates of free speech have turned to protests to deny and cancel a seminar at Ramjas college in Delhi, where JNU students Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid Shora were to participate.

Our perceptions of jobs often influence such social behaviour. Student union leadership itself, as we have seen in previous examples, turn to establish absolute authority over student affairs. The voice of rebellion, the anti-establishment student voice changes to one demanding absolute loyalty and to act with absolute impunity.

I must not be perceived as being biased against an ideology, for leaders, unions, organizations and individuals everywhere, across, nations and social systems have turned to this abandonment of ideals, of  resisting and expressing spite of unbridled power, while exercising it themselves when they are in authority, although in varying degrees, checked only by a system of accountability powered by the search for power of other groups keeping the establishment in an equilibrium of amoral, selfish lust for power with a facade of preserving democracy. Though I unfortunately lack a scientific cure-all for such power equations, I feel that we can start by attaching different roles and more responsibilities to these positions of authority. Let us not think of the police officer as our master, but as a responsible fellow citizen with an important job for ensuring law and order, deserving of punishment when acting with impunity. If we are in the Prison Experiment, the prisoners aware and fighting for their rights, and the jailer respectful and possessing a moral compass, the experiment would dissolve.  Let us change our attitudes to change our societies, and let us start as students, the new generation.