The Hindu Business Line : Corporal punishment of children must end

I distinctly recall when I was in primary school in 1964, in a well-known convent in Kochi, my talkative bench mate, a seven year-old girl, was slapped across the face for chatting with me. And, I was struck across the upper thighs with a garden cane ten times. In both cases, the bruising was visible even a week later.

I was too frightened to talk about the incident to my parents. . In 1989, my older daughter, just three years old then, was whacked on the knuckle with a ruler by her teacher in a South Delhi school. The scar refuses to fade. Sadly, it seems to me that we as a society have not evolved much. In fact, we have only gone rearward.

Shocking incidents

I was shocked to read recently, that even today children in India are subjected to corporal punishment. And the battle waged by the Government against such punishment has hardly met with any success. Fresh in our memory is 11-year-old Shanoo, a dyslexia child who slipped into coma and died after her teacher made her stand under the scorching sun. How would bored housewives who become teachers, understand that Shanoo needed special treatment?

And then, the horrific story of Aakriti Bhatia, a student of Modern School, Delhi who died because she could not be taken to hospital, 2 km away, on time. Clearly, a system failure, in a country which boasts of 7 per cent growth.

The 26/11 terrorist attacksevoked much anger and emotion from us Indians. But only to last for a few days. Now, everything seems to be pardoned and forgotten. What else can we expect from a nation where the culture of forgiveness is almost endemic?

I fell off my chair when I read that a fresher Aman Kachroo died in the hostel of a medical college in Himachal Pradesh due to severe ragging. He was beaten and tortured by four seniors who were dead drunk at the time of the incident. Ragging has become deep rooted in Indian universities. Almost all countries have enacted stern laws that ban ragging, and it is non-existent in Europe.

Let us take a dispassionate look at the corporal punishment scene in Europe.

Nordic Society

In the two decades I spent in Europe, I have never seen anyone hitting or smacking children. When I was in Mumbai recently, I was shocked to see a father shouting and smacking his little boy in public. None in the street stopped to prevent it or at least say something.

European nations have a culture of zero tolerance of violence towards children and women. Corporal punishment of children by their parents or teachers is illegal in the Nordic countries.

The Nordics believe that children can be made to understand better with words. Beating is just not part of their value system. This is worth emulating.

Britain under pressure

The British Government has already outlawed corporal punishment in day-care centres and schools. But parents, teachers and guardians are still permitted to use spanking as “reasonable chastisement,” putting Britain out of step with several European countries where all physical punishment of children is illegal.

Britain has a long tradition of corporal punishment. Hitting children with a cane, often until they bled, was a routine classroom punishment for centuries; it was banned in all schools in 1998.

The archaic law, allowing “reasonable chastisement” of children, should have no place in modern society. Hitting children is wrong, and the law should say so in the interest of children’s rights and child protection.

Physical punishment of children is illegal in several European countries,including Sweden, Germany, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Austria Reasonable chastisement? It is clearly possible to identify factors that will determine whether or not a teacher or parent has the requisite evil intent when he/she inflicts physical punishment on a child.

These include the nature and force of the punishment (including the point of the blow), the repetition or duration of the punishment, the manner and method of its execution, the age, sex and health of the child, and the blame worthiness or dangerousness of the child’s conduct. What is reasonable to some is not so for others.

Chastisement for some is smacking the child to inflict pain and instil discipline. For others, it is blow. How can a smack be distinguished from a blow or a hit. Beating a child with a slipper, cane or belt is very common in the Philippines; this is slowly changing.

A Filipino man living in Ireland with his family was given a suspended sentence by an Irish court for beating his child. It was considered beyond the physical chastisement allowed by law.

Irish and English child rights advocates are campaigning to ban all forms of physical rebuke or punishment of children. If it is an offence to smack or hit an adult why should it not be so for a child who is more powerless and vulnerable and unable to defend himself/herself?

Unreasoned and unreasonable

The concept of ‘reasonable chastisement’ to be basically unreasoned and unreasonable. Children, as the smallest and weakest in our society, deserve the same protection as adults from being battered — no more, no less.

It is, indeed, unfortunate that while the European Union is in the process of finalising a charter of rights for animals and pets, our Indian children continue to suffer indignities at the hands of those who are supposed to be care-givers.

(The author is former Europe Director, CII, and lives in Cologne,Germany. blfeedback@thehindu.co.in)

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