The Parable of the Professor and the Ghost – How One School Principal is Keeping Secularism Alive

Once upon a time not that long ago, there was a professor who needed a place to stay. Unfortunately, the only house that fit within his budget was a haunted house at the end of a somewhat deserted lane behind the university. Because no one else wanted to live there, the landlord gave him the house at a very low rent.

The landlord warned the professor about the resident ghost but the professor, a calm man, said he would handle it.

The very first night, the ghost appeared at the foot of the professor’s bed shortly after he had fallen asleep and start making all kinds of noises. It then yanked the covers off him, but the professor simply pulled another sheet over himself and continued to sleep.

The ghost tried night after night to terrorise the professor, but he simply refused to get scared.

Finally, exhausted, the ghost realised it would have to co-exist peacefully with the professor. One night over dinner, the ghost asked, “Why didn’t you get scared and leave like all the others who have lived here?”

To which the professor replied calmly, “You feed off people’s fear. If I don’t fear you, you have no power. And so, I choose not to fear.”

***

This adaptation of The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde is one of the tools that Mrs. M, the principal of a reputed school in the National Capital Region, employs while dealing with instances of bullying in her school.

The message of the story, of course, is that the bully’s power lies in fear. Face the bully and the bully will lose his power.

The murder of 26 innocents in the terrorist attack in Pahalgam has sadly, but not unexpectedly, led to a sharp spike in the bullying of Muslim students in schools.

Mrs. M told me that she was recently alerted by a (Hindu) parent that one of his daughter’s classmates, who happens to be a Muslim, had been called names all day by the other students and told things like, “People of your faith are all terrorists.”

The boy took it in his stride all day but finally lost his cool.

Mrs. M called the boy to her office the next day and asked him what had happened.

The boy, a student of Class 10, tried to make light of the situation and said, “Oh, they were only joking.”

Mrs. M said she wanted to hug the boy for being so stoic about it all.

Instead, she said, “You may be strong and able to handle all the nasty things that were said to you, but maybe the next person won’t be as gracious for as long as you were. It’s better to face the bullies down and tell them to stop saying all those things and remind them that terrorism has no religion. Also, just because one person in a community does something bad, it does not automatically make everyone else in the community guilty of the same.”

Mrs. M then called the House Captains and the members of the school’s Students’ Council and asked them why they had leadership positions if they couldn’t speak up against bullying of any kind!

She then proceeded to tell them the story of the ghost and the professor.

Mrs. M is a rarity in an educational ecosystem where a disturbingly large number of school principals don’t take the time to address crucial issues like these. According to her, most don’t even acknowledge that the poison of communalism has seeped into the classrooms. Most choose to look the other way. After all, schools are a soft target, and who wants to risk running afoul of the powers that be by tackling issues of communalism head on?

Clearly, some still do.

Mrs. M makes it a point to have regular conversations with the teachers and students in her school about the values of equality, liberty and fraternity enshrined in the Constitution.

“Building a good school culture takes a long time and many conversations. If we as teachers won’t talk about what is wrong in society, who will? Everyone talks about being ‘future ready’ and ‘building world citizens’ in their school brochures. Let’s start by first being good humans, shall we? And show our students by our own example that empathy and kindness are foundational, and all Indians are equal.”

Rohit Kumar is an educator, author and independent journalist and can be reached at letsempathize@gmail.com

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