Theres a dangerous strain of puritanism wafting through school and college campuses across India. The spontaneous hug exchanged between a class XII boy and a class XI girl of the co-ed CBSE-affiliated St. Thomas Central School, Trivandrum, Kerala over a prize-winning achievement which resulted in the school authorities expelling the students and depriving them of the right to write the class XII school-leaving board exam, is symptomatic of the spirit of illiberalism sweeping through campus India. At best, it should have resulted in a warning that such public display of affection would influence younger boys and girls and should be avoided.

Instead, it has been transformed into a federal issue resulting in punishment wholly disproportionate to the alleged offence. The irony of the incident is heightened by the fact that not only is Kerala the most literate state of India which reports 99 percent literacy, its also a matrilineal society with a long-standing communist/leftist history which would have pre-supposed greater egalitarianism and liberalism towards inter-sexual behaviour.

The exaggerated reaction of the school management apart, the response of the judiciary to this innocuous episode is also shocking. When the hapless students appealed to the Kerala high court to direct the school management to rescind its expulsion order, the learned judges ruled in favour of the school. An indicator of how deep and wide Victorian prudishness and narrow-mindedness has permeated Indian society.

In this particular case, it is pertinent to note that the Mar Thoma Syrian Church, promoter of the school — run by the clergy — is heavily influenced by the tenets of the Roman Catholic church that tends to be more suspicious of interaction between the sexes. This is because the archaic rules of the Catholic church mandate that all priests and nuns who dedicate themselves to the service of Christ are obliged to be celibate, while priests of the Protestant Christian church are free to marry and raise families.

Imposition of the vow of celibacy has cost the Roman Catholic church dearly in terms of a spate of sex scandals worldwide, and there is a strong movement within the church to review this onerous diktat which is obscuring the good work that missionaries of the Church of Rome are doing around the world.

Meanwhile, it would be best for the clergy of Catholic and associated schools to revert to managing single sex schools as they have traditionally done. With the rise of feminist movements, social mores and gender relations have undergone a sea change which requires sensitive handling, and is likely to be far beyond the ken of the cloistered men and women of the cloth, and best left to secular management professionals. The extreme reaction of the St. Thomas Central clerical management to the hugging incident in the school validates this proposal.