The news that shook us-and what it reveals
In Dharamsala, 19-year-old student Pallavi (Government Degree College) died on December 26, 2025, and police booked a professor and three women students on allegations including ragging, physical assault, and sexual misconduct. The reports say her father alleged an incident on September 18, 2025, after which she became mentally disturbed, her health deteriorated, and she was treated in multiple hospitals before being referred to Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana, where she died during treatment. Police also said they are collecting medical records and recording statements to examine whether the alleged acts link to her deterioration and death.
Many people will read this and conclude: “Some monsters did something monstrous.”
That conclusion is emotionally satisfying-but it is incomplete.
Because the real horror is not only what happened, but how normal it has become to treat cruelty as culture, humiliation as fun, and dominance as power. This is where right centre consciousness becomes the real subject-not just Pallavi’s case.
If the centre of the mind is distorted, the actions will be distorted. If the centre is healthy, the actions become clean. This is the core of right centre consciousness.
Stop calling it “isolated”
A well-known pattern follows every campus tragedy:
- Shock.
- Outrage.
- A few arrests/suspensions.
- And then… we move on.
But ragging and institutional violence keep returning in new forms because they are not random accidents. They are expressions of the same inner ecosystem: fear, insecurity, greed for status, and numbness to another’s pain.
A 2025 report (“State of Ragging in India 2022–24”) said 51 lives were lost to ragging in the 2022–24 period and flagged medical colleges as a major area of concern. If deaths and trauma can repeat at this scale, the issue is not only “bad people”-it is a bad inner centre across the culture.
Right centre consciousness says: look at the root, not only the branch.
Right centre consciousness says: do not treat recurring cruelty as isolated episodes.
What “right centre consciousness” actually means
In Acharya Prashant–style language (without pretending to quote him word-for-word), the emphasis is consistent: the centre matters more than the performance. When action emerges from ego, it becomes violence-even if it wears the costume of jokes, tradition, or discipline. When action emerges from clarity, it becomes responsibility-even if it is unpopular.
Right centre consciousness is not “being emotional.”
Right centre consciousness is not “being nice sometimes.”
Right centre consciousness is not “posting outrage and forgetting tomorrow.”
Right centre consciousness is the inner location from where one lives:
- Do you act to dominate or to understand?
- Do you seek validation or truth?
- Do you treat people as objects or as living beings?
- Do you see life as interconnected, or as a marketplace of exploitation?
When the centre is ego, the mind needs victims-someone junior, weaker, poorer, different, or alone. When the centre is right, the need to crush disappears.
That is why right centre consciousness is not an “extra spiritual idea.” It is the foundation of ethics.
Why lack of love becomes violence
A society that does not know love will keep producing violence-because where there is no love, there is only fear.
And fear does three things:
- It compares.
- It competes.
- It dominates.
This is how the hunger to dominate becomes “fun,” becomes “ragging,” becomes “harassment,” becomes “power.”
In many campuses, what is called bonding is actually ego-training:
- “Prove yourself.”
- “Tolerate humiliation.”
- “Obey seniors.”
- “Laugh at cruelty.”
This is not tradition. This is conditioning.
Right centre consciousness exposes this conditioning. Right centre consciousness refuses to call cruelty a rite of passage. Right centre consciousness sees that “normal” can still be sick.
The hidden partner of ragging: silence
Every crime has two forces:
- The doer.
- The silent ecosystem that protects the doing.
Ragging thrives not only because someone is cruel, but because many people choose comfort over confrontation. They say, “Don’t get involved.” They say, “It’s been happening forever.” They say, “Adjust.”
This is lokdharm in its ugliest form: social survival at the cost of truth.
Right centre consciousness is the refusal to worship social acceptance.
If the centre is right, one cannot enjoy another’s humiliation.
If the centre is right, one cannot remain neutral when cruelty is normalized.
Right centre consciousness forces a decision: truth or belonging.
Why environment and crimes are connected
Now the uncomfortable part: the same inner blindness that harms humans also harms nature.
We often think compassion is selective-“I can be cruel in one area, compassionate in another.” But consciousness doesn’t work like that. The mind that cannot feel the pain of a junior student also cannot feel the pain of a street dog, a calf tied in heat, a bird thirsty in summer, a river turned black, or a forest cut for convenience.
Right centre consciousness is not human-centered compassion; it is life-centered sensitivity.
When compassion disappears:
- Exploitation becomes normal.
- Convenience becomes religion.
- Suffering becomes background noise.
That is exactly the psychology behind environmental destruction.
So no—Pallavi’s case is not separate from climate collapse. It is connected through the same inner centre.
Right centre consciousness is the bridge that reveals this connection.
Animal cruelty we ignore-and what it does to the mind
Animal cruelty is one of the biggest training grounds of numbness.
When a culture normalizes violence toward animals (whether through entertainment, neglect, or food habits treated as “just normal”), it trains the mind to do something dangerous:
It trains the mind to split reality into:
- “Lives that matter”
- “Lives that don’t”
That split is the seed of all human-to-human violence.
Today the victim is “only an animal.”
Tomorrow the victim is “only a junior.”
Then “only a woman.”
Then “only a lower caste.”
Then “only a poor worker.”
Then “only someone from another region.”
The label changes. The inner mechanism stays.
Right centre consciousness cannot be built on selective empathy. Right centre consciousness must question the everyday violence that has become “routine.”
This is why animal cruelty is not a side topic. It is a mirror of our inner collapse.
Climate change we ignore-and the same wrong centre
Climate change is not only a scientific crisis; it is a consciousness crisis.
Yes, there are emissions, policies, industries, and global negotiations.
But behind them is a mental posture:
“I want comfort now. Someone else will pay later.”
That posture is the same posture behind ragging:
“I want entertainment now. Someone else will suffer now.”
Right centre consciousness breaks this posture by changing the identity of the doer:
- from consumer to caretaker,
- from exploiter to participant,
- from ego to responsibility.
Right centre consciousness sees the planet not as a resource-store, but as a living system. Right centre consciousness sees that poisoning air and water is not “development”-it is slow violence.
And again, the theme repeats: we call it “isolated.”
A heatwave is “isolated.”
A flood is “isolated.”
A polluted river is “isolated.”
A campus death is “isolated.”
But everything is interconnected.
The real prevention: outer systems + inner education
CCTV, anti-ragging committees, stricter action-these matter. But they are incomplete.
Because surveillance can control behavior temporarily, not transform the doer.
And ragging is not only behavior; it is a pleasure the ego gets from dominance.
So prevention must have two layers:
1) Outer protection (necessary)
- Quick reporting systems.
- Strong institutional accountability.
- Student safety protocols.
- Real consequences for offenders.
2) Inner education (missing)
- Teaching self-awareness, not just career skills.
- Teaching what ego does to relationships.
- Teaching compassion as intelligence, not weakness.
- Teaching how to handle fear without becoming violent.
Right centre consciousness is the missing curriculum.
If education does not produce right centre consciousness, it will produce skilled egos-and skilled egos are dangerous.
What right-centred students do differently
Right centre consciousness is practical. It changes everyday choices:
- Refuse participation: Don’t laugh, don’t share, don’t “adjust.”
- Interrupt normalization: Name it clearly—humiliation is violence.
- Protect the vulnerable: One honest voice breaks the mob spell.
- Choose clarity over belonging: Lokdharm survives on fear of exclusion.
- Extend compassion outward: Humans, animals, nature—one movement of sensitivity.
Right centre consciousness is not passive. It is the courage to live from truth.
Right centre consciousness is the inner spine that doesn’t wait for permission.
Bringing it back to Pallavi-and to all of us
Pallavi’s story should not become another cycle of outrage and forgetting. It should become a mirror asking: what kind of inner centre is our culture rewarding?
If campuses reward dominance, they will manufacture dominators.
If society rewards numbness, it will manufacture cruelty.
If families reward status, they will manufacture fear.
If we ignore animal suffering, we will shrink our empathy.
If we ignore climate collapse, we will normalize exploitation.
All of it is one diagnosis: absence of right centre consciousness.
And all of it has one direction of healing: restore right centre consciousness.
Not as a slogan. As daily living.
Understand beter:
Rape: Society, Shame, Stigma || Acharya Prashant, PES Goa (2025)
