Colleges In Bengal Give Students The Option To Keep Faith Matter Private & It's A Great Move

In a welcome move, at least 50 college across West Bengal have added ¡®humanity¡¯, ¡®secular¡¯, agnostic¡¯, and ¡®non-religious¡¯ as options in the religion column of their online admission forms and this has specially been done for students who don¡¯t want to disclose their faith.

The move would allow the students applying for undergraduate course in these colleges to keep their religious beliefs secret, an official of the century old Bethune College told PTI.

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The official said that the decision was taken several aspirants of the degree course questioned the need for the declaration of their religious identity in the admission forms of the colleges.

"We found that many applicants had been identifying themselves as non-believer in the option where they were supposed to mention their religion," said an official involved in the admission process at the college.

"Following this, the college authorities decided to consider and provide 'humanity' as a choice to students while filling the forms, firstly, for the online applications," the official said.

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The Scottish Church College and some other colleges in the city have provided options such as ¡®non-religious¡¯, ¡®agnostic¡¯ and ¡®secular¡¯ in their admission forms, a north Kolkata official said.

¡®Humanity¡¯ has been given as an option by Bangabasi Morning college in Kolkata, Midnapore College in Midnapore town, Maulana Azad College and Rammohan College in Kolkata and Maharaja Srischandra College in Andul in Howrah district.

Several degree aspirants and also the academicians have expressed that ¡®humanism¡¯ instead of ¡®humanity¡¯ would have been a better choice.

"This is historic. But we should consider providing humanism," an academician at the Presidency University said requesting anonymity.

Sagarika Sen, who aspires to get admission in English honour course in Bethune College welcomed the step and said, "This is an extremely progressive step. I consider this as an expression of historical importance. Though I am a Hindu by birth, I have never liked the idea of disclosing my religious identity."

Another student who seeks admission in sociology course also called the initiative ¡°path breaking¡±. Sammay Sengupta said,

"This is a path-breaking initiative. We are followers or believers of a religion but that cannot be our identity. Our identity is humanism. And we must not forget that religion is one's own choice."