A 16-year-old Delhi schoolboy, Shourya Patil, died by suicide on November 18 after allegedly facing days of humiliation by some teachers — a loss that has shaken his classmates, triggered protests outside his school, and left a city asking how a child could feel so cornered, so unseen. Suicides have been explained in many ways, but the most enduring framework comes from sociologist Émile Durkheim. ln Suicide: A Study in Sociology, he wrote, “At each moment of its history, therefore, each society has a definite aptitude for suicide.” Durkheim’s point is clear: An individual’s despair often mirrors the fractures, pressures, and failures of the society surrounding them. For children, school is that first society — a self-contained world with its own power structures, gatekeepers, rituals o

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