‘Humanity’ has been given as an option as religion in colleges in Bengal

Kolkata : At least 50 colleges in West Bengal, including a few in the city have added ”humanity”, ”agnostic”, ”secular” and ”non-religious” options in the religion column of online admission forms for students who are unwilling to disclose their faith.

The decision was taken after several degree course aspirants started questioning the need to declare their religious identity while seeking admissions to colleges.

This allows students applying for undergraduate courses in these colleges to keep their religious beliefs private, an official of the city’s century-old Bethune College said.

“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.

Some other colleges in the city such as the Scottish Church College have also provided ”agnostic”, ”secular” and ”non-religious” as options to students, an official of the North Kolkata College said.

Among other colleges that have adopted ‘humanity’ as an option are Maulana Azad College, Rammohan College, Bangabasi Morning in the city, Maharaja Srischandra College in Andul in Howrah district and Midnapore College in Midnapore town.

According to several degree aspirants as well as academicians “humanism” instead of humanity would have been a better term.

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

“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,” he said.