As incidents of religious intolerance continue to rage in India, a viral video depicting hatred against Muslims has raised questions about the nominally secular state.
At a school in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, a teacher was seen telling Hindu children to kill a Muslim classmate and asked to be expelled because of his religion.
The teacher, Tripta Tyagi, asked all the students to slap the Muslim child as punishment for “not learning the lesson”.
He was specifically heard calling out “all Muslim children”, indicating the rampant Islamophobia in India.
“I have declared that all Muslim children should go,” Tyagi is heard saying in the video.
A Hindu school teacher in UP, India, asking Hindu kids in the class to hit a Muslim kid because he is Muslim! Islamophobia in India has crossed all boundaries. pic.twitter.com/HET3utip7P
— Ashok Swain (@ashoswai) August 25, 2023
“You’re right, it destroys education,” a male voice is heard as the victimized student stands in front of the class, crying and horrified.
The victim’s father Muhammad Irshad said he did not want to take any action as he had compromised after the school management returned the child’s tuition fees.
Altamash's father Irshad gave it in writing to @muzafarnagarpol police that he doesn't want to file a police complaint against the teacher. He decided to remove his kid from this school by taking back the fee which he had paid. While speaking to me, he says, “I didn't want to… https://t.co/VsnMchj7YO pic.twitter.com/wgAaGOEOUf
— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) August 25, 2023
“My son is good in his studies. He takes tuitions. We fail to understand why the teacher treated him like this. It seems the teacher is full of hatred,” the 42-year-old added.
JEE News report quoted Irshad as saying that although the teacher admitted his mistake and apologized for his behavior, he would transfer his son to another school.
“She said she would never mistreat her students again,” he said. “But this is not the environment I want my son to be educated in and grow up in.”
Religious discrimination in India, the world’s largest democracy, has reached an “appalling” level since the Hindu nationalist BJP came to power in 2015.
The northern state of Haryana became the latest hotbed of religious violence in India when a hardline Hindu group marched through the Muslim-majority district of Noh in late July, playing offensive music over powerful sound systems.
Subsequently, seven people were killed and more than 70 injured in riots in Noh and Gurugram districts of Haryana state.
In its annual reports on religious freedom, the US State Department lists attacks against India’s religious minorities, including Muslims and Christians, as more than a billion in the country.
Human rights groups have also alleged that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is promoting discriminatory religious nationalism by targeting Muslim, Christian and Sikh religious minorities.