2023-08-26 13:06:57
Indian authorities vowed Saturday to take action following a primary school teacher ordered her students to take turns slapping a Muslim classmate, and footage of the incident sparked outrage online.
Rights groups say hate crimes and violence once morest India’s large Muslim minority have been on the rise since Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in 2014.
India has a population of 1.4 billion people, including 210 million Muslims.
Footage of Thursday’s incident shows a teacher at a private school in Uttar Pradesh ordering the students to slap the seven-year-old, apparently because he made a mistake in the multiplication table.
She was heard saying to the children as the boy stood crying, “Why do you hit him lightly? Hit him hard.”
“Start hitting him on the waist (…) his face turns red,” she added.
Police Inspector Satyanarayan Prajapat confirmed that the footage had been verified.
“Administrative measures will be taken once morest the teacher,” he said in a video clip posted on social media.
While the father of the child filed a case with the police in Muzaffarnagar district, where the accident occurred, according to a separate statement.
The incident sparked an online outcry, with opposition leader Rahul Gandhi blaming Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party for fomenting religious intolerance in the Hindu-majority country.
Gandhi wrote in a post on “X” (formerly Twitter), “planting the poison of discrimination in the minds of innocent children and turning a sacred place like a school into a market for hate.”
“There is nothing worse that a teacher can do for the country,” he added, noting that “this is the same fuel that the Bharatiya Janata Party has spread that has set the whole of India on fire.”
The Bharatiya Janata Party has ruled the state of Uttar Pradesh since 2017.. The state’s chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, is accused of encouraging acts of violence carried out by locals once morest the state’s Muslims and introducing discriminatory laws to marginalize this religious group.
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