EDITORIAL: The extreme levels to which politics of hatred and ‘othering’ of Muslims promoted by India’s far-right Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party, the BJP, have spiked was on display, again, last Thursday, this time at a primary school in Muzaffarnagar town of Utter Pradesh, the country’s most populous state.
A video that went viral on social media showed a seven-year-old student, Mohammad Altamash, standing before his class in tears as the teacher makes his classmates to slap him, purportedly, for getting his multiplication tables wrong. She can be heard saying something about “Mohammadan [Muslim] children” as a male voice, apparently that of the man recording the video, adds “you are right, it ruins the education.” And the teacher goes on to tell the young pupils to “hit him hard ... Start hitting him on the waist ... his face is turning red, hit him on the waist instead.”
The child has since been withdrawn from the school by his parents, but the humiliating and traumatic experience he went through will stay with him for the rest of his life. And the children who were made to hit him because of his faith will grow up doing to the ‘others’ what the teacher instilled in their impressionable minds.
It is worth noting that the teacher allowed the video recording, apparently, to win favours from the state’s BJP chief minister, saffron-robed monk-turned-politician Yogi Adityanath, said to be a potential successor to Modi. He is known for his incendiary speeches against Muslims, and making bulldozer — he used for demolishing several Muslim homes and businesses — a symbol of his brand of politics. No wonder therefore that soon after the incident, some local politicians mediated a “compromise” between the little boy’s family and those involved in it.
Too afraid to take a stand, his father initially told news channels that there was no religious angle to the thrashing his son had received. It was only after the video sparked outrage on social media that he took the courage to file a case with the police. Yet neither the PM, nor the CM, nor any other BJP leader has uttered a single word of regret let alone denunciation over the appalling treatment of a small Muslim child. Silence, of course, means collusion, which works fine for them, especially as the general elections are due come May. Stoking Hindu nationalist fervour is an integral part of the BJP’s vote winning stratagem.
As expected of him, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who is spearheading a 26-party opposition coalition under the banner of Indian National Development Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), has strongly condemned the incident in an X post saying, “sowing the poison of discrimination in the minds of innocent children, turning a holy place like school into a marketplace of hatred — nothing worse a teacher can do for the country. This is the same kerosene spread by the BJP that has set every corner of India on fire.... INDIA promises to restore the country’s founding ideals of secularism and pluralism”. However, as certain other examples have shown, it is not easy to turn back the tide of religious extremism once it is unleashed under official patronage.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023