Waquar Hasan | Clarion India
NEW DELHI – Several Muslim students have claimed beating, abuse, discrimination and humiliation at the hands of their teachers in a government school in the national capital. The teachers were also accused of regularly throwing religious slurs at them and ill-treating them because of the Muslim identity of the students.
The abhorrent incidents occurred in Sarvodya Bal Vidyala in Nand Nagri area of northeast Delhi and were brought to light in a letter from the victim students to Supreme Court lawyer Ashok Agarwal, who visited their institutions recently.
The students did not reveal their identities out of fear of retribution.
The religious bigotry displayed by teachers, expected to uphold communal amity and secular values, is symptomatic of the deep malaise that has set in a section of society and dented the country’s democratic and pluralistic ethos during the last decade.
The helpless and hapless students addressed their letter to the Lieutenant-Governor (L-G) and Delhi chief minister, detailing their harrowing experience of constantly being teased with epithets like ‘katwa’ and mulla’ and the forced chanting of ‘Jai Shri Ram.’
Earlier, during Agarwal’s visit to the school on August 7, students told him about their ordeal and then wrote the letter to him. Besides the L-G and the chief minister, the letter has also been marked to the director of the Education Department, the Chairman of the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights and other officials.
This story was originally published in clarionindia.net. Read the full story here.
