A viral video on social media caught the attention of international news outlets on Saturday, highlighting the acute discrimination faced by religious minorities in India.
A school teacher in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh can be seen on video behaving abusively with a seven-year-old Muslim student.
In a video that surfaced on Friday, primary school teacher Trapta Tyagi is seen demanding the expulsion of a Muslim student from school because of his religion and asking his classmates to slap him.
A male voice can be heard in the background agreeing with the teacher.
Tyagi can be heard saying in the video, “I have announced that all Muslim children should go away.”
“You’re right, it ruins education,” the man is heard saying as the victim stands in front of the classroom, crying and horrified.
India may have reached the moon but millions of Muslims still do not have basic rights as Muslims are killed in public view.
In this school teacher asks Hindu kids to slap Muslim kid, even scolds them if they don’t slap hard enoughpic.twitter.com/ci0YVgDpl2
– Muslim Daily (@muslimdaily_) 25 August 2023
Muslims constitute about a fifth of Uttar Pradesh’s 235 million population.
Parents of seven-year-old child Mohammad Altamash told al Jazeera The incident took place on Thursday at Neha Public School in Kubbapur village, 30 km (19 miles) from Muzaffarnagar city.
“Yesterday, my son came home crying,” said his mother Rubina. “He was in shock. You don’t treat kids like this.”
According to his father Mohammad Irshad, the teacher asked him [classmates] slapping my son one by one”.
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“The teacher justified his act by saying that my son did not remember his lesson.
“My son is good in studies. He takes tuition. We are not able to understand why the teacher behaved like this with him. It seems the teacher is filled with hatred,” the 42-year-old said.
Police in India have asked social media users not to share the video, prompting various users to delete it from their accounts.
Irshad, a farmer, said his son’s mistreatment was the result of “hate being spread against Muslims in the country”, which is evident from the teacher’s comments heard in the video.
Rubina said that the teacher allegedly had a habit of getting students slapped by their classmates. He said that just a few days ago, another student from his family was also treated in a similar manner as he had failed to remember his lessons.
A police officer said a case would be registered after recording the statements of the child and the parents.
The school in question has students from the Hindu and Muslim communities of the area.
Irshad said that, although the teacher has accepted her mistake and apologized for her behavior, he will take his son to another school.
“She said she would never mistreat her students again,” he added. “But this is not the environment I want my son to be educated in and grow up in.”
Man, this video is so heartwarming!! A school teacher in India orders Hindu children to step forward and slap a Muslim child one by one.
You can land on all the moons in the solar system and it doesn’t matter if the teachers are training the crowd in the schools. https://t.co/wlA93mhUN4
— Fatima Tassadiq (@fatimatassadiq) 25 August 2023
As the video went viral, outrage spread on social media, with many pointing to growing Islamophobia in schools.
“A generation is growing up in a society that has normalized hostility and hatred,” explained Nazia Eram, author of Mothering a Muslim. al Jazeera,
He blamed the state of the media and politics for the growing hatred in the country, saying it “only aims to constantly cast the minority Muslim population in a negative light”.
