The Indian authorities promised, Saturday August 26, to take action after the publication of a video showing a teacher ordering her students to hit a Muslim boy. This video, taken on August 24 and whose authenticity has been verified by the police, shows the teacher of a private school in the state of Uttar Pradesh ordering her students to slap a 7-year-old boy, arguing that he would have made a mistake reciting his multiplication tables. The video provoked strong reactions across the country.
“Why are you hitting him so lightly?” Hit harder », we hear him order the children, while the boy remains standing, crying. She then orders them to hit him on the body. “Start kicking him in the waist…His face starts to turn red, kick him in the waist. »
The father of the child has announced that he intends to withdraw his son from the establishment, according to theIndian Express. Interviewed by the Indian news agency ANI, the teacher apologized.
Rise of intolerance towards Muslims
Local police chief Satyanarayan Prajapat announced on social media that there would be sanctions against the teacher, who is a Hindu, and that the boy’s family had filed a complaint. “We discovered that the teacher had said that Muslim students, whose mothers did not pay enough attention to their studies, were spoiled children”he added.
Human rights groups have denounced a rise in intolerance towards Muslims in India since the coming to power in 2014 of Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi.
Uttar Pradesh has been governed since 2017 by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its leader is a Hindu monk, Yogi Adityanath, whom some see as a possible successor to Mr Modi .
Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition, accused the BJP of encouraging intolerance. “To sow the poison of discrimination in the minds of innocent children, to make this sacred place of school a place of incitement to hatred (…) this is the worst thing a teacher can do for the country”, he said on X (formerly Twitter).