India: Teacher orders students to beat Muslim boy

Indian authorities have vowed to take action after a video emerged of a teacher ordering his students to beat up a Muslim boy. The video, whose authenticity was verified by police, sparked outrage across the country. We see a teacher at a private school in Uttar Pradesh ordering students to slap a seven-year-old boy because he made a mistake in reciting his multiplication table.

“Why are you hitting him so lightly? Hit harder”, we hear him commanding the children, as the boy continues to cry. After a while, she orders him to body beat her. “Start kicking him in the groin…His face starts turning red, kick in the groin”.

Local police chief Satyanarayan Prajapat said in a video on social media that a ban would be imposed against the teacher, a Hindu, and that the boy’s family had lodged a complaint. “We discovered that the teacher said that Muslim students whose mothers do not pay enough attention to their studies are spoiled children,” he added.

The rise of tolerance

Human rights groups have long denounced growing intolerance towards Muslims in India since Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. Since his rise to power, attacks against Muslims have increased, some using the pretext of protecting cows, especially sacred to Hindus.

Uttar Pradesh has been ruled by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since 2017, and its leader is a Hindu monk, Yogi Adityanath, whom some see as Modi’s successor. Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi accused the BJP of promoting intolerance. “Sowing the poison of discrimination in the minds of innocent children, turning this sacred school into a breeding ground for hatred (…) is the worst thing a teacher can do to a country,” he said in X.

(AFP)