Outrage in India after teacher asks pupils to slap Muslim classmate

LUCKNOW – The Indian authorities vowed on Saturday to take action after a primary school teacher ordered her pupils to take turns slapping a Muslim classmate, with footage of the incident stoking outrage online.

Rights groups say hate crimes and violence against India’s large Muslim minority have been on the rise since Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in 2014.

Footage of Thursday’s incident shows the teacher of a private school in Uttar Pradesh state instructing pupils to hit the seven-year-old as she appears to hurl religious slurs, ostensibly because he got his multiplication tables wrong.

“Why are you hitting him so lightly? Hit him hard,” she is heard telling the children, as the boy stands crying.

“Start hitting him on the waist... His face is turning red, hit him on the waist instead,” she adds.

Police Superintendent Satyanarayan Prajapat said the footage has been verified.

“Departmental action will be taken against the teacher,” he said in a video posted on social media.

The victim’s father filed a case with police in Muzaffarnagar district, where the incident took place, the magistrate said in a separate video statement.

The teacher, identified as Ms Tripta Tyagi, apologised for her mistake and said she was just being strict with the boy after his parents complained about him.

“There was pressure from the parents of the child to be strict with him. I am handicapped and can’t get up. He was not doing his homework for the last two months. So, I made two or three pupils beat him up so that he would start doing his work,” Ms Tyagi said.

The woman denied making religious slurs, saying the video of the incident was edited and she only said that Muslim mothers should not take their kids to their uncle’s places since exams are approaching.

“But they cut this video and took the Muslim word. I had no such intentions. I have made a mistake and I seek apology with folded hands”, she said.

The victim’s father said this was “not a Hindu-Muslim matter”.

“My seven-year-old child was tortured for an hour or two. He is scared. This is not a Hindu-Muslim matter. We want the law to take its own course,” he said.

The graphic footage provoked widespread dismay online, with opposition leader Rahul Gandhi blaming the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for stoking religious intolerance in the Hindu-majority country.

“Sowing the poison of discrimination in the minds of innocent children, turning a holy place like school into a marketplace of hatred,” he posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“There’s nothing worse a teacher can do for the country,” he added. “This is the same kerosene spread by the BJP that has set every corner of India on fire.”

Uttar Pradesh has been governed by the BJP since 2017, when it appointed Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a saffron-robed Hindu monk seen as a potential successor to Mr Modi.

During his tenure, Hindu mobs have launched a spate of attacks over so-called cow protection – a sacred animal for many Hindus – and committed other hate crimes that have sown fear among the state’s Muslim population. AFP, THE STATESMAN/ASIA NEWS NETWORK