Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan slammed the classroom shaming of a seven-year-old upper primary student from the minority Muslim community in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled Uttar Pradesh. The incident that caused a national outcry occurred in a school in Muzaffarnagar after a video of Hindu students slapping their Muslim classmate allegedly at the instance of the class teacher surfaced on social media.
Mr. Vijayan said the incident typified how majoritarian Hindu nationalism could drain human values. It eroded humanism, undermined principles of humanism and fairness, retarded Renaissance values and rendered people cruel and blind to the pain of fellow citizens.
‘Religious hatred’
Mr. Vijayan said the Muzzafarnagar incident was not a one-off occurrence in BJP-ruled States. Under the BJP, India was incrementally degenerating from an oasis of peace and secularism into a turbulent whirlpool of religious hate and minority-baiting fascism.
The Sangh Parivar sought to divide citizens into religious lines to harvest votes and gain political power to subvert the Constitution to its revanchist social outlook.
The violence in Manipur and Haryana were manifestations of Hindu majoritarianism-fuelled hate and mistrust. Minorities, Dalits, tribals and backward classes were the victims. Marginalised sections were second-class citizens in the RSS’s lexicon.
Mr. Vijayan called for a mustering of secular and democratic forces to fight the rising tide of fascism in the country.
General Education Minister V. Sivankutty has conveyed the government’s willingness to offer education to the student who was victimised by his teacher.
Mr. Sivankutty, who strongly condemned the incident, had written to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath seeking stringent action against the teacher.
Manipur student
“Kerala will provide all assistance including the best education possible to the child if his parents agree to the proposal,” he said, while pointing out that the State was home to a student from strife-torn Manipur who had enrolled in the government school.
The government and the people of Kerala would strive to protect secular values, he added.
Highlighting the government’s resolve to work against efforts to subvert democracy and secularism in the country, Mr. Sivankutty said the introduction of additional textbooks incorporating portions that were omitted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) was reflective of the stance.
