[I. <<Arifa says the unmistakable changes came in after the national election campaigns in 2014. “People just became very in-your-face with their feelings about Muslims. And this I noticed was being reflected in their children at school. Bullying had always existed, but it was different before, largely comprising childish rebukes and stupid, dumb things being said to each other in schools. This has changed now. When a Muslim student is bullied it is on pronounced religious lines. Now he is called Baghdadi, Bangladeshi, Pakistani or simply a terrorist. Everyone’s speech is borrowed from the language used in the news [channels].”>>
(Excerpted from the sl.no. I. below.) II. <<Across India, and especially in the north, many CBSE schools that have thirty or more Muslim students in a class, clump them together to form a new section altogether. As more Muslims embrace formal mainstream English-medium education, this trend is seeing a peak in recent years. Sanskrit is offered across most of India as an elective third language. It is usually offered as a choice against a regional language or a foreign language. Where there are a large number of Muslim students, often Urdu is offered as an elective. But many schools divide up the students of each year into sections based on the languages opted for. Thus, section A will comprise students who choose to study Sanskrit and section B of those who choose Urdu. This means that sections are not only divided along linguistic lines but also end up being divided along religious lines. For, with a few exceptions, most Muslim kids opt for Urdu and most non-Muslim kids choose Sanskrit.>> (Excerpted from the sl.no. II. below.)] I/II. https://scroll.in/article/864056/i-hate-muslims-this-book-uncovers-the-bullying-faced-by-muslim-children-in-many-indian-schools BOOK EXCERPT ‘I hate Muslims’: A book uncovers the bullying faced by Muslim children in many Indian schools Nazia Erum’s book tells of Muslim children being beaten up and called terrorists by their classmates and teachers who look the other way, or worse. by Nazia Erum Published 2 hours ago My neighbour Arifa, a forty-five-year-old art curator, is the mother of two boys, who studied in the Lotus Valley International School on the Noida-Greater Noida expressway. A major terrorist attack had occurred the night before. Saad, her ten-year-old younger son, was then in Class 5. In his classroom, the newspaper was lying on the teacher’s desk as the students waited for their English class to start. The teacher walked in, picked up the newspaper and read aloud the headlines about the attack to the class. “What is happening in the world!” she exclaimed with a sigh as she sat down. Suddenly, one of the students called out Saad’s name loudly. “Saaad, yeh kya kar diya tumne? [What did you do, Saaad?]” There was silence in the class. The words stuck in Saad’s throat. He felt all eyes on him, waiting for him to say something. He was hot and angry. But he couldn’t find the words to retaliate. The question settled uncomfortably in the classroom, filling the air with tension. Through the incident, the teacher did not bother to look up. “I kept waiting for my teacher to react and scold the classmate, but she didn’t react. She kept sitting there in front of us without saying a word. After a while she stood up and began the class. I was silent, I didn’t respond and kept sitting there. I didn’t really know what to do.” Arifa says the unmistakable changes came in after the national election campaigns in 2014. “People just became very in-your-face with their feelings about Muslims. And this I noticed was being reflected in their children at school. Bullying had always existed, but it was different before, largely comprising childish rebukes and stupid, dumb things being said to each other in schools. This has changed now. When a Muslim student is bullied it is on pronounced religious lines. Now he is called Baghdadi, Bangladeshi, Pakistani or simply a terrorist. Everyone’s speech is borrowed from the language used in the news [channels].” While such slurs have been used since the 1990s, the tone and intensity have changed, especially over the last five years. Earlier the remarks were innocuous and infrequent. Now they occur more often and are marked by hostility rather than humour. Not that humour justifies the taunts. It shows how deeply entrenched the association of a Muslim to terror is. The context is different now and possibly feeds on the changes – global terrorism in the name of Islam has increased dramatically over the last fifteen years with ISIL (or ISIS) alone responsible for 95% of deaths from claimed terrorist attacks. At the same time, the past decade has seen a rise in Hindu right-wing sentiment within India and a slew of distorted narratives that portray Muslims as invaders, anti-national and a threat to national security. These took centre stage in the run-up to the polarising national elections of 2014. From my conversations with many others across the country, it seems this consciousness has now been handed down to the children of our country. Arifa’s elder son, Raffat, was called a “terrorist” casually in a fight when he was seventeen years old in 2016. Arifa was appalled and immediately contacted the mother of the name-caller through the class WhatsApp group. “But your kid also called my child names! He called him fat!” was all that the mother had to say. “She was actually defending her boy and equating a terrorist to fat. I had nothing more to say to her. The kids had been friends from a long time,” recounts Arifa, shaking her head. She took the matter to the class teacher. “There was no action. They simply said that they would talk to the parents. But then it kept happening repeatedly. And after a while my boys refused to report it to the school authorities,” Arifa said. As the brothers have grown older, they have become pricklier. Even though they still get bullied, they don’t want to appear like sissies and carry tales to their mother, preferring to “fight it out”. The verbal abuses often turn into physical scuffles and fights in the playground or school buses. Arifa is usually very vocal and assertive of her rights, but in this case, over time she has given in to silence. “I keep asking them to not react as the political climate is such. One never knows when things get blown out of proportion,” says Arifa sadly, with a tinge of fear in her voice. Raffat disagrees. “If they think we are terrorists then we will show them what we can do. How can they say that to us? Every time there is a terror attack in the news, my classmates ask me the next day, “Arre yeh kya karwa diya tumne? [What have you done now?]” “As if I am responsible!” When I asked Raffat why he gets into physical fights instead of complaining to the school authorities, he says that there is no point in trying to reason away the unreasonable. “If they want to fight, we cannot shy away!” said the visibly upset young man. The bullies are only repeating what they hear in their homes. Our conversations are laced with hate and awareness of the “other”, and it is natural for children to start mirroring this in their words. Arifa says, “I told my boys it’s best to ignore such absurd comments. Because they all have to together travel in buses and study. It’s not possible to avoid each other or live in animosity. It could lead to being pushed out from groups or being cold-shouldered.” Arifa’s comment reminded me of eleven-year-old Maaz, who studies in Class 6 in a branch of Delhi Public School in the national capital region (NCR). Born to parents in an inter-religious marriage, he tells me how he is socially boycotted by his classmates due to his Muslim surname. He is often called a terrorist and nobody wants to play with him. “They are all busy playing with each other and don’t include me,” he tells me forlornly. “I sit with a Muslim girl during the tiffin break. She has some friends who are okay with me. I have no friends,” says Maaz. Quite often, the battles start even earlier. “My little one is only six and a half years old and got hit for being a Muslim in school,” says Zareen Siddique, whose daughter Samaira studies in an internationally accredited school in Noida. A student sitting on the same bench as her asked, “Are you a Muslim?” He then started hitting Samaira, saying “I hate Muslims.” Zareen says it took a few days before her daughter could open up about it. “I was appalled and shocked. I immediately called up the class teacher who had a two-word response, “It happens.”’ Excerpted with permission from Mothering A Muslim, Nazia Erum, Juggernaut. II. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/all-that-matters/divide-and-school-policy-ghettoising-muslim-kids/articleshow/62395438.cms Divide and school policy ghettoising Muslim kids TNN | Updated: Jan 7, 2018, 11:32 IST File photo used for representation only By invitation: Nazia Erum What is it like to be a middle class Muslim parent in India today? Over the course of writing a book, I reached out to 145 Muslim families with kids studying in some of the top schools of the country. What I learnt was disturbing, to say the least. While parents today can ensure meals at malls, membership to sports complexes, education at leading institutions and clothes in vogue, what they cannot ensure is that their children will not be bullied for their religious affiliations. As many as 80 per cent of Muslim children I spoke to had experienced some kind of religious bullying, from as young as six. The bullies were almost certainly taking their cues from their parents and what they picked up at home. But what was more worrying still is that some schools are also unconsciously creating religious divides. The catchment area of one of Delhi's best-known public schools includes Jamia and Nizamuddin, two largely Muslim localities. The school offers foreign languages along with Sanskrit and Urdu. A teacher of the school tells me, "My section has mostly Urdu students and a few French students. While it was not an all-Muslim class, the ratio is definitely skewed. So, one of the parents wrote a letter to the administration saying they wanted their child's section changed as there was too much of 'M factor' (as they put it) in their present section. And they were obliged." Across India, and especially in the north, many CBSE schools that have thirty or more Muslim students in a class, clump them together to form a new section altogether. As more Muslims embrace formal mainstream English-medium education, this trend is seeing a peak in recent years. Sanskrit is offered across most of India as an elective third language. It is usually offered as a choice against a regional language or a foreign language. Where there are a large number of Muslim students, often Urdu is offered as an elective. But many schools divide up the students of each year into sections based on the languages opted for. Thus, section A will comprise students who choose to study Sanskrit and section B of those who choose Urdu. This means that sections are not only divided along linguistic lines but also end up being divided along religious lines. For, with a few exceptions, most Muslim kids opt for Urdu and most non-Muslim kids choose Sanskrit. We need to talk about the consequences of this beyond classrooms. When a 12-year-old child is separated from students of other religions, what are we inculcating subconsciously? Children hit adolescence in classes 6 to 8, and these are their most formative and impressionable years. When a child grows up in a school demarcated on religious lines, how deep will the dividing lines be drawn in our society? Will we ever be able to share a table or a plate? "Never were differences out so open in schools before," a parent from Bhopal, Raiqa Khan, tells me sadly. "I think this compartmentalisation of classes started since 2005 in Bhopal. I was also teaching in one of the leading schools at the time when it was introduced. The majority of the kids in a single section ended up being of a single religion. It did have an impact on the kids, as they were not ready to bond with students of other religions. Most of our friends are non-Muslims. My best friend is a Pandit. Earlier my son too had a healthy mix of friends from all religions. But (now), he has only Muslim friends. All the kids coming home are Muslims. That worries me. There is definitely a divide. I can feel it. I can see it," Raiqa says. When parents questioned this division they were told that timetables are easier to set and students do not need to be shuffled for a single class, and traffic in the school corridors is thus minimised. But when asked officially, school administrations denied the prevalence of any such practices. A school owner, on condition of anonymity, told me, "It makes economic sense for the administration to group students together according to language. It's a simple case of maximising resources. The administrations are only thinking about how much money is being saved, not about the ripple effects in society." TOP COMMENT Why is it that all across the world, Muslims are the only people who cannot co-exist peacefully with other communities. The problem is the barbaric thinking that Islam inculcates.... Don''t try to pa... Read More Sameer If students are compartmentalised this early they don't get to learn about 'others'. Students of one section don't get time beyond classes to bond with students from other sections. They don't share tiffins. They don't make friends. If you ask the kids, they say, "Woh bante hi nahi hamare friends. Bas hi-hello ho jata hai. (They don't become friends with us. We just greet each other in passing.)" (Nazia Erum is the author of the newly published Mothering a Muslim.) -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
