Kids face discrimination in class

Rights group finds lower caste and Muslim pupils ill-treated in India

SOME Indian teachers force children from lower castes and minority religions to clean toilets and sit separately from their classmates as part of persistent discrimination in classrooms, a rights group said yesterday.

Human Rights Watch said pupils from marginalised communities often dropped out of school and started working as labourers rather than face continued humiliation at the hands of teachers and principals.

The 77-page study on schools was compiled through interviews with more than 160 teachers, principals, parents and pupils in four states which have large populations of low-caste poor, indigenous tribals and Muslims.

“India’s immense project to educate all its children risks falling vic- tim to deeply rooted discrimination by teachers and other school staff against the poor and marginalised,” the report’s author Jayshree Bajoria said.

“Instead of encouraging children from at-risk communities who are often the first in their families to ever step inside a classroom, teachers often neglect or even mistreat them,” she said. Children from Muslim communities were among those often made to sit at the back of classrooms or in separate rooms. They were called derogatory names, denied leadership roles and served food last.

The report comes as a mammoth general election is under way which is likely to vault Hindu nationalist hardliner Narendra Modi and his party to power after a decade of centre-left Congress Party rule.

Some children said they were segregated and neglected because they were considered dirty, while Muslim students said they were called “mullahs”, a term for an Islamic cleric, instead of by their names.

India’s parliament passed land- mark legislation in 2009 that guarantees state schooling for children aged six to 14 and enrolments have reached more than 90% nationally.

But HRW said the law did not contain punishments for those who discriminated in the classroom.

Most education authorities had failed to establish proper mechanisms to monitor and track children who were at risk of dropping out, and were not acting to ensure they were able to remain in school, the report said. – AFP