– Raheem Khan
Jaipur, Mar. 5: People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) Rajasthan President Bhanwar Meghvanshi and State General Secretary Anant Bhatnagar issued a press release alleging that Madan Dilawar, Education Minister of Rajasthan, is bent upon making educational institutions places of unscientific talk and religious polarization, and is unnecessarily targeting Dalit and minority teachers. “This conduct of the Education Minister is worsening the educational environment of the state. And social brotherhood is also being threatened,” the statement said.
PUCL Rajasthan has strongly criticized the repressive attitude adopted by the state Education Minister in the cases of Dalit teachers Hemlata Bairwa, Mirza Mujahid, Firoz Khan, Shabana and Akalima Parveen.
The statement said these teachers didn’t do anything for which they should be punished. Hemlata Bairwa, as the festival in-charge on January 26, had kept the pictures of Savitri Bai Phule, Dr. Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi in the Republic Day celebrations. When she was forced to keep the picture of Saraswati, she asked what contribution Saraswati made to education, the angry people filed a case against the teacher.
Instead of honoring the teacher for protecting constitutional values, the Education Minister issued orders to suspend the teacher from the public platform and announced sending her to Bikaner, the headquarters of secondary education, which is an act of sheer torture.
“Similarly, in the case of three Muslim teachers, false allegations like conversion and love jihad were made against them and they were suspended without any reason even though these teachers had not done any such thing. All these teachers have been popular teachers, the students and parents of the school are still in their support and have even staged a protest demanding to bring them back to their school. But under the pressure of some organizations, the Education Minister is of communal mentality,” the statement further said.
Similarly, Akalima Parveen, 38, a Muslim teacher from Government School Kishanganj, Baran, has also been suspended and sent to Bikaner headquarters. She has been accused of wearing hijab and offering namaz in the corner of the school.
Another similar case has also come to light in Jodhpur district, where, on the instructions of Education Minister, in view of the controversy that arose after wearing hijab in the Government Higher Secondary School of Pipar city, school principal Ram Kishore Sankhla, Urdu lecturer Chaman Noor and Additional Chief Block Education Officer Samar Singh were made APO while these teachers had nothing to do with the dispute.
“On the instigation of the Education Minister, such an environment is being created in the schools of the entire state so that an atmosphere of fear is created among Dalit, minority and teachers who believe in secular ideas and communal organizations get an opportunity to do politics of discrimination. Such unilateral and unfortunate action against Muslim and Dalit teachers in Rajasthan is a ridiculous attempt of hate politics to get votes through polarization,” the statement said.
