‘Go to Pakistan,’ Karnataka teacher ‘tells’ Muslim students, transferred
The teacher who teaches Kannada in an Urdu school in Shivamogga district has denied the allegations and said she was just trying to discipline the students
In yet another case of Islamophobia invading spaces of learning, a teacher in an Urdu school in Karnataka’s Shivamogga district allegedly asked two Muslim students in her class to “go to Pakistan” after seeing them engaged in a quarrel during class hours.
The teacher, Manjula Devi, has been transferred and a departmental inquiry initiated against her after the parents of the children took the matter to the notice of the Karnataka Department of School Education and Literacy. She has been teaching in the Urdu school for the past eight years.
The teacher, however, has denied the charges and said that she was disciplining the students and that they were not respecting her.
The incident comes days after a teacher in Uttar Pradesh was caught on camera asking students to punish their Muslim classmate for not doing his homework, drawing severe backlash from several sections of society.
The incident in Karnataka occurred in a school in Shivamogga’s Tipu Nagar on Thursday when Manjula Devi, a Kannada language teacher, saw the two students from Class 5 fighting while the class was underway.
She reportedly broke the quarrel and told the students, “Go to Pakistan. This is a country of Hindus”.
The students reportedly went home and told their parents about the incident, who in turn apprised local leaders about it. A complaint was thereafter lodged with the education department by Shivamogga’s JD(S) leader A Nazrullah.
Parameshwarappa CR, deputy director of public instruction told Indian Express that the department received the complaint about the incident on Thursday, following which action was initiated against the teacher based on a preliminary inquiry by the block education officer.
