‘Slap him harder’ - Indian teacher ask students to beat Muslim classmate

A video of a seven-year-old Muslim student being slapped by his classmates on the instruction of their Hindu teacher in India has caused outrage and highlighted the daily struggle of Muslim minority in the world’s most populous country.

The incident took place on Thursday in a private school in the Uttar Pradesh (UP) province where Muslims have seen a surge in violence in recent years.

In the video, which was caught on a cellphone camera, the teacher, Trapta Tyagi, could be heard saying that Muslim mothers don’t pay attention to their childrens' education. She then asked the Muslim boy’s classmates to come and slap him one by one.

“Hit him harder,” the teacher says at one point.

The incident, which caused an outcry on social media, prompted police in Muzaffarnagar, the city where the school is located, to start an investigation.

“When we investigated, we found that the woman was ‘declaring’ in the video that Mohammedan students get spoiled when their mothers don’t pay attention to their studies,” the Indian Express quoted a senior police official as saying.

Another person can be heard laughing in the video as the terrified and teary-eyed Muslim boy is slapped on the face and back.

Leader of the opposition Congress party Rahul Gandhi blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the incident.

“Sowing the poison of discrimination in the minds of innocent children, turning a holy place like school into a marketplace of hatred - nothing worse a teacher can do for the country. This is the same kerosene spread by the BJP which has set every corner of India on fire. Children are the future of India - do not hate them, we all have to teach love together," he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

India’s National Commission for Protection of Child Rights says it has taken note of what has happened and intends to take legal action.

However, according to an Indian news media report, the Muslim boy’s father has refused to file a complaint with the police. He told reporters that he had withdrawn his son from the school, which has agreed to refund his admission fee.

Police are trying to convince the father to lodge a formal complaint against the teacher, who also owns the school.

“When my son came home yesterday he was crying,” Scroll.in quoted the boy’s mother as saying. “We didn’t take it seriously. We thought that the teacher must have punished him for not doing his homework. But when we saw the video we were shocked.”

India, which is home to more than 200 million Muslims, has seen a rise in violence against minorities since BJP came to power in 2014.

Many Muslims have been attacked and killed dozens killed by Hindu extremists in recent years.

Situation is ever critical in the state of UP, run by a Hindu monk Yogi Adityanath, who is also a BJP leader. The UP government has even used advertisements with communal undertones depicting Muslims as violent to appease voters.