Hyderabad, July 16 (IANS) In a shocking development, a Class 2 student of a private school in Hyderabad was asked by a teacher to recite the ‘Kalma’, leading to anger and outrage from the student’s parents and local residents.

The incident took place in Hyderabad’s Saidabad area. As the school came under fire from all quarters, the management on Thursday terminated the services of the teacher.

The Class 2 student was reportedly assigned the task as a homework activity in his school diary, the pictures of which are widely circulated on social media.

As the parents learnt about the alleged attempt by the teacher to memorise Islamic religious texts, they took up the matter with school authorities and confronted the management. They expressed deep anger and questioned the inappropriate conduct of the school, questioning the attempts to vitiate the academic environment for children.

Some videos of parents engaged in verbal exchange with school authorities are also doing the rounds on social media.

The parents demanded stern and swift action against the school authorities and those involved in pressurising students to undertake such activity. The matter turned bigger as local community members joined the parents in protesting against ‘inhuman practices’ at the school.

Facing flak from all quarters, the school has terminated the services of the school teacher.

In an order dated July 16, the school said, Your services as Mother Teacher at Success the School are terminated.”

“You are informed that you are permanently disqualified to apply for employment in future in the Success group of education institutions,” the order said, addressed to a teacher named Shaikh Aisha Parveen.

The parents have also demanded a formal investigation, seeking that religious practices remain distinctly separate from classroom activities. They have also approached the local police to hold the school accountable for the alleged incident.

The incident drew strong condemnation from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).

Calling it an assault on children’s impressionable minds, VHP’s Vinod Bansal said, “Schools are temples of knowledge, not centres for imposing religious educational kalma or jihadist agendas. The incident of teaching kalma to innocent second-grade students in Bhagyanagar (Hyderabad) is a direct assault on children’s constitutional rights and parents’ trust. Strict action should be taken against the guilty school management.”

BJP spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari claimed it to be the handiwork of the conversion mafia in Telangana while implying that the Congress party was the ‘inspiration’ behind it.

Referring to its previous “Congress = Muslims” stand, he alleged that the conversion mafia in Telangana was motivated by the grand old party’s designs and was trying to convert them by forcing them to read ‘Kalma’.

“Rahul Gandhi supports conversion mafia. Congress and Asaduddin Owaisi are hand in glove. Congress is anti-Hindu,” he wrote in a post on X.

–IANS

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