Schools offer degrees of humiliation as education

Tripta Tyagi is the kind of name you would find in a reality show-it just rolls off your tongue

- NISHA SUSAN

 

Unfortunately, the reality show Triptaji has appeared in is the kind of episode that most of us would wish we hadn't seen. No one really wants to see footage of a seven-year-old being hit by the rest of his classmates while his teacher urges them to hit harder.

As I write this, Tyagi, the teacher and owner of Neha Public School in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, is still grouchily defending herself, the centre of a national and local storm. Here are some of the convoluted justifications marshalled by Tyagi and others. She had a disability, so she couldn't get up to hit the child herself. The child hadn't learnt his multiplication tables. He had been asked to learn them a month ago. The child's uncle had asked for him to be disciplined. Children need to be controlled. In a later video, Tyagi talks about the first video having been manipulated; on what front, she doesn't make clear since she doesn't deny organising the daisy chain of hitting.

But almost all the voices involved are trying to establish whether the incident had a "communal flavour". As a clan member of Tyagi's told the Article-14 website: "This was such a small matter. We all were beaten in schools. It is common for teachers to punish kids in schools when they make mistakes. Nothing wrong and big in that."