“How can they (right-wing groups) protest at schools where little children are studying?” asks 43-year-old Dalit activist Bindu Thankam Kalyani.
Kalyani, who teaches English at the Government Higher Secondary School in Agali in Kerala’s Palakkad district, has reportedly alleged that her 11-year-old daughter has been denied admission at a private school under pressure from right-wing groups. The reason these groups are allegedly harassing her family is that in October 2018, Kalyani had made an unsuccessful bid to climb the hill at Sabarimala.
Right-wing groups — many of them backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — have been fighting hard against the Supreme Court’s decision to allow women of menstruating-age to visit the Ayyappa shrine. Kalyani, like many others, has thus become the target of such groups.
After her attempt to scale the hill, Kalani’s daughter faced harassment at her school, not just from students, but the teachers as well. “The class teacher and other parents would tell her classmates to not talk to her or walk with her. Even children would come to her asking her not to turn out to be like me,” Kalyani told the Indian Express. That is when she decided to shift her daughter from the government school where she taught to the private school in Anaikatti.
That shift, however, was when more trouble began. Right-wing protestors picketed the school that was prepared to enrol Kalyani’s daughter.
Kalyani said, “I had spoken to the principal and teachers at the Vidya Vanam School in Anaikatti a few days ago, and they were in favour of my daughter’s admission there. However, when I went there with my daughter yesterday, there were about 60 people outside the school gate. Initially, I didn’t know why they were there. I didn’t expect any protests in Anaikatti (which falls on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border). Later, I realised they had assembled in protest against me and my daughter’s admission.”
She added that “I feel that the school authorities are in favour of granting admission to my daughter. But they are afraid that the protests could affect studies of other children at the school too. About 300 kids are studying there. They must fear that if my daughter studies there, there could be an attack on the school. The principal said we could talk about admission once the protests around Sabarimala subside.”
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