The police in Faridpur, Bareilly booked the school principal and a para teacher of government higher primary school, after the local unit of Vishwa Hindu Parishad accused Siddiqui and Waziruddin of hurting “religious sentiments” of people in “a Hindu-dominated area by reciting madrassa-type prayers in the school”. The poem also known as Bachche ki Dua, was composed by Muhammad Iqbal in 1902 and its first verse has also been used in a song in a Hindi movie called ‘Raazi’.

The VHP raised objection on the line: mere allah burai se bachaana mujhko’. (O God! protect me from the evil ways). The VHP’s city president Sompal Rathore on whose instance the FIR was filed, alleged that school principal Nahid Siddiqui and Shiksha Mitra (teacher) Waziruddin were trying to convert the students and that students who protested against such prayers were threatened.

2 teachers in UP’s Bareilly booked — for ‘causing riot’ — and suspended after video of school children singing a song from their Urdu syllabus goes viral.
Objectionable part is: Mere Allah burai se bachana mujhko (O Allah! protect me from the evil ways) pic.twitter.com/xBePwhS1q4

— Kanwardeep singh (@KanwardeepsTOI) December 22, 2022

In an opinion piece in Indian Express, Devyani Onial wrote that the Urdu poem talks about a child’s wish for a life like a candle (shama), that banishes darkness from the world (door duniya ka mere dum se andhera ho jaye) and brings light to all corners (har jagah mere chamakne se ujala ho jai). It talks about protecting the poor (garibon ki himayat karna) and loving the weak (dard mandon se zaifon se mohabbat karna). She wrote,

“Before this, no one who had sung it had thought of it as a religious prayer. Children who followed faiths other than Islam neither paused nor stopped at the word “Allah”; everyone sang along, praying to God, asking him to keep us on the right path (nek jo raah ho us raah pe chalana mujhko). But in times when Urdu, the language, has become Muslim and the colour orange Hindu, what chance does a line like that have in an orange-lit India?”

The entire poem written by Mohammad Iqbal reads as follows:

lab pe aatī hai duā ban ke tamannā merī

zindagī sham.a kī sūrat ho ḳhudāyā merī!

duur duniyā kā mire dam se añdherā ho jaa.e!

har jagah mere chamakne se ujālā ho jaa.e!

ho mire dam se yūñhī mere vatan kī zīnat

jis tarah phuul se hotī hai chaman kī zīnat

zindagī ho mirī parvāne kī sūrat yā-rab

ilm kī sham.a se ho mujh ko mohabbat yā-rab

ho mirā kaam ġharīboñ kī himāyat karnā

dard-mandoñ se za.īfoñ se mohabbat karnā

mire allāh! burā.ī se bachānā mujh ko

nek jo raah ho us rah pe chalānā mujh ko

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In yet another example of authoritarian policing, the Uttar Pradesh Police have registered a first information report against the principal and a part-time teacher after the local unit of a supremacist organisation claimed that “madrassa-type prayers” were being recited in a government school at Bareilly.

Reports in the media stated that students had only recited Mohammad Iqbal’s iconic Urdu poem ‘Lab pe aati hai dua‘. Iqbal is the writer of the famous song ‘Saare jahan se achha’.

The principal of a local government higher primary school, Nahid Siddiqui, located in Faridpur, has been suspended. A police investigation has been ordered against the part-time teacher Waziruddin, PTI has reported, quoting the local Basic Shiksha Adhikari Vinay Kumar. Waziruddin is a shiksha mitra or a ‘para teacher’.

Police have slapped sections 298 (deliberate intention to wound religious sentiments) and 153 (provocation with intent to cause riot) of the Indian Penal Code against the two persons. It was some members of the local unit of Vishwa Hindu Parishad accused Siddiqui and Waziruddin of hurting “religious sentiments” of people in “a Hindu-dominated area by reciting madrassa-type prayers in the school,” Kumar told PTI.

Times of India has reported that VHP activists took exception to the line, ‘Mere Allah burai se bachana mujhko (‘O Allah, protect me from evils’)’ and claimed students were being compelled to sing/recite it. VHP members also claimed that the accused were also trying to convert the students and that students who protested against such prayers were threatened.

Police said they are in possession of a video of students reciting the prayers. Based on the complaint letter of VHP’s city president Sompal Rathore, an FIR was registered against the principal and the shiksha mitra on Wednesday.

This is not the first time that VHP has targeted the tradition of reciting Iqbal’s poems in schools. In 2019, students of a government school in Uttar Pradesh’s Pilibhit, in fact, protested against the suspension of their headmaster who was removed from his position after the VHP complained that he had made them recite a “religious prayer” – ‘Lab pe aati hai dua’. UP’s basic education minister Satish Chandra Dwivedi had at that time told reporters that this action had been hasty.

In addition to the fact that the poem is written by a Muslim, a bete noir for the supremacist VHP, uses the word ‘dua’ – the Urdu word for supplication – and ‘rabb’ and ‘Allah’ for god.

The English translation of the song is below:

My longing comes to my lips as a supplication of mine
Oh God! May my life be like a flickering flame

May the world’s darkness disappear through the life of mine
May every place light up with the sparkling light of mine

May my homeland through me attain elegance
As the garden through flowers attains elegance

May my life be like that of the moth be oh Lord
May I love the lamp of knowledge oh Lord

May my life’s work be to support the poor
And to love the suffering and the elderly?

My God! Protect me from the evil ways
Show me the path of righteousness.

Related:

Students protest suspension of principal, Pilibhit school: Recital of Iqbal poem

The post FIR against Principal, Teacher after VHP cites recitation of iconic Iqbal poem: UP appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Representation Image

After local Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) workers in Uttar Pradesh’s Pilibhit complained against a primary school teacher in Bisalpur for making students recite a ‘religious prayer’, usually recited in madrasas, the district administration had him suspended.

The inquiry initiated by Bisalpur’s Block Education Officer (BEO) Upendra Kumar, headmaster Furqan Ali made students recite ‘Lab Pe Aati Hai Dua’ by Allama Iqbal who had also written ‘Saare Jahaan se Accha’. His inquiry showed that the students usually sang the poem during morning assembly.

‘Saare Jahaan se Accha’ was sung by Mahatma Gandhi while he was imprisoned at Yerawada Jail in the 1930s. It was later recorded by Lata Mangeshkar and is frequently sung as a patriotic song and is a marching song of the Indian Armed Forces. However, the District Magistrate (DM) Vaibhav Srivastava said that Furqan Ali was suspended for not making the students sing the national anthem.

“If the headmaster wanted to teach another poem also to the student, he should have sought permission. If he makes student recite a poem and not the national anthem, then there is an offence against him,” the District Magistrate said.

However, Inspections by the BEO and Basic Shiksha Adhikari (BSA) DevendraSwarup found that the complaint by the VHP members did not question whether the national anthem was being sung or not. It was about the poem, which is usually recited at Urdu schools, being recited.
VHP’s district chief Ambarish Mishra said he opposed a ‘madrasa prayer’ being recited at a government school.

Bisalpur VHP president Ravi Saxena said that a video of the Morning Prayer was sent to him by an anonymous person, after which he took cognizance of the matter. He said, “No one in the country is empowered by the Constitution to exert one’s own religious ideology upon others, either in overt or a circumlocutory manner, especially with the intent of making others follow it. The headmaster was slyly trying to spoil tender brains of little children by promoting Islamic ethics.”

Reacting to the complaint and his ouster, Furqan Ali said, “Students regularly sing the national anthem and the poem by Iqbal is part of the Urdu syllabus for classes one to eight. VHP and Hindu YuvaVahini workers held protests outside the school and at the Collectorate, demanding my removal. I only got a poem, which is part of the government school syllabus, sung. My students also raise patriotic slogans such as ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ every day during the assembly,” he said.

He alleged that the members of the VHP were unnecessarily terming the recitation an ‘anti-national’ act and trying to give a ‘communal flavour to the whole incident.

“School children are made to sing both the songs ‘lab pe aati hai dua’ and ‘itni shakti hamein dena daata’ and the national anthem also. I have been doing this since 2011, but nobody objected to it,” he said claiming his suspension to be arbitrary and unjustified.

What the Poem Really Means
Lab Pe Aati Hai Dua, also known as BachchekiDua, is a dua written in poetic form by Muhammad Iqbal for children. It is frequently sung during morning assemblies as a school song, both in India and Pakistan.

The poem invokes blessings for the entire world, love for one’s country, love for knowledge and blessings for all mankind along with compassion for all human beings.

The poem has no religious connotation whatsoever. The meaning of the poem is given below.

My longing comes to my lips as supplication of mine
Oh God! May like the beauty of the candle be the life of mine
 
May the world’s darkness disappear through the life of mine
May every place light up with the sparkling light of mine
 
May my homeland through me attain elegance
As the garden through flowers attains elegance
 
May my life like that of the moth be oh Lord
May I love the lamp of knowledge oh Lord
 
May supportive of the poor my life’s way be
May loving the old, the suffering my way be
 
My God! Protect me from the evil ways
Show me the path leading to the good ways
 
Why the VHP can’t question the recitation of the poem
Has the VHP, members of the extreme right wing, who have been looking for every opportunity to alter the current curriculum of the madrasas, seen this incident as just another chance to spread their Hindutva propaganda?

While ‘AeMaalikTereBande Hum’ written by Pandit Bharat Vyas, composed by Vasant Desai and sung by LataMangeshkar had risen above all religious boundaries to be adopted by a Pakistani school as their anthem, it is documented that the RSS, an affiliate organization of the VHP, did not even wish to adopt the tricolor as the flag of India. They instead wanted the BhagwaDhwaj of the RSS to be adopted as the nation’s flag.

It was the madrasas that had become the hubs of nationalism facing the wrath of the British. Celebrated Punjabi litterateur Kartar Singh Duggal says in his autobiography that the Indian maulvis were one with the pandits on the issue of retaining the age-old Indian traditions – both Vedic and Islamic.

There are no rules set by the Ministry of Human Resource Development that controls the Department of Education making the singing of Indian national anthem mandatory. It is a very common practice for schools in different regions of the country to adopt different poems and songs for their morning assemblies. Some examples are listed here:

The current move of the VHP members of demanding action against the Bisalpur headmaster not only shows their mindset towards the secular standing of India, but also these intimidation tactics clearly portray their intention to sell their hyper-nationalist agenda.
 
Related
Is the Right Wing ‘fanning the flames of hate’ in WB schools?
https://sabrangindia.in/article/vhp-seeks-constitutional-amendments-obtain-equal-rights-hindus
 

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