Jamtara Hindi government schools change week-offs from Sunday to Friday [ Jharkhand, India]

[ Reported as seen]

Due to pressure from the Muslim community schools in Jamtara, Jharkhand  many government schools have changed their weekly offs from Sunday to Friday. The notice boards read it as ‘Jumma’ (When Muslims congregate for congregational devotion during Friday midday prayer, it is known as “Jummah”. An imam delivers a sermon (khutbah) after the prayer. )

However, as per the official data available with the state education department, out of the 1084 state-run schools on Jamtara, only 15 are Urdu medium schools, where teachers conveniently skip school on Fridays for Jumma prayers. But now, more than 100 state-run schools in Jamtara have officially designated Fridays rather than Sundays as a weekly holiday for all the students as well as the teachers.

A teacher of one of these state-run schools told Jagran, on conditions of anonymity, that initially, just a small number of students’ parents had requested the school administration to observe Friday as the weekly off day. The authorities, however, promptly convened a meeting to discuss this and issued arbitrary directives to observe the modification in the weekly off. This arbitrary instruction began to gradually become the new norm in these state-run institutions, and it has now persisted for a number of years, said the teacher.

As Sundays are still the departmental weekly off days they have to mark themselves absent in the school register but they must still report to school on such days since schools have arbitrarily marked Sundays as working days, rued the teacher.

The report further stated that along with marking Fridays instead of Sundays as weekly holidays for school students many government schools in Jamtara, Jharkhand has declared themselves Urdu-medium schools since 70 per cent of the children coming there are Muslims.

In recent history, India has bore the damage that was afflicted by the Islamists after Friday prayer. This is has been a habit and it means violence, temple vandalisation and murder against the Hindus. Stone pelting has been the minimum damage the Friday prayer has the power to.