A video is currently viral on social media which shows a school teacher teaching verses of the Quran to school children. It has been claimed that the incident took place in Karnataka and it has been alleged that this is the state of affairs ever since the Congress-JDS government came to power in the state. The text accompanying the video says that this school is in Shivamogga in Karnataka. The video has been circulating on social media for the past one week or more.
The above clip shows that social media users are actively sharing this video and the accompanying claim. The claim has already been debunked by Boom Live and Shivamogga Live, a regional news outfit of Karnataka but this seems to have had little effect on purveyors of misinformation. On Twitter, many users have posted the video. Some even tagged Union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar exhorting him to take action.
In Karnataka the teacher in school is teaching Namaz to Hindu children.
Now this news is ignored by media. If the Gita is taught in any Madarsa.. till now the whole media might have forced the govt to resign.
know how our religion is being destroyed by these secular parties. pic.twitter.com/kgFpIUuR9h— Amit Mishra (अमित मिश्र) (@amitkalraj) July 3, 2018
The same video has been circulated on Facebook as well by a number of individual users and by pages and groups supportive of the BJP and RSS. One such page Yogi Adityanath- True Indian posted this video but later deleted it. It was also posted by the page Acche Din 2019.
Not only Quran, Gita and Bible also taught
Boom Live had reported that the incident occurred in Vidhyadeep Vidhyalaya, a kindergarten school in Shivamogga. It turns out that the video being shared widely is merely one of a two-part video. The second video shows another teacher teaching the students shlokas or verses from the Bhagwad Gita. The exercise was conducted as rehearsal for a programme to be held in the school on independence day and included recitation of verses from the Gita, Quran and the Bible. Shivamogga Live has posted a video on its Facebook page which shows the sequence of events.
ಶಿವಮೊಗ್ಗ ಶಾಲೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಮಕ್ಕಳಿಗೆ ಕುರಾನ್ ಬೋಧನೆ ವಿಡಿಯೋ ವೈರಲ್, ಅಸಲಿ ವಿಚಾರ ಏನು ಗೊತ್ತಾ?
ಶಿವಮೊಗ್ಗ ಶಾಲೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಮಕ್ಕಳಿಗೆ ಕುರಾನ್ ಬೋಧನೆ ವಿಡಿಯೋ ವೈರಲ್, ಅಸಲಿ ವಿಚಾರ ಏನು ಗೊತ್ತಾ?
Posted by Shivamogga Live on Saturday, June 30, 2018
The principal of the school has been quoted as saying, “For Environment Day we conducted a program where all the kindergarten students recited verses from all the three religious books. Since this was a success we thought of doing it again for Independence Day and the video shows us practicing for the same”.
It is disturbing to note that an exercise conducted with the objective of fostering greater inter-faith harmony and understanding among young children has been given a devious spin to portray the exact opposite, and unfortunately seems to be working as despite being debunked by Shivamogga Live on June 30 and later on July 3 by Boom Live, this mischief continues to circulate.
Independent journalism that speaks truth to power and is free of corporate and political control is possible only when people start contributing towards the same. Please consider donating towards this endeavour to fight fake news and misinformation.
