Hindu teacher pressured to convert and remove her religious symbols at Christian missionary school; dismissed after refusal, her son also expelled

Case ID : 30a82eb | Location : Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 5 May, 2026

Case ID : 30a82eb

Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India

5 May, 2026

Hindu teacher pressured to convert and remove her religious symbols at Christian missionary school; dismissed after refusal, her son also expelled

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Restriction/ban on Hindu practices

Restriction on expression of Hindu identity

Case Summary

A Hindu female teacher at St Teresa School, a Christian institution in Modinagar, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, faced pressure from the school management to abandon her Hindu religious beliefs and convert to Christianity. She was also explicitly asked to remove her tilak and kalava. She was also asked to remove the tattoos of Om (the sacred primordial sound and symbol of the divine in Hinduism, representing the essence of ultimate reality), Lord Ram and Mahadev (a devotional name for Lord Shiva, one of the principal deities of Hinduism) from her hand. The teacher refused both demands, stating that they were a matter of her personal faith. Following her refusal, the dispute escalated, and the teacher was dismissed from her position at the school. A video of her testimony where she narrated her ordeal went viral on social media. In the video, she said that the school authorities pressured her to convert and remove her religious symbols. On refusal, they removed her son from school and forced her to bow at their feet and beg for forgiveness. In protest, a large number of Hindu organisation office bearers arrived at the school and began sloganeering against the management. During the protest, some office bearers spray-painted 'Jai Shri Ram' (a devotional salutation to Lord Ram, used as an expression of Hindu identity and solidarity) on the school's main gate, further heightening tensions. Police arrived at the scene upon receiving information and brought the situation under control. Police stated that the entire matter was being investigated and that both sides were being spoken to. The police force was deployed outside the school premises as a precautionary measure. Local Hindu organisations demanded a fair investigation and strict action against those responsible.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category for this case is "Predatory Proselytisation". The sub-category for this case is "Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion". Harassment covers a wide range of behaviours of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behaviour that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates a person, including threats and coercion. Harassment and threats, in this case, find their root on discriminatory grounds which has the effect of nullifying a person’s rights or infringing upon his freedom to exercise his right specifically owing to the victim’s religious identity. Verbal and physical threats and psychological or physical harassment are often used against Hindu victims because they choose to practice their professed religion. Religious harassment also includes forced and involuntary conversions by harassment, threats or coercion. Coercion includes intimidatory tactics like force-feeding a Hindu victim beef to convert to another religion, forceful circumcision etc. In several cases documented, non-Hindu perpetrators or those who harbour specific animosity towards Hinduism, harass victims simply based on their religious identity. Such cases often also include harassment to ensure the Hindu victim abandons his/her professed religion and adopts the religion of the perpetrator. Such cases where Hindu victims are harassed to convert to the perpetrator’s religion are rooted in animosity towards the victim’s religious identity and are therefore documented as religiously motivated hate crimes. Another primary category for this case is "Restriction/ban on Hindu practices". The sub-category here for this case is "Restriction on expression of Hindu identity". An example of the state-affected prejudicial and targeted orders against the Hindu community would be a government denying the right of a Hindu or a group of Hindus to hold a religious procession owing to the animosity of non-Hindu groups. Denial of the religious right of the Hindus to assuage the non-Hindu group which harbours animosity to a point where it could lead to violence against Hindus is not only a failure of law and order but is a prejudicial order against Hindus, denying them their fundamental rights to express their religious identity. An example of a hate crime against Hindus by a non-Hindu would be a non-Hindu institution forcing its Hindu employees to abandon religious symbols that a Hindu would wear as an expression of faith owing to inherent prejudice against the faith professed by the victim or a non-Hindu group of people restricting a Hindu group from constructing a place of worship simply because the demography of the area in which the temple is being built is dominated by non-Hindus. Such actions are driven by religious animosity and/or prejudice against Hindus and their faith and would therefore be categorized as a hate crime. The school management at St. Teresa School deployed institutional authority as an instrument of religious coercion. The teacher was not approached as an individual whose faith could be engaged through persuasion. She was approached as an employee whose continued livelihood depended on compliance with her employer's demands. The use of employment leverage to compel religious conversion is a documented characteristic of predatory proselytisation within institutional settings, in which the power differential between employer and employee is exploited to overcome the target's resistance to conversion. The forced conversion demands represent a profound violation of the victim's religious autonomy and fundamental right to practise her faith freely, as enshrined in constitutional protections and universal human rights principles. Compelling a Hindu teacher to renounce her beliefs, erase sacred symbols, and adopt Christianity under threat of job loss and family harm constitutes a grave insult to her religious identity, inflicting deep emotional wounds on her and evoking outrage among the larger Hindu community whose shared sentiments are trampled. Such aggressive proselytisation showcases the deep-seated contempt that the Christian perpetrators harboured for the victim precisely due to her Hindu faith identity, rendering this a clear case of a religiously motivated hate crime. Furthermore, the demand to remove the Om, Lord Ram, and Mahadev tattoos was not a neutral professional requirement. Om, Lord Ram, and Mahadev rank among the most fundamental expressions of Hindu devotional identity. Om is the sacred primordial sound that pervades Hindu cosmology, scripture, and ritual practice. Mahadev is a devotional name for Lord Shiva, one of the principal deities of the Hindu tradition. Lord Ram is a revered Hindu deity, extensively worshipped by Hindu devotees and considered an avatar of Lord Vishnu. Their presence as tattoos on the teacher's hand represented a permanent and deeply personal expression of her Hindu identity. The management's demand that she remove them was a call for her to physically erase the most visible markers of her Hindu faith from her own body as a condition of keeping her job. This was not a request about a professional presentation. It was a demand for the physical suppression of Hindu religious identity. The school management also forced the teacher to remove her Hindu religious symbols, specifically the kalava and tilak, which carry profound significance in Hindu tradition. The kalava, a sacred thread tied on the wrist, symbolises protection from evil, divine blessings, and commitment to righteousness, often worn during rituals and as a daily reminder of spiritual vows. The tilak, a vermilion mark on the forehead, represents the third eye of Lord Shiva, invokes divine energy, and signifies purity, devotion, and auspiciousness in Hindu worship and daily life. These visible markers are integral expressions of the wearer's Hindu faith and identity. The management's insistence on their forcible removal showcased a forced suppression of the victim's Hindu identity, reflecting deep-seated religious animosity towards her faith and religious expression. Such restrictions violated her religious autonomy and constituted a clear case of religiously motivated hate crime. The sequential nature of the coercion further underscores its religious motivation. The management first demanded conversion to Christianity, then insisted on the removal of Hindu religious symbols like tilak, kalava, Om, Lord Ram, and Mahadev tattoos, and finally escalated by dismissing the teacher, expelling her son from the school, and forcing her to bow at their feet begging for forgiveness upon her refusal. The expulsion of her innocent son and the humiliating act of making her beg were deliberate arm-twisting tactics designed to break her resolve, leveraging her maternal instincts and personal dignity to compel conversion and suppress her Hindu faith. Each step represented an escalation of institutional pressure against her Hindu identity. The dismissal became the terminal act of this coercion sequence, where the teacher's Hindu faith was treated as incompatible with her continued employment at a Christian institution. The message conveyed was unambiguous: retention of Hindu identity came at the cost of her livelihood, her child's education, and her self-respect. The restriction on the expression of Hindu identity operated simultaneously on two levels. At the individual level, the teacher was compelled to choose between her faith and her employment. At the institutional level, the school management established that visible Hindu religious identity was not acceptable within its premises, creating an environment in which Hindu employees were required to suppress or conceal their religious identity as a condition of participation. Given that this case met the parameters of a religiously motivated hate crime, the school management's conduct reflected more than institutional overreach. By using employment leverage to pressure a Hindu teacher to convert, demanding the physical removal of permanent Hindu devotional markings from her body, and dismissing her upon her refusal to comply, their actions demonstrated a deliberate and systematic effort to strip a Hindu woman of her religious identity through institutional coercion. The teacher was targeted specifically because she was Hindu, and every instrument of pressure, including conversion demands, tattoo removal orders, and ultimately dismissal, was chosen because it would be most effective in compelling a Hindu employee dependent on her income to abandon her faith. Such predatory conversion efforts stem from Abrahamic doctrines like Christianity that view non-believers with disdain until they convert, fostering contempt that manifests in targeted crimes against Hindus. Therefore, this case has been added to the Hinduphobia Tracker's hate crime database. Disclaimer: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when the crime occurred rather than when it was reported or published. However, since the exact date on which the school management issued its demands to the teacher was not confirmed in the source, 5 May 2026, the publication date has been used as the primary incident date. This was recorded for documentation purposes only. In this case, the primary victim was the Hindu teacher, but her son was also targeted by the school through expulsion. Henceforth, the victim count has been recorded as 2.