Hindu teacher assaulted by Muslims for opposing Urdu prayers in government school

Case ID : 90a0a39 | Location : Nawada, Bihar, India | Date of Incident : Fri, 7 March, 2025

Case ID : 90a0a39

Nawada, Bihar, India

7 March, 2025

Hindu teacher assaulted by Muslims for opposing Urdu prayers in government school

Attack not resulting in death

Attacked for opposing radicals or trying to save victim

Case Summary

In Jamalpur village in the Gaya district of Bihar, a Hindu schoolteacher named Ajay Prasad was beaten by Muslims at his school for opposing prayers being conducted in Urdu. The incident led to communal tension in the village. According to media reports, Ajay Prasad worked as a teacher at a government middle school. He stated that he had recorded a video of the prayer being conducted in Urdu, which angered members of the Muslim community. They beat him severely, but he managed to escape and save his life. He explained that the school was established in 2006 and that prayers were initially conducted in Hindi; however, for the past year, prayers had been held in Urdu. When the media learned of the incident and arrived at the school, the principal, Shabiha Khatoon, locked the premises from the inside and refused to speak. She asked the media not to disturb her during Roza. She denied that the teacher had been assaulted by Muslims and gave a vague response, stating that students only learned and recited the national anthem and the school prayer. Ajay Prasad filed a police complaint at the local police station, and the police registered an FIR in connection with the incident.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category- Attack not resulting in death. Within this, the subcategory selected is- Attacked for opposing radicals or trying to save the victim. In several cases, Hindus are attacked for opposing religiously motivated crimes being committed against a fellow Hindu or simply for voicing an opinion opposing radical elements, who either have in the past or continue to persecute Hindus. In such cases, the initial attack against the victim, against which the Hindu was trying to defend the victim, would also need to be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime. Since the initial crime itself was religiously motivated and the subsequent crime of attempting to save the victim or speaking against the radical elements ends up inviting a violent attack, it would also be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime under this category. This case is an instance of a hate crime against a Hindu man for resisting the imposition of Islamic culture through the Urdu language. In the Indian context, Urdu is widely associated with Islamic culture due to its historic development in Muslim courts, its script (Nastaliq), and its contemporary use in many Islamic seminaries and rituals. When a government school’s morning prayers shifted from Hindi to Urdu, it signalled the introduction of religiously marked cultural practice into a civic space, experienced by non‑Muslim stakeholders as an attempt to normalise an Islamic cultural frame in place of a neutral one. For a Hindu teacher, this read as enforced cultural change rather than a consensual, educational choice. Ajay Prasad, a Hindu schoolteacher, objected to this shift and documented it on video, after which he was beaten on school premises by members of the Muslim community. This violence did not arise from a pedagogical disagreement; it punished a Hindu man for resisting Islamic cultural imposition through an Urdu prayer in a taxpayer‑funded, secular institution. The physical assault communicated a coercive message: dissent against the Islamisation of a public space would be met with physical harm. Such instances of violence against Hindus for opposing the imposition of Islamic culture demonstrate that the attack was driven by religious animosity, making it a clear example of a religiously motivated crime. The school’s response compounded the harm. The principal, a Muslim woman, refused to engage transparently with the media, locked the premises, invoked personal religious observance (Roza) to avoid scrutiny, and publicly denied that Muslims had assaulted the teacher while offering a vague alternative narrative. Such whitewashing functioned as institutional cover, minimising a communal assault and signalling impunity to the Muslim attackers. When authority figures dismiss or dilute the gravity of biased violence, they embolden perpetrators and deter victims and witnesses, reinforcing the cycle of intimidation against the Hindu community. Given that this case meets the parameters of a religiously motivated crime, it is being added to the hate crime database.