Teachers’ Day 2022: Meet Islamuddin, a Delhi riot victim who teaches at school started for child victims of the February 2020 violence
For 24-year-old Islamuddin, a resident of Shiv Vihar, one of the worst-hit areas during the 2020 communal riots in Delhi, images of the incidents in February two years ago – his grandfather’s house being gutted by fire and his family’s motorbike being destroyed – would keep reappearing in front of him each time he heard a sudden sound or saw a group of people huddled together. A student currently pursuing a master’s in history at IGNOU, he eventually found himself at Sunrise Public School at Loni in Ghaziabad that started in August 2020 for child victims of the riot. He teaches Hindi as well as Social Science and tries to help students work through their own trauma.
He is one of the 14 teachers at the school, which was started by the Miles2smiles foundation, a non-profit.
“In August 2020, after the violence and the national lockdown, I met some families who said that they were not able to afford the education of their children. Initially, we thought that we could make a list of 10 to 15 troubled families and sponsor their children’s education,” said Aasif Mujtaba who runs the non-profit.
But when the foundation’s volunteers went to collect information, “they came back with a list of 80 children”. The school began with the number but has now grown to 350, most from the areas hit by the riot. Some of the teachers are from such areas, including seven from Shiv Vihar.
“I had never seen such things in front of my eyes before: petrol bombs being thrown, people shouting slogan from afar, threatening to kill. That was all a flash but when it was over, and we tried to return to normalcy a week or two later, those scenes would not leave my eyes he said,” Islamuddin said of his own experience.
Addressing the trauma that his students went through remains the most difficult part of teaching for Islamuddin.
“There are children who lost their homes and witnessed the violence, and then there are children who lost their fathers. It is still easier to explain what happened to the former. But for the latter, it was difficult to even call them to study and talk to them. In the early days, even if you mentioned the word ‘papa’ their eyes would start tearing up,” he said.
According to Mujtaba, 22 of the students had lost their fathers during the riots.
(Express photo)
Islamuddin says that the teachers started talking to the older children first, “explaining to them that coming to school and studying is the best way to move on.” The school also took them to a “picnic, conducted competitions, told them to express themselves through writing” to “gradually create a sense of normalcy.”
“We try to talk to them more about the future and what they want to do,” said Islamuddin.
The school teaches children from nursery to class VIII, after which the foundation either helps get the children enrolled in a government school or sponsors their education in a private school.
“We teach all subjects in the school but starting this session, since we are able to do physical classes fully again, we have decided to reduce the syllabus and spend more time on extra-curricular activities,” Mujtaba added.
