Articles by Shatarupa Bhattacharyya

Two significant changes in teaching and learning have marked the opening of schools in Bengaluru after a nine-month shutdown. One is the wholesale move from physical classrooms to digital classrooms. Second is the substantial reduction in syllabus, commensurate with the loss of teaching days this academic year.  Most schools had been preparing for the digital shift “by the end of last April itself,” says Gowri Mirlay-Achanta, a teacher at St. Joseph’s Boys’ High School. And they were told about the reduction in syllabus in July, she recalls. In fact, schools affiliated to the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations…

On October 13, Tanishq withdrew an advertisement – featuring a Hindu daughter-in-law and her Muslim mother-in-law – in response to widespread trolling on social media that the company was promoting ‘love jihad’. A couple of months earlier, on August 11, even as the country was emerging from the Covid-19 lockdown, Bengaluru witnessed communal violence.  We are living in a communally charged atmosphere where anything and everything seems to be susceptible to becoming a source of religious polarisation. It is in times like this that initiatives, both at the interpersonal and institutional levels, that encourage tolerance and co-operation between religious communities,…

Representational image: Alastair/Wikimedia Commons: CC-BY-SA-2.0 On August 11, a mob gathered around Pulakeshinagar Congress MLA R Akhanda Srinivasa Murthy’s house in Kaval Byrasandra, protesting an allegedly derogatory post on the Prophet Muhammed by his nephew. The mob soon turned violent, leading to clashes with the police that resulted in the imposition of curfew. The police reportedly used tear gas shells and opened fire, killing three people, only after which order was restored late at night. While some have characterised this riot as an organised event, some others said it was a spontaneous reaction to a provocation. No definitive account of…