Bastar: Maoists have banned the national anthem in schools in Naxal-stronghold Madh areas in south Bastar district of Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh.
Some of the local teachers who visited block headquarters of Orcha in the district on Saturday to lift their week’s rations disclosed to this newspaper that the Maoists have issued diktats prohibiting students of these schools from singing the national anthem and even putting restrictions on playing of the song on the occasions of Independence Day and Republic Day.
“Naxals’ writ runs large in the tribal-dominated Madh area. These schools are under the complete control of the ‘Jantan Sarkar’ , the parallel government run by Maoists. Many teachers appointed by the government in these schools earlier have stopped taking classes due to Naxal threats. But, a few like us are still taking classes in the schools”, one of the teachers, pleading to conceal his identity for fear of his security, said.
The Madh region falls under south Bastar’s Abujhmad, a 4,000 sq km densely forested area dotted with difficult hilly terrains, still remains out of bounds of local administration and police. All the schools in Madh area have been destroyed by Maoists in the past two decades.
The schools are now run in huts or collapsed school building structures. Naxals appoint their cadres, products of the Buniyadi Communists Training School (BCTC), a mobile school run by Naxals to impart formal education and use of weapons to select cadres to teach in the schools to indoctrinate the tribal kids in Naxal ideology, intelligence sources said.
