By IANS
Jaipur : A teacher has been on ‘maun vrat’, vow of silence, for almost a year in a village school in Rajasthan. Now, the angry students feel they have had enough and have put a lock on the school gate.
Sunderlal Chaudhari, a teacher in a government school in Bajju village in Bikaner district, stopped speaking while teaching since March last year.
In protest, students have put a lock on the front gate of the school, over 350 km from here.
Chaudhari, a middle-school teacher, would come to the school, write on the blackboard and leave, say infuriated students. He would teach languages and social sciences.
The students, who don’t know why Chaudhari started his maun vrat, claim that he is mentally unstable.
Several complaints by the students and villagers to the school administration proved futile.
“Enough is enough. Our studies are being affected. We have launched a dharna in protest. We want our studies to be conducted in a proper manner,” said Vijay, a student.
“If the teacher does not want to speak, then he should sit at home. Why waste our time? If students are not being taught properly, then it is better to shut the school, and this is what we have done,” Ramphool, another student, said.
The students went on a sit-in protest Wednesday in front of the school.
The students and villagers also submitted a memorandum to the tehsildar, a junior government official.
In the memorandum, they said that studies were being affected by the teacher’s behaviour and requested the government to either ask the teacher to teach properly, or appoint another teacher.
As per the 2001 census, Rajasthan recorded an overall literacy rate of 61.03 percent – 22.48 percent higher than the 38.55 percent recorded in 1991.
Female literacy rate was 44.34 percent, as against 20.44 percent in 1991, a more than 100 percent increase during the decade.