The headmaster of a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)-run school in West Bengal has been forced to resign for protesting the hosting of a Bajrang Dal arms training inside the school premises. Bajrang Dal is the youth wing of the VHP.<\/p>\n
Mahimaranjan Mandal, who was headmaster of Hindu Vidyalaya in the Kultali area of South 24 Parganas \u2013 about 60 km from Kolkata \u2013 had objected to the Ashram Committee\u2019s decision to host Bajrang Dal\u2019s arms training camp in the school premises in December 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cA letter was sent to me a few weeks back dismissing me from the school, but I refused to receive it as there was no letterhead nor any indication that it was an official correspondence,\u201d Mandal said.<\/p>\n
He added that when he went back to school on Janmashtami, September 3, after a few days\u2019 leave, he found that another headmaster had been appointed by the school. \u201cI was not allowed to sign in the attendance register, and neither was my salary of the last two months paid to me,\u201d Mandal added. He said that there was tremendous pressure on him from VHP and Bajrang Dal for the past few months asking him to either submit a written statement saying he was not against arms training camps in the school, or to resign.<\/p>\n
What led to the alleged threats<\/strong><\/p>\n In November last year, the school\u2019s management committee was replaced by an Ashram Committee to look after the school, and it was the latter\u2019s decision to host the arms training camp.<\/p>\n While the school was closed when the training camp was held in December last year, Mandal\u2019s consent was not sought in the matter. Moreover, Mandal had objected to the fact that a school was no place to organise an arms training camp. He has been headmaster of the school since 1988.<\/p>\n However, he began to receive death threats on objecting to the decision. This made him lodge two complaints in Kultali police station. In one of the letters, Mandal has stated that members of the Ashram Committee had threatened to kill him.<\/p>\n Since last December, he has continued to receive death threats, Mandal said. He is a resident of Joynagar area of South 24 Parganas district, 45 km from his school in Kultali. \u201cFrom the time I have objected to the decision of organising the Bajrang Dal training camp, I have not only received death threats, but also humiliation and insult before my colleagues several times,\u201d Mandal told The Bengal Story on Monday. \u201cI felt unsafe travelling between my home and school from the time these threats kept coming.\u201d<\/p>\n The state\u2019s reaction<\/strong><\/p>\n In April, Mandal had even met the state school education minister Partha Chatterjee and submitted a written complaint.<\/p>\n The school is run by Manav Seva Pratisthan, an organisation affiliated to the VHP. There were 300 students (classes V to IX) and 11 teachers in the school in December 2017, but Mandal said many had left following the arms training being held in the school premises.<\/p>\n \u201cI have met the district police superintendent and the school education minister. I have even written to the chief minister,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n What worries Mandal the most is that there has been nothing to prevent matters coming to such a pass. \u201cThings went from bad to worse. Even now, those who have caused my dismissal and those who threatened me, are roaming free,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n What the VHP says<\/strong><\/p>\n There was no official reaction from the VHP. Sourish Mukherjee, the media-in-charge of the VHP, refused to comment on the matter. However, sources said that a complaint had been filed against Mandal by a woman teacher before the Ashram Committee and the school authorities have taken action against Mandal on these grounds.<\/p>\n But the former headmaster denies this and says that the school authorities went against him because he refused to allow the arms camp and is now being framed with other charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The headmaster of a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)-run school in West Bengal has been forced to resign for protesting the hosting of a Bajrang Dal arms training inside the school premises. Bajrang Dal is the youth wing of the VHP. Mahimaranjan Mandal, who was headmaster of Hindu Vidyalaya in the Kultali area of South 24 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":2688,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-bengal"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2687"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=2687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}