On August 20, a six-year-old UKG student named Tammana Pranay Teja at Little Garden English Medium School in Visakhapatnam, was scolded and slapped by his teacher, whom some reports identify as Anuradha, over unfinished homework. CCTV footage shows, horrifyingly, how the child collapses onto the teacher’s lap. He was declared dead on arrival at a hospital. Following protests by his family, the teacher has since been booked under Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice Care and Protection of Child Act 2015, and police are treating the case as culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
This heart wrenching incident should open a larger dialogue about children’s rights in India. While a great deal of outrage exists following Teja’s demise, some responses to this incident include callous statements such as, “She didn’t even slap him that hard,” or “My generation faced worse from our teachers, and we still turned out fine.” The idea that something had to have been wrong with the child, rather than with the person who hit him, is shocking.
Whether the child had underlying medical conditions is irrelevant; that the teacher had no right to assault him is all that matters. Even if nothing worse than a red mark across his cheek was all he would have sustained, it changes nothing about the egregiousness of her action. Corporal punishment in schools is illegal in India, and it is held as a crime of such gravity that even a parent or guardian giving a teacher or caregiver consent to discipline a child is considered void.
It is not enough to hold schools to this standard, however. While laws like the Juvenile Justice Act, POCSO (which covers sexual abuse), and the Child Marriage Prohibition Act exist, the actual extent of abuse against children goes under the radar. Millennia of cultural norms in which individual autonomy defers to institutional authority — with the institution in this case being family — mean that while laws technically protect children, there is no internal moral framework in the collective consciousness that does the same. Most people will decry this idea, and say that they would never want harm to befall their child, or any child. But harm that originates in the family is always insidious. The notion that an adult should not be allowed to marry a person of their own choosing is rooted in the notion that a child is an extension of its kin, and belongs to them. The notion that a teacher can terrorise, humiliate, and physically attack a child over an innocent offence is rooted in the notion that children are property. These are all connected notions.
There is no bringing little Teja back, and the despair I feel over this event collides with my beliefs about carceral reform and abolition. I am sure others feel similarly. But a large part of the work of systemic overhaul lies in societal change and healing. What will it take for all adults to understand that a hand should never be raised against a child, under any circumstances? How different and better would the world be, if the very idea of such action seemed far-fetched to more of us?