New Delhi, India — On August 13, Abdul Hafeez returned to the primary school he once went to, in Karisunda, a village in Bankura district in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. The 26-year-old was visiting his alma mater as part of a campaign by the Cockroach Janata Party, a popular Indian pressure group, to audit conditions of the country’s under-funded, often dilapidated government-run schools. The CJP had just succeeded in forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, in July, after a 37-day sit-in in the national capital that prompted antigovernment Gen Z protests across the country.
But in Bankura, things would turn deadly. Hours after Hafeez’s visit to his school, he alleged that local workers of Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) arrived at his home and assaulted him and his father, Mohammad Mafik. Two days later, Hafeez’s 51-year-old father died from his injuries.
On Sunday, Suvendu Adhikari, the chief minister of BJP-ruled West Bengal, said the attackers were “criminals with no BJP connection” and assured action. But a day after burying his father, Hafeez told Al Jazeera that he stands firm in calling for accountability and reforms in government-run schools. That demand marks a new line in the sand for the CJP.
Fresh from successfully forcing Modi and his government onto the defensive — the Indian PM has only rarely sacked ministers even in the face of credible accusations of wrongdoing or public pressure — the group has now announced its next battleground: India’s public-funded schools. CJP leaders have asked their supporters, who thronged the protests in New Delhi from different parts of the country, to visit their nearby schools and audit their conditions. They are working around a basic four-point checklist for what the CJP is calling its Fix the Schools campaign: drinking water and functional toilets; electricity and usable classrooms; boundary walls and campus safety; and midday meals and teacher attendance.
And the murder of Hafeez’s father has raised the already high stakes in a battle between the well-oiled machinery of Modi’s BJP and the fledgling, thin-on-organisation CJP. He told reporters that the group proposed to press the government for compensation; however, Hafeez requested that a school be named after his father. In Rajasthan, Ranka’s home state in western India, the group has faced other challenges.
Ranka joined a sit-in with primary school students in Alwar district on August 14 to demand additional rooms, clean toilets and drinking water. Local publications reported that the officials accepted the demands. Spoke to Abdul, whose father was murdered by BJP members.
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