India’s most populous state has stopped paying some 21,000 teachers of subjects including mathematics and science in Muslim religious schools, or madrasas, an official said on Thursday, and they could lose their jobs altogether.
The teachers work at madrasas in Uttar Pradesh, ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party, and the move comes ahead of Modi seeking his third straight term in a general election due by May.
Muslims are a minority in mainly Hindu India, accounting for about 14% of a population of 1.42 billion, and they make up nearly a fifth of the population of Uttar Pradesh.
Rights groups such as Human Rights Watch say nationalist groups have threatened and harassed Muslim and other religious minorities with impunity under Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
