Rashtriya Sewa Bharati, affiliated with the Ekal Vidyalaya Abhiyan project, are teaching Kashmiri Muslim children ‘desh prem’, according to a report by News18.
Sewa Bharati is an educational initiative of the Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh (RSS), and it has established 1,250 schools for children across the Kashmir Valley.
These Vidyalayas are established across 10 districts, including 180 in Baramulla district alone. As per the report, Kashmir witnessed a rise of 53% in the number of Ekal Vidyalayas since 2022, from 800 to 1,250.
Citing security experts and academicians, the News 18 reported that Sewa Bharati achieved “a feat that was almost unthinkable in Kashmir a few years ago.”
The schools are being maintained by Muslim teachers and Aviyan Pramukhs (project in-charges), village committees, and some local representatives of panchayats as well.
A senior associate with the project said, “The medium of teaching is Kashmiri and Urdu. We do not want our children to become stone-pelters or join terrorist groups, and we also do not want them to indulge in drug addiction.”
The associate, whose identity was not revealed in the report, claimed to have been attacked by militant groups a number of times for his association with the RSS-affiliated schools.
“We do teach them the Quran here, and we never faced any adverse reaction from the organization in this regard,” he added.
The report said that Ekal Vidyalayas had been running in the region for over a decade and received a rousing response only over the past five to six years.
Notably, around 70% of the teachers are female, and the schools follow the syllabus of the general education system in J&K.
A teacher told News 18, “Some children come from the villages that don’t have schools. Others come from destitute families who cannot afford the school education for their kids.”
“We try to provide primary and post-primary education to the children. Apart from the general subjects, we teach about nationalist ideas and have a special subject called Kashmiriyat. We also teach them about the history of the region,” she explained, adding that the students in the school celebrate Independence Day, Republic Day, and all other major local and national festivals.
