The irony hasn’t escaped two Indian schools in Ahmedabad district, where Muslim and Hindu students are distinguished by their ‘uniforms’.
Muslim students are made to wear green uniforms while their Hindu classmates adorn saffron uniforms.
Shahpur Public School and Dani Limda Public School are also unique for being the only English medium schools in Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC).
The uniforms at the Shahpur School, where most of the students are Hindu, are saffron-coloured, while the uniforms the Dani Limda school, where almost all the students are Muslim, are green.
The other 454 schools run by AMC, all non-English-medium, have the same blue-and-white uniform.
School administration, however, has said the decision to use the two colours was taken without any prejudice. “The selection of green was a random decision and has nothing to do with any community. We had other options, of pink and blue, too but, keeping in mind the suitability to children, green was finalised,” AMC School Board Chairman Jagdish Bhavsar said.
He termed the selection of saffron for the Shahpur school as a “non-partisan decision” too, taken without any “prejudice or preference” towards a community or organisation.
More than 98% of the students at Dani Limda Public School, located in the middle of the Muslim-majority Kanubhai slum in Dani Limda village, are Muslim.
At Shahpur Public School, more than 95% students are Hindu.
Many took to Twitter to express grief over the discrimination faced by the students and how they were being divided by religion.