Hagerty high school teacher arrested

For many years, Abdul Wahid Sheikh lived a life of peace and quiet. He would go to school in the morning, teach his students, spend time with them sorting out their issues, come back home in the afternoon to his family. The beautiful bubble burst when the police asked him to report to the local police station and arrested him as an accused of Mumbai train blasts of 2006 which claimed more than 180 lives.

The next nine years were spent proving his innocence. After being acquitted in the case, Sheikh decided to put it down in a book Begunah Quaidi, later translated into English as Innocent Prisoner . This Friday, Sheikh’s story makes it to cinema halls as director Sudarshan Gamare’s film Haemolymph releases at theatres across the country. Sheikh is both a relieved man, and emotional. “The film brought back memories of the prolonged stay in jail, the third degree treatment, false implication,” he shares his experience with The Hindu.

Excerpts from the interview:

You had already penned your experience in Innocent Prisoner. What led to Haemolymph now?

I returned from jail in 2015. A year later my book was published and many filmmakers started approaching me for making a film around my life. I did not say no to any of them. After listening to my story, nobody mustered up courage to make the film. When Sudarshan Gamare approached me, I told him, ‘You are not the first or the last to talk of making a film on my ordeal’. He had read Sunetra Choudhury’s book Behind Bars, which had a chapter on me, and my book too. We had many sittings about the script. Their team went through my chargesheet of 20,000 pages and the judgment of 2,000 pages. They saw the work I had been doing.

The film unit met you in Mumbai?

Yes. They hired space in a hotel in Mumbai and said, ‘You will have to sit with our team for two-three days and discuss minute details of the jail days’.

Didn’t you fear revisiting past trauma?

Yes, every now and then explaining the prison experience, I would get emotional. But I had a larger vision that if the film actually gets made, the world will know about my experience. What the book failed to do, this film has already done; those who watched the film at the premier (in New Delhi this past week), shed a tear. The film overwhelmed the audience and people asked about the 12 other accused too.

How long did it take to shoot the film?

It took two years to complete the film from research to shooting. As soon as the film’s shooting was completed, lockdown was imposed in March 2020. So the release was delayed. It will be screened at nearly 300 theatres from May 27.

How involved were you with the shooting?

I knew all the time where were they shooting in Mumbai. They used to call me regularly, and I attended whenever I had the time as I am also teaching in a school.

Was Riyaz Anwar who plays Abdul Wahid Sheikh in the film your choice?

No, he was the director’s choice. Sudarshan has worked with him in a couple of short films earlier. Riyaz has done a good job. There is a resemblance to my face and voice in the film.

How satisfied are you with the movie?

To a large extent…I understand it is not possible to encapsulate nine years of life in a two-hour film. Whatever the film shows is factually correct; whatever I underwent in jail or court, has been shown with honesty.

Were you arrested from school?

Yes and no. The illegal arrest took place when I was in school. They came and took me along. I came back a little later. For official arrest, they phoned me at home, asking me to come to the police station. I went over and they arrested me there. We have shown it in the film.

Aren’t you worried that the Intelligence Bureau guys who you say have often followed you will see the film too?

No, I am not worried. Let them watch a movie that narrates the life of a school teacher who is falsely implicated in a crime he did not commit.

REMEMBER when the priority of our schooling system was supposed to be “education, education, education”?

Today it’s “indoctrination, indoctrination, indoctrination” schools seem to be in the business of.

There is too much focus on race , too little reading and writing — and when it comes to lesson plans, too much gender on the agenda.

Parents increasingly find themselves locking horns with teachers turned social-justice activists.

It emerged this week the parents of a London teenager are at loggerheads with teachers at their daughter’s school after being barred from seeing lesson plans.

They are fighting for the legal right to see “secret” lessons their daughter has been taught on issues such as white privilege — the idea that people with white skin are born with social and economic advantages over those who are not.

Failed in the basics

This comes after the school, Haberdashers’ Hatcham College in South East London, reportedly denied the parents access to the materials used to teach their daughter.

So, let me get this right.

You’re forced to pay exorbitant taxes to prop up our bloated, ineffective education system, you then send your children off to school, at risk of prosecution if they don’t turn up, and you don’t even get a right to see what the predominantly lefty teachings are feeding your children?

You couldn’t make it up.

I see two major problems here.

Firstly, teachers should not be using precious learning time to brainwash kids about nonsense US theories on race and gender gibberish as if it is sacred truth.

Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi has said as much.

Last October he warned: “Schools should not teach contested theories and opinions as fact and this includes contested views about white privilege.”

This came after he was given a dossier by the Free Speech Union warning that the teaching of things like white privilege and micro-aggressions was “rife” in schools.

With identity ideology running rampant in classrooms, you would think we had already mastered every other core topic that teachers are supposed to be teaching, like — oh, I don’t know — reading and writing.

Wrong. Last September, Government figures showed 200,000 pupils would be entering secondary school unable to read properly.

Maths is no better. One in five leave primary school without having reached the expected standard.

Under these dire circumstances, not a single second should be dedicated to dubious race and gender theories when children are being failed in the basics on such a massive scale.

DANGEROUS IDEAS

And don’t get me started on the idea that kids should be taught that white children are endowed with some special, mystical privilege.

Tell that to the white working-class boys who perform worse in British schools than almost any other ethnic group.

As inconvenient as this is to lefty victim-mongers, this is irrefutable fact.

I know this because I’ve spent years poring over the stats, not least when I recently sat on the Government’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities.

Publicly paid teachers squandering finite classroom time on woke drivel is not only misleading and pointless, it’s perverse and downright wrong.

The second problem is this: While parents are allowed to ask to see their children’s lesson plans, schools are not legally obliged to provide them.

Schools can hide behind the cloak of legal immunity when they are subjected to accusations of “secret lessons”.

How can this be right?

You should not have to write a softly worded letter to kindly request knowing what your own kid is being taught when you drop them off at school.

Schools should be completely at the mercy of parents when it comes to demands for transparency around teaching.

Teaching materials and lesson plans should be dished out speedily and without contest any time a parent requests one — and that should be enshrined in law.

That is why it is right that Baroness Morris of Yardley, a former Labour Education Secretary, has tabled an amendment to the Schools Bill to give parents the legal right to see what their children are being taught.

Mr Zahawi has made it clear that teaching children disputed ideas as fact is completely unacceptable.

He should go even further and confirm the law will be firmly on the side of parents who are concerned about identity politics propaganda in schools .

If he doesn’t, the infiltration of these dangerous ideas in classrooms will continue to be spread by the army of ever-more woke teachers.

As the national debate over teaching gender ideology to children in schools rages, some schools are putting in restrictions while others are doubling down.

While seven states require gender ideology training in their schools, five other states have put in restrictions, at least until later in a child’s education.

Some of the demand for teaching the ideology has been met by curriculum developers with increased options for all grade levels.

The National Sex Education Standards group has called teaching about “gender identity” as “one of seven essential topics, alongside puberty, consent, sexual orientation, and other subjects,” according to the Washington Post .

NSES’s gender ideology standards for K-12 students include , by the end of the fifth grade, being able to “describe the role hormones play in the physical, social, cognitive, and emotional changes during adolescence and the potential role of hormone blockers on young people who identify as transgender.”

Even earlier, though, by the end of second grade, students should be able to “define gender, gender identity, and gender-role stereotypes” and “discuss the range of ways people express their gender and how gender-role stereotypes may limit behavior.”

The Biden administration has also advocated for gender ideology teaching in schools, in addition to puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and even genital mutilation for children who identify as transgender.

Florida is one of the five states that either ban or limit teaching such an ideology to its youngest students. The state made headlines when leftist media outlets erroneously dubbed the bill the “don’t say gay” bill. There are ten other states considering measures to limit the discussion of the ideology until later in a child’s education.

One common point of contention is certain books in school libraries and classrooms that depict pornography or pedophilia that are somehow supposed to represent LGBTQ persons.

Leftists contend that banning these books is tantamount to censorship but fail to realize that children can be harmed by being exposed to such adult content.

Other restrictions include disallowing boys from competing against girls in sports, a restriction in at least 18 states, and similarly disallowing boys from using the girls’ restrooms and changing rooms.

Leftist outlets like the Post breathlessly report that “Philadelphia’s school district even came under fire for informing teachers about an independent Trans Wellness conference where some attendees discussed how to support youth who are transitioning genders.”

What the Post failed to mention was the fact that the conference in question explored topics such as “BDSM,” “masturbation sleeves,” “kink,” “banging beyond binaries,” and “trans sex.”

As Breitbart News reported, one presenter spoke about “prosthetics for sex” and showcased his collection of over 500 genital prosthetics.

“I have tried and touched many dicks, right — prosthetics, real dicks, all dicks,” he said during a presentation. “This is one of the most realistic feeling in terms of like the inside of a penis.”

“It’s a big boy, this is, like, gigantic,” he continued. “Alright, give me two hours alone and I’ll get this in my butt.”

The increase in teaching gender ideology comes as more and more of America’s young people identify as transgender or nonbinary.

Indeed, over five percent of young adults in the United States identify as transgender or nonbinary — a massive generational increase.

The gender training starts early, setting a foundation to build on as children get older.

For example, some early training tells students there are no “girl colors” or “boy colors” and that dolls are not just for girls. Teachers will also stay away from saying things like “good morning, boys and girls, and instead only say a gender-neutral “good morning, class.”

But other curriculums are more direct.

One training for first graders pushes the message that gender is fluid.

“You might feel like you’re a boy even if you have body parts that some people might tell you are ‘girl’ parts,” teachers tell children. “You might feel like a girl even if you have body parts that some people tell you are ‘boy’ parts. And you might not feel like you’re a boy or a girl, but you’re a little bit of both. No matter how you feel, you’re perfectly normal!”

That curriculum was developed by a gender ideology activist organization called Advocates for Youth.

The Post reports of a Massachusetts kindergarten teacher using the activist curriculum, where the teacher “introduces the terms transgender and genderqueer but doesn’t fully define them because that is too much for kindergartners.”

“He talks to students about anatomy but declines to classify various body parts as male or female,” the Post reports. “‘We don’t say a penis belongs to a man,’ he said. It belongs to a human, he explains.”

“And he makes clear that even if a doctor proclaims at birth, ‘It’s a boy!’ that baby may not be a boy,” the Post continues. “‘Someone who was born a boy may not feel they are a boy.’”

Maryland has a statewide framework for teaching gender ideology in sexual education courses, but the topic could vary by the school district, with each being able to decide for itself how to go about teaching the topics.

One of the creators of the Maryland framework told the Post she believes the standards will mostly be used in schools or districts where a student has identified as transgender.

Among individual states and school districts, gender ideology is taught or not taught extremely differently.

Many conservative-leaning areas have been pushing to ban the ideology entirely or delay the age at which it is taught to students. Indeed, many conservatives argue that the ideology is a political movement, and many consider the left’s insistence that it be taught at such young ages as “grooming.”

The idea of “grooming” is the belief that schools and other left-leaning organizations might introduce these ideas to children in order to suggest to them into believing they are of a different gender than they actually are. In essence, these institutions can take children who are already impressionable and naïve and get them to question their own identities. That, the argument goes, is the source of the extraordinary amount of America’s young people identifying away from their true gender.

Indeed, in many instances, teachers have been caught telling children that doctors “make mistakes” when declaring the gender of a newborn baby. Further still, children have reported teachers telling them that their parents may be lying to them about their gender and asking if they had ever considered that they were not the gender that matches their biological sex.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) had issues with her state’s sexual education course, which included a video for kindergartners telling them that doctors “make a mistake” when declaring gender. After the Maine Republican Party ran ads against her, Mills removed the video from the government’s website.

Virginia saw this issue as well, particularly in the months leading up to its 2021 gubernatorial election, where parents became outraged at what their children were learning in school — from gender ideology to critical race theory. The Commonwealth, too, had a statewide standard for transgender students that allowed boys to use girls’ locker rooms and restrooms, among other things.

After a revelation that the Loudoun County School Board appeared to cover up a rape of a female student by a boy in a dress using the girls’ facilities, the election flipped in the Republicans’ favor.

Virginia, a state that had been trending blue for many years, elected three Republicans statewide and a Republican-controlled General Assembly almost entirely based on the education issues.

New Jersey nearly had the same fate for the same reason, with Gov. Phil Murphy (D) nearly losing his reelection bid.

Breccan F. Thies is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @BreccanFThies .