On August 19, a Class 10 student was stabbed inside the premises of their school in Ahmedabad. The two students allegedly involved were Hindu and Muslim, respectively. The religious identity of the latter was quickly weaponised by Hindutva organisations in the state. The next day, the Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad mobilised hundreds outside the premises of the Seventh Day Adventist Higher Secondary School at Maninagar which had transformed into a site of chaos and vandalism. Among those assembled were students’ guardians who protested outside the school gates, demanding that “no Muslim student” be admitted to the school.The incident is not an isolated one. Across Gujarat, schoolyard disputes – from scuffles during playing hours to fights in classrooms – are being painted in communal colours. When the children involved have been from two different religious communities, Hindutva groups have rushed in to declare the fights as part of a broader Hindu-Muslim confrontation; as always, viewing Muslims as part of conspiracies.Patterns of polarisation“Burn this school, burn the teachers with it, it is their fault,” Bipinbhai Gadhvi heard protestors at the Ahmedabad school yell such slogans. Gadhvi, a political activist and eyewitness to the violence outside the Ahmedabad school also said that the police had been onlookers, hesitant to intervene.Several locals, parents, bystanders, and Hindutva organisations yelled such slogans outside the school turning the educational space into a new theatre of polarisation. By recasting interpersonal violence as communal violence, Hindutva organisations seek not only to deepen divides but also to target minority-run schools, like Christian institutions. At the Ahmedabad school, angered mobs had demanded that ‘school leaving certificates’ must be issued to all Muslim students. Barely, 150 kilometres away from Ahmedabad is Vadali, where on August 21, just two days after the Maninagar incident, another incident of school students fighting within school premises unfolded. Students from two different religions were involved, with the Hindu student suffering scratches on his face. This too, was used by the local Hindutva leaders and organisations as a pathway to propagate propaganda. They not only caused ruckus outside Vadali’s Sheth CJ High School – where the incident took place – but also pressured the school administration to grant ‘school leaving certificates’ to all Muslim students at the school, just like Maninagar. Several right-wing organisations such as the VHP, Bajrang Dal, ABVP, Antarrashtriya Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Rashtriya Bajrang Dal announced bandhs. Locals joined them in their rallies on those days.The result is a dangerous precedent: young students are being forced into the roles of communal actors, and their schools are transformed into sites of ideological battle rather than safe spaces for learning. This narrative eclipses the tragedy of the victim and instead weaponises it for communal mobilisation. This results in the systematic targeting of educational spaces: from schools to universities, especially minority-run institutions. These two incidents show how discipline issues and youth violence get translated into religious conflict.Socially sanctioned segregationIn January this year, at the same Sheth CJ High School, a Class 11 Muslim student was horribly beaten by two Hindu teachers, to the extent that the student bled within the school premises. They were still not taken to the hospital.The student’s family told The Wire that the school had refused to take any responsibility at all, even when the parents met school authorities. Since then, the family said, the Muslim student has been suffering from trauma caused by the beating. Meanwhile, the school has refused to let the student attend classes or give exams, and is also refusing to grant him a school leaving certificate. A family member of the Muslim student said that several children from the same family also go to the same school. “All our children go to the same school, and the same teachers taunt them by boasting of how nobody could suspend them despite what happened with our child,” she said.Hozefa Ujjaini, activist and advocate from Ahmedabad said that such incidents, whether the one in Maninagar or the ones in Vadali are dangerous as they seek to set children against each other. Ujjaini added that when mobs are able to vandalise schools and police or even force schools to play by the rules of Hindutva, they are enabling segregation among kids. This, he said, “Severs the last remnants of communications between both communities in society”.In this atmosphere, where socially-sanctioned segregation of children on the basis of religion is being pushed, it must be understood that schools are becoming the new targets of Hindutva interference because they shape socialisation. Control over education is central to Hindutva’s cultural project. The Maninagar school, a Christian institution, become especially vulnerable because it was at the intersection of anti-Muslim and anti-minority rhetoric.Weaponising books, harbouring hate“Those people who would spill blood on our festivals, create issues even while flying kites, create an atmosphere of curfew. And sitting in Delhi, Congress has never heard our pleas against them,” said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at a programme in Ahmedabad this week.Modi was not speaking of local unrest, which has no historical proof, but he was rephrasing the trope of Muslims as permanent disruptors of Hindu life. This rhetoric, coming from the country’s highest office, legitimises the same logic now creeping into schools: where a playground fight becomes a “Hindu versus Muslim” clash, and Hindutva organisations call for Muslim children to be barred from admission. Modi’s and his BJP colleagues’ speeches and the communalisation of textbooks through NCERT’s revisions are thus intimately connected to the discourse near these schools. If the prime minister frames minorities as habitual sources of disorder, it is little surprise that in Vadali, parents stormed a school demanding action against Muslim students, or that in Ahmedabad a beating was weaponised to argue for segregation. The schoolyard, like the political stage, is becoming a site where identity rather than conduct determines guilt.After the vandalism of the Maninagar school, several Hindutva leaders also went on a hate-speech rampage. A Hindutva leader, Mahamandaleshwari Iswari Nandgiri held a programme where she could be seen wielding a sword and calling for violence to avenge the death of Nayan Santani, the student killed at the Maninagar school. VHP’s Dharmendra Bhavani too, labelled the attack an ‘Islamic conspiracy,’ further calling the school fight a type of ‘jihad’.While NCERT busies itself rewriting history to downplay the Emergency, erase the Babri Masjid demolition and the Gujarat riots, and recast Muslims as outsiders, the ground reality in schools is shifting in dangerous ways. By whitewashing and even rewriting the past and villainising minorities in textbooks, the state creates a climate where Hindutva organisations can seize upon even trivial schoolyard fights to demand that Muslim students be expelled or barred from admission. An NCERT survey in Goa, itself shows how fragile the school environment is: nearly a quarter of schools lack anti-bullying policies, while a third of children report being physically hit by peers. These Hindutva protests are turning children into pawns in a larger ideological battle. Instead of addressing violence, bullying, or discipline through the education policy, the response is being hijacked to normalise communal exclusion. The cost: erosion of secular values, heightened fear among minority students, and deepening divides in India’s classrooms.