Kindergarten children perform a song depicting people in Arab attire entering train coaches to frighten passengers and planting bombs on railway tracks
ERNAKULAM/NEW DELHI — A performance by kindergarten children at a CBSE arts festival in Kerala has triggered police complaints and renewed debate over Islamophobia in school cultural programmes, after the children sang lyrics portraying people in Arab attire as thieves and terrorists.
Upper Kindergarten (UKG) students from St. Mary’s School, Allapra, Perumbavoor, in Ernakulam district, performed the piece. It was staged on Tuesday at the CBSE schools’ arts festival hosted by Christava Mahilalayam School in Aluva.
The children performed an action song in which, according to reports of the performance, people wearing Arab-style clothing board a train, frighten passengers, plant explosives and flee.
The lyrics, as reported, were: “Thieves and terrorists, dressed in Arab attire, enter the coaches and we are afraid. Oh no, terrorists place bombs on the tracks and flee.”
Another translation reported in local media rendered the lines as: “Thieves and terrorists, dressed in Arab costumes, enter the coaches, oh no, we are afraid. Terrorists are running on the tracks, planting bombs.”
The performance drew objections from the audience and representatives of other participating schools, who questioned the content of the song.
Reports say the same school had performed the same song at the previous year’s competition and won first prize, without attracting similar public attention then.
That detail has become central to the criticism: complainants argue the issue is not a one-off lapse, but the repeated, unexamined circulation of material linking a recognisable form of dress — widely associated in India with Muslims and Arab culture — with criminality and terrorism.
Critics say such portrayals, when performed by very young children, risk normalising stereotypes at an early age and shifting the responsibility for vetting content away from adults — teachers, school management and festival organisers — onto children who are merely repeating what they were taught.
The incident also echoes an earlier controversy in Kerala. In January 2023, a programme staged after the inauguration of the 61st State School Youth Festival in Kozhikode depicted the Indian Army apprehending a man wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional Arab headgear, prompting a political row and a police case against organisers for allegedly promoting religious enmity.
The Ernakulam district committee of the Fraternity Movement — a student-youth organisation that describes its platform as democracy, social justice and fraternity and is linked to the Welfare Party of India — filed a complaint at Perumbavoor police station on Tuesday.
District general secretary Ashiq Panayikkulam submitted the complaint, seeking an investigation and action against those responsible.
The organisation said children’s cultural programmes were being turned into platforms for spreading Islamophobia, and argued that educational institutions should foster fraternity, tolerance, mutual respect and humanism rather than prejudice and division.
Separately, the Perumbavoor constituency committee of the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) also filed a complaint against the school authorities and the festival organisers.
Its president, Shameer M H, submitted the complaint to the Perumbavoor police inspector.
The SDPI alleged the performance sought to portray a particular religious community as thieves and terrorists and to create religious hostility. It described the use of young children in such a performance as an attempt to communalise children’s cultural platforms.
It demanded criminal action against the teachers, school management and those who prepared the song, and called for relevant provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), India’s criminal code, and the Juvenile Justice Act to be invoked.
School’s Response
Responding to the controversy, St. Mary’s School manager T J Eldhose said the management had initiated an internal inquiry.
He said the audio track was an old song that had been used by several schools in competitions over the years, and that it was selected without any intention to hurt a particular community. He expressed regret on behalf of the school management if the lyrics had caused distress to any community.
In another account, Eldhose said he was unaware that the lyrics included such messages, that the song has been performed in various schools since 2010, and that he did not know who wrote the lyrics or their origins.
That explanation has not settled the matter for complainants, who argue that lack of intent does not remove the harm of exposing young children to stereotyping, nor the responsibility of schools to review lyrics, costumes and choreography before a public performance.
For now, the focus remains on the police complaints and the school’s internal inquiry.
