TN teachers' protest: Detained Pudukottai teacher gives students lessons from behind gates

When strikes happen in this country, the unaffected almost immediately point out all the inconveniences they are caused — the traffic jams, the delays in their daily routine and people are also quick to dismiss the 'strikers' as lazy. We often forget that here are people who possibly all love their jobs but that doesn't mean they deserve to be treated unjustly. Some of them love their jobs so much, they find ways to do it through the bars of a gate, while being detained by the police. 

S Deiveegan is an English teacher at the Gandharvakottai Government Boys Higher Secondary School in Pudukottai. Deeveigan, like thousand of other teachers in the state has been part of the JACTTO-GEO protests. But on Tuesday he was spotted correcting the essays of some of his students while he sat on one side of the gate and the students stood on the other. He had been detained in the building and couldn't leave the premises so he corrected the papers through the gate. When we reached out to him to do this story, he immediately dismissed the incident as unimportant and refused to make a big deal about it, "They needed me to correct those essays immediately and so I did it, there's nothing more to it. It was an IMPART project and so I brought the essays with me to correct. There's really nothing to say on the matter." he said. 

The teachers were being detained and held at the Murugaiya Mahal Marriage hall in Ghandharvakottai. Before the protests started, Deiveegan had given his students a project under the IMPART (Improving Participation) programme and it had been due on Tuesday. But when the students got to the school, none of the teachers were available. The teachers were supposed to give their students feedback on their work so when the teachers were detained at the marriage hall, Deiveegan asked the students to come there. However, the students were not allowed to come inside the premises, so the teacher sat at the gate and spoke to his students through the bars of the gate.

The teachers were released later that evening.