Sunday holidays linked to Christians, one district tried to change it: Modi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday spoke about a Jharkhand district’s attempt to change the weekly holiday from Sunday to Friday. While addressing a rally in Dumka, Modi said Sunday holiday in India has its roots in the British colonial period and is associated with the Christian community.
He accused his political rivals of following vote bank politics and said infiltrators have become a “big problem” in Jharkhand. "In our country, there is a holiday on Sunday. When the British used to rule here, the Christian community used to celebrate the holiday (on Sunday), this tradition started from that time. Sunday is not associated with Hindus, it is associated with the Christian community. This has been going on for the last 200-300 years. Now, they have put a lock on Sunday holiday in one district and said that the holiday will be on Friday. Now, there is a fight with Christians too. What is this?" said Modi.
In 2022, the Jharkhand government dissolved the management committees of schools and reinstated Sunday as the official holiday, two years after 43 state-run schools had unilaterally changed their weekly break to Friday.
At the time, Jamtara district education office had said that an investigation had found that some schools in the minority community-dominated pockets of Jamtara district had switched to Friday as their weekly off for over two years.
Dumka MP Sunil Soren had expressed outrage over the change, requesting the Centre to address the issue. In contrast, Congress party's Jamtara MLA Irfan Ansari downplayed the matter, stating, "The Dumka MP is giving a trivial matter a communal colour. What is wrong in observing a weekly holiday on any other day than Sunday, especially where the bulk of the students come from the Muslim community?”
