Guwahati, Sep 5 - As the country celebrates Teachers Day Saturday, there is a sense of gloom and despondency in Assam, due to incidents of students vandalising schools and assaulting teachers.

'This is a shocking state of affairs to find students punching and kicking teachers inside schools and in one instance vandalising school property,' Pabitra Deka, principal of the 175-year-old Cotton Collegiate Higher Secondary School in Assam's main city Guwahati, told IANS.

The past one week in Assam's education scene presents a sordid picture - students of a school in Guwahati thrashed the headmaster black and blue, leaving his face visibly swollen.

'It is a clear case of some of our teachers in the school instigating the students to attack me,' said P.C. Biswas, headmaster of the Lalchand Onkarmall Goenka Hindi High School, still nursing the injury a week after the assault.

Six students of the school were detained by the management for assaulting the headmaster -- but more than 150 students took to the streets and blocked a main thoroughfare demanding the release of their fellow students.

Police later caned the students, but not before they threw stones at the security team.

'The violence was a fallout of a rift between the school management and the teachers with a section of the teachers using the students to attack me,' Biswas said.

On Wednesday, students of a Navodaya Vidyalaya in Nalbari in western Assam ransacked the school - damaging computers, desks and benches, the principal's office and teachers' common room.