Babar Ali is the youngest headmaster in the world who started his school in his backyard to serve the underprivileged community. At this young age when most of the students are looking for a job, Babar was already a headmaster of a school he started with only nine children. It’s an inspiring short story with moral lessons.
Babar Ali was born on 18th March 1993 in the minority-community dominated village, Murshidabad of Gangpur, West Bengal. He was the eldest of four siblings, In 1998 Babar was admitted to the Primary School, two kilometers from his house, where he studied up to Class 4. In 2002, when he was nine, his father got him admitted to the Beldanga CRGS High School, about 10 kilometers away. Babar used to walk 2kms from his place to catch the bus. While returning from school, he used to see kids playing in the fields and used to ask them if they would like to study if he will teach them, and kids always said yes. Babar took this seriously and he started teaching them under the guava tree. In this batch of 8 children, one was his sister Amina Khatun. Since he had no stationery like pens and notebooks, he created a blackboard out of terracotta titles and started using newspaper as reading material. Then his father contributed 600rs for buying some stationery material. Finally, in 2003, the school had an official inauguration and it was named Ananda Shiksha Niketan (House of Happy Learning). In 2005 when he was in class eighth, he was invited by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen to Shantiniketan, the prestigious center of learning founded by Rabindranath Tagore, to speak about his school.
Wearing his school uniform, Babar used to travel to the big cities to ask government officials to help him with supplies for school. Those officers didn’t let his morale go down. Instead, they approached the sub-divisional magistrate Sabuj Barun Sarkar to be the president of his school’s governing body. In 2008, Babar passed his high school with the first division. Babar received the CNN IBN Real Hero Award from the actor Aamir Khan. BBC traveled out to his town to expound on him. He was only sixteen when BBC named the ‘youngest headmaster in the world’ in October 2009. Babar noticed that there was a need for a proper school building. He bought a wasteland near his place using the prize money of Real Hero award, but that amount wasn’t enough to construct a building. Babar was also awarded the ‘Indian of the Year’ award by the NDTV and LITERACY HERO AWARD, BY ROTARY INDIA LITERACY MISSION and was featured in ‘FORBES ASIA’ in their 30 under 30 list as a ‘SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR’, also received Education leadership award by BBC knowledge.
People started being jealous of his achievements as he had so much at such a young age. Even, he had to appear for his college exams under police protection. In 2012 Babar was featured in Aamir Khan’s popular TV show Satyameva Jayate. He became a Ted Fellow, talking about his school at the Ted Talks in Mysore, Karnataka. His other achievement came in front of him when Babar’s story was included by the Central Board of Secondary Education syllabus for Class 10 and also by the Karnataka government in the prescribed English book for the first-year PU course. Babar then purchased around 7,200 square feet of land there at a price of rupees ten lakh, donated by one of his supporters Ms. Almitra Patel in 2013. The newly built school was inaugurated in November 2015. It was three kilometers away from the previous school. It was difficult for the students to commute and hence Babar also started school buses for student’s ease.
“Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached.” — Swami Vivekanand
Meanwhile, his first batch of eight students have entered college, and are now teaching at his school. The school is ceaselessly extending and has an aggregate of ten staff individuals, including eight educators. His story is evidence of the fact that if you have a will then there is away. If a 9-year-old can alone change the world then it is an inspiration for all of us to come out of our closed cocoons and help to make a difference.
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