At 8, Babar became ‘youngest headmaster’ in world

NAGPUR: In 2002, as eight year-old Babar Ali was returning from school to his home at a remote village in

Murshidabad

district of

West Bengal

, he saw something that would change his life forever. That 10km return trip, went through patches of fields where children of his age were working on farms rather than being in school. Same was the situation with most of his peers in his village. “I decided then and there that no one should be deprived of education. I was lucky because my father wanted me study and become a civil servant, but my friends did not have parents with that kind of vision,” said Ali.

Within days, he gathered a few of his village friends and started teaching them in the backyard of his house. With age not on his side and no formal training, he simply copied his schoolteachers. “Whatever I learnt at school, taught them the same day. My sister was my first student and soon enough were on to a dozen or so,” recalls Ali with a smile. The family’s backyard now resembled an open air school and a few years later, a media outlet coined the term “world’s youngest headmaster” to highlight his story. It description stuck and made Ali all the more determined to expand his school and along the way he ran into Good

Samaritans

. Some 15 years later, the situation has changed and Ali now reaches out to 300 students from his government-recognized

Ananda Shiksha Niketan

, at a different location in the same village. While his teaching continues, the learning process has not stopped. “I have completed my master's degree in English literature and have now enrolled for a degree in History. My journey has just started at the age of 24 and as the poet says, I have miles to go before I sleep,” said Ali.