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Hussain from RSS-run school tops Assam Class 10 boards
GUWAHATI: A week after the installation of a BJP-led government, a Muslim boy has given the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in Assam a reason to be happy again.
GUWAHATI: A week after the installation of a BJP-led government, a Muslim boy has given the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in Assam a reason to be happy again.
Sarfaraz Hussain topped the Assam state board’s Class 10 exam with 590 marks out of a maximum 600. The results were declared on Tuesday.
Others before him have had similar scores. But Sarfaraz, 16, is the first Muslim to pass out of a school run by an affiliate of Vidya Bharati, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s education wing.
And he is not the only Muslim student of Sankardev Sishu Niketan, one of many that the Vidya Bharati-affiliated Sishu Shiksha Samiti, Assam runs.
The school at Betkuchi on the outskirts of Guwahati has 24 Muslim students, most of whom — like Sarfaraz — have won prizes for reciting the Bhagwad Gita.
“They have never complained about what we teach because our emphasis is on academic excellence apart from giving the students a grip on Indian culture and values,” Akshaya Kalita, the school’s headmaster, told HT.
“We did not make them feel different, and as a rule, they have lunch with all the other students and teachers after a bhojan mantra (prayer before meal),” he said.
Ajmal Hussain, Sarfaraz’s father, said he let his son study in the school because it provided free education. “It would have otherwise been difficult to sustain his studies with my meagre income as a waiter in a restaurant,” he said.
He credited his son’s success to his hard work, the support from his school teachers, and also to the Hindu goddess of learning. Sarfaraz was the secretary of the school’s Saraswati Puja celebration.
“The school shaped my life, and I hope to achieve greater academic glory as my teachers expect,” Sarfaraz said, wishing he could repay his alma mater some day.
For now, the Sarbananda Sonowal government is taking care of the payback part. Education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has promised a road to the school that has existed on paper since it was established in 1998.
