Visually challenged twin brothers, role models for everyone

A Year-long Series on Education, Sponsored by The Aligarh Forum : – A Mirror on our Efforts, our Successes & our Shortcomings ; Stories of triumphs, tribulations and struggles of the Indian Muslims in improving their educational status, in illiteracy alleviation, and in their professional and social uplift.

By Abdul Basith MA, TwoCircles.net


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Vythiri [Wayanad], Kerala: “Be kind enough to call us visually challenged or impaired rather than calling us blind or handicapped” asks Habeeb and Akbar; the twin brothers, who fought their way out of numerous challenges since born to C Kunhammed and Hawwa on March 1982. Now Habeeb and Akbar are working as assistant professors at Farook College and Kalpetta Govt College respectively and are relentlessly working to achieve new heights in their career. Being born visually impaired, that too in a remote village in the hilly Wayanad district the parents were clueless regarding their kids’ capabilities and the ways of nourishing their innate abilities.

Schooling

In the year 1990 they joined Rahmaniya Vocational Higher Secondary School for handicapped near medical college, Calicut. This was indeed a period of revelation for their parents, teachers and themselves as they were until then not aware of the possibilities before them. 1988 would have been the ideal time for them to start their schooling but hurdles like identifying the right school, were cleared only by 1990; when they were eight.

Rahmaniya School had the experience of teaching the visually impaired and the teachers were phenomenal in promoting the academic and artistic skills with in them. Habeeb says “Rahmaniya School was in fact discovering the potential buried within us, we were good at sports like chess, Akbar got trained in Harmonium and I learnt to play Tabala. We participated in youth festivals, arts and literary festivals competing both with the visually challenged and sighted contestants. We both got acclaimed and won prizes in most of those venues. By the time we left Rahmaniya we were altogether a different Habeeb and Akbar”.

Rahmaniya school being a very established institution, they got in touch with many important personalities including some foreigners. At Rahmaniya they both were honoured by a Calicut based charitable society Child
Care Foundation run by Mr PK Gopi [well renowned Malayalam poet] and Father Vincent Thomas. They completed their primary education up to 7th at Rahmaniya by the year 1997 and these seven years they had the opportunity to appear before many newspapers, radio and other media organizations.




Akbar (left) and Habeeb (right) are the role models for everyone.

In the year 1997 they joined Nirmala High School, Thariyode and by March 2000 completed SSLC [10th exams, Kerala Syllabus], were they both scored 550 marks out of 600; turning out to become the top ranked visually challenged candidates. Nirmala School didn’t have prior experience teaching visually challenged students but the teachers were very supportive and it was altogether a different experience for Habeeb and Akbar there.

Though they passed out SSLC with flying colours there were no near by schools offering humanities subject at the plus-two levels. They submitted a petition on this regard to the then chief minister EK Nayanar [CPIM], educational minister and director of plus-two; requesting them to sanction a humanities batch at the nearby school namely, Wayanad Orphanage Higher Secondary School [WOHSS], Pinangode. Their father was a strong CPIM activist and by his effort the issue was once published in the CPIM owned news daily Deshabhimani, so with the letter drafted to the CM they attached prints of this news clip and the govt. moved to sanction a humanities batch at WOHSS. Before this even the WOHSS school officials were highly pessimistic on this regard and were asking Habeeb and Akbar to apply in other schools as well.

Habeeb and Akbar consider life in WOHSS as the most creative age in their life. Rahmaniya School and Nirmala School provided sufficient quality to their educational and artistic background but the plus-two time in WOHSS shaped up their intellectual foundation. Just like Nirmala, for WOHSS too it was a fresh experience teaching the visually challenged and both the school time were more than fruitful in our life, says Akbar. Habeeb scored 4th rank for plus-two in the state level and Akbar too was there among the high distinction marks.

Farook College

It was since then the twin brothers had to confront the real challenges and realities as they reached Farook College, Calicut to enrol in the BA English programme. Until reaching Farook College there was no questioning of their supremacy in the academic, artistic and literary fields. But in Farook College there were many English medium students who were born and brought up in gulf countries like Kuwait and Bahrain. Though they both had enough skills and ideas, their language was not sufficient enough to fight with those students.

At Nirmala and WOHSS, they were the first visually impaired students but Farook College was altogether a different reality. The college had a very big history of promoting the visually impaired and an environment was already set for them at Farook. But the twins observed that there were two eras on this regard as well, they says that Farook was so productive for the visually impaired until 1995 after which it was a stagnant age for them with nothing innovative happening. So by the time Habeeb and Akbar reached there the atmosphere was not that conducive so they along with their friends had to work to change the status quo.

Activism

Their father is at present the local secretary of CPIM and is a strong left activist. Being part of the marginalised community and being visually impaired the twins always had a passion for the downtrodden mass. When they were small kids their father used to take them to attend processions and other party events. Though they didn’t do anything specific there, they used to walk in between the party workers. Thus the ‘left’ was in their blood since the childhood days. Habeeb says, “Though I am a strong believer, I got stuck by some social ideas put forward by Karl Marx. I understand that all parties have their own degenerations and deteriorations, in the present scenario. But now with no-politics turning out to become the politics of the day, left is a far better choice withstanding all its limitations. And it should not be forgotten that, when we developed our political tastes left was far better than what it is today”.

Akbar too is a strong believer and is of the opinion that, ‘except good believers non believers are better than believers’. Most of the voluntary organisations they have worked for including the Kerala Federation of Blind Students Forum [KFBSF] though didn’t have any left links gave the feel that they too shared a left impulse, said Akbar.

Farook College has been a strong fort of Muslim Students Federation [MSF, students’ wing of IUML] and they held the college union unquestioned for decades. In the campus politics visually impaired students were often used to sing and perform but they were not given any leading or active roles in politics. Habeeb and Akbar were disappointed at having such reservations because they were already well established performers and so felt that campus politics in its true spirit should be experienced by visually challenged students as well.

In his second year Habeeb competed to the University Union Councillor [UUC] post on the Students Federation of India [SFI, students’ wing of CPIM] ticket and was defeated. The MSF was handling the college politics in an autocratic style and no other organisations were in a position to put up a strong challenge. The twins along with their comrades took the campaigning to such a level that, the very next year SFI won four college union posts.

Habeeb again contested the college union chairman post while he was into his third semester PG, and the situations were far more conducive for SFI. But there were other factors like; the previous year SFI put up a good show winning both the chairman and UUC posts and the very next year when Habeeb contested MSF along with its ally KSU [Kerala Students Union, students’ wing of Congress party] had their sentiments high and was all set for a backlash. When the campaign started the initial trends were in Habeeb’s favour but soon they focussed their campaign on his visual impairment telling that ‘If he wins, he will turn a puppet in the hands of SFI people’. It was ‘an uphill’ task for Habeeb to overcome these campaigns.

“Here we had to resist a challenge, which we were all the way fighting out in our life and the question before us was that, whether a visually challenged person can overcome his impairment in the campus? We wouldn’t have been annoyed if they discussed our politics or religion instead they discussed the very question which we were trying to challenge in our life. We were a constant presence in all the discussions, events and debates held in the college with a strong vigour and zest and so it was tough to assume that such a campus would underestimate our abilities”, say the twin brothers. Habeeb admits that this was not the mere reason for his defeat but he says it played a vicious role. “The MSF camp was intentionally blind to the realities and they just exploited the situations and I was the one defeated at the narrowest of margins” says Habeeb. Though Akbar didn’t compete in the elections he was always there in active campus politics.

The brothers have been active members of non voluntary organisations like Kerala Federation of Blind Students Forum [KFBSF]. Habeeb was president for the year 2004 and succeeding him in the year 2005 Akbar became president of the organisation. Both were Kerala representatives of National Federation of Blind Students as well.

The twins are against the general feeling that the English medium students are the ‘be all and the end all of everything’ as they observes that there was a general trend of evaluating students in comparison with these factor despite whatever performance others did.

Awards

Habeeb and Akbar received the PM foundation awards [sponsored by P Muhammed Ali, Gulfar group] while doing their SSLC, plus-two and Bachelors degree. A dynamic incident while at Farook College, which changed their life was that – during Oct-Nov 2002 there was an announcement by Foundation for Academic Excellence and Access [FAEA, promoted by FORD foundation] centred in Delhi and chaired by Dr VR Mehta [former Delhi University VC] that it would give scholarships to 500 students from India. The qualification was 80% percentage marks at higher secondary level and economic backwardness. There was a general feeling that the scholarships will be given exclusively to science students and even the department teachers were not so optimistic. But with full support from the then Farook College Principal Mubarak Pasha, who always have been a source of inspiration and support through out their career, the twins applied for it and were successful in winning the scholarships; by which they received around 23,000 rupees per year. The scholarship besides won them, Personal Computers and a chance to interact with former President APJ Abdul Kalam. Akbar is proud as he says “This gave us financial security for next five years, we were completely independent on our own and we even provided our family from this amount”.

The computer was then installed with screen readers, optical character recognizing softwares; which at first scans the text and then reads out. As the Calicut University BA English results were published Habeeb was 1st and Akbar 3rd in the rank list.

Since then the Farook College Principal Kuttyali Kutty, teachers including Dr Yaseen Ashraf, Dr Asha were all persuading them to join Farook College for their Post graduation and now they both feel grateful to them because they say, “other wise we won’t have reached the present position”. Enrolling for their PG, the campus then had no prejudices against them and they were then treated like two key factors in the English department.




Various awards won by the twins over the years.

When the Calicut University MA English results were published Habeeb got fifth rank and he cleared NET exams in the first chance and now being a permanent faculty in Farook College, he is planning to do research on a topic combining ‘literature and the visually impaired’. Akbar too scored high marks for his PG; later qualified NET exams and has now cleared Kerala Public Service Commission [PSC] exams by which he is now appointed as a faculty in Govt. College, Kalpetta. Immediately after their PG, they both worked as guest faculties, Habeeb in Farook College and Akbar in WMO Arts and Science College, Muttil and Sullamussalam College, Areekod. “We were able to procure these secure permanent jobs after continuing as guest faculties for years only because we proved that we were capable of working in such posts”, say the twin brothers. Assuming these posts, both says “it is their dreams which have turned true now”.

For last few years they both have been searching for competent marriage proposals and social problems like prejudiced notions against the visually impaired stayed as hurdles. Akbar is now about to get married. The marriage is fixed to be held on 22nd April and his bride Rajula is an M.com graduate. Habeeb is yet to find his life partner as his notions towards a life mate are a bit stronger. “There were a few fruitful candidates but they were not up to my dreams, I know all my dreams regarding my life partner won’t be fulfilled, still I have a few conditions”, says Habeeb.

They both had an affinity towards Civil service exams from their very childhood and they both are confident of achieving it after a few years hard work, especially because there are reservations for the physically challenged. But “what we should do after assuming the post is rather limited” says Akbar.
Habeeb opined that If a visually challenged gets to civil service there are lot of potential things he could do, but now he identifies that this is ‘his cup of tea’ as he finds civil service not as competent as lectureship for visually impaired.

While their student period they belonged to the lower middle class, still they believe even the poor visually challenged students can attain heights through their desire, commitment and dedication because they says govt., college trusts and KFBSF are good at supporting them even until their PG through scholarships and other financial aides.

Habeeb says that “North Indians are more updated regarding computer related technologies for the visually challenged. In Kerala we prefer only humanities subjects whereas in North India with the help of even more updated technologies students are taking up commerce and science related subjects. Here visually impaired candidates are limited to professions like teaching but in North India there are people like Hareesh Kotian working as assistant manager in the Reserve Bank of India, IT professionals like Kiran Khaja working for Adobe in London. Compared to other North Indian states the open source Linux programmes for the blind is so vibrant and widely used in Kerala and this is the only area were we are ahead of them”.

Akbar’s asks his friends to have an absolute faith in Allah and to exhibit an hundred percentage commitment. He asks the community not to stay away from professions like nursing by having a prejudiced mind that it is against religion. “But the fact is that Prophet [SAW] encouraged serving others and healing others wounds” Akbar says.

The twin brothers recalled a dialogue delivered by Malayalam actor Srinivasan in a film which they recently watched as a message to their visually challenged friends, which says “there is a space for each individual in this world, if you are able to understand where your space is, your life is successful”. Habeeb asks his friends to knock at every door and hunt for that space; no difficulties or marginalisation can stop you, than the lack of desire. He asks the Muslim community to emphasise on opportunities rather than keeping on using the term backward.

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