How a model school came up in a remote village of Jammu and Kashmir 

Umar Iqbal taking a class.

Umar Iqbal was seven years old when he lost his father, a teacher who was taken away by army soldiers one summer day in 1996 and whose body was found in a neighbouring village some days later. 

Iqbal remembers his widowed mother crying when she saw him off a few years later to Srinagar, where he would grow up and study in an orphanage. 

“She told me to return home only after completing my college studies,” he recalls. “I studied harder at the orphanage knowing the condition of my family back home.” 

After graduating with a degree from a Srinagar college in 2012, he returned home to Bhabore, a remote, hilly village in Doda district of Jammu and Kashmir. Bhabore’s mostly poor population of 3,000 subsists on agriculture, and the children have to commute long distances to study in elementary schools of neighbouring villages.   

Read also: How a year-long ceasefire is changing lives along LoC

“I was in my final year of graduation when the thought of opening a school came to my mind after seeing the condition of my village,” said Iqbal. “I also wanted to follow in the footsteps of my father, whose mission of educational uplift of children of especially poor people in our village was left incomplete after his tragic death.” 

He shared the idea with other educated men from the village who supported him in his mission of establishing a school in Bhabore that would impart quality education. 

In 2012, he started Iqbal Memorial School from the upper storey of a two-storey building donated by his aunt. He named the school after his late father. In its first year, some 20 students were enrolled in the school. 

Iqbal Memorial School has a modest presence.

A model school  

The school has grown over the years and now has 240 students enrolled in Class I to Class VIII who are taught by 14 teachers including Iqbal.

In addition to following the syllabus prescribed by the state education board, the faculty runs classes for skill development and encourages children to participate in inter-school competitions – sports tournaments, and writing and debating contests. The school’s students have won many such contests, beating children enrolled in bigger and more prominent institutions.  

Iqbal Memorial also has a social media presence. The success stories of and creative work done by school children are regularly shared on the official Facebook page of the school, which has more than 8,000 followers.  School students are also interviewed and share their thoughts on the social media page. 

Following the outbreak of COVID-19 and the subsequent closure of schools in early 2020, Iqbal Memorial started online classes.  

To be sure, not all students could attend the online classes as many students come from disadvantaged families that can’t afford smart phones or laptops. 

“For such students our teachers made all efforts and personally visited their houses to provide them with all the study material,” said Iqbal. “Every possible help was provided to meet their educational needs.”  

Free education, books and uniforms  

Not bad for a school in a village whose people, Iqbal says, were completely unaware of the importance of education, causing many children to drop out early. “Kids were not properly guided here (in Bhabore) when it came to their careers,” he says. 

 The school supports about a dozen orphans, and many poor children from nearly villages who are provided free education, books and uniforms. 

Iqbal credits Jammu and Kashmir Yateem Khana (orphanage) in Bemina, Srinagar, where he spent nine formative years before his admission to college, for whatever he has achieved in life.   

 “There were many kids who had lost both their parents to conflict for no fault of theirs,” he recalled, adding that they would support and comfort each other. “I felt grateful that I still had my mother.” 

 All the inmates were treated with love, care and affection by caretakers of the orphanage, Iqbal said. 

 “We were provided with all the things that any student needed,” he says. “Whenever I needed anything, all my needs were fulfilled.” 

 The orphanage became his second home when he grew up. He is still in touch with the many friends he made there. 

 Following father’s example 

Iqbal is following a path shown by his father, who was a respected teacher. He remembers his father often travelling to far-off villages in Doda district, staying away from home for days to help in the education of children of disadvantaged families. He helped enroll many children of poor families in school. 

Iqbal is now searching for better space for his school so that he can expand and enroll more students from neighbouring villages. He has plans to turn Iqbal Memorial into a high school. 

Iqbal believes that his father would have been proud of the school and its vision.

“When I see our students, especially orphans and children from poor families, doing well despite all obstacles and shortcomings, it makes me happy,”  Iqbal said with a smile. “I know it would have made my father happy too and maybe he would have been proud of my efforts.”