“Akshara Santha” Hajabba's saga now a textbook lesson at two universities

The 50-year-old man's unusual saga of struggle and success has been included in the Kannada textbook for the fourth semester students of the Davanagere University under the title “Sahitya Spandana, Bhaga 2'.

The life and achievements of Mr. Hajabba, who has already won a number of accolades including the Kannada Prabaha Person of the Year award (2004) and CNN-IBN Real Heroes Award (2009), has been chronicled by Ismath Pajeer in a book published recently by Kanthavara Kannada Sangha.

An orange vendor by profession, Hajabba took the unusual plunge about a decade ago after seeing the dismal situation of the Muslim community in terms of education. His journey started after he convinced the villagers to start a primary school at the local Madrasa.

Hajabba has used his hard-earned money to build the school, literally brick by brick. Despite leading a life of penury, he has donated all his prize money, including the five lakh rupees he got from the CNN-IBN, towards realizing his dream.

Interestingly, Hajabba's story has been included in the Kannada text book for commerce undergraduates instead of arts students. The Shimoga and Davangere Universities comprise a geographical area that includes CHikmagalur and Chitradurga districts, besides Shimoga and Davangere.

The number of students pursuing gradation in commerce in the colleges under the two universities is much more compared to arts and science students. “We just don't want these students to become number crunchers. We want them to develop pro-society attitude than just keep their studies to calculating profit and losses,” said a source in the Shimoga University.

Besides Hajabba, the Kannada text book also includes brief biographical accounts of Cherkadi Ramachandra Rao, the organic farmer, writer Anupama Niranjan, forlk artiste Sukri Bommanagowda and Salu Marada Thimmakka.

'Sahitya Spandana Bhaga 2'will remain as the textbook until 2016 in the two universities. The book has 132 pages and around five to six pages have been devoted to each personality. Na. Karantha Peraje, editor of 'Adake Patrike' has authored the lesson on Hajabba.

Despite hitting headlines every now and then, Hajabba remains his usual humble self. “He (Mr. Peraje) had come to this poor man's house (badavana mane), but I did not know what he wanted to do by collecting details about me. Now I am getting calls from people from across the State congratulating me on being a textbook topic. Even H.R. Venkatesh from CNN-IBN had called me to say welldone. But, I have not read the reports yet,” said Hajabba over the phone.

Unfortunately, Hajabba who lives just few miles from the Mangala Gangotrhi is yet to get any recognition from the Mangalore University. But, the noble soul is not worried about such things and continues to think about building a pre university college. “I had been to Bangalore recently, where I was felicitated by Chief Minister Sadananda Gowda at a function organized by Tulu Koota. I have raised the issue of building the PU College before him,” Mr Hajabba said.