Kulgam, Aug 15: Days before Independence Day, Numan Gani, a student at a local residential school in Chawalgam, Kulgam, was asked if he would be willing to play Mahatma Gandhi at the district’s main function, a role that meant, first, cutting off his hair.
By the time he stepped onto the stage on August 15 on Saturday, Numan stood dressed in a plain white dhoti and shawl, round wire-framed glasses perched on his nose, a grey smudge of a moustache pencilled above his lip, and a bamboo staff in hand, barefoot on the carpet laid out for the occasion, as rows of onlookers watched from behind a picket fence.
Numan, born in 2016, is originally from Shopian. His father died in 2018, and his mother passed away within a year of him, both to heart attacks, leaving him without either parent while he was still a toddler. With no one immediately able to take him in, he narrowly avoided a life on the streets. Today, the only family he has close by is a paternal cousin, who managed to get him admitted to Al-Hilal REI, a residential school run by the J&K Yateem Foundation.
It was here that Showkat Hussain Rather, who heads the institute, asked Numan if he would be willing to play Mahatma Gandhi at the district’s main Independence Day function.
“We have a barber shop right next to our institute,” Rather told Rising Kashmir. “The next morning, I saw Numan with his head shaved, standing ready to act like Gandhi ji.”
There was no hesitation, Rather said, only quiet readiness, the same quality he says has come to define Numan at the institute. The boy has already memorised two paras of the Quran as a Hafiz, and can recite close to 250 hadith from memory. “He was very happy with the accolades he received for his act,” Rather said.
When Numan stepped onto the stage in Kulgam and caught his first glimpse of the crowd gathered for the function, people in the audience were seen taking photos, selfies and reels with him, a 10-year-old standing still in Gandhi’s likeness in front of a crowd that had no idea of the story behind the costume.
Rather said Numan’s paternal cousin visits him at the institute on occasions, and that the boy continues to do well in his studies and in his memorisation of scripture, alongside his regular schooling in the third grade.
The recognition has not stopped at the school gates. Rather said the Deputy Commissioner of Kulgam has invited Numan and the institute for a meeting on Monday, where the boy is likely to be formally appreciated for his performance.
For a child who began his life with barely anyone to call his own, Independence Day 2026 gave Numan Gani a stage, an audience, and a moment of recognition. What he and hundreds of children like him at institutions such as Al-Hilal need beyond a single day’s applause, his caretakers say, is sustained government support.
