A Question He Couldn’t Answer
Harekala Hajabba has sold oranges outside the bus depot in Mangaluru, Karnataka, since the 1970s, earning as little as ₹150 a day. He never went to school himself, and to this day cannot read or write, a fact that made one ordinary transaction, decades ago, impossible to forget.
The moment came in 1978, when a foreign tourist stopped at his cart and asked him, in English, how much his oranges cost. Hajabba understood nothing of what the tourist was saying, and the couple eventually walked away without buying anything. “The first time I felt bad for being illiterate was when a foreigner enquired about the price of oranges in English. I did not know what he meant,” Hajabba later said. The embarrassment of that single exchange did not fade with time; instead, it planted an idea that would take him roughly two decades to act on.
Two Decades of Saving, One Room at a Time
Determined that children in his village would not grow up facing the same barrier, Hajabba began saving whatever he could from his orange sales, a painfully slow process on daily earnings that barely covered his own household’s needs. His efforts were not universally welcomed at first; fellow villagers mocked the idea, and his own wife grew frustrated that money meant for family meals was instead being set aside for a school that didn’t yet exist. Hajabba persisted anyway, camping outside the local Zilla Panchayat office and repeatedly petitioning officials to help formalise education in his village.
His persistence paid off in 1999, when, using his own modest savings, he opened a primary school in Newpadpu village, then working out of space borrowed inside a local madrassa. The school began with just 28 students. A local politician, the late MLA U.T. Fareed, later helped sanction formal construction of the school building in 2000, and over time the state government and private donors also stepped in with additional support, though the foundational act and the years of sacrifice behind it remained entirely Hajabba’s own.
From 28 Students to a Full School
What started as a single-room initiative has since grown into a proper institution. The school in Newpadpu now serves around 175 students, offering classes through the 10th standard — a dramatic expansion from its original 28 pupils, achieved gradually as Hajabba continued ploughing his earnings, later supplemented by prize money from various honours, back into the school. He has said his next ambition is to help establish a Pre-University college in the village as well, so that students from Newpadpu would no longer need to leave the community to continue their education past the 10th grade.
A Padma Shri, Received Barefoot
Hajabba’s decades of quiet, self-funded work eventually reached the highest levels of Indian public recognition. He was named a recipient of the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian honour, in the January 2020 awards list, in recognition of his contribution to human service and education. Because the formal ceremony was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Hajabba did not actually receive the award from President Ram Nath Kovind until 8 November 2021.
Even the way the news reached him reflected his everyday life. Hajabba was standing in line at a ration shop when he was informed of his selection, and, not being fluent in Hindi, had to hand his phone to a nearby auto-rickshaw driver so the news could be properly explained to him.
The ceremony itself carried its own quiet symbolism. Meeting India’s President, Vice-President and Prime Minister in such proximity left a deep impression on him, and out of a sense of humility he chose to remove his footwear before stepping up to receive the award, saying he did not feel a poor man like himself should wear shoes in front of such dignitaries. In brief remarks after accepting the honour, Hajabba thanked the President, the Prime Minister and local officials, and used the moment to make one further request: help in securing sanction for the PU college he still hopes to build.
The Saint of the Alphabet
Today, Hajabba is known across Karnataka and increasingly across India by an affectionate nickname: “Akshara Santha,” or the “Saint of Letters”, a title that captures, in two words, a life spent giving others the education he never received himself. A small room beside his home has become an informal archive of his journey, filled with certificates, photographs and plaques awarded to him over the years by governments and private organisations alike, with the Padma Shri simply the most prestigious addition to a wall already crowded with recognition.
His story has since been written into university syllabi at Davangere, Kuvempu and Mangalore, and included in a Tulu-language school textbook, ensuring that the same barrier that once humiliated him, the inability to read, now stands as a lesson taught to students who can. For a man who spent his life selling fruit by the roadside, unable to answer a simple question in English, Harekala Hajabba’s response to that moment of shame has become one of India’s most quietly extraordinary stories of self-made education reform, built not from policy or funding, but from a single unanswered question and twenty years of saved coins.
References:
- Awaz-The Voice. “Orange-seller Padma Shri Harekala Hajabba wants to build a college in his village,” February 3, 2023.
- Coastal Digest. “Harekala Hajabba, the orange seller who set up a school for the underprivileged, chosen for Padma Shri 2020.”
- Zee News. “Meet Padma Shri Harekala Hajabba, orange seller from Mangaluru who built a school with life’s savings,” November 9, 2021.
- Asianet Newsable. “Padma Shri Harekala Hajabba’s journey: From selling oranges to building a school,” November 8, 2021.
- The Print. “For Harekala Hajabba, journey from orange cart to Padma Shri began with a foreigner’s question,” November 13, 2021.
- Life Beyond Numbers. “Meet Harekala Hajabba - The Orange Seller Who Got Padma Shri Award,” November 10, 2021.
- Deccan Herald. “Padma Shri 2020: Humility is central to this orange seller’s school of thought.”
- Deccan Herald. “As Hajabba receives Padma Shri, kids rejoice at his school.”
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