Shabir Ahmad
Teachers’ Day is not a ceremonial pause in the school calendar. It is the one day when a Union Territory that has just declared itself fully literate under the ULLAS–Nav Bharat Saaksharta Karyakram can look its teachers in the eye and say the obvious thing that is too often left unsaid: purpose without passion is dry instruction; passion without purpose is noise. Together, they turn a classroom into a public institution.
Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, greeting the teaching community on the birth anniversary of Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, called teachers “true nation-builders and changemakers” who spark curiosity, break barriers and help students grow into creative and compassionate leaders. He asked classrooms to become engaging and interactive spaces and linked the day’s gratitude to a larger resolve: quality education for all and a Developed India by 2047.
That language sits against a concrete milestone announced a day earlier. Education Minister Sakina Itoo said Jammu and Kashmir had recorded a literacy rate of 98.43 per cent and attained the status of a Fully Literate Union Territory. She credited “every teacher who taught, every volunteer who served, every officer who guided, and above all, every learner who chose to learn,” and warned that the figure was a beginning, not a finish line, a chapter in which education must still carry the region towards peace, progress, dignity, equality and prosperity.
Purpose, in this setting, is not an abstract slogan. It is the teacher who walks to a remote school when weather and terrain argue against it. It is the volunteer who sits with an adult learner after the official day is over. It is the headmaster who treats a government school as a place families should choose with confidence, not as a last resort. Passion is what keeps that work from becoming mechanical: the extra question asked, the child who is not written off, the classroom that still believes curiosity is a civic virtue.
The scale of the system makes that daily work more, not less, demanding. J&K’s school network runs into tens of thousands of institutions and more than a lakh and a half teachers. Access and enrolment have expanded. The harder test now is learning, whether children leave school able to think, speak, calculate and live with others. A teacher who only completes the syllabus has done a job. A teacher who makes a student want the next book has done the work the day is meant to honour.
National recognition arrived with the same calendar. Among the school teachers selected for the National Teachers’ Award 2026 is Mohd Ayaz Raina of Jammu and Kashmir, a reminder that excellence here is not an exception imported from elsewhere. It is already present in district schools if the system is willing to see it.
Political voices used the occasion in different registers. National Conference president Dr Farooq Abdullah called teachers the backbone of society and pressed a pending point: private school teachers deserve dignity and adequate pay. The argument is not a detour from celebration. Passion cannot be asked of a profession that is chronically underpaid and then treated as if gratitude were a substitute for wages.
The useful lesson of September 5 is therefore practical. Honour the teacher, but also protect the conditions in which purpose can survive, training that is more than a circular, classrooms that are safe and stocked, promotions that do not stall for years, and a public culture that does not reduce teaching to invigilation and paperwork. Literacy at 98.43 per cent is a claim the UT can be proud of. Whether the next generation can read the world, not only the primer, will still be decided by the person at the blackboard.
One teacher, the Kashmiri saying goes, is worth a thousand books. On Teachers’ Day, the books can wait. The teacher cannot.
