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By:

Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Credibility Crisis

For years, Faizal Khan, known across the country by his affectionate moniker of ‘Khan Sir,’ has cultivated the image of an educator fighting a noble battle against an exploitative coaching industry. To millions of students, he is not merely a teacher but a folk hero, someone who is an outsider challenging entrenched interests while offering affordable education to the masses. But the recent episode surrounding the attack on Khan Global Studies in Patna raise uncomfortable questions and casts...

Credibility Crisis

For years, Faizal Khan, known across the country by his affectionate moniker of ‘Khan Sir,’ has cultivated the image of an educator fighting a noble battle against an exploitative coaching industry. To millions of students, he is not merely a teacher but a folk hero, someone who is an outsider challenging entrenched interests while offering affordable education to the masses. But the recent episode surrounding the attack on Khan Global Studies in Patna raise uncomfortable questions and casts a shadow on the educator’s reputation. According to reports, a group of men allegedly vandalised the coaching institute, pelted stones and assaulted a security guard. But the controversy did not end there. Soon after the incident, Khan claimed that seven to ten rounds of firing had taken place outside his institute. The allegation dramatically escalated the seriousness of the episode. His claim generated headlines, social media outrage and a wave of sympathy. Yet police investigations reportedly found no evidence of firing by the attackers. CCTV footage and local inquiries also failed to substantiate the claim. Then came a more troubling development. A video surfaced allegedly showing two security guards associated with Khan Global Studies had fired shots into the air. The guards have since been arrested. While the investigation is still underway, the sequence of events is, at the very least, fishy. If police are ultimately correct that there was no firing by the attackers, then how did such a dramatic narrative emerge? Why were claims of multiple rounds being fired presented with such certainty? Why did the alleged gunfire become the centrepiece of public messaging immediately after the attack? Khan’s rivals have claiming that it was the educator himself who orchestrated the attack to gain sympathy as his fortunes were flagging. While the truth of these allegations have yet to be proved, it is worth noting that the modern coaching industry is not merely an educational enterprise but also a business of branding whose teachers are celebrities. Coaching centres compete for market share, social media attention and student enrolments. Success stories turn into marketing campaigns. And victimhood can sometimes become a marketing campaign too. Indeed, the most striking feature of the episode is not the vandalism itself but the rush to construct a story of persecution before the facts were known. The suggestion that shadowy rivals sought to silence a successful educator fit neatly into an existing public image. It generated precisely the sort of public sympathy that influential personalities often enjoy. Students deserve better. They look to educators not merely for knowledge but for intellectual honesty. A teacher’s first duty is respect for facts. The Patna incident should therefore serve as a reminder that celebrity status cannot become a substitute for credibility. The damage will extend beyond one coaching institute or Khan’s reputation. It will damage trust itself. And for a teacher, there is no greater loss.

The Fixer Falls

Ali Larijani, the Islamic Republic’s consummate insider, dies as his carefully managed crises spin beyond control.

In the labyrinthine politics of Iran’s Islamic Republic, few figures were as quietly indispensable as Ali Larijani. He was never one for the theatrics of revolutionary zeal nor the blunt force of military command as typified by the Revolutionary Guards. Larijani was something subtler and, in many ways, more valuable: a fixer. He was regarded as a man who could navigate Iran’s overlapping power centres of the mullahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and keep the system functioning even as it strained under pressure.


His death in an Israeli airstrike in the ongoing conflict thus removes not merely a senior official, but a rare kind of operator. At a time when Iran faces war abroad and unrest at home, it has lost the man who specialised in holding contradictions together.


Larijani’s authority rested less on charisma than on reach. Born in 1958 into a prominent clerical family in Najaf, he was steeped in the ideological traditions of the Islamic Republic, yet never confined by them. His father and brother were ayatollahs; he himself was not a cleric, but moved easily among them. Over four decades, he built a career that traversed nearly every pillar of the state: the IRGC, the culture ministry, state broadcasting, parliament and crucially, the Supreme National Security Council.


This breadth made him invaluable. He was a bridge between factions, between institutions and between ideology and pragmatism. Western diplomats encountered him as a nuclear negotiator while domestic elites relied on him as a consensus-builder. Even his critics conceded his strategic acumen.


Yet Larijani’s pragmatism had limits. He was, above all, loyal to the system. That loyalty was tested most starkly in moments of crisis. As speaker of parliament from 2008 to 2020, he helped shepherd the 2015 nuclear deal through Iran’s fractious political machinery. But as security chief in later years, he also played a central role in overseeing crackdowns on dissent, including the violent suppression of protests that shook the country in 2026.


This duality defined him. To some within the regime, he was a moderating conservative - a man capable of engaging with the West without conceding ground. To many outside it, he embodied the system’s hypocrisies: a polished insider presiding over repression while speaking the language of diplomacy.


In his final months, Larijani found himself at the centre of a gathering storm. Following the death of Ali Khamenei, he emerged as one of the key figures managing Iran’s wartime posture. He was tasked, in effect, with holding together a state under siege from Israeli and American strikes, and internally from mounting unrest.


It was a role that suited his skillset. Larijani had long argued for a calibrated but firm response to external pressure. He advocated preparing for a prolonged war, even entertaining escalation across the region. At the same time, his diplomatic networks with Russia, China and the Gulf states offered channels for manoeuvre in an increasingly hostile environment.


His death, therefore, creates a vacuum that is not easily filled. It is not simply that Iran has lost a decision-maker; it has lost a co-ordinator. In a system where authority is diffuse and often contested, such figures are rare. More than the clerics, Larijani occupied a role that was in some ways more critical: that of the system’s manager. He ensured continuity where others pursued ideology.


That continuity is now in question. Potential successors, such as Saeed Jalili, a hardliner, is unlikely to replicate his predecessor’s balancing act between confrontation and engagement. The risk is that Iran’s decision-making becomes both more rigid and more fragmented. Larijani’s death also illuminates a deeper fragility. The Islamic Republic has long prided itself on the ability to absorb shocks and endure. But that resilience depends on individuals who can navigate its complexities.


There is, too, a personal dimension to Larijani’s legacy. For many ordinary Iranians, Larijani symbolised the contradictions of a ruling elite that imposed strictures on society while enjoying privileges of its own. Stories of moral policing and everyday indignities coexist with images of officials moving freely within global networks. Such tensions fuelled the very unrest Larijani was tasked with containing.


In the end, he was both product and custodian of the Islamic Republic: shaped by its revolution, sustained by its structures and ultimately consumed by its conflicts.


His passing leaves a more immediate one about the system he helped sustain: who, now, will hold it together?

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