Khan Sirs rise, his reckoning

“Bombs exploded at our coaching institute, one after another… hum coaching pe hain ya border pe (were we in a coaching centre or at the border)?,” says educator Faizal Khan.The incident that Khan described in his characteristic wry style, in a video shot four years ago, is from 2019, when crude bombs were allegedly hurled into his classroom in Patna. While there are few details about what prompted the incident, Khan did not let the 2019 summer attack end his teaching career. If anything, it became part of his story — an outsider who challenged entrenched interests and carved out a space in Bihar’s crowded coaching market as the wildly popular “Khan Sir”.In the video, Khan said that while neighbouring establishments closed their shutters and people fled after the 2019 ‘bomb attack’, students urged him not to give up. “Sir, koi baat nahi. Aap kholiye, hum log padhenge. Kitna bhi bomb chale (Sir, it’s okay. You keep going, we’ll study, no matter how many bombs go off).” Now, nearly seven years later, Khan finds himself at the centre of one of Bihar’s biggest coaching controversies. A clash between his Khan Global Studies (KGS) and a rival coaching institute, Gyan Bindu GS Academy, operated by educator Raushan Anand, escalated to shots being fired outside Khan’s institute on June 2, resulting in an FIR and a counter-FIR. To supporters, ‘Khan Sir’ is the educator who disrupted a market long dominated by expensive coaching institutes. To critics, however, he is now part of the establishment, occupying a position of influence similar to what he once challenged. The making of ‘Khan Sir’ Much before he became a nationally recognised online educator, Khan was among the thousands of students navigating Bihar’s competitive examination ecosystem. In public interviews and videos, he describes a journey of financial hardship, interrupted ambitions, and years of struggle in a society that discriminated against his religious identity. He has spoken about growing up in a joint family in Deoria, the Uttar Pradesh district that borders Bihar, the single room he shared with his parents and siblings, and how his mother struggled to bring them as his father travelled for work to different places. In one of his many video interviews, he says, “I went to a normal school… Even pencils were accounted for. When a pencil arrived, it would be cut in half. I would take half, he would take half…” In the mid-2010s, Khan left home to pursue his ambitions in Patna’s coaching ecosystem. He recalls preparing for the Army and clearing the National Defence Academy written exam, only to be disqualified during the physical round due to a “minor arm condition”. Those close to him say that from 2014 to 2016, Khan frequented coaching institutes in Patna to study English, Maths and Reasoning for competitive exams while teaching part-time. But when nothing worked, he finally transitioned to teaching for state-level and lower clerical-level competitive exams. A clash between his Khan Global Studies (KGS) and a rival coaching institute, Gyan Bindu GS Academy, escalated to shots being fired outside Khan’s institute on June 2. (Express Photo by Rahul Sharma)“His first teaching job was at a coaching institute, where he held test-series discussions for a modest Rs 150 per session, each lasting around 1.5 hours,” says an acquaintance from his student days. “He had a laptop obtained under a Uttar Pradesh government distribution scheme that carried the image of then chief minister Akhilesh Yadav. He frequently used the device while teaching mapping.” In one of the interviews, Khan talks about how, when he started off teaching part-time, the manager at a coaching institute, who didn’t remember his first name, would schedule his classes under “Khan Sir”, and the name stuck. Nikhil Kumar, a teacher who runs Nikhil Classes in Patna’s Musallahpur Haat, says that around 2016-17, in partnership with Khan, he started an institute. But the relationship soon soured. “When we were in a bus