At 25, Hasnain Khawja, a law graduate from Srinagar has got the distinction of earning prestigious Chevening fellowship.
The fellowship is a UK government’s global scholarship program in which hundreds of people from all around the world apply every year. The scholarship offers’ future leaders’ an opportunity to pursue a fully-funded one year master’s program in any subject in universities across the UK.
Son of advocate Tasaduq Khawja, and a teacher Rifat Nasreen, Khawja was chosen from a big pool of 70,000 applicants from across 170 countries. He is now a proud recipient of the fellowship along with 1400 other students from across the world .
Forty more candidates from other states have been awarded the fellowship
A resident of Bemina, Khawja has pursued an integrated law degree from the University of Kashmir and is a 2019 law graduate.
“I received an e-mail from British Embassy that I have been selected. I read it several times to believe what actually I was reading,” said Khawja. He credits his parents and teachers for his success.
“When I applied for the fellowship, certain people encouraged me including my parents, my teachers and professor at Kashmir University,” her said.
He said he pushed on and was lucky enough to have some wonderful people on his side including his professor Dr Muhammad Husain and Dr Showkat Bhat.
“Most importantly my parents stood by me and I attribute my success to their tireless appreciation and love,” he said.
He said he would now proceed to study LLM in Human Rights from Queen Mary University.
Khawja has also set up a non-profit organisation SAAYA in 2015. The organisation works for educational uplift of students of financially backward and minority communities and has nearly touched the lives of around 3,000 students.