Khan Sir, aka Faisal Khan of Patna, the educator who turned a cramped classroom into a cultural phenomenon, is viral again. But this time, not for explaining geopolitics with disarming clarity. This time, he is explaining how to categorise women — women who deserve sammaan (respect), and women who are merely samaan (objects). Khan Sir is facing major backlash for his viral video on women, as he should. Such comments aren’t a novelty in India, but coming from a popular educator, it is scary. 

Not so clever wordplay

The sammaan-samaan distinction isn’t new or rare. The viral clip is drawn from one of Khan Sir’s online lectures, in which he attempts to distinguish between Indian women and European women. The spirit, one presumes, is Mera Bharat Mahaan. However, the execution shows the not-so-mahaan mindset. 

European women, he explains, lack natural beauty, which is why they resort to wearing revealing clothing in order to look attractive. Indian women, by contrast, are naturally beautiful, and because of this innate beauty, they do not need to display their bodies. They wear sarees and suits. And it is this modesty, this restraint, that earns them sammaan. The others, by implication, become samaan.

In attempting to celebrate Indian women, Khan Sir has managed to degrade women on two continents simultaneously. He has told European women they are naturally unattractive. He has told Indian women their worth lies in their clothing choices. And he has told everyone watching that a woman’s body, what she chooses to cover or not cover, is the appropriate unit of measurement for her dignity as a human being.

To anchor his argument, Khan Sir uses the example of Goddess Sita. She is always depicted in a saree, and we instinctively call her Sita Maa — the respect arises from within, prompted by her modesty of dress. However, Khan Sir conveniently forgot about Draupadi, another saree-clad woman, who was dragged into a royal court by her hair and publicly stripped before an assembly of kings, elders, and warriors.

Why Khan Sir’s viral video on women deserves to be addressed

What makes Khan Sir’s statement more problematic is that he is not just another man. He is arguably one of the most influential educators in contemporary India. And that comes with a lot of responsibility because what he says is absorbed and acted upon by his students. Milgram’s experiment has proven that people obey authority figures over their conscience. Thousands of young students encounter ideas about the world primarily through his videos. For these students, Khan is that authority figure. 

Perhaps the most painful dimension of this moment is one that his own supporters have documented with pride: the Raksha Bandhan celebrations. In 2025, Khan Sir organised a large Raksha Bandhan event in Patna where thousands of students participated and young girls tied rakhi on his wrist, an act of extraordinary trust, a declaration that you are my protector. And this is what he says about women.

One has to ask: in his taxonomy, which category do they fall into? The ones who tied him rakhi — do they earn their sammaan by virtue of that gesture? What happens when they grow up? What happens when they travel abroad or wear something he does not approve of? Do they slide from sammaan to samaan? 

Khan Sir has been a champion of girls’ education. While that’s a great thing, his current statement takes us back to the troubling reality — most people will talk about women’s empowerment as long as it stays within the limits they like. 

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