| “Boys in Lahore go to one of two schools,” a principal explained once. “They go either to Aitcheson College or to some other school.” Although he had not intended his remark to be taken in an entirely positive way (he lamented that parents tended to regard his school in the latter category), his analysis implied that things had improved since independence, when everyone admitted going only to Aitchison. |
| Before 1947, Aitchison College had been a 176 acre preserve of privilege, and enclosed sanctuary in which the turbaned sons of the princes and elite of the Punjab were allowed to roam, carefully supervised by house-tutors and games-keepers. The stringent criteria for admission applied since its foundation in 1886 had restricted the rolls to uneconomic levels, at times bringing the school swimmingly close to insolvency. Over the yeas these rules had been relaxed, allowing places reserved for families whose names appeared in Lepel and Griffin’s ‘Chiefs and Families of Note in the Punjab’ (the Who’s Who of anyone still someone in the Punjab and of those who had nothing left to boast of but their names) to be gradually taken up by boys with more talent than breeding. In its first term after Pakistan’s independence in 1947, following the exodus of the Hindus and the Sikhs from the Punjab, the school became like the rest of country overtly Muslim in purpose. |
Published in THE NATION 24 Sept. 1992, and reprinted in THE ARMLESS QUEEN. |
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