I am grateful to Dr Turab Hussain for allowing me to say a few words before our dinner.
As some of you may know, I served as Principal here from 2009-2012. The association of our Fakir family, though, goes back to earliest days of College. The first Fakir to be enrolled was Fakir Jalaluddin who won the Lyall medal.
I wrote the history of our college to mark its centenary in 1986 and then another in 2011 to commemorate its 125th anniversary.
It is a special honour to be here this evening to celebrate Aitchison’s 140th anniversary. It is almost twice as old as our country. Hopefully, one will be around to celebrate its 150th birthday.
What distinguishes Aitchison as an institution is not age, but the values it has inculcated in generations of its pupils over the centuries.
It has succeeded not because it has persevered, not because it has survived, but because it is a symbol of what is best in our country.
Over the years, Aitchison has had many clones – Yadvindra Public School across the border in Patiala, Sadiq Public school in Bahawalpur, and a more recent imitator. Few though have demonstrated the resilience, the staying power, or the adaptability of Aitchison.
Our latest principal Dr. Turab Hussain is doing wonders to modernise our college, to equip teachers to teach not what they themselves know but what students ought to know, and to prepare its pupils for a world in which we already live, and they will have to.
Few of us may be around to celebrate Aitchison’s bicentenary in 2086. Our great-grandchildren will.
What we should pledge here, tonight, is the resolve to return to Aitchison multiples of what we have gained from it.
In 1936, on the occasion of Aitchison’s 50th anniversary, Mr. Charles Barry said in his speech at the banquet held in this very Main building: ‘’There is something even higher than the aristocracy of birth; it is the aristocracy of service’.
We need to remind ourselves of that today, just as our forebears pledged themselves to do in this very hall years ago.
F. S. AIJAZUDDIN
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