GENTEEL or upper-crust Lahore is reported to be in a state of titillation if not of minor shock as a result of recent events in Kinnaird College for Women — “an institution of historic and qualitative importance in the life of the nation”, as an op-ed in the Daily Times puts it.

The events in question revolve around the sudden removal of Principal Ira Hasan from her post and her replacement, temporary as Lahore was given to understand, by the redoubtable Mira Phailbus who was principal before Ira for 32 years.

Let me say at the outset, we are dealing with a cast of formidable characters. Mira was not only principal for all those years but as my journalist-colleague Zafar Iqbal Mirza (ZIM to his friends) once told me, she was also quite a stunner (his actual words somewhat more vivid but let discretion be the better part of valour). Kinnaird incumbency plus the stun factor made for a powerful combination and ensured Mira a permanent place in the guest list of Governor’s House and suchlike resorts of the temporarily mighty. Indeed, governors came and went, KC principal remained the same.

As for Ira, she taught English in Kinnaird for over 30 years and by all accounts was an outstanding teacher. Mid-2004 she became principal and it was thought that like her predecessor she too would have a long innings. As we have seen, that was not to be.

The story being put out by the anti-Ira camp is that while she may have been a great teacher, she was not necessarily a sound administrator. While toying half-heartedly with the idea of writing this piece I called up a few people in Lahore and got a somewhat different picture. I was given to understand that Ira stepped on some powerful toes. Let me explain.

Once upon a time Kinnaird was the stuff of Pakistani male fantasy. Supposed to have the brightest girls, in studies and in looks, it was only natural for boys stepping into adolescence — and remember Lahore before partition and well after was the quintessential college town, boasting some of the finest colleges in the whole of north India — to weave romance around the very name of Kinnaird, wondering what exquisite mysteries lay behind its high walls. Confident, smart and full of chic, the girls lived up to this reputation.

But just as from the 1970s onwards the smart boys’ colleges in Lahore, Government College and Forman Christian College (the latter General Musharraf’s alma mater), fell on hard times, in the process losing much of their academic sheen, academic standards in Kinnaird too declined in recent years. It still had the name and the reputation but some of the magic had gone.

Not that this was Mira Phailbus’s fault. She was a good head of the institution but her empire, and it was that, had lasted for too long and, as even with the best of things, it was perhaps time for a change. Enter Ira Hasan (incidentally, wife to Masood Hasan, the well-known columnist — as I said, formidable cast).

Abida Hussain, as in ‘Chandi’, ex-MNA and federal minister, despot of Shah Jewna, her village, and Fakhar Imam, her husband — speaking to me on the phone, I heard her saying, “Fakhar, there’s someone at the door” and no doubt Fakhar went to the door — calls Ira one of nature’s “innocents”: superb teacher but innocent of guile and intrigue. She was serious about discipline, always an uncomfortable thing to bring back once some of it is lost. More alarmingly, she also appeared serious about financial bungling. (lest despot give the wrong impression, let me hasten to add that Chandi, by universal acclaim, was second to none as far as the stun factor was concerned.)

It is alleged the college gave “lucrative” building contracts to a practising husband-wife team of architects. There’s nothing wrong with this except that the wife, who is the principal of another institution, was also a member of Kinnaird board of governors, a small detail which invites charges of conflict of interest. In trying to investigate some of these contracts, Ira was stepping, or so it is alleged, on some powerful and sensitive toes, the most sensitive in this case being that of the lady just mentioned.

Having decided on action, the board of governors met in a hurry, without giving seven days’ notice to the Punjab Education Department as I am told it should have, and a day before Eid axed Ira and brought back Mira (you can’t miss the rhyme) as temporary replacement. Ira of course was far from amused and genteel Lahore, taking the goings-on in KC very personally, was outraged. Such things happened elsewhere, not KC — “an institution of historic and qualitative importance...” as I have already quoted from a column by the fetching Navid Shahzad, herself an English teacher and one-time TV personality of no little fame.

There have been other comments and columns too in Lahore’s English-language papers (Kinnaird not quite figuring on the Urdu horizon). Lahore is the hub of Punjab politics, alas no longer of national politics, that distinction having been usurped by Islamabad. But even in a country sprinkled all over with history, it remains Pakistan’s most historical city, being one of the great cities of the Mughal Empire.

But there is more to Lahore than this. There are now two Lahores: one the centre of the ideology-of-Pakistan industry, more nonsense in the name of this nebulous philosophy being spouted in its various lecture halls than any other city in the country; the other genteel Lahore, the bastion of a waning and faint-hearted secularism.

Faint-hearted because genteel Lahore while, say, knowing how to party during Basant and being a great place for such NGO causes as mixed marathons, hasn’t stuck its neck out for anything more substantive during the last 30 years of its existence. No wonder affluent Lahore has hastened to the support of every military dictator, Musharraf included. (How the fond hopes of some of his early admirers turned to dust is of course subject for another story.)

Be that as it may, what happens in Kinnaird or Aitchison, or now LUMS, is of burning concern to Lahore’s well-heeled denizens, its English-speaking core, but not, alas, to its outlying parts. Such is the way of the world, Harvard and Yale, Oxford and Cambridge, appealing the most to their own constituencies. Who’s bothered if something happens to the headmistress of Government Girls High School, Santnagar? But since it is the wages of privilege we are speaking of, what happens to the Kinnaird principal becomes a matter of huge public importance.

There are other interesting aspects to this affair too. This being Kinnaird, the approval for Ira’s removal had to come from the Punjab chief minister, Pervaiz Elahi. But from what I gather he acted in good faith, being told by the board of governors in breathless tones that the Ravi would catch fire if Ira stayed a moment longer as principal. So although, as I am told, the chief secretary, a cultivated man, murmured his dissent, saying it was the wrong thing to do, Ira was summarily removed.

As it happens — and I want to put this as delicately as possible — this is largely a Christian affair. Both Mira and Ira are Christians and there is a heavy Christian presence on the board of governors. The Chairman of the Board is Bishop Alexander John Malik. Suppose this was some Islamic foundation, we would say, what else do you expect? I find it vaguely comforting that a closer Anglo-Saxon connection is no bar to making a mess of things.

Furthermore, like in all good thrillers, there is said to be a Yank factor in this story too, the word going round that for some reason, unfathomable to me at least, the American ambassador also was interested in the return of Mira Phailbus. What on earth for? But there it is, charges being made that both sides have powerful foreign backers.

One thing is clear: Ira’s axing was summary, much too quick and for the haziest of reasons. This alone is enough to show that she has been hard done by. Is there any chance of the chief minister having second thoughts and re-examining the issue?