As the gateway to Kashmir, GilgitBaltistan and China, Haripur has, since the 14th century, been strategically important for the invading forces of Mughal, Turk, Afghan and Sikh rulers. Before British rule, the Sikhs were the last to rule the area from 1818 to 1849 and declared Haripur town, one of the important administrative units of Pakhli Sarkar, Hazara Karlugh and Hazara, the headquarter of Sikh forces.

Sardar Hari Singh Nalwa, then governor of Kashmir, conquered this area, quelling the unrest orchestrated by local tribal chieftains. He later built Harkishan Garh Fort in 1822 and Raja Ranjeet Singh renamed the town Haripur after Hari Singh Nalwa, as a reward of his gallantry and gains. The Sikhs built a number of temples and an irrigation system known as Rangeela in Haripur, but did not make great strides in education.

After the fall of the Khalsa Raj, a sizeable Sikh population stayed on in Haripur and felt the need for a separate school system for the Sikh children. Their dreams were realised after six and a half decades, when Sikh philanthropist Bhai Lakshmi Das (also known as Lakshmi Chand) established the Khalsa High School in 1913. Its majestic building continues to serve as a beacon of light for education, courtesy financial contributions of the Sikh community.

FROM SCHOOL TO TEACHER TRAINING

The Chief Commissioner of the erstwhile North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), J.S Donald, laid the foundation stone of the school on November 6, 1913, and its first headmaster was a Sehajdhari Sikh, Sardar Mohan Singh. After the creation of Pakistan, on September 22, 1947, it was renamed as the New Government High School and the late Allama Abul Khair was appointed as its headmaster. On May 27, 1952, it was upgraded as a teachers training school and renamed asthe Regional Professional Development Centre (RPDC); it continues to cater to the needs of trainee teachers from different cadres.

RPDC principal Abdul Quddus Azad says that, between 1951 to 2022,theKhalsa school has trained at least 5,000 teachers, whose students, by a rough calculation, run into the hundreds of thousands. This has all been possible courtesy of the Sikhs philanthropic contribution.

Azad says that, currently, 100 teachers from Hazara division are receiving training while, during the next phase starting next year, about 1,000 teachers of different cadres, including sub divisional and district education officers, would be attending a nine-month training.

A MULTI-FAITH SPACE

Dr Harbans Lal, a US-based senior pharmacologist/neuroscientist who was born in Haripur and studied in this school, wrote about his alma mater in an article published online by the Academy of the Punjab in North America.

“When the Sikh school of Haripur was still a dream, Bhai Lakshmi Das, an Abbottabad based Sehajdhari Sikh businessman, won a contract to build railway tracks in the district [Hazara] and the project not only brought huge profit to him but provided sizeable stockpiles of the leftover material for the school building. He not only built the school but also furnished and partially funded its later running. As a reward for his services, the managing board named the institution asLakshmi Das Khalsa High School.”

He also writes that “a large room of the school was designated as a gurdwara. Half an hour before the classes started, everyone was required to come to school for a prayer. Sikh students, including Sehajdhari Sikh students, attended the gurdwara.”

Dr Lal wrote about a peaceful period of coexistence in the area: “Very few Hindu students said their prayers in the drawing room designated for this purpose. Muslim students, who were in [a] majority, lined up in front of the stairs entering the school veranda, to sing an Urdu prayer praising God’s greatness. They perhaps would sing a poem of Dr Muhammad Iqbal. A couple of times I joined Hindu students in their prayer and a few times I was with my Muslim friends during their prayer period.”

Apart from a number of Sikhs who rose to prominence in Indian politics later, there were some prominent Muslim alumni as well. Gen Ayub Khan, who hailed from Rehana village in Haripur, was earlier enrolled in the Government School Sera-i-Saleh and migrated to Khalsa near Darwesh, his maternal grandparents village.

Gen Ayub briefly mentioned in his book Friends Not Masters why he chose to transfer to the Khalsa School. There were, in fact, two other prominent schools for boys in Haripur: the Government High School, also known as the Islamia High School — now renamed as the Government Centennial Model Higher Secondary School No 1 — and the Sanatan Dharam High School, now renamed as the Government Higher Secondary School No 2. The latter was built by a Hindu woman philanthropist, Shirimati Narain Devi, in the memory of her late husband Pandit Hiranand and its prominent alumni include the former federal finance minister Sartaj Aziz, the poet Qateel Shifai and the former principal of the College of Community Medicine in Lahore and author of several books, Dr M.A. Soofi.

But prominent Muslim families often chose to send their children to Sikh educational institutions because of their high educational standards. It is perhaps because of the influence of the Khalsa School and his Sikh schoolmates that Gen Ayub Khan had a soft corner for Sikhs. A paragraph from his book is worth quoting:

“The school was run by Sikhs and the teachers were very kindly and considerate, except for the master Sujhan Singh, who was a Tartar… Sikhs were large-hearted people. I found their rituals and their songs in Punjabi absorbing.”

GEN AYUB AND THE SIKHS

Justifying the perception that Gen Ayub Khan had a soft corner for the Sikhs, Dr Lal wrote: “It was at Haripur that Sikh students founded the unit of the All India Sikh Students Federation (AISSF), and it is a fact actually owing to Ayub Khan’s persistent pleas for educated Sikhs to organise and help their community in the challenging circumstances that would follow when the British would leave India”.

However, Dr Lal stopped short of saying how Ayub Khan motivated the Sikhs to organise and found the AISSF in 1944, while he was still serving in the British Indian Army. He does go on to write that, “In 1944, a meeting was held in the orchard adjoining the school where the Sikh Students Federation was founded. Besides me, there were four other students who were its founding members: Manmohan Singh Kohli, Gurbachan Singh, Harbans Singh Nanda and Harbhajan Singh. We drafted a news item to send to the Sikh press. Soon after the news was published, Dr Gopal Singh Dardi, who edited and published the first-ever English Sikh weekly, The Liberator, wrote to us about the AISSF being formed in Lahore. We immediately responded [that we would] become the Hazara Unit of that AISSF.

Seth Khalid Mehmood, the former Haripur president of the Pakistan Muslim League Quaid-i-Azam (PML-Q), recounts that, during the early months of 1958 when Ayub Khan was Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Army, he visited his hometown accompanying then President Sikandar Mirza and his wife Naheed.

“They went straight to the Khalsa School, where Ayub boastfully told the dignitaries and the school’s staff that he used to be a student of this school.”

HARIPUR ONCE A SYMBOL OF INTERFAITH HARMONY

Talking to Eos, Seth Khalid endorses Dr Harbans Lal’s views about interfaith harmony, adding that there was an immensely cordial relationship between Muslims and the minorities. They would interact frequently every day in markets, bazaars, schools and public places, visit each other’s houses as a gesture of goodwill, and doctors of one faith would see patients of the other and so on.

The city administration was Muslim but Dr Beli Ram, father of Dr Harbans Lal, was chairman of the Municipal Committee and Seth Khalid’s paternal grandfather, Seth Gohar Rehman, was vice chairman in 1943.

Unfortunately, nearing Independence and Partition, Haripur saw an interfaith bloodbath that fractured this once amicable relationship.

Dr Lal recounts how violence broke out in Haripur in 1945 and how the “political [temperature] began to boil to a very dangerous level that impinged upon the amicable relationship between various religious communities of Haripur.”

In his article ‘Microcosm of Sikh Multifaith Life’, Dr Lal writes how, for the first time in Haripur’s history, a procession in honor of Guru Gobind Singh’s birth anniversary was attacked by some Muslim hooligans from the surrounding villages. While there were no injuries, it created bitter memories. Muslims assured Sikhs they would provide protection should any untoward event occur again but, the following winter, men armed with machetes, knives, axes and stones attacked the Sikh procession from several directions. Local Muslims evaded the mob themselves but alerted their non-Muslim neighbours about the advancing mob; they also advised Sikhs where to hide and how to protect themselves from the oncoming assault.

Dr Lal writes that, after entering Haripur, the mob went into a frenzied spree of looting and burning non-Muslim properties, burning a gurdwara, and murdering priest Granthi Bhai Tara Singh while he was reading the Sri Guru Granth Sahib. A woman priest named Mai Dhanwanti was visiting from a neighbouring gurdwara allocated exclusively for women to the Guru Nanak Satsang Gurdwara, to serve during the Akhand Paath (reading of Sikh Scripture).

She exhibited courage by preventing a stop in the recital and started reading the scripture herself. The very next day, according to Dr Lal, the locals were able to control the situation. Muslims joined their non-Muslim neighbours in offering prayers for forgiveness. They brought food and supply for those who suffered injuries and other losses.

Seth Khalid also shares stories his father and other family members narrated about how Sikhs and Hindus were attacked and deprived of valuables in different localities of Haripur during the communal riots of 1947.

“We have spent decades with them [Sikhs and Hindus] enjoying socio-cultural relations, but the moments of parting ways with them left irremovable scars,” he laments.

“When a vast majority of Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims were illiterate and there were no schools, colleges and universities, they enjoyed very cordial relations,” says Indian poet and journalist from Faridabad, Jyoti Sang, whose mother was from Abbottabad and father from Haripur.

“Now the education level and wisdom have improved to a certain extent, but the centuries-old bonds of mutual respect and love are on the decline. We have to find out who is behind all this.”

Sang speaks Hindko fluently and loves to talk in his parents’ language. He shares two Urdu couplets from his own poetry:

Neela hai falak iss taraf, neela hi udhar hai/ Hum panchhiyon ko phir bhala kya khauf o khatar hai [The sky is blue on both sides of the border / Then why should birds like us be afraid]

Topon ke yeh taajir ao siyasat ke madari/ Hain waqt ke mujrim yeh idhar hain ya udhar hain [These dealers of arms and political showboats/ They are the culprits of the time, whether on this side of the border or that].

He isn’t alone in reminiscing about better times between religious communities in Haripur.

Amarnath Baghi, the editor of the weekly Urdu newspaper Sher-i-Sarhad that was later renamed Sher-i-Hariyana and changed to a Hindi-language publication in 1970 was also a resident of Haripur once and also confirms the cordial relations between Muslims and people of other faiths.

KHALSA HIGH SCHOOL BUILDING

The building of the RPDC still known as the Khalsa High School is located at a conspicuous point on the side of GT Road in the city. The school’s academic block covers 9.14 kanals [4,624 sq metres] of land and has two opening verandas. Three large arches assisted by two smaller arches welcome visitors entering from the main gate. Three rooms inside the opening veranda function as offices.

The backyard veranda, with at least 18 arches, opens into a grass-filled courtyard and has five classrooms and a large hall, once used as a Gurdwara.

The backyard veranda represents a typical British colonial structure, based on columns, segmental arches with parapets, and topped by a running series of merlons in the shape of bars and geometrical designs. The roof of the academic block houses two rooms meant for the headmaster’s residence, but are now used as an art gallery. The watershoots fitted on the roof of the academic block are in the shape of a lion’s head with an open mouth.

The adjacent Shibli Hostel building, on 4.8 kanals [2,428 sq metres] of land has 10 rooms and two halls. The doors and windows ventilators represent segmental arches and cusped arches typical of the British era. The hostel building has two entrance gates that open on the western side; one is wooden, while the second, which opens on the eastern side facing the playground, is made of iron.

“The height of the roofs and the thickness of the walls, wooden-cum-glass ventilators, windows and wide doors, allow unblocked sunlight and air throughout the day,” says Dr Shakir Ullah Khan, chairman of the Department of Archaeology at Hazara University.

“That shows the building engineers approved the plan keeping in mind the weather conditions and the rainfall pattern during winter and summer. That’s why its rooms are cool in summer and warm in winter.”

The building has, in fact, survived earthquakes, including the devastating 2005 one and suffered hardly a single crack because the engineers erected the structure using the rules of geometry.

ENCROACHMENT AND APATHY

The Sir Syed Hostel, which has 50 rooms with a capacity of accommodating 200 teachers, is also the property of the Khalsa School. However, in 2003, the provincial government handed over the building to the Frontier Education Foundation, which then opened a women’s college that was later relocated to Khanpur. In 2018, the provincial government again declared the hostel’s building as the Government Girls Degree College No 2.

In front of the two hostelsis a playground over an area of 14.1 kanals [7,133 sq metres], which the then headmaster, Sardar Mohan Singh, had purchased in 1927 from the District Board Hazara, against the payment of Rs 2,775, or 25 percent of the total cost of the land.

The ground still has the remains of a five single-room housing unit called the serai. It used to serve as a transit point for bullcarts and their drivers travelling to and from Kashmir. During the lockdown, the Tehsil Municipal Administration partially occupied the ground by establishing shops for a Sasta [Fair Value] Bazaar.

Although the academic block needs very little maintenance, the roof of the Shibli Hostel leaks during rains and cannot be used for the boarding trainees, unless repaired. During the forthcoming training programme, the 10 rooms of the hostel will not be able to accommodate teachers from eight districts, without handing over the charge of Sir Syed Hostel, says principal Azad.

He says at least Rs 5 million is required for the repair and maintenance of the hostel.

Commenting on the condition of the Khalsa School’s building, the retired Sub-Divisional Officer Education Javed Iqbal points out it was due to the efforts of the Sikh and Hindu communities that the Muslim community got the Khalsa High School and the Sanatan Dharam High School.

“In return we defaced their buildings, occupied them forcibly and encroached upon them, instead of preserving them in their true shape and design,” he says.

Section 2 (b) (ii) of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Antiquities Act 2016 de!nes antiquity as any ancient product of human activity which has been in existence for a period of not less than 100 years. It includes any building or site of cultural, historical, social, religious, architectural, ethnographical, anthropological, military orscienti!c interest. Under this law, the archaeology department is bound to preserve and protect the British era monument that is the Khalsa School.

Dr Shakir Ullah discloses that the Department of Archaeology at Hazara University, the Directorate of Archaeology KP and Leicester University in the UK are currently working on a three-year joint project aimed at registering and rehabilitating and preserving precisely these kind of buildings.

The writer is a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa-based journalist and tweets @MSadqat