With the defeat of the armies of the Lahore Darbar in 1849, the East India Company (EIC) took over in March of that year. In the Shahi Hammam inside Delhi Gate they set up their first court. Their three priorities were firstly, security, then agriculture, and then education.

This piece concentrates on just how they tackled education in Lahore, and the Punjab. The EIC and colonial British rulers were not geared for education. But their traditional British education was then, and still largely remains, dependent on Christian missionaries. But first a few words about pre-EIC rule and education.

Famed educationalist, Dr G.W. Leitner, in his amazing research titled “History of Indigenous Education in the Punjab”, tells us of the Punjab having lost about a third of its native educational capacity, from 330,000 pupil or student places, before 1857, to about 190,000, in 1880. The basic education of girls and women was also apparently surprisingly catered for, with 18 formal schools for girls in Lahore alone. Cunningham’s ‘History of the Sikhs’ claim that women had a better basic education then men.

The reason for this was that Maharaja Ranjit Singh loved to receive letters. To communicate one had to send him a letter. Thus, he made it compulsory for everyone to be able to write a letter, leading to a policy where ‘every village in the Punjab, through the tehsildar, had an ample supply of the Punjabi ‘Qaida’, which was compulsory for females’. Thus, almost every Punjabi woman was literate in the sense that she could read and write the ‘Lunde’ form of Gurmukhi.

Come the British and the Punjabi-educated elite virtually disappeared, largely because of attempts to introduce English to the elite and Urdu for the masses.

Prof. Leitner wrote: “As a result of British actions, ‘the true education of the Punjab was crippled, checked and nearly destroyed.’”

In such circumstances the very first English-medium school in the whole of the northern sub-continent was set up by two American missionaries named Charles William Forman and John Newton on Dec 19, 1849 as Lahore Mission School. It was the first English-medium school in northern India at the time of its establishment, and the first classes of the school were started under a tree with three students.

The EIC informed the priests that Punjabi was not to be taught, a stricture they initially ignored.

Very soon the number of students grew to seven and as the classes expanded under the tree, the two Americans just could not stand the heat of the sun. In 1850 with record heat of the EIC soldiers then quartered in the Lahore Fort, almost 10 per cent of them died of heat stroke and malaria. Newton returned to recover in America, while Forman decided to live in the tomb of Nusrat Khan in Mughalpura.

The school was later shifted to Haveli Rang Mahal in 1852, in a huge mansion previously owned by Saadullah Khan, a wazir of Emperor Shah Jahan. It was officially acquired by the mission to establish a school, named the Rang Mahal Mission School.

This very first English-medium school of Lahore, and the Punjab, started off under the administration of the Presbyterian Education Trust. Forman decided that only good scientific education would be of use, and he ordered $600 worth of scientific equipment. So Rang Mahal School had the Punjab’s finest scientific laboratory.

By 1854 the school had become famous and with its amazing science laboratory it had 200 students. Along with mathematics all students had to study the Bible. In the spirit of fairness, the Rang Mahal School got printed the very first Punjabi dictionary. This was to meet the linguistic needs of the local population.

In those day the Company clerks from Delhi and Bengal had not yet asserted their Urdu influence. The missionaries also translated a lot of European books into Hindi, Urdu and Persian. In 1864 the American missionaries set up the Forman Christian College (FCC) at the Rang Mahal school building, but then shifted it to Napier Road in 1889, and then to its current location alongside the Lahore Canal in 1940.

Parallel to this missionary effort the British rulers decided that it was best that the finest British government educational institutions be tapped to set up in Lahore. Towards that end they advertised for a scholar to set up Lahore’s Government College, and in 1864 Prof G.W. Leitner, an outstanding linguist was selected from Kings College London to: ‘educate Indian students to serve the colonial administration in important positions’.

The Government College was set up in 1864 in the Haveli of Dhian Singh inside the walled city of Lahore. In 1873 it shifted to the ‘kothi’ of Rahim Khan. In 1876 it moved to its present building, which was built next to the Ranjit Singh ‘horse coach’ building that today is known as the college’s gymnasium. Prof. G.W. Leitner was the first principal.

So, we see that the American Presbyterian missionaries of the USA launched the very first English-medium school of Lahore, as also of the Punjab as also of the whole of northern sub-continent. These missionaries went on to set up the very first English-language college, which they still manage.

The British rulers believed that a much more neutral college was needed, and so Prof G.W. Leitner set off founding not only the Government College of Lahore, but also the Oriental College and then in 1882 the Punjab University. He was the university’s first registrar.

A year later a school named the Central Model School was opened, initially in Anarkali, but later a building to one side of the Central Training College became the present school in 1891. Parallel to this government effort, another Catholic school, the St. Anthony’s High School, was set up in 1892 by the Capuchin Friars from Belgium whose patron saint was St. Anthony of Padua. It started with three students on Empress Road where Don Bosco is today. In 1900 it shifted to its present Lawrence Road site. In 1978 it was handed over to the Irish Marist Fathers.

Prof. Leitner was able to achieve his reforms largely because he was considered an outsider, for he was a white European of Hungarian origin. He was able to speak 50 languages, and while travelling through Muslim countries he named himself as ‘Abdur Rashid Sayyah’. He learnt the Quran by heart and wrote three books on Islam which are considered masterpieces.

At this point let me narrate an incident in which this column suggested that ‘Katchery Road’ be rename Leitner Road, for on both sides of the road are his creations, they are the GC Lahore, the Oriental College, and the Punjab University.

In the Punjab Assembly Rana Sanaullah opposed the suggestion claiming he has nothing to do with Islam. This columnist retorted that Britain’s first mosque – the Woking Mosque – was built by Prof. Leitner, and our column suggested that he should read the scholarly book ‘History of Islam’ by Leitner. The Rana went silent. One hopes he has read those amazing books.

So, while the pioneering first English-language school at Rang Mahal, and its off-shoot the Forman Christian College, stuck to its English medium way of education, the Government College Lahore under Leitner concentrated on languages and literature, and later in sciences, it reflected the days to come.

Leitner believed the best learning comes about if local languages and its culture are central to all educational efforts. He said: “We must raise the spirit of self-reliance among the Natives”. This the British rulers did not like who were bent on eradicating the Punjabi language. That effort the colonial-trained bureaucrats of a free Pakistan continue to follow.

From the first English-language school set up by American missionaries in the year that the Sikh rule ended in 1849 to today 175 years later we have more ‘madressah’ schools teaching Arabic as given in the Quran. There is not a single local language school. Women are discouraged from reading any ‘Qaida’. The original Mission School of Rang Mahal now run by the government, has only 10 teachers and a handful of students. The tragedy is clear.

Published in Dawn, April 21st, 2024