How a 100-year-old women’s college is a testament to Karachi’s inclusivity

Minority communities have made immense contributions to Karachi’s education and health sectors – from the iconic Bai Virbaijee Soparivala (BVS) and Mama Parsi schools to Saint Patrick’s and Saint Joseph’s schools and colleges, to Lady Dufferin, Holy Family and Seventh Day Adventist hospitals.

However, while the Parsi and Christian communities have earned acclaim and recognition for their work, the contributions of the Hindu community have largely remained overlooked. This largely comes down to what can only be described as a systematic omission of their services from the country’s history by seemingly innocuous acts, such as renaming the educational institutes they built or renaming streets named after eminent Hindu personalities.

The Government College for Women Shahrah-e-Liaquat located on Burns Road – Karachi’s famous food street – is one such example. Established a century ago in 1917 as Vasant Pathshala School, the college is a great reminder of the glorious pre-Partition memories of a Karachi that was not yet deeply divided along religious or ethnic lines.

Ironically, very few Karachiites know about the long history of this college, probably because its name has been changed some four times over the hundred years of its existence. But the building holds sufficient records which show how the city’s older dwellers cared about imparting education, especially to young girls.

A century of history

According to the plaques fixed on the school’s [now college’s] walls, Vasant Pathshala School was founded in 1917 by Hirdaram Mewaram and Jamshed Nusserwanji Metha, and that both Muslim and Hindu community members donated generously for the school’s construction.

A worship place, the Guru Nanik Darbar, was built in the school by SH Totibai Gobindar Mirani.

In 1920, it was merged with Carneiro Indian Girls High School set up by the then Additional Judicial Commissioner of Sindh Rupchand Bilaram. A new building was constructed for the school in the same premises a few years later. Co-founder of Vasant Patshala Jamsheed Nusserwanji Metha laid the foundation on December 20, 1930. Construction was completed within three years in 1933.

In 1936, another educational institute, Vishindevi Naraindas Maha Kenya Vidyalaya Inter College, was also established in the same premises and continued to function along with Indian Girls High School till Partition.

According to 2010 edition of Horizon, a magazine published by the Government College for Women, the Female Education Society in Karachi was formed in 1917, which laid the foundation for the Vasant Pathshala School. Donations and grants from the government and the municipality of Karachi helped run the school.

Once the school was set up, the teaching staff led by Miss Sybil D’Abreo, who founded the historic Jufelhurst school, was sent to Bombay College in present-day Mumbai to obtain a diploma in teacher training. The teachers not only served at Vasant Pathshala School but also contributed as main donors to upgrade it to college level.

However, after Partition the institution remained closed for a couple years until the Pakistani government decided to reopen it as a college, which began functioning on June 1, 1949. At that time, it was the first girls’ college under the administrative control of the Pakistani government’s Ministry of Education. It was then called the Central Government College for Women, Karachi.

Sonia Gandhi, who has been teaching at the college since 2011, said pre-Partition Karachi residents were not divided by their religion. They struggled hard to educate the girls in the Subcontinent as is evident by the fact that both Hindus and Muslims donated to the school.

In a way, the women [who had set up the Vasant Pathshala School] took part in the independence movement by educating people by setting up schools, said Sonia.

According to her, Zeenat Rasheed Ahmed was appointed as the first principal of the college through the Federal Public Service Commission of Pakistan. When she [Zeenat] took charge of the college there was only one peon, all teachers had left the country and there were no students as well, said Sonia. The principal then appointed 17 teachers and gave admission to 150 students by urging their parents to send their daughters for a college education.

Hundreds of locals as well as some 25 foreign students from Iran, Germany, Sri Lanka also attended the college up until the 1970s, said Sonia.

Zeenat served as principal for a collective 27 years; by the time she left there were 50 teachers and 2,000 students, as per the college’s records. She also set up a branch of the same college in Nazimabad in 1968. For her services, Zeenat was awarded the Tamgha-e-Quaid-e-Azam and Sitara-e-Kidmat by the Pakistani government and numerous shields by private organisations.

The college was brought under the provincial government’s administration in 1961 and renamed Government College for Women. Since then, it has been administered by the Directorate of College Education. The college is currently offering commerce, science and arts studies up to degree level. It is among Karachi’s largest educational institutions with 4,620 enrolled students and 80 faculty members.

Overlooked contributions

The city’s Hindu community had set up hundreds of educational institutes before Partition, but unfortunately, over the years, the names of these places have been changed or their premises have been occupied by other communities, said Goswami Kanti, Incharge of Dharamshala at Shri Swaminarayan Mandir.

According to Kanti, Vasant Pathshala was basically a religious school, while some of its Muslim founding members including Nasrat Haroon and K B Abdul Sattar also contributed to its construction.

“In the pre-partition era both the Muslim and Hindu communities were struggling to educate people without discrimination with the common goal of winning independence from the British,” he said.

Kanti lamented that while Pakistani students now mostly know about the Muslim educationists who had set up educational institutes in India, Hindu educationists and philanthropists who served the country by establishing institutes such as NJV School or DJ Science College have been largely forgotten after Pakistan’s creation.

“There is not even a single line written in the current curriculum about them,” he said. According to Prof Dr Syed Muhammad Taha, the chairman of Karachi University’s History Department, Karachi’s Parsi and Hindu communities established a number of educational institutions including DJ Science College, NJV School, NED University and some other prestigious institutions. But as new migrants, largely Muslims, poured in, the names of these institutions began to be changed.

He recalled that his mother had told him that Karachi Zoo was originally called Gandhi Gardens; it was renamed after Partition. “After the creation of Pakistan, the state in an unnecessary manner promoted Islamism which led the authorities and migrants to rename roads, institutions and neighbourhoods named after non-Muslims,” he said. “It is very unethical to erase the real history [of a place].”