Prince of the princes: Shamim Saifullah Khan

There was little in my time at Aitchison that felt as rewarding as my leaving of it. “Tell me about Aitchison. Tell me how we can be better. And not for your type – you will succeed in spite of Aitchison – I want to know if we’re helping boys who really need the support.”

Shamim Saifullah Khan had just taken over as principal in late 1994 and wanted to speak to “his boys”. This, in and of itself, was extraordinary. The principal, in my decade plus pupilship, was a mystical figure, removed from the students, an oracle who showed up at select events and sat silently for team pictures. The notion of him engaging with his students – of wanting to know what they thought – felt revolutionary.

A memorial service for Shamim S Khan, who passed away on June 12, 2022 at the age of [86], is being held today at Aitchison College in the eponymous Shamim Khan Hall.

Born in [Charsadda] in [1936] into a well-known Pashtun clan – he was the grandson of Dr Khan Sahib, the former chief minister of West Pakistan, and the great-nephew of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan or Bacha Khan – Shamim Khan obtained his early schooling locally after which he enrolled in Aitchison College, Lahore. From Aitchison, he went on to the United Kingdom and to Cambridge University.

After a successful career as an educationist and administrator in England, Shamim Khan returned to Pakistan and his alma mater for the role of a lifetime. To the patrician Pathan – the “Prince”, as we came to reverentially call him – principal of Aitchison College was a role that was to be visibly relished, acting in loco parentis of boys (and alas only boys) who for decades have had first dibs on the running of the nation.

But reverence for the school did not translate to a fixation with orthodoxy. He was determined to shake things up after Pakistan’s culturally and intellectually subdued 80s and early 90s.

Down came the walls between the Prince and his pupils. Up went expectations of their potential. Where once the school magazine was a tame vehicle subject to strict content control – as editors, we had no input into layout or cover design that routinely featured bland images of the school’s newest construction – a new era of creativity exploded. Not only were Aitchisonian editors given the leeway to own production end-to-end, but competition was encouraged and brilliant (and brilliantly subversive) new publications such as The Aitchison Tribune entered the fray. Experimentation and new ventures flourished – languages were introduced – French, Spanish – and music, theatre and societies flourished.

It felt as if Aitchison transitioned out of the era of “everything that is not expressly allowed, is forbidden” into a more liberal milieu. All within reason of course – the Aitchison principal, by the nature of the role, functions as a dictator; it just happened that in Shamim Khan the school found a worldly and benevolent master. He brought to the school the belief that his boys did not need to be micromanaged, that they were mature enough to be granted autonomy and agency, but could also be held responsible for their actions and their consequences. The Pashtun Prince let out a lot of rope, but he wouldn’t hesitate to hang if the occasion demanded.

The Prince was larger than life and omni-present. His chariot was a standard issue Sohrab bike that he would ride all across the sprawling campus, his black robes flapping behind him (and giving rise to another one of his monikers, Batman). He constantly wanted to know how his school was doing, what his staff and students were thinking, and what his graduates were up to. The previously unheard-of act of expatriate alums coming to have tea with the principal emerged as a de-rigueur Lahore pit-stop.

Perhaps as a vestige of his populist lineage, Shamim Khan possessed an instinctive understanding that the source of his authority were his pupils, not their plugged-in parents nor the school’s powerful patrons. Where others might have sought favour with governors, politicians and board members, he invested time and energy into his flock, legions of whom remember him with respect, awe, and admiration. His focus on students was not without controversy – an early decision to ban private tuitions proved unpopular with large sections of his teaching staff, as did late tenure decisions to relieve senior teachers of their duties.

Indeed, Shamim Khan never shied away from controversy. He was principled to the point of being obstinate, such as when he resigned prematurely from his second stint as principal rather than concede to wishes of the Board of Governors that he disagreed with.

The tributes on his passing flowed in from all parts of Pakistan, and the planet – several hundred laudatory comments on the school Facebook page alone remember a man who, for so many of his flock, was simply legend.

For my part, if I harbour any regret about my time at Aitchison, it was that the Prince arrived too late, or that I graduated too early. What joy it would have been to spend a few more years, not mere months, under his reign and be a part of the renaissance he wrought.

The writer, former aide to UN secretaries-general Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon, tweets

@aliahsan001