In the Gazetteer of District Shahpur (1887) , it is mentioned that the municipality of Bhera was first constituted in 1867. In the official register of Chirri Chog School, it is written ” MC School No 2 – 1876 and MC School No1, 1955″ ( commonly known as Chitta School ), near Ganjwala Darwaza ( Lahori Gate – 1869). The Municipal Committee can verify, why the Chirri Chog School is called No 2, whereas it was established about 80 years before , MC School No 1. (A picture of the register’s page is given at the end of the write-up) .
My father, Sheikh Muhammad Mumtaz ( 8 Oct 1910 – 20 Mar 2003 ) , from Mohallah Sheikhanwala was admitted in Chirri Chog School in 1916. He retired as District Inspector of Schools, Cambellpur ( now District Education Officer, Attock ) in the mid-1960s.
Initially, the Hindus called MC School No 2, Chirri Chog School, as in a nearby temple they fed the birds, particularly sparrows with a maze every day. My father told me when he joined the school in Class l, most probably Mufti Fazal-e-Azeem was the headmaster ( father of headmaster Fazal – e – Jalil and maternal grandfather of Mufti Lutafullah, former federal secretary, Ministry of Religious Affairs ). It is worth mentioning that Mufties donated a library to the National Archives, Federal Secretariat, N Block, Islamabad. The highly valuable books are preserved in the Mufti Fazal -e -e-Azeem Collection, worth visiting the National Archives of Pakistan, Islamabad. ( reference Wikipedia … given at the end ). The collection has about 450 years old rare manuscripts of Arabic and Persian. A research book of about a thousand pages was published in Iran, related to Persian manuscripts of the Mufti’s collection. This internationally acclaimed work was done by a renowned scholar of Persian, Dr Arif Naushai, a friend of Dr Bilal Sohail from Bhera.
When my father left Bhera , somewhere in the early 1950s, due to service reasons, he donated several family books to the Municipal Committee Library, Bhera . Later, when I checked up, I did not find a single book. Nobody gave me any satisfactory answer, where books had vanished. A person on the Committee told me, ” May have been damaged in the floods of 1992. ” Who was responsible for preserving the library books? I wonder if the MC Library will ever be established again, although the new building has been constructed. The question is whether the citizens of Bhera are interested in the library/reading room at MC any more. ” Mufti Fazal – e – Azim’s family took a wise decision by donating their family books to the National Archives .” I wish my father had done so.
Sorry, I digressed from the main subject, due to the loss and grief of valuable family books. Coming back to Chirri Chog School, all the old timers belonging to Bhera and surrounding areas (three to four generations back ), either studied in Chirri Chog School or in Government High School, Bhera ( established around the early 1880s, the exact year may be mentioned in the archives of MC, Bhera . It was shifted to the new building in 1927).
I met one of the oldest students of Chirri Chog School, Khawaja Bashir Ahmed, from Mohallah Sheikhanwala, who lived in Rawalpindi (a few years back he died, aged 99) . He had vivid memories of the school. I took his informal interview. He remembered all the names of his teachers and a few of his classmates. Mr Tufail Piracha (late), Professor Nasrullah Malik ( late ), and Malik Muhammad Nawaz Awan ( late ) have also mentioned Chirri Chog School in their memoirs ( links given below ). Headmaster Ch Ali Hassan has also given some information about Chirri Chog School in his video article, ” Education Institutes of Bhera “. Link at the end.
I visited Chirri Chog School a few years ago, it was in bad shape. Now, I have heard a few new rooms have been reconstructed. Headmaster, Mr Khalid Mehmood, who has been with the school since 1999, told me that seldom any old student visited the school ( now he has retired ). He added, “If the old students look back at their primary school, they may be able to contribute something positive for the betterment of students and school”. I hope Khalid Sahib’s message is conveyed to the old boys of the school.
Zahid Mumtaz
