Debt of gratitude: GCU alumni want road named after founding principal

Speakers remember Leitner as a great scholar of oriental languages.

LAHORE:

Eminent Government College University (GCU) alumni said on Thursday Kutchery Road should be renamed to honour Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner.

Addressing a seminar on Cultural Landscape of 150-year-old Government College University, they said Leitner had founded the GCU, University of the Punjab University and the Oriental College.

Vice Chancellor Muhammad Khaleequr Rahman chaired the seminar. Indian writer Pran Nevile, author of Lahore - A Sentimental Journey, was the chief guest.

Rahman said Leitner, the first principal of Government College Lahore, was also a great scholar of oriental languages.

“He had memorised many parts of the Holy Quran to understand Islam.”

The vice chancellor announced that the GCU’s Kala Shah Kaku campus would also be named after Leitner.

Columnist Majid Shiekh said Leitner was “one of the greatest linguists and the greatest educationalist to work for Lahore and the Punjab and an outstanding researcher of the Orient”.

“Our government colleges and model schools are all built on the foundations Leitner had laid.”

Neville said two former Indian air marshals and two army chiefs had been students of the Government College (GC), Lahore.

“The GC is almost the same,” he said. He also recited a Punjabi poem.

Higher Education Secretary Abdullah Khan Sumbal, a former captain of the GCU cricket team and a former editor of its magazine The Ravi, said rigorous academic work and curricular activities at the GCU helped its students do well at all examinations and competitions.

He said everybody must have the ‘courage to know’ [Government College motto] and the will to do something for the country.

Allama Iqbal Medical College principal Mehmood Shaukat said, “The Ravian community has a distinct culture.”

He said the GCU gave its students a chance to groom their personality and polish their abilities. He told students there was a difference between knowledge and education. He said universities should pay more attention to grooming the student and making them better human beings.

Sabir Lodhi, who taught at the GCU for 33 years, congratulated the GCU Library Society for holding the seminar.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 18^th, 2014.