Major (retd) Langlands who served Pakistan since 1947 passes away

The former Aitchison teacher died at 101

Major (retd) Geoffrey Douglas Langlands, a former British Army official and an educationist, who served Pakistan since the partition in 1947, died at the age of 101 in Lahore on Wednesday.

Carey Schofield, who took over as Principal of the Langlands School and College in Chitral after him, says he will be very sadly missed.

“He loved the country and it was his decision to stay on after 1947”

Schofield says he taught mathematics primarily and was an inspiring teacher.

Major (retd) Langlands landed in India as part of the British Army. He ran the Langlands School and College in Chitral for 24 years and took up residence earlier this year at the Aitchison College in Lahore.

Schofield says Aitchison looked after him wonderfully and gave him a few rooms there after he retired from Chitral. They also held a large celebration last year for his 100th birthday.

 

The most striking part of his life was his decade-long stay from April 1979 to September 1989 in North Waziristan. Langlands took up the position of principal after the then newly established Cadet College Razmak's first principal left.

Born in 1917, during the First World War, he and his elder twin brother were 10 minutes apart. Followed by the birth of a younger sister next year, the Langlands’ household was struck with grief, as their father died just five days after the birth of their youngest child.



From Yorkshire, the children travelled with their mother, a classical folk dance school teacher, to their grandparents’ house in Bristol. At the age of 11, they lost their mother to cancer too and were left under the care of their grandfather. The next year, their grandfather, who was also the last adult in the family passed away.

His teaching career began in London in 1936, at the age of 18. He started by teaching the second grade and soon mastered the art of making the dullest subjects interesting for his students.

Just as Langlands was settling into this life, the world changed again. On September 3, 1939, Langlands — by then a young schoolteacher — heard prime minister Neville Chamberlain announce that Britain was at war with Germany. He immediately signed up to be an ordinary recruit in the British Army.

In 1943, during his officer training in Kent, when the army was looking for young army volunteers for India, Langlands did not hesitate. In January 1944, he finally arrived in India and spent the next three years in the army as part of the selection board for officers training in Bangalore.



While not many British officers chose to stay back in Pakistan, Langlands recalls that the one-year contract by the British government was cancelled by Pakistan in December 1947. He was awarded a three-year contract followed by another one.

Three days after his decision to stay back in Pakistan, Langlands was offered a teaching job at the Aitchison College, where he had the likes of Imran Khan and Zafarullah Khan Jamali in his tutelage. The next 25 years were spent teaching at Aitchison until he retired and took up another stint in the education sector.

He visited the United Kingdom infrequently because he had no family. Langlands never married and his twin brother has only visited him a handful of times in Pakistan.

After serving as a principal in the tumultuous terrain of North Waziristan for a decade, the next challenge was in the serene mountains of Chitral where he headed the Langlands School and College for the next 24 years. Having started with merely 80 students, it now educates as many as 1,000 students each year.

Tributes pour in

Saddened to learn of the passing of my teacher. Apart from being our teacher, he instilled the love for trekking and our northern areas in me - before the KKH was built. (I was 12 years old in the school picture) pic.twitter.com/cgH4glWIDR

— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) January 2, 2019

Friends and loved ones have shared their grief at his loss.

My old teacher, Housemaster and intrepid leader of many treks up into our Norther Areas Maj GD Langlands has died aged 101. He served Pakistan from the day it was born, in Pak Army, then Aitchison College for 25 yrs, Razmak Cadet College & finally Langlands School/College Chitral

— Haroun Rashid (@HarounRashid2) January 2, 2019

Pakistan has lost a great friend and teacher of generations of its students. We today mourn Major Geoffrey Langlands CMG MBE HI SPk who passed away in Lahore aged 101. pic.twitter.com/XF6UJtAa1n

— Thomas Drew (@TomDrewUK) January 2, 2019