CHAKWAL: Government High School Munday is celebrating its centenary today.

This school was built by a wealthy Sikh, Sardar Chet Singh in June 1918 in the memory of his father, Sardar Hira Singh.

The school was first named S. Hira Singh AV School Munday and started off as a primary school. In 1927, the school was upgraded to a middle school after Sardar Chet Singh built four more rooms in the building.

The school was built in 1918 by a wealthy Sikh, whose house was used as a hostel post-partition

A few years later, the British administration decided to start a high school in the area.

The government had three options before it- middle schools in Neelah, Balkasar and Munday which were all built by Sikhs.

“Everyone thought the school in Balkasar will be upgraded because it was a developed village and had an oil field. But the school in Munday was upgraded to a high school due to the influence and determination of Sardar Chet Singh,” Rattan Deep Singh Kohli, the grandson of Sardar Chet Singh, told Dawn.

He said that after it was upgraded to a high school, a boarding facility was also started as students from remote villages also enrolled there.

“Like the hostel with the Chakwal school, which was built entirely by funds provided by his family, Sardar Chet Singh also wanted a hostel with the Munday school. None of the other schools had a boarding facility at the time,” Mr Kohli said.

With the help of friends and family, Sardar Chet Singh had also built the present-day Government High School No.1 in Chakwal in the memory of his teacher, Munshi Sant Singh, in 1910 and the school was named Sant Singh Khalsa High School Chakwal.

After partition, the only two-and-a-half storey house in Mundey, which belonged to Sardar Chet Singh, was used as a hostel for students for many years.

Sardar Chet Singh imported steel girders for the school hall from Belgium. It boasted the largest hall in the district, much bigger than the school in Chakwal.

“Chet Singh wanted it to be the best school in the entire Jhelum district as Chakwal was part of Jhelum then.

“A large playground was developed for sports and games right next to the school,” Mr Kohli added.

After partition, the ground was encroached on and only recently, in 2015, the school authorities were able to get it back from encroachers.

A teacher at the school, Abdul Rahim, has preserved old records of the institution. There is a register which has details of the students who were enrolled in 1936.

They included Sikh, Hindu and Muslim students.

Surinder Singh, Sohan Khan, Mitha Khan, Mehdi Khan, Mohammad Ashraf and Ammar Nath are some of the students who were enrolled at the school in 1936.

After partition, the school was stripped of its original name and was renamed Government High School Munday.

Since it first started, this school has produced army officers, teachers and government officials.

Currently, 262 students are studying in the school.

A ceremony will be held Saturday to celebrate its centenary which will be attended by Sardar Rattan Deep Singh and his wife Paramjit Kaur. Sardar Gurucharran Singh Bhasin, the son of Sardar Mota Singh who built a school in the Neelah Village of Chakwal will also be attending. All three have arrived for the ceremony from Delhi.

“All arrangements have been made for the ceremony,” the school’s headmaster, Shakeel Ahmed, told Dawn.

“I am happy we are here for the school’s centenary celebrations, but I wish its original name were restored,” Mr Kohli said.

When Sardar Chet Singh and Sardar Mota Singh migrated to India after partition, they both opened schools in Delhi, which are still operating and which are considered leading schools in the city.

Sardar Chet Singh named the school he established the Sant Singh Khalsa High School Chakwal. The word Chakwal is still part of the name of the school in Delhi.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2018