The school was originally named Seth Cooverji Khimji Lohan. gujarati school (SKKLGS) After a Gujarati social worker. Changing its name. done Malala Yousafzai Government Girls Secondary High School in February 2012 after the young Nobel laureate.
Pakistan’s human rights activist Kapil Dev said in a tweet, “Let’s not change history.” He requested the Education Minister of Sindh to reconsider the decision. “The government should open new schools in honor of our icon Malala,” he said. Malala’s father Ziauddin Yousafzaiza Said that the original name of the school should be restored. “We are obliged to honor our history,” he responded to the news in a tweet.
Sindh Education Minister Saeed Ghani said he has asked his department to submit a comprehensive report on the matter.
“After due process the name will be officially restored but surely another school will be named after Malala, who has no such old name,” he tweeted.
83-year-old advocate VM Ganatra, who studied till class 4 at Seth Coovarji Khimji Lohana Gujarati School, says he clearly remembers his school days and some of his teachers. He and his family moved to Bhuj in the pre-independence period.
Coovarji Khimji was a respected philanthropist with contributions in the field of education. His name in history highlights the Gujarati Sindhi contribution in the making of Karachi and the need for protection, tweeted social media users.
Some prefer to enroll in government schools
Mohammad Arif Azakia, a French-Pakistani of Indian origin and former deputy mayor of Jamshed Town near Karachi, said there were several Gujarati schools earlier, but all have been closed for years. In the schools which remain functional, teaching is done in the local languages.
Dr. Mahadev Lohana, a doctor from Kutch who has been living in Sindh region for 25 years, said that it is estimated that there are 20 lakh Gujarati speaking people in Karachi.
He said that the books mention that Tarwanti Bai was appointed as a Gujarati language teacher by the Sindh government in 1982. She used to teach in SKKLGS. She retired on April 18 last year. Lohana said that due to low enrollment percentage in government schools, teachers could not continue teaching in Gujarati for long.
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