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Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Recommendation Letter from Principal Tara Singh, Government Intermediate College Lyallpur

Tara Singh. College recommendation letter from Tara Singh. Sept. 5, 1928. 1 p. 1 sheet. 6.5 x 7.7". Typewritten on brown paper. Written by Tara Singh, principal of Government Intermediate College, Lyallpur, in year of Rashed’s graduation. English. Box 1. Folder 14: College certificates and recommendation letter. 001. Digitized by Zain Mian. Catalogued by Pasha M. Khan. Donated (2015) by Yasmin Rashed Hassan to the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, Montreal. Full text here.


From 1926 to 1928, Nazr-i Mohammad Rashed matriculated from the Government High School in Akalgarh, and passed his Faculty of Arts examination at Government Intermediate College (now Government College University) in Lyallpur (now known as Faisalabad). The principal of the college, Sardar Tara Singh, appears to have written this as a letter of recommendation for the young Rashed (who would have been 18 years old when this document was written). The college had evolved out of a high school in 1924. Akalgarh (modern Alipur Chattha), where Rashed had been born, had no college.

Rashed was a "non-resident student" because his father Raja Fazl-i Elahi Chishti was posted to Lyallpur as Additional District Inspector of Schools from September 8, 1926 to September 27, 1928. Therefore he was able to live at home with his family while completing his education at the college.1

According to the modern GCU Faisalabad's account, Sardar Tara Singh was the third and then the fifth principal of Government Intermediate College Lyallpur from April 11, 1927 to January 8, 1928, and again from October 2, 1928 to December 7, 1928. From the letter it appears either that this account is mistaken, or that Tara Singh depended upon his former or anticipated status to subscribe himself "Principal." In the interim Rai Bahadur Manmohan was principal at the college.2

As other items in the NMR Archive will show, the city of Lyallpur remained important to Rashed throughout his life, particularly since his sister Mumtaz and brother-in-law Chiragh Hassan, headmaster of M.B. High School, were resident there, as well as their sons Faruq and Aftab.

Keywords: #Government_Intermediate_High_School, #Government_College_Lyallpur, #Sardar_Tara_Singh, #Raja_Fazl-i_Elahi_Chishti, #Lyallpur, #Akalgarh, #Mukhtar_Hassan, #Chiragh_Hassan, #Aftab_Hassan, #Faruq_Hassan, #education, #letter, #typewritten, #recommendation_letter


1 Khalid, Anwar Mahmūd. "N. M. Rāshid, Lā’ilpūr meñ." Draft paper in Noon Meem Rashed Archive, p. 2.
2 “College Era | GCUF.” http://gcuf.edu.pk/about/history-and-introduction/college-era/.

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