Memories of School Life from Princely India: Two Essays from ‘Prakash’ by Gulam Hussain Abdulla Rajkotwala

The two essays by Gulam Hussain Abdulla Rajkotwala (1928–2010) translated in this article from his handwritten Gujarati journal, ‘Prakash’ (‘Light’), capture his memories of school life in Rajkot in princely India during the British Raj. The son of a Khoja Ismaili merchant, Gulam Hussain concurrently attended two schools, Shri Kishorsinhji Taluka School, Rajkot, a vernacular state school where Mohandas Gandhi formerly studied, and the Shia Imami Ismaili School, Rajkot, run by the Ismaili community to impart religious education to Ismaili youth. After migrating to Pakistan in 1951, the author recorded his memories of school life in 1954 in Karachi. The essays serve as a primary source for the study of everyday life and times in Rajkot through the momentous 1930s and 1940s. With rare historical, cultural, and ethnographic details, the essays offer an intimate view of the milieu during a period of social and geopolitical upheaval and change, including the modernization of education. In certain instances, the essays reveal an unexpected mingling of secular and religious in the Ismaili community and a blurring of religious boundaries, which challenge the conventional dichotomies of faith and world, traditional and modern, and self and other.