UTTAR PRADESH :

Shahjahanpur:

On the eve of the country’s 69th Independence Day, the Abbie Rich Inter College, one of the oldest schools in Uttar Pradesh, is struggling to preserve its heritage. The school building, a hundred years old, is in dire need of repairs. The school is the alma mater of Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqullah, who, long before their participation in the Kakori train robbery of 1927, were classmates and friends here. The school even has their attendance records up to 1919.
Abbey Rich is owned by the Methodist Church of India (MCI) and run on funds raised by Christian minority institutions. The nearly 700 students are mostly from poor families, with no fees charged from them till class VIII. At present, the school is looking for funds to renovate its buildings. However, fund constraints and absence of financial help from the government has brought the school to dire straits.

Abbey Rich has a past that is intimately connected with Uttar Pradesh and the rest of the country. Bismil and Ashfaqullah forged their well-known friendship while students here. Moreover, its alumni fought in both the First and Second World Wars. In the latter, three teachers and five students are known to have joined the armed forces. Their names have been commemorated in a wall plaque.

In 1991, some students put up statues of the two martyrs on the school grounds. Abbey Rich authorities have since wanted to replace them with better statues in marble and have written several times to the state government. However, no reply has been received. Meanwhile, the statues are placed facing the wall, making it difficult for anyone to see the faces either from inside or outside the school.

“Abbie Leonard Rich was an American social worker who came to Shahjahanpur in the 1850s and began teaching children under a tree. In 1857, he was forced to flee the place because people did not know he was not connected to the East India Company,” said principal Mihir Phillips.

Rich returned a few years later and the government gave him some land on rent to set up a school. In 1867, it moved to another building and got affiliation till class X, one of the first in the province. Finally it moved into the current building in 1916, build on land donated by a local nawab.

“We still have the attendance records of Ashfaqullah and Ram Prasad Bismil. They were here till class VIII, in section B actually. The students and staff feel proud to share this heritage,” said Phillips.

There is an important incident from the freedom struggle connected to both martyrs. In 1919, police raided the school to arrest both the boys. “But then principal Rufus Charan stopped the police at the gate. This gave time to the two boys to escape,” the principal said.

Professor Bikram Mani, who retired from the school told TOI, “This used to be the best school of the city but everything changed with time. We provide free education and this is probably not what people need these days. Otherwise, it would have been declared a heritage institution.”

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Bareilly / Kanwardeep Singh / TNN / August 23rd, 2016