In the vicinity of walled-Delhi, or old Shahjahanabad, stands a school with a long, fraught and yet cherished history. The magnificence of the Anglo-Arabic School is amplified by the Indo-Persian architectural style of the mosque and buildings, and the astoundingly serene and sprawling campus within which it is housed. Apart from the educational services that it renders, the School connects the past with the present, and ‘offers solace to the Delhiwalas’, an allusion to the residents of the old city. Despite its nearly 350 years of existence, the School survives on the threshold of anonymity, absent as much in the annals of history as in the educational narrative. The School at Ajmeri Gate by Razzack and Siddiqui is an attempt to fill this conspicuous void.
A School Steeped in History
Tanweer Fazal
THE SCHOOL AT AJMERI GATE: DELHI’S EDUCATIONAL LEGACY by Azra Razzack and M. Atyab Siddiqui Oxford University Press, Delhi, , 501 pp., 2295
July 2023, volume 47, No 7