More importantly, very few know that this is the first school exclusively for Muslim girls in the city. While the school management plans glittering platinum jubilee celebrations soon with Congress chairperson Sonia Gandhi possibly inaugurating the year-long festivities, the school's contribution in educating Muslims girls in Mumbai deserves applause.
Outside principal Najma Kazi's office, hangs a wooden board with names of past principals. And thereby also hangs a tale. Long after Badruddin Tyabji, Indian National Congress's third president and first Indian judge at the Bombay High Court, founded Anjuman-I-Islam school for boys near CST station in 1874, his family thought to start a school for girls too. In 1936, Saif Tyabji High School, named after Tyabji's grandson Saif Tyabji, began with just three students. Just when the school desperately needed a captain to lead, Annie Samson, a Nagpada-based Jewish woman, returned from Oxford and was roped in to lead it.
"She had offers from many established convent schools in the city to become principal, but she joined this school as she saw it as a challenge," says Anjuam's president, Dr Zahir Kazi. "Samson would go door-to-door convincing Muslim parents to send their daughters to the school," says Najma Kazi, seated in her office lined with awards and citations. By the time Samson retired in 1966, the school's strength had jumped to 1,200 students.
From its inception till 1947, English remained its medium. Post-partition, the medium switched to Urdu as most of Jewish community, which once inhabited Nagpada, migrated to Israel and the school started catering to almost exclusively to Muslims. Significantly, on growing demands, the school started its English medium wing in 2002. Even its Urdu medium, Maths and Science are taught in English.
From Junior KG to HSC, the school today has 5,800 girls, many from poor families. "It would have been difficult for me to study if this school was not there. It takes care of my fees," says Nazneen Ansari, an orphan and a class 10 student. Mahe Noor, class 10 student and daughter of a taxi driver, says she wants to be a teacher. "No woman in my family has studied beyond 10th. I will become a teacher," she says.
"The poor and deserving get help from our Welfare Fund created by teachers, ex-students and donors," says the principal. Many of its alumni have excelled in various fields, including medicine. Dr Zainab Kazi became UAE's first woman doctor a couple of years ago while Dr Shagufta Ansari, Dr Fahmida Shaikh and Dr Kaneez Fatima became eminent surgeons. Its alumnus Farida Naik cracked the IAS exam a couple of years ago while actor Surekha Parker starred in the award-winning 'Shehar Aur Sapna' (1963).
But why doesn't the school have more non-Muslim students? "We have a few in the junior college, but I think a compulsory Urdu paper discourages non-Muslims from coming here though our doors are open to all," says Kazi.
The only major concern the principal has is about safety of students. "Highrises have come up on both sides of the school's narrow entrance and we are fighting to create an emergency gate from the rear," says the principal. Recently, one of its teachers died in a road accident near the school's gate. Unchecked urbanisation and little regard for safety are hurdles in the way of the city's glorious piece of education history.
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