Punjab University Lahore

Punjab University Lahore, now the University of the Punjab, was formally set up at Lahore on 14 October 1882. It was the fourth university of British India and, in Chaman Lal's account, the first to teach as well as examine. It grew out of Punjab University College, created in 1870, and out of the Anjuman-i-Punjab, a learned society founded at Lahore on 21 January 1865 by Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner, who became the university's first registrar.

Why it matters to Sikhs: Punjabi and Gurmukhi won a place in higher education here. Sikh members of the Anjuman, led by Raja Harbans Singh, pressed for Punjabi to be taught, against British education officers who saw it as a rude dialect. In 1877 Sardar Attar Singh of Bhadaur put forward a list of 389 Gurmukhi works from his library, and the college then appointed Bhai Gurmukh Singh of the Singh Sabha to teach Gurmukhi. Leitner started a Sikh "Bhai Class" at the Oriental College. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism records a Gurmukhi examination called Budhiman, with Attar Singh as its first examiner, and a standard system of Gurmukhi examinations at the university by 1883. The writer Giani Gurdit Singh's own biography records that he took the Giani at Panjab University, Lahore, in 1945.

Key moments

• 21 January 1865: the Anjuman-i-Punjab is founded at Lahore.
• 1870: Punjab University College is created.
• 14 October 1882: Viceroy Ripon sanctions full university status.
• Summer 1947: the Punjab Partition Committee argues over dividing the university. Hindus and Sikhs want a physical partition, Muslims want it to stay whole at Lahore, and the Partition Council cannot decide. For a time Lahore is to conduct examinations on both sides of the border.
• 27 September 1947: East Punjab's government issues an ordinance for its own university, which begins work on 1 October 1947 as East Punjab University, with its office first at Shimla and then at Solan. Wikipedia dates its renaming as Panjab University to 1950 and its move to Chandigarh to 1956, though it gives no citation for either date.

Where it stands today: The Lahore university continues in Pakistan as the University of the Punjab. Panjab University at Chandigarh is its Indian successor, descended from the East Punjab University of 1947.