A School Teacher's Quest to Build Shahr-e-Aarzoo

This is the story of an “ordinary” sarkari schoolteacher, Safdar Naqvi and his efforts to dream and build Shahr-e-Aarzoo. This activist-teacher was not just passionate about teaching and administration, but both supported the government as well as protested it to bring about larger transformations. In the harrowing time of Partition he worked with an organisation called Shanti Dal to bring about peace. Later he participated and led teachers’ movement to demand better service conditions. In order to take people along he edited a monthly newspaper-cum-magazine called Shikshak Sathi. This paper brings concreteness to the otherwise abstract idea of national imagination and political futures by helping readers engage with the struggles and ebbs and flows of this teacher’s life. The paper questions, what made Safdar emerge from the cloak of a “meek dictator”? Did he gain the strength as the times he lived in became supportive of his activities? Did the political and pedagogical moment of Independence and Partition nurture him to become what he became? Can we locate his activities in the collective ethos of Jamia Millia Islamia, an institution with which Safdar’s school was associated?