In the narrow streets of Old Sukkur stands an institution whose quiet work has changed thousands of lives: Nare Shala (ناري شالا, “Women’s School”). Founded in 1933 by the visionary railway officer Devan Pasu Mal Bhagwandas Chandwani, Nare Shala has stood for almost a century as a beacon of hope and empowerment, committed to uplifting widows, orphans and underprivileged girls through free training and education. Its story is one of the most moving chapters in the social history of Sukkur city.
A Legacy of Education and Empowerment
When Nare Shala opened in 1933, girls’ education in colonial Sindh was the exception rather than the rule. Formal schooling existed mainly for boys, and for women of poor families — especially widows and orphans with no male earner — there was almost no route to literacy or to a marketable skill. Devan Pasu Mal Bhagwandas Chandwani, a railway officer who saw both the poverty of the neighbourhoods around the station and the intelligence wasted by it, designed Nare Shala to answer exactly that need: an institution where the poorest girls and women of Old Sukkur could learn for free. The detailed account on our sister site, Nare Shala: empowering women since 1933, traces the founding and the family behind it.
What Nare Shala Teaches
From its earliest years the school combined basic education with practical vocational training. Students have been taught:
- Sewing — the foundation skill that allowed generations of women to earn from home.
- Embroidery — including the Sindhi needlework traditions whose mirror-work and coloured threadwork are famous across Pakistan.
- Handicrafts — small goods that could be sold in the Sukkur bazaars.
- Soap making — a genuine cottage industry taught as a trade, not a hobby.
- Planting and household management — part of a curriculum that treated running a home as a discipline worth teaching.
Students at these schools have always been encouraged to think and act like designers and artists, fostering creativity and intelligence rather than rote work — an approach decades ahead of its time in a charity school.
Parmeshure Chandwani Girls High School
In the same year that Nare Shala was established, the Parmeshure Chandwani Girls High School opened opposite the Sukkur Post Office, giving the movement a formal academic wing. Together the two institutions covered both halves of the problem: vocational training for women who needed to earn immediately, and full school education for girls who could continue to higher classes. This twin structure — skills plus scholarship — is what made the Chandwani initiative unusual among the charitable foundations of its era.
Leadership and Vision
At the time of its founding, the chairman of Nare Shala was Rai Bahadur Kundan Das, a respected figure whose leadership helped shape the institution into a cornerstone of the community. Nare Shala belonged to a wider culture of philanthropy in colonial Sukkur, a city whose merchant and professional communities — Hindu, Muslim, Parsi and Christian — endowed schools, temples, hospitals and parks whose names still mark the city today. The publishing reformer Master Hari Singh Dungarmal, the Parsi benefactors remembered in Sukkur’s Parsi history and the founders of the city’s parks and schools all belonged to this same tradition of giving back; Nare Shala was its most enduring gift to the women of Old Sukkur.
Nare Shala Today: Modernization and New Buildings
Today there are plans to modernize the facilities, ensuring that the legacy of Nare Shala continues with newly constructed buildings, including the Government Primary Girls High School Sukkur that shares the site’s mission. The transition from a 1933 charity school to a modern government-supported girls’ campus reflects both the institution’s success and the changing role of the state in education — but the founding principle survives intact: that a girl in Old Sukkur, whatever her family’s circumstances, deserves free access to learning and to a skill she can sell.
Why Nare Shala Matters
Measure Nare Shala not in buildings but in generations: the seamstresses who supported families through hard decades, the widows who never had to beg, the orphans who grew up literate, and the daughters of all of them who went to college because their mothers could read. In a region where female literacy still lags, the model Devan Pasu Mal Bhagwandas Chandwani proved in 1933 — free, practical, respectful education for the poorest women — remains as relevant as ever. Visitors interested in the living heritage of Sukkur and neighbouring Rohri should count Old Sukkur’s charitable institutions among its truest monuments.
Keeping the Story Alive
Nare Shala sits in the heart of Old Sukkur, within easy reach of the historic bazaars, the riverfront and the Lansdowne Bridge view points described in the city guide. Residents and visitors alike can help simply by keeping the institution’s history known — sharing its story, buying from the women’s handicraft traditions it helped preserve, and supporting girls’ education initiatives through the district education offices in Sukkur. Heritage is not only bricks: an institution like this one survives on memory and continued use.
References
- rohri.net: Nare Shala: Empowering Women Since 1933.
- Tareekh-e-Sukkur and Sukkur Sunehra — local historical texts on the city’s institutions.
- District education records, Sukkur — Government girls’ schools in Old Sukkur.
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