EXTEMPORE SPEECH OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE AGA KHAN DELIVERED ON THE OCCASION OF VISIT TO SULTAN MOHAMMED SHAH FOUNDATION SCHOOL.
Mr Chairman, Members of the Trust, Ladies, Gentlemen and Dear Students, FIRST, I want to begin by congratulating the staff and the students for what appeared to be the extremely cordial relations. When I was a student, it would have taken a lot of coaxing and consider able bribery to get me to the school on Sunday. I congratulate you for this achievement and I am very happy to see all the students here today and to be amongst you no longer as a bachelor but with my wife who will be able, I know, to be of great assistance to the Jamat and especially to my spiritual daughters who are studying here at this school. This is a young school and it takes many years to develop a tradition. But you have begun in the most magnificent manner and I want to congratulate the staff and the students for having set up a proud record in the first two years of its existence in the matriculation exams. I hope this will be an uninterrupted record of the success in the future. But I want to add also that a school such as this cannot make solid and continuous progress without wide and diversed support. Support not only from the citizens of Pakistan because this is a Foundation and therefore it is entitled to call up on the philanthropists and every Citizen of the Country but also the support of these graduating students. I hope in the years ahead, as you progress, start earning and start developing your own lines and your own interest, you will not forget that this school reburies your support and your loyalty. It also requires as the time goes by better and better teachers to be attracted to the school and one of the tasks, I have set myself in the years ahead in the Ismaili Community, is to make teaching one of the most coveted and one of the most desired professions amongst my Jamats. This is the foundation stone of any school-- a good teaching staff. You have fine buildings and I am happy and proud to see they have been most beautifully maintained. That I hope that those amongst you who are considering teaching as a profession, will know that not only will I consider you as people who are rendering service to your country and to your Jamat but I would consider you as people who have attained and who will attain a position of leadership in service to the Jamat and to the country. I lastly wish to congratulate the staff on the excellent achievement and the really magnificent results which have been achieved so far and I hope that they will act as constant source of inspiration to try to improve upon these results in the future and not only do I hope that you will continue to obtain 100% pass in your matriculation exams, but also the boy or the girl who stands first in their respective exams, will stand first throughout the Karachi schools regardless of who are the students and where they come from. I would particularly wish to express to the staff and to the students my wife's and my most warm and sincere thanks for the magnificent presents which you have given to us. I want you to know they have made us immensely happy because they have been made by you and we will keep them as very warm remeberance of the visit today. My wife has also asked me to express her congratulations to the women section of the school. She hopes that you also will set examples of success in the exams, which lie ahead and I hope that when I return here, I will be told that not only do we have leading men but leading women also in all fields.
Source Ismaili Mirror.
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