PM Imran’s school teacher Major Geoffrey Douglas Langlands passes away

LAHORE: Major Geoffrey Douglas Langlands, a former British officer who arrived in Pakistan with the Raj and stayed to become one of the country's most famous educators, with students including Prime Minister Imran Khan, died in Lahore aged 101.

For years, Major Langlands taught future Pakistani presidents and prime ministers including Khan at the prestigious Aitchison College — known as the Eton of Pakistan — in Lahore.

"Aitchison College mourns the passing of Major Geoffrey Douglas Langlands, who left us quietly on Wednesday after a brief illness," the institution announced on its official website.

"Born on October 21, 1917, and affectionately known to all as 'The Major', we acknowledge the life of a soldier, teacher, gentleman, story-teller, mountaineer and humanitarian whose life was devoted in service to others and especially his adopted country Pakistan," the college said.

Prime Minister Imran Khan — who, Langlands told the Guardian newspaper in 2009, "owes me quite a lot" — tweeted an old class photo from Aitchison when he was 12 years old.

"Saddened to learn of the passing of my teacher. Apart from being our teacher, he instilled the love for trekking and our northern areas in me, before the KKH was built," he wrote. 

Major Langlands was posted to the Indian army during World War II. After independence in 1947, he volunteered to stay on a while longer to help train the new Pakistani military.

But his brief posting turned into more than seven decades in Pakistan, during which he left the army to become one of the country's most revered teachers. 

He was briefly kidnapped in the tribal areas, spent decades building a school in the mountainous northwest and taught for years. He finally retired in Chitral in 2012 at the age of 94.

Langlands was awarded two of Pakistan's highest civilian awards in his lifetime.

"Pakistan has lost a great friend and a teacher of generations of its students," tweeted British High Commissioner Thomas Drew.

— With additional information from AFP