This week a house in Chesterton played host to an international anniversary.
The Humberstone Road residence was the birthplace of Pakistan, and owes its fame to its former resident Choudhary Rahmat Ali, one of the founding fathers in Pakistan’s relatively short history.

On 28 January 1933, Rahmat, a Cambridge academic, published a document called the Pakistan Declaration, containing the first recorded use of the country’s name, which became a reality in 1947 after the partition of British India.

80 years later, the house’s unassuming exterior belies its historical significance.
The house is now owned by Juliet Mills, who lives there with her son, Guy. They were unaware of the site’s significance when they bought the humble suburban semi. The house has become a place of pilgrimage for Pakistani visitors wishing to see where their nation was born.

“We do get people coming to the door asking to look around and one even asked if they could come to tea. We did think about it but were away when they wanted to visit,” Mills said.

“Sometimes we do make them a cup of tea and let them look around but it is just an ordinary family house inside and we do like our peace and quiet – although we are sociable.”

President of Cambridge’s Pakistan Society, Usmaan Ahmed, a third-year medic from Churchill, has not visited the house, but says he would like to do so before he graduates.

Rahmat is not Cambridge’s only link with Pakistan’s heritage: another founding father, Muhammed Iqbal, was a student at Trinity College in the early twentieth century. Ahmed describes the connection as “an inspiration”.

“Pakistan’s founding fathers were based in Cambridge, studied in Cambridge, so the heritage is definitely there and it is an attractive factor when you’re applying here – it’s awesome. Cambridge does bring the best out of you I suppose, like it brought the best out of them.”

The Cambridge Pakistan Society is “flourishing”, according to Ahmed; they are expecting at least 300 people to attend their annual ball on Saturday.
But despite historical connections, Ahmed says there is still work to be done persuading ethnic minority students from diverse backgrounds to apply to Cambridge: “That’s why we have our access day. We know that there are disadvantaged schools with really high proportions of Pakistani students and ethnic minority students.

“It’s an opportunity for them to know that there are other people like themselves here because if in the media you just see the same homogenous things from Cambridge then it’s hard to think that you’re going to fit in. It’s like a family that you can come to, and I think that’s what Paksoc tries to be.”