Adil Najam
In late July, the Daily Times broke the story about about how the new Ethics textbook published by the Punjab and Sindh Textbook Boards for class IX do not have a chapter on Christianity and Jesus Christ.
The good news was that there was an immediate uproar from some politicians (Senator Aitzaz Ahsan) and major Pakistani newspapers (Daily Times, News) wrote scathing editorials condemning the omission.
I have waited ten days now to find out what has been done on this. Yet, unless I have missed something — and I really hope I have — nothing seems to have been done yet to rectify the situation.
To be fair, the text books are slowly becoming better and more balanced than they used to be. This is largely because of the pioneering work being done by many civil society activists. Indeed, the fact that the text book in questions does have sections on Moses, Buddha, Zoroaster, Krisha, and Guru Nanak is great news (these were not there when I was in school).
But as this incident points out, because of our past negligence, the challenge is much bigger and there is a need for continued vigilance. At issue is the education of our cchildren, but also the shape of society and the treatment fo religious minorities in Pakistan.
The News, for example, pointed out:
Mr Ahsan is spot on as far as his remarks on the Christian community are concerned. Unfortunately, he has also hit the nail on the head when he says that the community has been persecuted since the days of General Zia. The reason for this has a lot to do with the fact that the country has become conservative since then and because that military dictator introduced laws that tended to target Christians and other minorities, especially the laws relating to blasphemy. Other policies introduced by General Zia — and which successive governments have failed to discard in many instances — were even more overtly discriminatory. For instance, many public-sector educational institutions give applicants extra marks or credit if they have learnt the Holy Quran by rote. Indeed, if such a policy is to be followed in college or university admissions then applicants of all faiths should be allowed to benefit from it — otherwise it should not be instituted in the first place because it reeks of discrimination….
The News is exactly right. For too long and on too many issues, Pakistan has taken its minorities for granted. An immediate stop must be put to this and we have to learn to treat all Pakistanis, irrespective of their religion, as equal citizens with equal rights. The insensitivity that officialdom and society at large shows to the religious beliefs 
of non-Muslims must be reversed and meaningful steps should be taken by the government to reverse the trends of discrimination and marginalization.
The misdirected zeal of our curriculum designes has created entire generations who actually think that patriotism is just about trashing the ‘enemy’ and faith is about explaining what is wrong with everyone else’s religion. True, others do it too and there are enough hate-mongers everywhere. But that is their problem. Our responsibility is to our own kids and we must not mess with their future!
Speaking of messing with education, now we hear of more propaganda seeping into the curriculum. A story in the August 2, 2006 issue of The Daily Times points out this incident of curriculum abuse:
Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s messages to the nation have been replaced by messages from President Pervez Musharraf and Punjab Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi in almost all the latest editions of books approved and published by the Punjab Textbook Board… The Punjab Textbook Board chairman said he had noticed the error in books published by the board and had planned to omit the messages of Musharraf and Elahi from books to be published in 2007-08.
In this case it is good news that the Board plans to remove the political propaganda. Let’s please make sure it is removed.
We have fed our youth canned and erroneous histories for too long. So long, in fact, that I would bet if you asked a cross section of our young who Mohammad Ali Bogra was and gave them two choices — sportsman or politician — most will probably guess he was a sportsman rather than a Prime Minister of the country!
So, whatever else we do or not do, please do not mess with education!
(P.S., also see earlier ATP post on what’s happening to libraries).
Good points Naveed. How would Muslims living in, say, Europe feel if the curriculum tried converting their kids to some other religion. How do non-Muslim Pakistanis feel when we try that. Its their country too.
As the anonymous contributor has indicated India is a secular state not a hindu state. This is a timely blog but the lack of a mass protest in Pakistan is reflective of our general attitude.
Children need to learn about other Religions so as to expand their knowledge base not because of some reaffirmation that Islam is the true religion. They should already be convinced due to their upbringing that their faith is strong & based on universal Truth. Not necessarily to join the bandwagon of mullahs hellbent on converting other people
They should learn about religions because this can stop them from becoming the biggots that we find on our streets. Lets face facts. Muslims are not really the role models that believers of other faith will aspire to convert. You get people to convert with example not by proselytizing.
Why must we assume that there is this huge yearning among non-muslims to convert…everyone is happy with their faith & this presumption of superiority among muslims that they are the rescuers is best resigned to history books…
Thanks for pointing this out Anon. You are right and we Pakistanis are wrong in describing India as a ‘hindu’ country; especially since India has as many Muslims as Pakistan. This is why the subject of this post is so imp. we must stop educating kids to think in these ways.
For the record, Nepal is the only official Hindu country in the world. India is neither a hindu country, nor has any states that have declared itself ‘hindu’.
I strongly support that our youth should be educated about other religions like Hinduism and other branches of Abrahamic Faith.See you just can’t convince a student that Islam the true religion without exposing other religions for comparison[please dont take me anti-Islam,my readers are well aware my strong point of views about Islam].
I started reading about christianity and other religions few years back that is,when i had already crossed 25 years of my life.Its very shameful.Currently we are going thru situation where we have to face lots of non-muslims and answer their questions.Unless you dont know difference between Old Testament and New Testament,how could you convince them to follow Islam.
its a good step and i would go one step ahead that TV channels should give chance to minorities to tell about their religion.Look how zakir naik of Mumbai preach about Islam in a hindu state.