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).
Education is key to development for every society. Unfortunately, we have been playing politics on it. I was working in SDPI when this study was in process. The researchers (Ahmad Saleem, Dr. Nayyer and their team) worked very hard for bringing a change in our textbooks. The main thrust was to omit the material which creates hatred, intolernce, gender inequality and supremacy of religion. I think the researcher did a tremendous job in identifying them and even had a wonderful advocacy to raise those issues.
How the right wing politicians played their role is another phenomenon. During the textbook reforms, the Madrassah registration and reforms were also in process. These politicians had “first offesne is the best defence” strategy to criticize this study by labeling it an agenda of Western Countries, while ignoring the issues raised in the study. There was a great hue and cry in the parliament and even the government which did not want to engage on both fronts, gave more priority to Madrassah Reforms rather than textbook reforms. And now we are at square one.
I personally dont beleive this justification that Quaid-e-Azam’s addressess were omitted and Gen Musharraf comments were added unintentionally. Regarding Ch Pervaiz Elahi, you might have might have seen those costly ads in the newspapers’ front pages “Mera Khawab Parha Likha Punjab” (My dream is educated Punjab). This is how they are politicizing the education jargon while ignoring its quality.
I beleieve that it was a wonderful oppurtunity for our government to bring revolutionary change in our educational system in order to have a new generation capable of living with peace, tolerence, equality.
But leadership needs to have vision!!!
to MSK: I do believe, as good neighbours, we will learn to like and dislike same things in our respective countries…(Separation of religion and state, stronger democracy, separation of Military and State..)
If by “rabidly suspicious of everthing done across our borders” you mean the arms-race, it will be a tactical blunder for India to ignore the military potential of China. China is not a free society and the huge military arsenal of that country rests in the hands of a few “party members”. In the current international atmosphere, other miliary superpowers have already set the precedent of unilaterally invading sovereign nations under false pretexts.. The neccessity of a credible Nuclear deterrent becomes a sad reality for India for this very reason. . And I don’t blame Pak gov to use the same analysis while dealing with India.
Another issue is that although there is a general animosity (at least among liberal Indians) towards parties preaching Hindu-Muslim hate. The same is not entirely true about India-Pak hate.
In my earlier comment I said “Indians who have had interactions with Pakistanis” are the ones who see that our differences are negligible. But, the number of Indians who have indeed interacted with Pakistanis is very small and mostly abroad (I don’t live in India). And I am sure that the reverse is also true.
While I can only speculate why most Pakistanis don’t seen indians in a good light, I can squarely blame the Indian media for the hatered most Indians have towards Pakistan. The fact that there are little or no cultural insights into the Pakistani life is another culprit. Let me explain, when most Pakistanis see Indian movies (even the crappy ones) you see a side of Indians which is not that different from the urban Pakistani life. Indians don’t have many (any?) opportunites to do the same. (I do love Nuzrat Fateh Ali Khan, and Junoon..But, the effect of these artists is not comparable to that of Bollywood.)
On a different issue, I have heard (and read) that the Prophet Mohammed has quoted and praised both Jesus and Abraham in the Holy Quran.. So how is it that extremists still find a way to spin the holy text to anti-christian and anti-jewish views?
And, with all due respect, the reason there is so much animosity in the world is because of the specific religious texts which preach the followers that it is their moral duty to “prove to non-believers that their faith is wrong and my faith is the only right answer”.
To my knowledge (and I may be wrong) this “requirement” exists in all of the 3 Abrahamic religions. I am sure, there are many part of these texts (esp. Old Testament) which followers have overlooked for various legitimate reasons, this “duty to convert others” should be viewed as one of those parts to be overlooked in today’s world.
(If you disagree as to how annoying this missionary work is, try listening to a evangelical christian priest trying to convert people to Chrisitianity…)
anon. agree with the sentiment and the analysis… as long as you don’t mean “bringing the two countries together” literally.
Tht ain’t happen’n. The question is to learn how to live like neighbors. we may never learn to like everything about each other, but can we at least stop being so rabidly suspicious of everything that is done across our borders, whichever border it may be. I think the place you start off with has to be in what we teach and how we teach it-on both sides of the border.
Education for most Pakistani’s is non-existant.
Even if chapters are included about stuff like religion…Pakistan does NOT have the teachers to teach those chapters.
Education in Pakistan is terrible…best thing is for kids to be educated at home…is better than at school…even illiterate parents are better than ego-craving teachers or teachers who are not even present or even teachers who are just people-pushers.
It’s a nice thing that progressive Pakistanis are also working towards bring our two countries together.. Teaching children about other religions and cultures is a small step in that direction…(Maybe someday, you will also have Gandhi in your textbooks..if you don’t already..)
(As someone pointed out earlier) There are at least as many muslims in India as there are in Pakistan, and most ordinary Hindu’s don’t discriminate against Muslims or any other religion. The Indian President is Muslim, leader of the ruling party is Roman Catholic and the PM is Sikh..People who describe India as “hindu” are just plain wrong!
The political parties who paint Indo-Pak disputes as that between Hindus and Muslims are doing so exclusively out of narrowminded political motivations. In any part of the world, politicians NEED a monster/demon to scare the citizens into voting for that party. Many indian politicans use Pakistan as that “monster”. Indians who have had any personal interactions with Pakistanis know how false this is.
Indians and Pakistanis are united by thousands of years of history and culture, the line politians drew 60 years ago can not erase that.
There are other issues which are going to plague our part of the world in the near future. The arms race between US and China is spilling over to become an India-China arms race and which is undoubtedly becoming an India-Pak arms race. Both India and Pak need to form a closer alliance so that the scarce resources of our countries don’t go towards building weapons we will never use against each other.
(Why “Never”?..US needs a stable Pak for its wars in the middle east, and US needs a stable India for all its outsourcing and as a regional counterweight to China..)
(We do get zealous about Indo-Pak cricket matches though : ).. But you know, We are Better at it :) .. )