Author: Khaled Ahmed
Publication: The Friday Times
Date: April 16, 2004
A kind of debate has been held on
a study made in 2003 by Islamabad's Sustainable Development Policy Institute
(SDPI) on the activity of the Curriculum Wing of the federal education
ministry with regard to the kind of school and college textbooks being
produced in the provinces. The study was titled The Subtle Subversion:
the State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan and it focused on three
subjects, Urdu, English, Social Studies and Civics. Five chapters studied
the guidelines handed down by the Curriculum Wing and the effects they
had; the rest of the chapters were contributed by scholars discussing historical
facts, problems of teaching and reflection of human rights in our course
books.
The education ministry came under
attack in parliament and the Urdu press for trying to remove from the textbooks
in the country what was alleged to be the content of Islam. The opposition,
including the liberal PPPP, staged a walkout after rejecting the explanation
given by education minister Ms Zubaida Jalal that a longer verse of the
Quran on jihad was replaced by a shorter verse on jihad in a matriculation
textbook and that jihadi verses were removed from an 11th class biology
course because of lack of relevance. There was a spate of outraged editorials
in the Urdu press about 'removing Islam from the textbooks' after the ulema
lashed out at the government for subverting the ideology of Pakistan at
the behest of the United States.
SDPI in the dock: On 25 March 2004,
GEO TV and its host Hamid Mir discussed the SDPI report with four personalities.
It was in fact an unequal battle between Dr AH Nayyar of the SDPI and his
three conservative opponents, Urdu columnist Mr Ataul Haq Qasimi, academic
Ms Dushka Syed, and federal education minister Ms Zubaida Jalal. Dr Nayyar
said that the curriculum guidelines stressed jihad as qital (killing) although
there could be jihad against illiteracy and poverty. He said teaching our
children only qital and shahadat in the way God was not a good conditioning
for them in this day and age. Ataul Haq Qasimi said that if jihad and shahadat
were removed from textbooks then we would have to remove the Quran, the
hadith and Allama Iqbal from our midst. He said the SDPI report was following
the plans (maqasid) of someone else (read America).
Dr AH Nayyar said that when there
was no argument against the truth it was usual in Pakistan to make accusations
and level charges. He said that there was no doubt that history was being
twisted around in the textbooks. He gave the example of one primary school
textbook which declared that the Muslims were massacred and their women
raped by Hindus and Sikhs as they crossed over to Pakistan from India.
He said the book declared that Sikhs and Hindus were allowed to go to India
in safety by Muslims. He gave another example of brainwashing when he said
that a textbook declared that in the 1965 war, which started with an invasion
by India, Pakistan had conquered Indian territory but when India felt that
it was about to be vanquished it went to the Soviet Union and begged for
help. The upshot was that Pakistan returned the captured Indian territory.
Should we do 'namastay-namastay'?
Ms Dushka Syed said that SDPI and its scholars had been given a certain
line (from outside) and they were pushing it. She said there was nothing
wrong with teaching jihad to children; after all, Islam was not the religion
of Christ who taught its followers to turn the other cheek. Why should
jihad be wrong when the Americans feel that it is against them? What was
required of Pakistan now? Are we supposed to become prostrate in front
of India (lait na jayen)? She said our history was full of jihad and the
Holy Prophet PBUH himself did jihad. But the SDPI was obstinately against
our history. 'What are we supposed to do? Should we do namastay-namastay?'
There was injustice being done in Palestine and Israel was crushing the
Muslims with impunity. Should Pakistan become Switzerland in these conditions?
Dr AH Nayyar replied that Pakistani
course books were not like this in the past, which clearly meant that the
Islamic content in the books after 1979 was not a part of our thinking
after 1965 and even after 1971. He disclosed that during the American jihad
against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan the Americans got the University
of Nebraska to write up courses on jihad for textbooks in Afghanistan.
Now the Bush administration was once again approaching the University of
Nebraska to fashion a new curriculum to take jihad out of the Afghan textbooks.
He said it was not SDPI that was trying to take out Islam from textbook
at the behest of the United States. He said SDPI had not taken any funds
from America for the study conducted; the funding had in fact come from
Holland. Qasimi retorted that now the Americans wanted jihad out of Pakistani
textbooks.
Islam in the Urdu textbook: Dr Nayyar
stated that in the Urdu course books there should be more Urdu literature
and less indoctrination through Islam. On this Qasimi said that he was
opposed to stuffing Ghalib and Mir in Urdu textbooks for the children because
classical Urdu was too tough for them. He was in favour of putting in other
subjects in contemporary Urdu. Ms Dushka Syed said that on page 124 of
the Report among the recommended Urdu authors for textbooks Allama Iqbal
had been omitted and writers like Ratannath Sarshar and Munshi Premchand
and Rajinder Singh Bedi had been recommended. Dr Nayyar said that the recommendations
were the opinion of a renowned Pakistani language expert Dr Tariq Rehman
and featured in an article contributed separately to the Report.
Ms Dushka Syed said that she would
not name names but one of the scholars involved in the writing of the SDPI
report had called Allama Iqbal a fascist. Dr Nayyar stated that from class
one to three the burden of the message should be light and the content
of Islam should be generalised because non-Muslims too were forced to read
them and pass exams on their content. He said at present Quranic verses
in Arabic text were included in these textbooks and the non-Muslim Pakistanis
were forced to read them and memorise them. (Qasimi said that he agreed
that non-Muslims should not be forced to read Quranic verses.) Dr Nayyar
also said that anti-non-Muslim messages planted in the textbooks were wrong
because non-Muslim Pakistanis had to read them.
'I am a fundamentalist': Minister
Zubaida Jalal said that she had grown up reading the same textbooks and
that Pakistan had not been harmed by them. She said the Hindus of Balochistan
and Sindh had not suffered because of these textbooks. But she did promise
that hate material would be removed from the textbooks. She said she was
a Muslim and a proud fundamentalist but she was not an extremist. She said
she was not planning to remove Islamic teachings from the madrasas but
wanted them to include secular subjects in their courses so that their
graduates could go into the normal job market.
A day earlier, on 24 March 2004,
ARY TV had its host Dr Shahid Masood discussing the SDPI report in the
first of a series of programmes he planned to do on the subject. He began
by explaining how all nations indoctrinated their children and how Europe
actually fought nationalist wars based on this indoctrination. He said
America was still guilty of omitting facts in its textbooks to build up
a certain image of the nation. He then gave details about how a blind Helen
Keller was built up in children's textbooks without a word about her socialist
creed. He said Red Indians were ignored in the American textbooks since
certain facts about them were not allowed to figure. He explained that
nationalism sought to establish the superiority of one nation over the
other and this was done through textbooks, after which it was assumed that
the more civilised nations had the right to suppress the less civilised
nations.
Anita Ghulam Ali disappoints Dr
Masood: Dr Shahid Masood then dubbed the SDPI report as a fulfillment of
the 'foreign agenda' by some scholars who used to be Masko-nawaz once but
now had become Amrika-nawaz. He said things may be wrong in Pakistani textbooks
and the problem may be in the presentation of jihad and shahadat but this
was an internal matter of Pakistan and no one from outside had the right
to dictate terms on the subject. He then called a well known Pakistani
pedagogue Ms Anita Ghulam Ali in Karachi and asked: if America and Japan
were indoctrinating their children through the textbooks, why should Pakistan
be faulted for doing so? Ms Ali said that she had taught for 24 years and
was of the opinion that Pakistani textbooks should not give only one side
of the picture. She said textbooks in Pakistan were substandard and there
was a need to overhaul the system.
The above two specimens should be
considered the highest point of the debate on curriculum in Pakistan. Out
in the Urdu press everybody is tilting into it with wild hyperbole. The
lowest point is reached with Hafiz Saeed of the banned Lashkar-e-Tayba
saying that the Americans were now taking Islam away from the Muslims of
Pakistan. According to him jihad was a private enterprise enjoined on the
Muslims in their individual capacity and was not necessarily to be declared
by the Islamic state. General Zia, who put jihad in the textbooks, was
allowing the holy war against the Soviet Union in the private sector so
that he could deny it officially. Today jihad is the most dangerous concept
in Pakistan because the non-state actors believe that they can carry on
without the sanction of the state. Children however continue to be indirectly
indoctrinated in favour of the non-state actors.
Poor quality of debate: Ms Zubaida
Jalal either knows nothing about fundamentalism and its violent side or
is pretending to pass muster with the radical Islamic ideology by pretending
that it means true Islam. Bunyad-parasti once aroused sensitivity in Pakistan
and judges of the Supreme Court and prime ministers had to clarify that
although they were Muslims they did not believe in fundamentalism. It is
another name for extremism and she vowed that she was not an extremist.
She was wrong when she said that she had read the same textbooks and was
quite normal. The said books came much after her schooling. Her claim that
the Hindus of Balochistan and Sindh had not suffered because of the textbook
brainwash was equally wrong. There are at least two studies that show that
the Hindus of Sindh and Balochistan have suffered after a narrower official
redefinition of a Pakistani Muslim.
Qasimi's point was right that tough
Urdu literature should not be put in the Urdu course book, but what would
he say to a class-four Urdu book saying aam al-huzn and muqatiya-e-quraysh?
The truth is that the critics of the SDPI report were not experts in the
subject and Ms Syed was merely hostile towards Dr Nayyar because of university
politics. Omission is what many nations practice in their brainwash. Indian
writer Krishna Kumar has noted the phenomenon in the Indian textbooks,
but Pakistan is guilty of aggressive up-front denigration of the 'other'
for its brainwash. It signed an agreement under SAARC to cleanse the textbooks
together with India but took no action. On the Indian side, the Hindu fundamentalists
want the textbooks aggressively oriented against Muslims but not getting
anywhere. No one complains about the non-subtlety of the message in our
textbooks and the crudeness of textbook production. After all, a message
is effective only if it is couched in an expert manner.
