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1 Drawn Swords: Subtle and Brazen An exploration into the construction of national identity through school curriculum . Aneeq Ahmed Cheema Supervisor: Taimur Rehman Lahore University of Management Sciences Senior Project, 2010 'In accordance with Regulation of the General Regulations for the Social Science Senior Project, I declare that this thesis is substantially my own work. Where reference is made to the works of others the extent to which that work has been used is indicated and duly acknowledged in the text and bibliography'
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Page 1: Drawn Swords - Subtle & Brazen (Senior Year Thesis at LUMS) - Aneeq Cheema

1

Drawn Swords: Subtle and Brazen

An exploration into the construction of national identity

through school curriculum

.

Aneeq Ahmed Cheema

Supervisor: Taimur Rehman

Lahore University of Management Sciences

Senior Project, 2010

'In accordance with Regulation of the General Regulations for the Social Science Senior Project, I

declare that this thesis is substantially my own work. Where reference is made to the works of others

the extent to which that work has been used is indicated and duly acknowledged in the text and

bibliography'

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Abstract

The peculiar nature of the origin of the state of Pakistan and the turbulent path it treaded since

independence led to emergence of a configuration of identity that revolves around Islam. This

identity is produced and reproduced through the state-controlled education system. The process

of limiting the scope of school curriculum to officially produced and endorsed textbooks—

combined with a regressive education system— ensures that official textbooks are read and

(aided by the pattern of exercise questions and exam pattern) rote-learned. These textbooks

then form a mainstay for the state-agenda of the construction of national identity

through justifying the creation of Pakistan within the broad Indian struggle for independence,

up to the partition of India in 1947, by establishing ancient origins for Pakistan, Islamizing

history, categorically distinguishing Muslims from Hindus, and exaggerating the scope and

historicity of the Two Nation Theory. The struggle towards maintaining and upholding the

Islamic ideology of Pakistan is created laboriously by narrating a natural transition from the

Two Nation Theory to the Ideology of Pakistan. The struggle of survival against the arch

rival— India— and Pakistan’s dependence on warfare and the military institutions. The

national image constructed here excludes all religious and sectarian minorities; instilling a

feeling of marginalization, which fuels discontent and anguish. The results of this

indoctrination are visible today in the prevalent discord on all fronts of identity within Pakistan

– regional, ethnic, religious and sectarian.

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CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1

2 Theoretical framework 5

3 Research context & literature review 10

4 Education system of Pakistan 16

5 Content analysis 18

Phases of national identity construction 19

5.1 Justifying the creation of Pakistan within the Indian

independence movement

20

5.1.1 Search for primordial origins 20

5.1.2 Islamizing the Past 21

5.1.3 Muslims vs non-Muslims 22

5.1.4 The “fighting people” of Islam 26

5.2 Battlefronts for upholding Ideology of Pakistan 29

5.2.1 The Unworthy Equation: Ideology of Pakistan and the Two-

Nation Theory

29

5.2.2 Fixing India as the enemy 34

5.2.3 Militarization and acceptance for violence 37

5.3 Islam as Criterion for Citizenship 40

5.3.1 Pan-Islamism 40

5.3.2 Suppressing difference 42

5.3.3 Islamic ideals for all 43

6 Conclusion 47

7 Bibliography 49

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Extract from list of contents of Social Studies 6, Punjab Textbook Board,

2009. 21

Table 2: Topics on early Muslim struggle and patriotism for Pakistan in the Islamiat

syllabus for classes 3–12. 27

Table 3: Extract from list of contents of Social Studies 5, Punjab Textbook Board,

2005. 38

Table 4: Islamic Content in Primary level Urdu textbooks, 2009. 46

APPENDICES

Appendix I Screen image of the Board of Intermediate & Secondary Education,

Lahore website. 52

Appendix II Selected translations of Urdu, book 2. 53

Appendix III Extract from Crescent Model Higher Secondary School Prospectus 67

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1. Introduction

Pakistan was carved out of a united India as a result of a Pakistan Movement fuelled by the

Two Nation Theory. According to the Two Nation Theory the Muslims and Hindus living in

colonial India were two separate nations, thus entitled to separate states of their own. And

hence a separate state was created for the Muslims of India in August 1947.

This narrative is the briefest possible rendering of the “Ideology of Pakistan” as posited by the

state textbooks of Pakistan in various lengths and degree of detail. The titles for such sections

are identified simply as “The Ideology of Pakistan”; they are placed right at the beginning of

“Pakistan Studies” textbooks and aim to impart exactly this; the ideology of Pakistan espoused

by the state as evolved till the date of publication. This paper will focus on the official Pakistani

curriculum sampled through the textbooks published under the aegis of Punjab Textbook

Board, given the huge share of students it caters to, and draw out the different aspects of

political identity conveyed by them.

The territorially-divided state called Pakistan— created in the Indian subcontinent— came into

existence too soon into the struggle waged for it. This aforementioned struggle was in fact

largely focused to convince those who were later to become a part of it. The Pakistan

Resolution in Lahore did demand separate states in India but the particular shape and form was

not clear to even its own movers. The demand itself evolved with the struggle for it. So did the

political command over Muslims for the political party that made this demand on behalf of the

Muslims. Even after the trumpeted 1945 elections in the subcontinent, the All India Muslim

League came into power in only two of the provinces that were later to become a part of

Pakistan; Sind and Bengal (the bigger of which later broke away to become Bangladesh in

1971).

The struggle for Pakistan was waged in the name of one Muslim nation in all of India. But not

all of them became a part of either the struggle or the Pakistan it resulted in. Conversely, the

residents of this new state were yet to situate themselves as a nation, for they had not even

fought for it. The fight had been staged by those who had just come in from the new ‘outside’:

the Muslim minority provinces in India. Therefore, the national reality was yet to be imagined

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for the nation now within its new boundaries. The image to be created was of extreme

significance; for it could bind it together or divide it further. This dilemma becomes even more

complicated with the breaking away of its eastern wing. Add on to that a legitimacy-starved

military dictator’s regime, the solution was found—or at least, sought—in religion, beyond the

banality of territoriality. It was to be known as an Islamic state and not just as a state for

Muslims as it was intended to be.

The struggle for salvaging the national pride after the secession of East Pakistan in 1971 was

fought on multiple fronts. The then President—and later Prime Minister—Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

created a populist fervor in the name of Islamic Socialism and managed to create a

unanimously approved constitution for the country. But for unanimous support from the

legislature, Bhutto had to join hands with the religious parties represented in the parliament.

This was achieved by including clauses that made Pakistan an Islamic state and expected it to

perform the roles associated to one, such as Article 31 which goes:

“Islamic way of life.

(1) Steps shall be taken to enable the Muslims of Pakistan, individually and collectively,

to order their lives in accordance with the fundamental principles and basic concepts of

Islam and to provide facilities whereby they may be enabled to understand the meaning

of life according to the Holy Quran and Sunnah.

(2) The state shall endeavor, as respects the Muslims of Pakistan:

(a) to make the teaching of the Holy Quran and Islamiat compulsory, to encourage and

facilitate the learning of Arabic language and to secure correct and exact printing and

publishing of the Holy Quran;

(b) to promote unity and the observance of the Islamic moral standards; and

(c) to secure the proper organization of zakat 1[ushr,] auqaf and mosques

2”.

Zia’s regime was instrumental in expanding the religious coloring of the state’s institutions,

with his Islamization program. Whereby the laws and judiciary were being radically Islamized

and all forms of political contestation by the civil society largely oppressed, it was deemed

1 Inserted by P.O. No. 14 of 1985, Art. 2 and Sch.

2 Pakistan, The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, (Islamabad: Ministry of Law, Justice and Human

Rights, 2004), p. 17.

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necessary to erase all things non-Islamic from the minds of the coming generations itself. At

one hand when all political parties were banned, the student-wing of the largest Islamic

political party was heavily patronized and gradually became the only face of student politics in

Pakistan. On the other hand, “petty officials”3 on government payroll were assigned the task of

Islamizing the national curriculum as well. This legacy is largely intact till day.

Today, the office built to educate the nation identifies this nationalistic discourse creation and

perpetuation as its stated vision:

“Our education system must provide quality education to our children and youth to

enable them to realize their individual potential and contribute to development of

society and nation, creating a sense of Pakistani nationhood, the concepts of tolerance,

social justice, democracy, their regional and local culture and history based on the basic

ideology enunciated in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.4”

The italicized message in the above vision-statement runs throughout the curriculum designed

by the Curriculum Wing of the education ministry and the textbooks officially produced as a

result of them by the respective provincial boards. The sense of “Pakistani nationhood” is

constructed in the following manner; a Pakistani is a Sunni Muslim who hates India and reveres

militarism and the Pakistani military forces. This truth creation is largely channeled through

Social Studies (and its senior form: Pakistan Studies, implemented from ninth grade onwards),

Urdu and Islamiat. Assessing the form of this truth, the process of its construction and the

alarming rigidity it binds our nation in with reference to our foreign policy engagements of the

day is the task for this paper.

The paper divides itself into six sections.The first builds a theoretical framework for

understanding the tasks that a state takes upon itself to produce nationalism – i.e. loyalty to

itself. The works discussed in this part shall take as base Benedict Anderson’s reading of

nationalism as a produced imagination through the spread of vernacular. This idea shall be put

3 Ayesha Jalal. “Conjuring Pakistan: History as Official Imagining” International Journal of Middle East Studies,

27, No. 1 (1995): 77. 4 National Education Policy 2009. (Islamabad: Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan, 2009), p. 10.

http://www.moe.gov.pk/nepr/NEP_2009.PDF (accessed June 29, 2010) – stress added.

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into flux with the work of Ernest Gellner and Anthony Smith which shall be brought together to

form a theoretical framework to be applied to the produced national history of Pakistan.

In section two, the paper intends to undertake a literature review. It shall concentrate on the

groundbreaking works of K. K. Aziz, Ayesha Jalal and the detailed report by A. H. Nayyar and

A. Salim and other works in relation to these.

In section three, the closed natures of the education system in Pakistan will be explored to seek

out the dependence on textbooks.

In section four, the paper moves into its core. It tackles the textbooks and excavates the

memory and value structures it intends to impart and its impacts. This section shall look at the

textbooks and conduct an analysis of how they produce the three characteristics in an

individual.

Section seven shall be cursory remarks on the work linking it to the prevalent strife in the

society and explore avenues to fully explore the identity creation process in the education

system of Pakistan.

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2. Theoretical Framework:

Foucault maintains that truth should be understood as a “system of ordered procedures for the

production of, regulation, distribution, circulation, and operation of statements”5. The truth-

creation process in Pakistan can be seen through the closed system of development and

production of textbooks and the created dependence of matriculating students on them

described above. It is certainly contestable that these textbooks and the examination system,

even combined are not enough to command the discourse production in the whole society, but

the state uses these textbooks to standardize the discourse that shapes the societal identity as a

whole. This standardization has historically been affirmed through the state owned television

and radio content and continues today in the parameters adopted by the electronic media. The

state’s success in creating the boundaries of its choice can be observed in the discourse of

exclusion the fringe ethnic parties protest about6. Foucault also postulates the space for

contestation of the institutionalized truth within the educational system as well: “Every

educational system is a means of maintaining or modifying the appropriateness of discourses

with the knowledge and power they bring with them”7. But will the established truth ever allow

us to use this educational system for “modifying the…discourse” or for that matter even open

our eyes?

Before we indulge in a discussion on the contestation of the established truth, the nature and

choice of this truth needs consideration. The truth-construction in process is seen as actively

aligning the territory and identity and then more importantly state and nation. Borrowing from

Derrida, David Campbell calls this imminence of streamlining as ‘ontopology’8. He suggests

that this norm, leads to a desire for a coherent, bounded, monoculutural community9. The same

is observed in the discourse produced in the official textbooks whereby all cultural differences

5 Michel Foucault. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, ed and trans. Colin

Gordon. (Sussex: Harvester, 1980), p. 33. 6 The example of the Muhajir leader Altaf Hussain of Muttahida Qaumi Movement as noted in Ayesha Jalal.

“Conjuring Pakistan: History as Official Imagining” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 27, No. 1

(1995): 83. 7 Michel Foucault. L’ordre du discourse. (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), p. 46. 8 David Campbell. National Deconstruction: violence, identity, and justice in Bosnia (Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 1998), p. 80. 9 Ibid. p. 168-9

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are suppressed and the idea of Pakistan equated to the boundaries that exist today as an

inevitable reality.

What is this bounded community? A ‘nation’ has historically been defined in terms of the

shared characteristics of the people that constitute it as commonly found in standard

dictionaries today and in fact still ascribed to by many, specially where their own nations are

concerned10

. An example of its prevalence is found in the Oxford English Reference

Dictionary: “a community of people of mainly common descent, history, language, etc. forming

a state or inhabiting a territory”11

. This approach is known as the perennialist perspective

whereby nations had existed since time immemorial12

and the history of commonness of these

characteristics dates the existence of the nation. This approach to nationalism came under

heavy attack after the Second World War when it was increasingly explained as a product of

modernity and the changes in the socioeconomic, sociocultural, political and ideological

fronts13

.

However, it is in the constructionist approach, where the state’s spurring of national identity

creation can be best understood. According to constructionism nations are taken as historically

contingent products of human cultural construction14

. The most relevant approach however, for

understanding national identity creation through state apparatus is the. Benedict Anderson

speaks from the constructionist perspective and defines nation as “an imagined political

community-and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined because the

members of even the smallest nations will never know most of their fellow-members, meet

them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives an image of their community.”15

This definition has been chosen to guide this work because of the particular nature of the

Pakistan movement and the process of creation of the Muslim nation in India. The nation

certainly did take form, but was certainly not falsely invented to serve a corresponding existing

10

Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism: theory, ideology, history (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001), p. 49. 11

Judy Pearsall and Bill Trumble, Oxford English Reference Dictionary (New York: Oxford University Press,

2002), p. 963. 12

Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism, p. 49. 13

Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism, p. 48. 14

Liah Greenfeld and Jonathan Eastwood, ‘Naionalism in Comparative Perspective’ in The Handbook of political

sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 249. 15

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, (London: Verso, 1983), p. 15.

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state or a state to be achieved, as it should be if Gellner’s dependent relation of the nation with

the state is considered16

. This can be observed through the political developments in the early

first half of the twentieth century in India, the Muslim community became to be recognized as a

separate political entity as early as 1909 with the introduction of the separate electorates for

Muslims. Journals and popular magazines (like Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s Tehzeeb-ul-Akhlaque

and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s Zamindar) issues by the intelligentsia of the time produced a

new framework for Muslim Nationalism . In consequence, the religiously defined nation took

form as a result of the processes found in constructionist discourse i.e. print capitalism but this

nation could not transform into a nation-state of its own as a very limited Pakistan surfaced on

the map when Muslim-majority areas were arbitrarily demarcated into a new state.

Anderson describes the nation as “imagined because the members of even the smallest nation

will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the

mind of each lives the image of their communion.”17

Anderson's definition is important because

it emphasizes the central role played by the image of a nation in creating a national reality. It is

imagined because its existence is contingent on its members' sustaining a certain image of it

that is based on their perceptions and feelings. It is worthwhile to notice that Anderson

carefully distinguishes his definition from Ernest Gellner's claim that nationalism “invents

nations where they do not exist.”18

Gellner, he argues, is so anxious to show that nationalism

masquerades under false pretences that he equates invention with fabrication and falsity rather

than with imaging and creation.

The second pillar of Anderson’s definition poses the real challenge for choosing to define the

Pakistani nation in terms of religious affiliation.

“The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing

perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which

lie other nations… The most messianic nationalists do not dream of a day when all the

16

Liah Greenfeld and Jonathan Eastwood, ‘Nationalism in Comparative Perspective’ in The handbook of political

sociology, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 248. 17

Ibid. 18

Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 4.

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members of the human race will join their nation in the way it was possible, in certain

epochs, for, say, Christians to dream of a wholly Christian planet.”19

Practically, the dependence on using Islam for defining the distinctness of Muslims is

problematic since Islam was neither a coherent nor a limiting identity for its followers in the

region. There were, and are today even more, significant divides within. The huge spectrum of

ideological and sectarian categories existing within this larger category had divergent centres of

ideological leanings and the political affiliations that sprouted from them. Furthermore, the

pan-Islamic ideas postulated in the curriculum as well as in the discourse furthered by Islamic

political parties today allude to a type of Muslim planet, which the conception of this nation is,

ironically, completely at odds with. The struggle to deal with these contradictions is apparent

throughout the school curricula and will be discussed in detail in sections 5.3.1 and 5.3.2.

Now that a basic understanding of nationalism in the constructionist perspective and the

challenges faced in the imagining of the Pakistani nation has been attained, a brief exploration

of the power of nationalism in itself to be chosen as the prioritized disseminated identity over

all others is mandated here. The power of nationalism, argues Smith, should be attributed to the

fact that membership in a nation provides" a powerful means of defining and locating

individual selves in the world through the prism of the collective personality and its distinctive

culture.”20

This contextualization as members of a particular continuous community influences

one's perception of oneself, as well as of one's past and future. Similar, yet distinct from

perennialism which connects today’s nations with their past, Yael Tamir connects its

individuals with their future generations. “Membership in a nation, unlike membership in a

gender, class, or region, enables an individual to find a place not only in the world in which he

or she lives, but also in an uninterrupted chain of being. Nationhood promotes fraternity both

among fellow members and across generations. It endows human action with a meaning that

endures over time, thus carrying a promise of immortality.”21

This offer of redemption from

personal oblivion is echoed as Anderson22

and Smith23

both emphasize the immortality only

19

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, (London: Verso, 1983), p. 16. 20

Anthony D. Smith. National identity. (Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 1991), p.17. 21

Yael Tamir, “Enigma of nationalism” World Politics, 47, no. 3 (1995): 430. 22

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, (London: Verso, 1983), p. 16. 23

Anthony D. Smith. National identity. (Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 1991), p.160.

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nationalism can offer when one dies for one’s nation and this is precisely what we can observe

these textbooks doing by allocating separate chapters for each of the soldiers awarded the

“Nishan-e-Haider” – the biggest military award in Pakistan.

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3. Literature Review

This subject matter has been discussed and written about for quite some time by academics and

researchers in Pakistan as well as abroad. In a way this age old relevance creates the space for

more work in this field, the nexus of politics and curriculum in Pakistan.

Firstly, despite a consistent criticism on the curriculum, particularly that of history textbooks in

Pakistan by the most eminent historians and scholars of Pakistan, the aim, intent and

methodology of teaching history have not seen any variation which may be labeled as change.

Reform reports fail to bring about any significant turbulence in how the textbooks convey the

national narrative to the young minds.

Secondly, a considerable amount of literature exists and focuses on how Pakistani governments

have changed the curriculum content as per their ideology, using tools ranging from

exaggeration to falsehood. However, these studies are either unable to locate particular

examples from the textbooks or have to take refuge in the seminal work of K K Aziz: The

Murder of History24

. In this phenomenal book, he has extracted and corrected an extensive list

of errors from 66 Pakistan Studies and History textbooks, in use all the way from primary to

undergraduate level. Where this collection of errors offers a great opportunity for students and

particularly their parents and teachers to either avoid them or offer factual insight, it has its

share of limitations in being a reference for research on curriculum in Pakistan. Most

importantly, where the variety of the books used should accord this study a more representative

status, it in fact leads towards more confusion for the reader concerning the extent of the

calamity of these errors, since the prevalence of the concerned book is often unrecognized,

especially those taught at the undergraduate (BA) level. This problem arises because students at

this level prefer privately published guide books which continue to be replaced by newer and

better books. Though this might seem insignificant in terms of the contribution K K Aziz’s

work has made, the consequent conflation of errors that is presented to the reader is harmful for

a research effort, or more importantly for a policy proposal, given that all the errors are jointly

answered to and synthesized at the end.

24

K. K. Aziz. The Murder of History: A critique of history textbooks used in Pakistan. (Lahore: Vanguard, 1993).

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There have been other works focusing on the deliberate distortion of history for ideological

reasons; the first of which was from Pervez Hoodbhoy and A. H. Nayyar25

, pointing to the

policy directive which brought about the change in writing history to paint Islamic origins for

Pakistan and the subsequent distortions entering the Pakistan Studies textbooks, the foremost

target of the process of Islamization of education. This piece effectively articulates the main

strands of Islamization which Rewriting the History of Pakistan has undergone. It highlights the

Islamic nature of “Ideology of Pakistan”, the Islamized depiction of Jinnah, the attempt to

establish Ulema as heroes of the Pakistan Movement and the emphasis on ritualistic Islam as

presented in the textbooks and then brings forth historical proof in order to clear the haze of

subjectivity from these facets of common text-book description. This piece paves the way for

defogging the history of Pakistan but falls into the same temptation other investigators into the

representation of national narrative have faced; looking at the most blunt misrepresentations in

the wide range of ‘consumables’ available for a candidate of the Bachelors examination. For

example, one of the culprit historians referenced here is M. D. Zafar, author of Pakistan Studies

for Medical Students26

. It is worth noting here that medical students are a very small proportion

of the total undergraduate students and a product manufactured to serve them cannot serve as a

representative for ‘textbooks in Pakistan’.

Apart from the theme, the abovementioned culprit is the only common factor Hoodbhoy and

Nayyar’s chapter and Ayesha Jalal’s eloquent critique of the history taught in Pakistan. Her

insight into the matter demolishes the projected connection between the Ideology of Pakistan

and the Two Nation Theory. She explores the myths regarding the origins of Pakistani nation

and the implicit message within these origins for example the demonization of Hindus as a

reference sample of the historical narrative. Furthermore, the struggle of silencing all inner

dissent, particularly regionalism through historical writing, has been dealt with effectively.

Nonetheless, the problem of referencing books without contextualizing them with their

relevance to the student of the age recurs throughout the abundant use of private Intermediate

and BA books. Thus, a disconnection with the earlier introduction to the writing of textbooks

25

Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy and Abdul Hameed Nayyar, “Rewriting the History of Pakistan”. Islam, Politics and

the State: The Pakistan Experience, ed. Asghar Khan (London: Zed Books, 1985), pp. 164-177 26

M. D. Zafar, Pakistan Studies for Medical Students (Lahore: Aziz Publishers, 1982).

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by “petty officials”27

and the provincial textbook boards is exposed when not a single official

textbook is used for analysis.

A much deeper content analysis of social studies textbooks was carried out in 1993 by Rubina

Saigol, conducted to uncover the gendered articulation of educational discourse in Pakistan28

.

She also explores the amount of hate material found in textbooks along with nationalistic and

militaristic ideological indoctrination. Whereof the text has good views to offer, the work must

be contextualized as one which situates itself in a feminist framework. Moreover, the text is in

fact a PhD thesis, and hence differs in structural concerns from a book, wherefrom the response

it draws from the reader is off a different kind. A more minor drawback perhaps, but the text

may drag at times and disinterest the reader.

Overall, therefore, an excessive focus on history with a damaging exclusion of Urdu and

Islamiat continues with the choice of social studies and Pakistan Studies repeatedly; despite the

extensive potential for uncovering more subtle ideological statements and hence possibly prime

subject matter for the detailed content analysis like this.

A much more riveting work by an eminent scholar of education in India, Krishna Kumar

compares school histories of the freedom struggle in India and Pakistan to bring out the master

narratives of the two states: the closed Islamic state in Pakistan and the gradual

communalization of the secular India. He examines the representation of major episodes – like

the 1857 rebellion, the Khilafat Movement and Partition – and the opposing portrayals of

significant personalities such as Gandhi, Jinnah and Iqbal. The distinguishing characteristic of

his work is the recurring recourse of highlighting the “politics of mention”, “pacing” and the

“conception of end”29

, making the content analysis that follows much more accessible as well

as ordered in the reader’s mind. But again, the scope is limited to history and even more so to

only the hundred year period preceding partition.

27

Ayesha Jalal. “Conjuring Pakistan: History as Official Imagining” International Journal of Middle East Studies,

27, No. 1 (1995): 77. 28

Rubina Saigol, Knowledge and identity: articulation of gender in educational discourses in Pakistan.(Lahore:

ASR Publications, 1995). 29

Krishna Kumar. Pride and Prejudice: School Histories of the Freedom Struggle in India and Pakistan (New

Delhi: Viking, Penguin India, 2002), p. 72.

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The Sustainable Development Policy Institute report30

produced by a group of 29 scholars,

educators and researchers is the most comprehensive work done till date on the state of

curriculum and the textbooks in Pakistan, with particular focus on the textbooks produced by

the state, along with the policy directives that went into producing them. This is the first work

which does not limit itself to Social Studies and considers, instead, the varying array of places

where text-book ideologies hold sway, including Urdu, English and Civics but still leaves out

Islamiat for the political message therein. The report touches upon important components of the

curriculum that need immediate attention. The analysis systematically bring out the problematic

aspects of the curriculum, such as the distortion of our history through inaccuracies of fact and

omissions, sheer insensitivity to the existing religious diversity of the nation, glorification of

war and incitement to militancy and violence, and an overall dependence on outdated and

incoherent pedagogical practices that hinder the development of interest and insight among

students. While this comprehensive report covers good ground, it fails to gain any significant

depth in reaching any of the particular conclusions given above. Given also the lack of serious

work on the militarization aspect of the curriculum31

there is a welcome inclusion of a chapter

titled “Glorification of War and the Military”, which unfortunately falls short of a truly

outstanding piece of work by not penetrating far enough into the topic. After an introduction, it

provides a description of a Bhutto era two-year course on ‘Fundamentals of War’ and ‘Defence

of Pakistan’ for class XI and XII respectively and then launches on to listing particularly hate-

invoking learning outcomes from the curriculum documents followed by examples from

textbooks depicting Hindu-hatred as well as a listing of the topics glorifying Jihad and

Shahadat (martyrdom), without any textual analysis of any of the above. Thus this

groundbreaking work exposes many frontiers where the curriculum functions on ideological

grounds but does not fully recreate all the identities, the curriculum produces for school

children.

30

A.H. Nayyar and A. Salim, eds. The Subtle Subversion: A report on Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan.

(Islamabad: Sustainable Development Policy Institute, 2002). 31

Only a few fancily written opinionated pages exist on “Support Military Rule”, “Glorify War” and “Hate India”

by K. K. Aziz in The Murder of History, p. 190-195.

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A much deeper content analysis of social studies textbooks was carried out in 1993 by Rubina

Saigol conducted to uncover the gendered articulation of educational discourse in Pakistan32

.

She also explores the amount of hate material, and nationalistic and militaristic ideological

indoctrination found in textbooks.. Thus the focus on history with a damaging exclusion of

Urdu and Islamiat continues with the choice of social studies and Pakistan Studies repeatedly

despite the huge potential for uncovering more subtle ideological statements and hence possibly

prime subject matter for the detailed content analysis like this.

The most recent work on this subject is Marie Lall’s 2007 paper: “Educate to hate: the use of

education in the creation of antagonistic national identities in India and Pakistan”. In this paper

she compares the politicization of curriculum in the Zia ul Haq regime in Pakistan (1977-1988)

with that of the BJP-led government in India (1998-2004) and highlights how national curricula

was respectively colored with Zia’s Islamization and BJP’s Hindutva33

ideologies. In terms of

the contribution to the literature on assessment of politicization of curriculum in Pakistan, it

gives a good summary of education reforms under Zia’s regime but falls short of actually

referencing any of the books. Though one contribution serves the beginner in the field for

whom the lessons of imparting Islamic ideology through textbooks have been reproduced very

successfully from the reports and articles discussed above, there is a clear lack of direct

engagement with textbooks. The only direct reference she does make is to a privately published

book34

used in “preparing for GCSEs”35

even though this system of education has not been

introduced anywhere in the paper. Interestingly, even this book was published in 1991, well

after the end of Zia era, and no direct reference is made to any book from the Zia period, other

than this justification: “Whilst original Pakistani textbooks from the late 1970s and mid 1980s

are virtually impossible to get hold of today, the textbook boards and schools ensured that

anything printed before 1991 was a carbon copy of the books printed under Zia36

”.

32

Rubina Saigol, Knowledge and identity: articulation of gender in educational discourses in Pakistan.(Lahore:

ASR Publications, 1995). 33

Hindutva is based on the premise that India is a Hindu nation. Any non-Hindus in India have to either accept the

majority’s domination or leave. 34

Nadeem Qasir. Pakistan studies: an investigation into the political economy 1949–1988 (Karachi:

Oxford University Press, 1991). 35

Marie Lall, 'Educate to hate: the use of education in the creation of antagonistic national identities in India and

Pakistan', Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 38, no. 1, (2008): 113 36

Ibid.

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Marie Lall has also contributed a chapter to a recent compilation on state of education in

Pakistan, “Shaping a Nation: An examination of education in Pakistan” by the title of “What

role for Islam today? The political Islamisation of Pakistani society” in which political

socialization through education has been studied as a route to Islamisation. So much for the

word ‘today’, the whole section on education has been copied verbatim from the above

mentioned article, without failing to call the Nayyar & Salim report a “recent review”37

and

quoting the same piece from the 1991 book. More problematic is the fact that the revised books

which are out in the market are being referred to only as a curriculum directive sent out in 2006

which falsely claims that “all references to Islam have been removed from all textbooks bar

Pakistan Studies and Islamiyat.”38

It can be seen therefore that there has been no comprehensive review of the latest curriculum

documents released in 2007 and the textbooks produced as a result of them. Further the lack of

textual analysis prevails in all of the work done in this field, save Rubina Saigol’s PhD thesis.

And then there is the omission of Islamiat as a source of developing (Muslim) national identity,

while of course the only works that actually go beyond noting the historical errors and listing of

problematic material, and aim to draw out the master national narrative from the officially

dictated educational discourse are those of Ayesha Jalal and Krishna Kumar.

37

Marie Lall, “What role for Islam today? The political Islamization of Pakistani society” in Shaping a Nation: An

examination of education in Pakistan ed. Stephen Lyon and Iain R. Edgar, (Karachi: Oxford University Press,

2010), p. 103. 38

Ibid. p. 104.

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4. System of education in Pakistan

The stated aim of ordering the lives of Pakistanis according to the principles of Islam in the

constitution has been implemented on various fronts; one of the most significant of which is the

education system of Pakistan. Pakistan’s ministry of education maintains a sprawling network

of public schools which aim to educate a characteristically young population. Since these

schools have proved, even to the present date, insufficient to reach the whole of the population,

they are supplemented with private schools all over the country. Still, an overwhelming

majority goes to public schools. The Matriculation exam taken after the tenth grade is a

significant stage of education in Pakistan after which a majority of students discontinue

education. Thus enrollment at the Matriculation level can be used to gauge the coverage of

public schools. In 2007-08, a total of 2,426,255 were enrolled in the high school level (leading

to the Matriculation exam) in Pakistan, out of which 1,723,30939

were in public schools which

amounts to 71% of the total students. Punjab accounts for a huge 1,360,757 high school goers

(957,145 go to public schools) i.e. 56% of the total high school students in Pakistan.

Furthermore, private schools too largely prepare students to sit for these exams, and only a

small number of students from large urban centers take the British O/A level exams. Thus,

every year at least more than a million students read the textbooks produced by the Punjab

Textbook Board to take the Matriculation exam. The number of students attending public

primary and secondary schools is phenomenally larger at 5,770,429 and 20259,435

respectively40

, also denoting the certain minimum number of students reading Punjab Textbook

Board books at these levels.

The direct equation between public school education and officially produced is simple, there

are no other books taught in public schools. Further the examination system makes sure that

official textbooks are completely memorized which makes any study outside these textbooks

redundant. The questions posed in these exams are usually directly borne out of particular

subsections in the respective textbooks. These exam question papers are set by officials of the

39

Pakistan Education Statistics 2007-08, (Islamabad: Academy of educational planning and management,

Ministry of Education, 2009), Table 0.2: Enrollment by stage. 40

Ibid. Table 1.2: Enrollment (Public sector) by Province, Stage, Gender and Location.

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individual boards like Board of Intermediate & Secondary Education Lahore and are patterned

on model papers released by the Board well in advance from the actual paper (see appendix I).

The students are so conveniently conditioned into following these model papers and the limited

syllabus that if anything “out-of-course” is posed in the exams, protests or walk-outs are likely

to occur. Interestingly, this “out-of-course” does not necessarily mean something popping up

completely out of the topics noted in the syllabus but actually exact questions from the

officially prescribed textbook. This sheds light on the dependent relationship students are

taught to develop with the textbooks prescribed by the ‘boards’.

Once these exams conclude, the papers are gathered and distributed among examiners on

government payroll. These examiners make sure that only the officially sanctioned ideas are

reproduced by the students to the fullest. The ideal candidate would have reproduced the

relevant section in the textbook the best and presented it in the most linear fashion. A glance on

the production of textbooks is mandated here. The responsibility for designing them lies with

the Curriculum Wing of the Federal Ministry of Education and the provincial Text Book

Boards. The Curriculum Wing is mandated to design all pre-university curricula and issue

guidelines to textbook writers and school teachers. Provincial Textbook Boards commission

writing of textbooks and get them printed after their contents are approved by the Curriculum

Wing. Thus, the tightly controlled process makes sure that the official discourse is perpetuated

in the young minds of this nation.

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5. Content Analysis

Before we attempt to scale the national identity project in the national curriculum, it is worthy

of our investigation to discern the ordering of identities it provides for the nation’s youth and

their reference for the life to come. The grade II Urdu book (see Appendix II) provides the

reference point for the nation that sharply resisted the slogan of Sub se pehlay Pakistan –

Pakistan first41

. It starts from a poem on the praise of Allah, followed by an account of the

Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and a poem on his praise42

. “Pakistan” comes right on number four.

After an interval of two lessons, “tales of great personalities”43

appears, of which the first one is

the Prophet of Islam followed by a companion of the Holy Prophet and a scholar of Islam. The

choice of the personalities finely confines the young children’s imagination and scope for

‘great men’ to not only being Muslims but also either the Prophet himself or at least belonging

“to that era”, as it is commonly referred to. The questions that follow the lesson leave no room

for any questioning when “Muslim” and “infidel” are asked to be matched as antonyms44

. But

then confusion is introduced by bringing in the very contemporary “Quaid-e-Azam” in the next

lesson. There could only be two meanings for the seven year olds studying this book in this

order, either Quaid-e-Azam (and the phenomenon of his making of Pakistan) also belong to

that category or he comes right after these people in historical standing, as Pakistan does after

Allah and the Prophet. This ordering of identity through prioritization of knowledge is no mere

accident. This order is particularly delineated for Urdu books, all the way from grade I to XII,

in the official curriculum directive guiding the textbook writing process45

.

The following opening sentences for the lesson on ‘Pakistan’ in the above mentioned book

succinctly summarize the national identity formulation this paper seeks to identify:

“Our dear country’s name is Pakistan. Pakistan is an Islamic country.

41

“Sub se pehlay Pakistan” – Pervez Musharraf’s popular slogan. His autobiography In the line of fire is published

in Urdu with this title. 42

Meri kitab (Urdu): Jamaat Doam, (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2010), p. iv. 43

Ibid. p. 15. 44

Ibid. p. 18. 45

Qaumi nisaab baraye Urdu (lazmi): pehli ta barhween jamaat kay liye, (Islamabad: Ministry of Education,

Government of Pakistan, 2006), 52-78.

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Non-Muslims live here too who are less in number…”46

Here we can see the basic equation for Pakistan with Islam and the secondary status accorded

to non-Muslims. This political identity sits in the context of long struggles to officially classify

Ahmedis as non-Muslims and episodes like the burning of a Christian village in Gojra, though

no direct link between this episode and the identity formation has been explored here.

‘Pakistan’ – Phases of its Construction

The national identity construction is phased in this manner:

1) Justifying the creation of Pakistan within the broad Indian struggle for independence

up to the partition of India in 1947) by

i. establishing ancient origins for Pakistan,

ii. Islamizing the past,

iii. categorically distinguishing Muslims from Hindus, and

iv. exaggerating the scope of the and historicity Two Nation Theory

2) Description of the struggle towards maintaining and upholding the Islamic ideology

Pakistan was purportedly created to serve. This struggle requires the textbooks to

function on all these fronts:

i. The transition from the “Two Nation Theory” to the “Ideology of Pakistan”

ii. India – the arch-enemy and the survival against its evil designs.

iii. Glorification of violence and the military

3) Establishing the exclusivity of Pakistan for Muslims by

i. linking the Muslims of Pakistan to a bigger whole; the Muslim Ummah and

ii. denying any recognition and representation to religious and sectarian

minorities.

iii. forcing non-Muslims to read Islamic religious teachings,

46

Meri kitab (Urdu): Jamaat Doam,p. 7 – my translation.

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5.1. Justifying the creation of Pakistan within the Indian independence movement

For serving this purpose, History writers do not hesitate in personally intervening in the history

that actually unfolded in the region by withholding characters or incidents or by pacing up

through those times which are deemed insignificant for contributing towards creation of

Pakistan in the subcontinent.

“Although the Pakistani story of the ‘awakening’ is a historical story, it is represented to

children in a timeless mode. Events that occurred in different epochs and around

personalities as different as Shah Waliullah, Syed Ahmad Khan and Jinnah are welded

together to form an account that makes the ‘awakening’ of Muslim people in the Indian

subcontinent a predestined, stepwise revelation.”47

The creation of Pakistan is conveniently constructed as the teleological culmination of the

history of the subcontinent. Rather, there is no history of the whole subcontinent; there is only

the history of ‘Pakistan’. Hence the introduction of the subject “Pakistan Studies” was

imperative, for that can warrants all such historical engineering; inclusion, exclusion and

pacing.

5.1.1. Search for primordial origins

Tracing the historical origins of the country can serve as a very fruitful exercise in discerning

this sense of timelessness that surrounds the phenomenon. Ayesha Jalal’s Conjuring Pakistan

provides a detailed analysis of the various origins of the idea of Pakistan traced by multiple

authors in publication48

. Here, the exploration shall be restricted to the official textbooks. A

beginner’s chapter on “History of Pakistan” conveniently dates “our country” to the first known

inhabitants of this region. It says, “About 5000 years before, the majority of the people did not

know the art of constructing fine houses…But, even in those days, the people of our country

lived in good looking houses which had all the basic facilities of life”.49

Crafting ancient origins

47

Krishna Kumar. Pride and Prejudice: School Histories of the Freedom Struggle in India and Pakistan (New

Delhi: Viking, Penguin India, 2002), p. 85. 48

Ayesha Jalal. “Conjuring Pakistan: History as Official Imagining” International Journal of Middle East Studies,

27, No. 1 (1995): 78-81. 49

Social Studies 5 (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2005), p. 114.

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is not an entirely novel exercise, whereby many modern day nations strive to establish their

nationhood in long-past days with any remote connection. The subtle novelty introduced here is

dating the existence of the political entity in its own to the first known habitation of this region.

Or it is more likely that the authors simply do not deem children worthy of such

disambiguation.

In more advanced texts, the creation of Pakistan is slightly delayed to serve the Islamic

connection. Though these texts fail to note the time and occasion for the saying, they do

certainly pin the origin of Pakistan to the first conversion to Islam according to a paraphrased

saying of Quaid-e-Azam5051

. Apart from erasing the significance of time and chronology for a

historical inquiry from the students of history, it also drills in them a very restricted picture of

the astute founder of Pakistan as one who sees nothing but the demand for a separate state for

the Muslims of India, taking away the margin Jinnah sought to create for himself in the

constitutional battle through claims of religion in the public sphere52

.

5.1.2. Islamizing the Past

With ancient roots defined for both the nation as well as the state, history of South Asia is

allowed to proceed only with a clear Islamic direction. A simple indicator of this ordering is

found in the titles for the chapters covering history in grade VI Social Studies textbook53

. Here

is the history section of the contents list:

Sr. No. Chapters Page

5 Society in South Asia before Islam 81

6 Advent of Islam in South Asia 93

7 Advent of British in South Asia 110

Table 5: Extract from list of contents of Social Studies 6, Punjab Textbook Board, 2009.

50

Pakistan Studies 9-10 (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2010), p. 2. 51

Mutalia-e-Pakistan 11-12 (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2005), p.2. 52

Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia: History, culture, political economy (New Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 2004), p. 146. 53

Social Studies 6 (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2009), p. iv.

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Given the classification above, it is expected that the categorization of “Advent of Islam” till

the next impending “Advent” will have accounts of the different Muslim kingdoms that formed

and withered in India but the machinations of the official historian go one step beyond. After

accounting for Muhammad Bin Qasim’s arrival; the standard marker of the beginning of

Pakistan’s Muslim history, the rest of the chapter is devoted to extractions aimed at extolling

the virtues of Muslim rule with no differentiation in terms of chronology or political impact of

say, even the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, let alone different Mughal emperors. The

evident clumping together of all Muslim rulers of the subcontinent into a continuous “Muslim

rule” here is attempted much more actively in the fifth grade history textbook through

statements like: “The Muslim ruled over the sub-continent for about eight hundred years after

Sultan Mahmood Ghaznavi54

” and “In 1206 A. D. Sultan Qutb-ud-Din Aybek conquered Delhi

and his successors ruled over South Asia until 185755

” or through the brevity in this statement

from the more important tenth grade book, “The Muslim rule in the South Asian sub-continent

started with the conquest of Sindh by Muhammad Bin Qasim in 712 AD56

”. The united and

even singular category of “The Muslim” now embedded in the Muslim rule spanning centuries

provides substance for an overall framework that classifies not being in power as ‘slavery’57

and demands an imminent return to the natural order – one which truly transformed the caste-

ridden Hindu society58

into one based on “justice, equality and brotherhood” inherent in the

system of Islam59

.

5.1.3. Muslims (All India Muslim League) vs non-Muslims (Hindus – All India Congress &

the British)

The foundations for communalization of the subcontinent’s history are also laid here. This

communalization runs both ways, of establishing the superiority of social system Islam

introduces as well as denigrating other religions particularly Hinduism e.g. compare “Islam

54

Social Studies 5 (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2009), p. 131. 55

Ibid. p. 116 56

Pakistan Studies 9 – 10 (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2009), p. 9. 57

Social Studies 5, p. 118. 58

Social Studies 6, p. 86- 88. Also mentioned in the chapter on Musawaat (Equality) in Islamiat 7, (Lahore:

Punjab Textbook Board, 2005), p. 46-47. 59

Ibid. p.101.

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preached equality, brotherhood and fraternity and respect for all the people60

” with “The

foundation of Hindu set up was based on injustice and cruelty”, right in the next paragraph. The

use of “Hindu set up” is worthy of attention here. While this phrase wisely avoids implicating

the Hindu religion in itself but certainly fixes it with a sense of artificiality in contrast with the

natural and divine Islam. Further on however, even this refrain is done away with at the end of

the chapter through a “right/wrong” question, “There is no place for equality in Hinduism.61

After a firm introduction to the essentially unjust and unequal society that Hinduism had

ordered, the narrative moves on to establishing Hindus in a relationship of a complete and

comprehensive rivalry with Muslims; one that comfortably transcends the limited political

sphere.

The first step in this connection is by creating the ‘Other’ out of Hindus in the social realm.

Such a definitive claim is attributed to the nineteenth century reformer Sir Syed Ahmad Khan

whereby he had “made clear to the Muslims that the Hindus could never be their friends62

”,

after duly noting that “the non-Muslims, especially the Hindus, did not like the Muslims as they

looked upon them as usurpers63

” under the heading “Advent of the Muslims”. Sir Syed’s saying

is then claimed to have proved true as “Hindus proved by their actions that they were a separate

nation and were enemy of Muslims64

”. In point of fact Sir Syed mainly warned the Muslims to

stay away from the Indian National Congress, keeping in view the impending democratic

reforms in the colonial setup; where he viewed western democracy to be harmful for the

Muslims of India. This commands that this warning is referring to the Indian National Congress

as can be seen through a rushed account of “The Freedom Movement” in the grade VI Social

Studies book. This account problematically pins the foundation of Congress on the Hindus and

informs students of its Hindu-centric politics, thus laying down the divide in identity between

the Congress and Hindus in two quick sentences spaced only by the formation of Muslim

League in response: “The Hindus in 1885 founded Indian National Congress…The Congress

60

Ibid. p.100. 61

Ibid. p. 92. 62

Social Studies 5, p. 134. 63

Social Studies 5, p. 117. 64

Social Studies 5, p. 134

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didn’t care for the interest of the Muslims but it only served the political cause of Hindus65

”.

One other account emphatically lays down the mutual power dynamics between the three

‘actors’ namely the Hindus, the Muslims and the British in the post-185766

era:

“The British had not forgotten the War of Independence waged by the Muslims against

them. The Hindus had never forgiven the Muslims for having ruled India for centuries.

Therefore, the both the communities conspired against the Muslims to turn them into a

poor, helpless and ineffective minority.

The Hindus soon learnt the English language, adopted the western ways of living and

occupied important government posts. Muslims were left far behind socially,

educationally and economically. Then the events took a new turn. Hindus who had

received western education in England or some other countries of Europe formed in

connivance with the British rulers a political party called the Indian National Congress

which aimed at sharing power with the British in ruling India. They were successful in

their plans. But Muslims were losers and so when councils were set up, they were left

out. The ruling British sensed this and felt concerned because the Muslims did not get

adequate representation.67

The stamp on the pupil’s memory is explicit and clear:

i) The Hindus are a clever and cunning people.

ii) The Hindus and the British had schemed together to suppress the

Muslims.

iii) The Muslims were in deep trouble and needed to break away from it.

As a linear consequence of the above, it is noted that since “Muslims of India had no political

organization of their own; therefore in 1906 they decided to form a political party known as All

65

Social Studies 6, p. 126. 66

The year 1857 marks the beginning of the “British Raj” in India under the Queen after the British Army

successfully suppressed the military uprising of many names and hence many interpretations: Great Rebellion, the

revolt of 1857, the Sepoy Mutiny or the War of Independence. See Rubina Saigol’s devoted chapter “” in Shaping

a Nation: An examination of education in Pakistan ed. Stephen Lyon and Iain R. Edgar. Karachi: Oxford

University Press, 2010 on the revolt for a comparison of representation in the textbooks of the two countries or

Krishna Kumar’s Prejudice and Pride for a discussion on tracing origins of the Freedom Movement for the two

countries: “A beginning located”, p. 87-101. 67

Social Studies 8, (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2009) p. 74.

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India Muslim League68

”. Here at its founding and henceforth, the Muslim League will continue

to be the only Muslim political party mentioned in all of official textbooks. All those opposing

Pakistan, whether they were religious in nature – in the form of Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind, Majlis-i-

Ahrar-i-Islam or Jamat-i-Islami; or secular – like the Khaksar Tehrik or the Congress affiliated

Khudai Khidmatgars in North West Frontier Province, have been erased from the officially

sanctioned school history. The Unionists manage a mention only for their eventual compromise

with the idea of Pakistan. And yet, Jinnah’s claim that Muslim League is the only

representative party of Muslims in India is repeated time and again as reinforcement69

. The

need for such defences are often lost on the student, for only one Muslim political party ever

existed for them. The space for opposition to partition of India and its proponents is warranted,

thus situating an inclusion within exclusion.

In this way Muslim League and Congress are fixed into identical relationships with Muslims

and Congress respectively. This identity serves to create the epic battle between the Muslim

League and the Congress and by implication, from hereon, between the Muslims and the

Hindus. The battle in which “Congress only wants the domination of Hindus70

” and the

Muslims fought for “the establishment of the new state71

” one the Pakistan Resolution was

passed on 23rd March 1940. The maneuvers in the above narration are worth assessing to

gauge the susceptibility of national education to the “petty officials” to whom writing school

history has been entrusted with. The birth of Congress is noted as if to be ‘set up’ like an

institution or enterprise72

.

The official textbooks completely strip the Congress of any context in terms of educational and

societal reform movements taking shape in India or the impact of Colonial administrative and

economic reforms, whereas the Muslim League had clear origins in inadequate representation

of Muslims, bigoted opposition of Hindus to the partition of Bengal province and the

(unexplained) British attitude73

. Consider now, the claim of Congress aspirations of Hindu

68

Social Studies 8, p. 75. 69

? 70

Meri kitab (Urdu)5 (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2010) p. 19. 71

Ibid. 72

Krishna Kumar. Pride and Prejudice: School Histories of the Freedom Struggle in India and Pakistan (New

Delhi: Viking, Penguin India, 2002), p. 117. 73

Pakistan Studies 9-10 (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2010), p. 11.

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hegemony in India. It is a known fact that many Muslims including religious scholars held

important positions in the Congress right up till 1947, only to find them marginalized in the

newly constructed official history of Pakistan.

The categorization accords significant room for the state, individual governments and the

media alike to concoct conspiracy theories with which all of Pakistan’s problems can be

explained away. For example, Lahore’s Commissioner comfortably blamed India’s Secret

Agency for the recent bombings in the tomb of the city’s revered saint within minutes of its

occurrence to hide the administration’s incompetency74

. Stories of a “Brahmin-Zionist” nexus

conspiring against Pakistan are regularly churned out by the Pakistani media75

and often

extended to include America in a variety of these conspiracy plots. Krishna Kumar summarizes

the convenience accorded by this lumping together of millions of people to potential

exploitation. “Such categories serve to create stereotypes which can be conveniently invoked

for the arousal of hatred or empathy76

”.

5.1.4. The “fighting people”77

of Islam

Once the Muslims are affirmed as an oppressed people at the hands of the conniving Hindus

and the brutal British rulers, the texts imbeds in them a spirit of inexorable resilience: they were

weaker and lesser in number, yet they fought bravely and defeated all their fears and achieved

the ultimate goal of creating their own homeland. A theme that echoes the early Islamic history

taught parallel in Islamiat course texts; when early converts bore all the hardships inflicted by

the infidels, yet persisted in the most humane ways and managed to take back not just Mecca

but burgeoned the boundaries of the Islamic frontiers to the Persian and Byzantine empires.

74

Kunwar Idris, “Laws that stoke violence,” Dawn, June 6, 2010, editorial. 75

Paul Rockower and Aneeq Cheema, “Dancing in the Dark: Pulling the Veil off Israeli–Pakistan Relations” in

Muslim Attitudes to Jews and Israel: The ambivalences of rejection, antagonism, tolerance and cooperation ed.

Moshe Ma'oz. (Sussex Academic Press, 2010). 76

Krishna Kumar. Pride and Prejudice: School Histories of the Freedom Struggle in India and Pakistan (New

Delhi: Viking, Penguin India, 2002), p. 111. 77

Krishna Kumar. Pride and Prejudice: School Histories of the Freedom Struggle in India and Pakistan (New

Delhi: Viking, Penguin India, 2002), p. 82.

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Here is a list of the relevant topics from the prescribed topics for the school syllabus for

Islamiat78

:

Grade Topics on the Struggle Topics propagating national ideology.

4 Sabit Qadmi (Perseverance)

Migration to Abyssinia

Watan se Muhabbat (Love for the

homeland/ Patriotism)

Migration to Medina

5 Battle of Badr

Battle of Uhad

Battle of the trench

Islami Akhuwat

6 Battle of Khyber

Mulk-o-millat kay liyay isaar ka jazba

(Passion for Sacrifice for the country

and the nation)

7 Conquest of Mecca

Battle of Hunain

Battle of Tabuk

Salah-ud-Din Ayyubi

8 Muhammad bin Qasim

Ittehad-e-Milli (Unity of the Nation)

Table 6: Topics on early Muslim struggle and patriotism for Pakistan in the Islamiat syllabus for class 3–12.

The idea of fighting for ‘their’ Islam is instilled unabashedly through every subject matter that

can be exploited. At one place, the eighth grade Social Studies textbook narrates the resistance

of Indian Muslims in the following words: “The Muslims did not rest after defeat in the War of

Independence. They could not be cowed down by the atrocities committed on them by the

78

Qaumi Nisaab baraye Islamiat (lazmi): Jamaat soam ta dawazdaham (National Syllabus for Islamiat

(Compulsory): Grade Three to Twelfth), (Islamabad: Curriculum Wing, Ministry of Education, Government of

Pakistan, 2006), p. 6-14.

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British and the Hindus. Rather, they continued their struggle more vigorously, which

culminated in the creation of Pakistan in August 194779

”. This summary of the Muslim struggle

builds on the epic battle discussed above as a foundation towards the ‘creation of Pakistan’

(which at this point sounds very imminent) – a permanent replacement for ‘partition’80

. This

seems rather logical at this point. Given the degree of glorification of the path to achieving

Pakistan, the scope for ‘history’ in the official narration of past events seems limited. The

creation of Pakistan could not possibly be seen as an outcome of banal political contestation,

particularly those which could actually aim at dividing a land Muslims had ruled in entirety for

centuries. The word ‘Partition’ could not therefore be used – lest the children could imagine

that dividing a land is a possibility, let alone the country created to serve and protect Islam.

Hence, the Achievement of Pakistan was the result of a grand wrestle between the forces of

‘good’ and ‘evil’ – in which the Muslim League is the obvious champion for the good in its

limited odds against the united British-Hindus front of evil81

.

The other notable avenue selected for inculcating the ideal of fighting for religion is Islamiat. A

lesson in the Fourth Grade Islamiat book on Watan say Muhabbat (Patriotism) neatly knits the

narrative of struggle and sacrifice for realizing the homeland of Pakistan with the Prophet

Muhammad’s sacrifice of migration from Mecca82

. The ideologically loaded paragraph that

follows is best translated as:

“Pakistan is our beloved country. Pakistan was attained so that we can save ourselves

from the slavery of foreigners and freely live our lives according to the Islamic way of

life and prosper. Our elders have given countless sacrifices for it. We value these

sacrifices and are ready to offer any sacrifice for it. We love Pakistan more than our

own lives because this is Allah’s gift. It is mandated upon us that we try our best to

protect our lives and defend it at any condition…83

79

Social Studies 8, p. 73. 80

I owe Taimur Rehman for introducing to this particular of many vagaries Pakistani school history is plagued

with in a lecture delivered to Seeds of Peace gathering at the Divisional Public School, Lahore in 2005. 81

“The Muslims of the subcontinent…forced the two enemies, the British and the Hindus, to accept the demand

for an independent Pakistan.” In Social Studies 8, p. 83. 82

Islamiat 4, (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2005), p. 59. 83

Ibid. – my translation and emphasis.

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5.2. Battlefronts for upholding Ideology of Pakistan

5.2.1. The Unworthy Equation: Ideology of Pakistan and the Two-Nation Theory

“Quaid-e-Azam said that the foundation of Two Nation Theory was laid on the day the

first Hindu became a Muslim. Thus the Two Nation Theory originated with the arrival

of Muslims in the sub-continent. In fact the concept of ideology originated in the same

period.84

The above quote is from a critical chapter in the Pakistan Studies textbook for the student about

to take the matriculation exam. This concise statement embodies three important messages

aimed at these students. The first of these; antiquating the Muslim nation has already been

discussed. The second seeks to establish the separateness of Muslims wherever they are, in

whatever number, since even a single Muslim here in a non-Muslim land constitutes a separate

existence. This separateness essentially warranted the whole Pakistan Movement based on the

Two Nation Theory, which demanded that Muslims be recognized as a separate nation in India,

along with Hindus. Whereas this significance necessitates some introduction of the concept of

separate identity, the treatment school historians actually bestow to this concept breaches

today’s norms of international society. For example, consider here the inherent disrespect for

sovereignty in the description of Muslim majority and minority countries in the world in terms

of ruling status: “In some countries Muslims are in a majority and there they have their own

government and at some places their population is less (in a minority) and they live subordinate

to some other nation’s government.85

” If such an ideology of Two Nation Theory is applied in

each of these countries then the result would be many more states sprouting from the original

countries in the name Muslim separateness.

The most disturbing, though, is the way last sentence has been worded, and the implication it

creates. The use of the term ‘ideology’ runs rampant in the syllabi of Pakistan Studies, Urdu

and Islamiat with complete disregard for defining the concept itself so as to free it of the

various connotations it carries. Krishna Kumar’s surprise on the frequency and ease of its use

creates a small comparison on the bluntness of educational policy discourse compared with the

84

Pakistan Studies 9-10, p. 9. 85

Islamiat 5, p. 89 - elaboration in original.

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‘enemy’. He writes, “As an Indian reader of Pakistan’s educational policy…one is struck by the

ease with which the word ‘ideology’ is used to define or justify the orientation of the system

and its curriculum86

.” He later settles with the idea only to hit right at the heart of the intention

of the Pakistani educational system, “[it] is used in Pakistan to indicate a rationale for national

self-identity87

”.

The most common use of ‘ideology’ is in statements equating Ideology of Pakistan to Islam

through the Two Nation Theory. The section on “Meaning of the Ideology of Pakistan” in the

chapter “Ideological Basis of Pakistan” opens with the following ambiguous statement in the

Pakistan Studies textbook: “The ideology of Pakistan and the Islamic ideology are having the

same meaning88

”. The explained link between the two, however, is limited to realizing the

separateness of the Muslim subcontinent “on the basis of Islamic ideology89

.” The mental

imprint of such draped statements is much larger than a mere historical misunderstanding of the

Pakistan movement. Later on in the chapter, the following constituents of ideology of Pakistan

are identified “in the light of Islamic ideology90

”:

1. Islamic beliefs,

2. Islamic worship,

3. Supremacy of law in the light of Quran and Sunnah,

4. Fraternity and equality

5. Justice

A glance at the adept removal of context from Quaid’s sayings offers an understanding into the

created space for equating the Two Nation Theory, Ideology of Pakistan and an extremely

restrictive Islamic ideology. Consider the choice of quotes for explaining the Ideology of

Pakistan. Extracts from addresses to the armed forces and then one on the inauguration of the

State Bank, both specialized institutions of the state, are paraphrased. Whereas, Jinnah's

86

Krishna Kumar, p. 57. 87

Ibid. 88

Pakistan Studies 9-10, p. 1. 89

Ibid. 90

Mutalia-e-Pakistan baraye jamaat dehem, (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2005), p. 7.

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presidential address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan two days before Pakistan was to

be a sovereign state has been completely glossed over91

.

This vacuum of detail is not left unexploited in the religiously charged nation. Religious

organizations – political, militarist or just revivalist – all clamor to fill in this knowledge gap in

the young minds with their own versions of Islamic ideology, and that too with significant

success. The remarkable stronghold commanded by Islami Jamiat e Talaba; the student wing of

the mainstream religious political party Jamaat-i-Islami, on large public universities and

colleges in Pakistan92

, reflects the vulnerability to religious propaganda a public school

education in Pakistan exposes one to. Jamiat’s astounding influence in student politics

compared with the dismal election performance achieved by the Jamaat-i-Islami is the starkly

ideological character of both organizations93

that limits its membership to the urban educated

class at the cost of the more numerous rural voter.

The troubled times of today, when the manifestations of religious indoctrination have far

exceeded the petty hooliganism of the Jamiat, demand a serious review of feeding such

jingoistic cries to pliable adolescents. But whenever any such review or reform is attempted, it

is met with severe protest. In 2004, such an attempt was heavily criticized by parliamentarians94

hailing from religious parties when Zubaida Jalal, the education minister in Musharraf’s

government, proposed changes such as the removal of Quranic verses from higher secondary

level Biology textbooks95

. In the face of the pressure from religious parties, the proposed

changes were withdrawn and these verses still mark the opening of each chapter in the said

science book.

91

“…everyone of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the

past, no matter what is his colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights,

privileges, and obligations…

“You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or

worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the

business of the State…”

in Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah: Speeches and statements 1947-48, (Islamabad:

Directorate of Films & Publications, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of Pakistan, 1989), p.

46. 92

Waqar Gillani, “2004 — education issues, problems and reforms”, Daily Times. July 24, 2010. 93

Seyyed Vali Raza Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press,

1994), p. 72. 94

Juliette Terzieff, “Pakistan’s inner battle for education reform / Fight pits as rivals progressive forces and old-

school religious factions”, San Francisco Chronicle, May 30th, 2004. 95

Waqar Gillani, “2004 — education issues, problems and reforms”, Daily Times. July 24, 2010.

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As a response to all the touted protectors of the Islamic ideology of Pakistan, a brief

examination of the origins of this oft-mentioned concept with reference to the textbooks is

carried out here.

However long the debate on Jinnah’s proposed “ideology of Pakistan” goes on, and it seems

unlikely to be resolved whether he intended Pakistan to be an Islamic state or a secular liberal

democracy. What is relevant here is how textbooks practically quote him to base their preferred

Pakistan’s Islamic foundations. Pakistan Studies textbooks for the vital Matriculation (IX-X

grades) and Intermediate (XI-XII) have specific sections on “Ideology of Pakistan and Quaid-e-

Azam” starting right from the first96

and second page respectively. While they stop short of

titling it “Quaid-e-Azam’s Ideology of Pakistan” or “Ideology of Pakistan according to Quaid-

e-Azam”, the progression of quotes provided here lay down a peculiar foreground for the

overall ideology of Pakistan constructed in detail in the senior book. The first two establish the

Two Nation Theory and the demand for partition: establishing that the Two Nation Theory is

the Ideology of Pakistan. The third and fourth help perceive Pakistan in the “North West” and

consisting of “Punjabi, Sindhi, Balochi and Pathan”, thus categorically removing Bengal from

the Quaid’s conception of Pakistan97

. Finally the term ‘ideology’ appears; an incorrectly dated

address is quoted next. It is then reported to have been delivered to “the officers of the

Government of Pakistan”, the most subtle tampering of historicity by a textbook – that actually

hides a reference to the military forces rather than highlighting – since it was an address to the

“Civil, Naval, Military and Air Force Officers of Pakistan Government at Karachi”98

. These

assertions are being made in the light of the striking resemblance of the two quotes found in the

textbook and a compilation of Quaid’s speeches and the fact that there is no noted and recorded

address on the 1st October even in the Ministry of Information compilation. The two are

similar, but not identical, for an exact reproduction could possibly break the particular frame of

history Pakistan is allowed to be seen through. Here’s how the textbook paraphrases it:

96

Pakistan Studies 9-10, p. 1. 97

The quote from Iqbal’s Allahabad address of 1930, though correctly, repeats the same geographical bounds to

further strengthen the image of Pakistan as the “current Pakistan” since the time its demand was made. 98

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah: Speeches and statements 1947-48, (Islamabad:

Directorate of Films & Publications, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of Pakistan, 1989), p.

74.

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“On 1st October 1947, while addressing the officers of the Government of Pakistan, he

said that their mission was the establishment of a state where they could live like free

people in their own socio-cultural set up necessary for the promotion of social justice

and Islamic Ideology99

”.

The Urdu edition of the same textbook actually puts quotation marks from “their mission”

onwards100

. The original text of the speech however says:

“The establishment of Pakistan for which we have been striving for the last ten years

is, by grace of God, an established fact today, but the creation of a State of our own was

a means to an end and not the end in itself. The idea was that we should have a state in

which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to

our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find

freeplay.101

The contradictions in the two statements are apparent. The original does not refer to any

Islamic ideology, rather seeks to focuses only on Islamic ideas of social justice.

There is also no dearth of opposition to this crafty manipulation of Quaid’s words and the

crafted “Ideology of Pakistan”. And this opposition’s apostle is Justice Munir who writes in

From Jinnah to Zia:

“Quaid-i-Azam never used the words “Ideology of Pakistan” … For fifteen years after

the establishment of Pakistan, the Ideology of Pakistan was not known to anybody until

in 1962 a solitary member102

of the Jama’at-I-Islami used the words for the first time

when the Political Parties Bill was being discussed. On this, Chaudhry Fazal Elahi,

who has recently retired as President of Pakistan, rose from his seat and objected that

99

Pakistan Studies 9-10, p. 2. 100

Mutalia-e-Pakistan baraye jamaat dehem, p. 9. 101

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah: Speeches and statements 1947-48, (Islamabad:

Directorate of Films & Publications, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of Pakistan, 1989), p.

74. 102

K. K. Aziz and Bakhshish Yousaf Chaudhry identify this member as Maulvi Abdul Bari of Lyallpur.

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the ‘Ideology of Pakistan’ shall have to be defined. The member who had proposed the

original amendment replied that the ‘Ideology of Pakistan was Islam’ …103

Thus the phrase Ideology of Pakistan had no historical basis in the Pakistan movement.

Today’s projected understanding of Ideology of Pakistan resonates with the concept of Islamic

state proposed by Maulana Mawdudi. Thus, the ideology of Pakistan in vogue today is a

symbol of Mawdudi’s success in salvaging his lost cause at the creation of Pakistan, a

phenomenon he bitterly resented and criticized.

5.2.2. Fixing India as the enemy

One of the most significant aspects of the Pakistani national identity is the classification of

Pakistan and India as arch-enemies. Survival against the arch-enemy – India — appears as a

major in theme in the curriculum of Social Studies and Urdu. The creation of this enemy is

facilitated by the already completed task of vilification of Hindus. As the Hindus had proved

through the Congress politics that they are a separate nation, the India that formed was

obviously a Hindu country. Furthermore, in an attempt to deny the secular image India seeks to

project, all Social Studies texts for middle classes consistently use “Bharat” to refer to India

even in English editions. Thus, the whole baggage of hatred created for Hindus is conveniently

carried over to the state they inhabit: India.

Keeping India fixed in the mould of hatred also requires maintaining a simple, uniform and

most importantly, a cunning yet cowardly image of Hindus and India – which keeps creating

one problem after the other for Pakistan and its citizens. Right after ‘independence’ (again, not

partition), Hindus created various problems “like the unfair division of assets, the problem of

rehabilitation of the refugees and the ill-treatment of the Muslims by the Hindus. Moreover,

India did not transfer the administrative records to Pakistan in time104

.”

The easy substitutability of ‘Hindus’ with ‘India’ in successive sentences is apparent here.

Also, the lack of concern for helping students make sense of cause and effect in history

103

Muhammad Munir, From Jinnah to Zia, (Lahore: Vanguard, 1979) quoted in A.H. Nayyar and A. Salim, eds.

The Subtle Subversion: A report on Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan. (Islamabad: Sustainable Development

Policy Institute, 2002), p. 72. 104

Pakistan Studies 9-10, p. 20 – my emphasis.

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effectively removes the impediment to link the mass ‘transfer’ of populations with the parallel

eruption of violence on both sides. Thus, these two ‘problems’ are also attributed to the Hindus

with ease.

In a similar vein, Hindus and India continue to create problems for Pakistan till date:

i. Conspiring with Hari Singh and sending their army to Kashmir to oppress Muslims.

Later India itself requested the “U.N.O” for a cease-fire when the Mujahideen

defeated the Indian army at various places105

.

ii. Surprise-attacked Pakistan “early in the morning on September, 6 1965106

” and

“when the Indian government realized that Pakistan will inflict a crushing defeat on

her, she requested the U.N.O. to intervene” – both statements being historically

false, with Pakistan’s infiltration plan “Operation Gibraltar” was the main instigator

and the result of war can be at best be called a draw, Pakistan was in the more

vulnerable position at the ceasefire.

iii. India instigated the Muslims of East Pakistan using Hindu teachers and traders

living in East Pakistan, ultimately attacking it to help the ‘East Pakistanis’ to sever

their relations with West Pakistan107

. Even a more detailed listing of “Causes of

Separation of East Pakistan108

” pins three out of eight causes to either Hindu

scheming or Indian interference.

iv. Launched surprise attacks on Kargil, as evidenced by “Hawaldaar Lalik… was

home on leave. He got to know that the enemy has launched a massive attack at the

Kargil front109

”.

These mostly false anecdotes “serve as the alphabet and the grammar110

” of hatred with help

from the national media. Thus, the daily discourse produced in this manner continuously

informs the citizen of the tensions between the two states. India is maintained as a threat to

Pakistan and its citizens, but in effect as the never-ceasing reason to exist – existence in

105

Social Studies 5, p. 122. 106

Ibid. 107

Ibid, p. 123. 108

Pakistan Studies 9-10, p. 28. 109

Meri Kitab 3, (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2010), p. 98 – my translation. 110

Ayesha Jalal. “Conjuring Pakistan: History as Official Imagining” International Journal of Middle East

Studies, 27, no. 1 (1995): 77.

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specifying exclusion and specification of a threatening other111

. Fixing India as the threatening

‘Other’ constitutes the Pakistan’s statehood itself. As Ayesha Jalal succinctly puts it, “in

contexts of competing and multiple identities – and there are hardly any free of contestation

and diversity – the narrative of ‘us’ in its myriad imaginings requires a parallel construct of an

equally imagined ‘them’112

.”

David Campbell offers valuable help on understanding the exigency of this discourse. “The

constant articulation of danger through foreign policy is thus not a threat to a state’s identity or

existence; it is its condition of possibility113

”. This “condition of possibility” clause not only

makes this state possible but also permits the Army to remain as the biggest power wielding

institution within the state apparatus.

Consider, for example, “India is our traditional enemy and we should always keep ourselves

ready to defend our beloved country from Indian aggression.114

By maintaining the looming Indian threat over the existence of Pakistan, the Army poses as the

savior institution which can safeguard the sovereignty of the state through its excellent training

and discipline. This image serves two purposes, (a) to keep the Army at its best it needs to get

the most up-to-date equipment and training and hence keeping large sums of money flowing

from the national exchequer and (b) legitimacy as the only disciplined institution to take over

the country when the politicians repeatedly bring the country to the brink of extinction115

.

111

Richard Devetak. "Postmodernism" in Theories of international relations, Scott Burchill et al. (Palgrave

Macmillan, 2001), p. 177. 112

Ayesha Jalal. “Conjuring Pakistan: History as Official Imagining” International Journal of Middle East

Studies, 27, no. 1 (1995): 73. 113

David Campbell. Writing Security: United States foreign policy and the politics of identity, (Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 1992), p. 12. 114

Social Studies 5, p. 123. 115

General Ayub's Message to the Nation, October 8, 1958.

“Fellow Citizens of Pakistan, As-Salam-o-Alaikum

…History would never have forgiven us if the present chaotic conditions were allowed to go on any further.

These chaotic conditions as you know have been brought about by self-seekers who in the garb of political leaders

have ravaged the country or tried to barter it away for personal gains…”

As accessed from http://pakistanspace.tripod.com/archives/58ayub.htm on 15 July 2010.

Musharraf’s address to the nation on the night of coup, 2: 45am, 13th

October, 1999.

“My dear countrymen, Assalam Alaikum

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5.2.3. Militarization and acceptance for violence

“maar liya, maar liya, dushman ko maar diya, dushman ko maar daina chahiye116

”.

Translation: “killed it, killed it, killed the enemy, the enemy should be killed.”

This is how Rashid Minhas, the youngest martyr to achieve Nishan-e-Haider, exclaims after

killing a squirrel that disturbed his pet birds.

Usually, the whole point of telling stories of brave heroes from history is to inspire children to

act like them. While it is indeed true that Rashid Minhas valiantly gave away his life for the

nation; but inclusion of this cry represents a much broader endorsement of violence than just

the warzone. As evidenced above, creating enemies should be an easy task for the hate-trained

students of the public education system.

Nayyar and Salim make this excellent observation on glorifying violence:

“The minds that have been taught to hate do not have always to hate the enemy they

have been told to hate; they can create ‘the other’ from amongst themselves and

exercise violence against anyone, even against their own countrymen. Violence comes

naturally to those to whom the military and the use of force have been glorified.”117

The disproportionately higher representation given to the Military and its heroes in textbooks in

Pakistan reveals the roots of the fervor for joining the military in children all over the country

as well as the trust enjoyed by the armed forces for their own jobs, as well as some that usually

civilians perform. Consider the following three chapters in the fifth class Social Studies book:

You are all aware of the kind of turmoil and uncertainty that our country has gone through in recent times. Not

only have all the institutions been played around with, and systematically destroyed, the economy too is in a state

of collapse. We are also aware of the self-serving policies being followed, which have rocked the very foundation

of the Federation of Pakistan.

The armed forces have been facing incessant public clamor to remedy the fast declining situation from all sides of

the political divide…”

As accessed from http://presidentmusharraf.wordpress.com/2007/07/10/address-nation-13-oct-1999/ on 15 July

2010. 116

Meri Kitab 6, (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2010), p. 15. 117

A.H. Nayyar and A. Salim, “Glorification of War and the Military” in eds. The Subtle Subversion: A report on

Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan. (Islamabad: Sustainable Development Policy Institute, 2002), p. 79-80.

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No. Chapter Page

12. Population and Occupations 74

13. Administration of the country 86

14. Public Security 92

Table 7: Extract from list of contents of Social Studies 5, Punjab Textbook Board, 2005.

The first describes some population characteristics of Pakistan and then gives brief descriptions

of some occupations, namely farming, cattle-rearing, mining, craftsmen and laborers, banking

and then a section on ‘Other Occupations118

’. This section counts off other occupations as

“teachers, doctors, engineers, nurses, advocates, traders, office employees, soldiers, army men

etc.” followed by one-liner introductions to each of these. The seventh sentence in these

introductions is about “our brave army men” who protect the boundaries of the country,

whereas none of the previous six had been qualified by adjectives suitable for their jobs. The

teachers aren’t called ‘devoted’, nurses didn’t qualify for ‘caring’, engineers aren’t ‘skillful’

enough, police officials are obviously not ‘efficient’ and not even the doctors are ‘intelligent’

or ‘devoted’.

Moving on, the next chapter is a four page description of all three pillars of the state with the

title “Administration of the Country” but interestingly enough the legislative and the executive

are dealt with under the heading “Federal and Provincial Government”, without any marker of

separation between the two. On the other hand, the chapter on Public Security – of which all

the departments come under the broader ambit of bureaucracy are explained separately. Even

here the five lines on the “Armed Forces” manages to announce that “At the time of its

establishment…Pakistan Government devoted its attention to improve its military force and

warfare equipment119

” and declare “the neighboring country…Bharat” a threat. This chapter

also manages a remarkable Orwellian feat rest of the curriculum falls just short of: “during the

war, the enemy’s agents spread false statements to upset the common people and demoralize

118

Social Studies 5, p. 79. 119

Ibid. p. 97.

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them120

”. Pakistanis have been keen on calling each other traitors and enemy agents. Political

leaders and liberals have been particularly targeted with such titles. The ingredients of mistrust

for all who dissent with the popular truth and an entrenched trust and confidence on the

country’s army have been spread profusely.

Finally, the chapter closes on the note the entire curriculum seems to converge upon: “Our

homeland is important and valuable for us. You are given the responsibility of its security121

”.

Redemption from Oblivion – Appropriation of national recognition

Anderson and Smith’s congruence on the idea that nationhood helps achieving oblivion has

been noted above. This strength of nationalism is capitalized upon by the modern nation-state

by institutionalizing recognition in the form of nationally awarded decorations. By

appropriating the tools and means to express gratitude from through institutionalization of

recognition to citizens showing brilliance and commitment in service, military or civil the state

of Pakistan asserts that it represents one united nation, the Pakistani nation. Those awards in

turn incorporate Islamic symbols; in their names and form alike to assert the Islamic face of the

nation-state. The text turns the highest military award ‘Nishan-i-Haider’ into a national

narrative its own. What is significant here is that only the Shaheeds (martyrs) who have been

awarded this medal make it to the exclusive club whose stories are narrated in the textbooks, no

recipient of any civil decoration is ever mentioned. Even the only Pakistani Nobel laureate Dr

Abdus Salam is not deemed fit to earn a mention. There are (at least) two lessons to be learnt in

the inclusion of ‘Nishan-i-Haider’ stories in Urdu textbooks from grade I onwards.

(a) Military achievement is to be seen as superior to achievement in any other sphere of

life and hence more worthy of being emulated by the young students.

(b) All those who have been awarded this medal are seen as possessing very clear

Islamic sense of purpose for their lives and their military service. This country can only

120

Social Studies 5, p. 97. 121

Ibid. p. 98.

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be guarded from outside threats through an Islamic sense of purpose and nothing else.

The nation itself is not presented as the source of motivation, courage or valour for to

give up the life for. The soldier, and in turn all the soldiers-to-be will struggle with these

two identities for all times or submit to the state provided ordering of the two, the life is

to be lain for the country; the nation-state but the direction for such a ‘goal’ comes from

the more sublime source; Islam*.

It serves two purposes, first, never letting the existence of non-Muslims be recognized in

Pakistan and then secondly when this fact is realized, it does not permit Pakistanis from other

religions to be possibly seen as truly devoted to the defense and interest of this country. This

subtext is not directly readable in the textbooks but abundantly available in the popular

discourse.

5.3. Islam as Criterion for Citizenship

5.3.1. Pan-Islamism

The curriculum is also utilized to deal with the fundamental quandary that comes from defining

the Pakistani nation with the religion its people ascribe to and are yet bounded by the profane

territorial confines of colonial inheritance. Pakistanis are informed that they are part of a bigger

whole: the Muslim Ummah. That Pakistan is just one of the manifestations of the strength of

Islam – it actually spans the “Muslims World”. A world that has its own land features, climatic

regions, history of colonial rule and demography as the whole seventh grade Social Studies

book explores each one by one.

Fifth grade Islamiat has a chapter on Ittehad-e-Milli. It is defined as: “Such a nation is called

‘millat’ which is based upon a belief or an ideology. Ittehad means being one. Thus, ‘ittehad-e-

milli’ means such a national unity and cooperation, which is based on a belief. When we

Pakisanis use this word (ittehad-e-milli) then it means the unity and concord of Pakistani nation

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on their belief122

”. The inherent connection with the whole Muslim world follows soon:

“Millat-e-Islamia is not just limited to Pakistan only but is spread all over the world. A fifth of

the whole population of the world consists of Muslims….But in whichever part of the world

Muslims are; they are one millat, members of millat-e-Islamia123

”.

The eighth grade Islamiat text develops this concept in a chapter with the same title. It

categorically denies any variation within Muslims all over the world: “Muslims have one

standard for good and bad. Their political and economic systems are based on identical

principles. Since Islam has made our thought process similar (yaksaan), therefore our actions

and characters are alike. It has established our Ittehad-e-Milli on very strong foundations124

”.

The possible motivation for this suppression of differences within Muslims could be to prevent

divisions and demarcations within their religion. But it doesn’t work too well in the context the

students live in. Since these textbooks cannot possibly cover all the teachings of Islam, this task

is essentially left to the local mosque’s Imam. This ‘Mulla’ as this Imam is popularly known

(and feared) as, usually specializes in instilling that the particular sect of Islam he preaches is

the only true Islam. The fear of this suppression of difference often motivates parents to feed

their children with identification of their particular sectarian identity as basic truths of life125

.

The author’s recent interaction with his driver’s 6-year old son resulted went as follows:

“Q: What is your name?

A: Taimour Ahmed.

Q: Who are you?

A: I am a Sunni126

Muslim.”

122

Islamiat 5, (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2002), p. 88 – the latest syllabus has a similar lesson on “Islamic

Fraternity”. 123

Ibid. 124

Islamiat 8, (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2002), p. 69.

126 Sunni refers to Barelvi Muslims in the popular language as Deobandis have distanced themselves from this

title in order to better differentiate from Barelvis

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5.3.2 Suppressing difference

The suppression of difference is not restricted to internal sectarian suppression. The

homogenizing project spans all provinces:

“Gul Khan said, ‘that is what Allah has instructed Muslims, “Allah’s men! Become

brothers with each other.” All of us Muslims are brothers with each other. Whichever

family one is from, whichever clan one is linked with, whether one is white or black, all

are brothers with each other. All are one.’

Our country was founded in the name of Islam. This bond is stronger in its inhabitants.

Whether one is Pathan or a Balochi, Sindhi or a Punjabi, all are one127

”.

While Muslims of all provinces are Bhai Bhai (brothers – the title for the chapter quoted

above), people from other religions are not. They are never mentioned. Care is taken that their

existence is not noticed by the people of Pakistan – unless of course a Danish Kaneria pops into

the national cricket team – the first Pakistani Hindu, whom many Pakistanis had ever heard of.

The preoccupation with war heroes, martyrs specifically, denies space to even Cecil Chaudhry

who flew successful missions in both the 1965 and 1971 wars and of course to Bapsi Sidhwa,

an author who pioneered Pakistan’s entry into English literature. Ahmadis also are not brothers.

Recently two-time ex-Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, was condemned widely for describing

Ahmadis as “brothers and sisters” who are “assets to the country” after the recent attacks on

Ahmadi worship places128

. Their exclusion too is celebrated in the textbooks, though indirectly,

when the inclusion of the definition of Muslims is noted as a development in the “Islamic

Clauses in the Constitutions of Pakistan129

”.

Even though accepted inside fold of Islam, the official curriculum narrative excludes Shiites

and maintains a strict preference for Sunni heroes. The historic episode at Karbala is

remembered by Sunnis and Shiites all over the world as a story of true devotion to Islam but

still Karbala and Hussain, the slain grandson of the Prophet (pbuh) are both denied space in

127

Meri kitab (Urdu): Jamaat Doam, (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2010), p. 32. 128

“PML-N defends Nawaz’s remarks about Ahmadis”, Dawn, June 10, 2010, front page. 129

Mutalia-e-Pakistan 11-12 (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2005), p.89.

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Islamiat or Urdu textbooks which profusely write about many companions of the Holy Prophet

(pbuh).

5.3.3. Islamic ideals for all

Pakistan was named ‘the land of pure’ as an exercise in jugglery of initials, not meant to be a

criterion for purging those who do not classify as ‘pure’ – Muslims, as set by the explanations

in the official textbooks. General Knowledge, Social Studies and Pakistan Studies are

compulsory subjects for all those entering the public education system taught to grade I – III,

IV – VIII and IX onwards respectively. Minorities in Pakistan are just short of four percent of

its total population. Of this proportion, Hindus make up 1.6%130

which translates into a

considerable 2.7 million people, a population bigger than around 70 nation-states in this world.

It is this significant minority at which most of the hate-material is directed at. Although the

majority (93%) of Hindus are in Sindh and the textbooks implemented there are slightly more

receptive in terms of religious exclusivity compared to the Punjab Textbook Board surveyed in

this paper. Regrettably, though, the National Curriculum Guidelines are produced centrally and

have to be strictly adhered to by the provincial textbook boards.

The restrictive learning objectives of the curriculum guidelines along with a sample paragraph

that addresses these is reproduced here.

General Knowledge Syllabus for grade I identifies the following learning outcome based on

“our beliefs”:

“All students will be able to…

Recognize that Almighty Allah has created us.

Recognize that everything in the world is created by Almighty Allah.

Name the creations of Almighty Allah (human beings, animals, plants, trees, stars, sun

etc).

130

Population Census Organization, “Population by religion,” Population Census Organization,

http://www.statpak.gov.pk/depts/pco/statistics/other_tables/pop_by_religion.pdf.

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Recite Kalimah Tayyiba with its meaning.131

Thus forcing the fundamental tenets of Islam down the throat of non-Muslims in Pakistan.

The learning outcomes required for the theme ‘Prayer’ are particularly noteworthy. They

require that “students be able to:

Name the five prayers Muslims offer daily

Recognize Azan as a call for Namaz.

Find out a Mosque/Masjid in their neighbourhood.

Inquire about other places of worship in their neighbourhood (Church/Temple) etc132

”.

The Curriculum itself sees Christian and Hindu places of worship as “other”. These learning

outcomes reflect the intended interpretation of “tolerance”, enunciated in the National

Educational Policy quoted in the introduction. It is tolerance of ‘other’ religions by Muslims –

the true holders of national self-identity in Pakistan – not mutual tolerance.

As for the national self-identity, the learning objectives of Pakistan Studies begin as:

“Broadly speaking, the Curriculum of Pakistan Studies is designed to:

1. Inculcate a sense of gratitude to Almighty Allah for blessing us with an independent

and sovereign state.133

The textbooks (IX-X and XI-XII) produce the components of Islamic system listed in

subsection 5.2.1 above, in response to the even more specific learning objective, “explain the

ideology of Pakistan with reference to the basic values of Islam134

”.

The passage covering the first two of those components; beliefs and worships, equates pretty

much everything that is Islamic as a component of the Islamic system on which Pakistan is

founded on. It’s reproduced in entirety from XI-XII textbook as follows:

131

National Curriculum for General Knowledge, Grades I-III, (Islamabad: Ministry of Education, Government of

Pakistan, 2007), p. 12. 132

Ibid. p. 14. 133

National Curriculum for Pakistan Studies, Grades IX-X, (Islamabad: Ministry of Education, Government of

Pakistan, 2006), p. 1. 134

Ibid. p. 2.

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"One idea behind the claim of Pakistan was that if such a state comes into being then

the Muslims will be able to lead their lives according to their own beliefs and will not

face any difficulty in the performance of their rights. These include belief in Oneness of

Allah, Prophet Hood of Muhammad (pbuh), the Day of Judgment, angels and the

revealed books. Worships include prayers, fasting, alms-giving and pilgrimage. Islam

pays significant importance to Jihad as well. Islam is all about worshipping none other

than Allah Tallah and to spend one’s time in an effort to please him. Jihad refers to be

ready to sacrifice one’s life and possessions for Allah, the greatest personage at all

times. Jihad Bin Nafs (fighting with the self) and Jihad Bil maal (spending one’s wealth

for the purpose of jihad) have both been advised to all. All these rights and jihad aim at

submitting oneself to the will of Allah Almighty. These worships prepare Muslims to

follow the path of Allah almighty and to live and die for Him only and prevent him from

being dependent on anything other than Allah Almighty.135

It can be seen here that every tenet of Islam is reproduced to supposedly contribute to the

Pakistani ideology since it is part of the overall way of life Islam proposes. On one hand, it is

downright excluding those who do not ascribe to these particular beliefs from having any

ownership of the country they live in. On the other, it is also a needless exaggeration of the idea

of an Islamic state closer towards that of an Islamist state, which insists on doing everything

that goes on in the society through narrow Islamic injunctions – something neither Pakistan is

nor does any relevant party intend to make it, including religious political parties.

The imposition of Islamic religious teaching on non-Muslims does not end here in the Social

Studies stream of curriculum. Islamic lessons occupy a significant amount of Urdu school

textbooks. The number of lessons with direct and indirect Islamic teachings in Urdu textbooks

from grade I to V is summarized as follows:

135

Mutalia-e-Pakistan 11-12, (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2005), p. 4 – my translation.

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Grade Total No.

of lessons

Lessons with

direct Islamic

content

Indirect Islamic

lessons Total

Total proportion of

Islamic content

1 18 7 3 10 56%

2 39 7 7 14 36%

3 43 12 2 14 33%

4 45 6 7 13 29%

5 34 6 5 12 35%

Table 8: Islamic Content in Primary level Urdu textbooks, 2009.

By ‘direct Islamic content’, lessons like ‘hamd’ (praise of Allah), Na’at (praise for the

Prophet), Reading Quran and Dua (supplication) are referred to. And the indirect lesson contain

mentions of Allah’s creation of human beings, animals, plants etc and that Pakistan is a God-

given gift for ‘us’.

This fundamental truth is presented to the school-going children in the most sacred of forms.

The slogan equating Pakistan with the fundamental proclamation of belief in Islam, echoes all

through the Urdu, Social Studies and Islamiat textbooks alike.

“Pakistan ka matlab kya: la ilaha illallah!”136

Translation: “What is the meaning of Pakistan: There is no God but Allah!”

136

Meri kitab (Urdu): Jamaat Doam p. 8, Mutalia-e-Pakistan 11-12 (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2005), p.30

& Islamiat 5, (Lahore: Punjab Textbook Board, 2002), p. 93.

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6. Conclusion

While it is widely observed that today Pakistani society is leading towards a gradual

liberalization as seen through the opening up of media and a sharp rise in consumption, the

forms of resistance shaping in response to these trends need to be explored as well. Sufficient

attention is being paid to the hate-mongering Madrassahs, but the public education being meted

out to the masses, with all the embedded messages of hate, mistrust and violence needs to be

debated widely as well. Apart from the curriculum, it is pertinent to look at the teaching

methods involved in conveying these messages across to the students. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a

leading physicist in Pakistan, remarks:

“Public school education today is premised on a belief that repeated sermonizing, and

strict regimentation of the school environment, will produce moral and patriotic

Pakistanis137

”.

During the course of this research, it has been found that this statement offers more truth than it

might have intended to. The noted ‘sermonizing’ here is taking place as a regular practice, not

just in the course of teaching the Islamized textbooks explored in this paper, but in daily

assemblies138

or in the increasingly popular specially designed “Nazariati (ideological)

Summer School139

”. As for the success of producing ‘moral and patriotic’ students, a number of

validation studies, based on extensive interviews and group-discussions with students are in

order. A wide variety of students, hailing from different regions, religions, ethnic backgrounds

and economic classes, pursuing the public education system leading towards Matriculation and

Intermediate exams should be included in these studies. Also, while the national identity frame

embodied curriculum has been explored and discussed, it needs consideration that most of the

critics of this curriculum have also passed through it and yet managed to break free. Thus

particular attention should be given to exploring the origins of this disconnect in these

validation studies that is how well do the students receive this system of thought.

137

Pervez Hoodbhoy, "What are they Teaching in Pakistani Schools Today?" Chowk. Available from

http://www.chowk.com/articles/4740. Internet; accessed 12 July 2010. 138

See Appendix III for “The aims of the school” from the prospectus of a large trust-based school in Lahore,

Crescent Model Higher Secondary School. 139

See: http://nazariapak.info/summer_school/

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The mass-suppression of alternate identities inherent in the official curriculum has led to wide

social discontent. In its short existence, Pakistan has experienced all kinds of backlashes such

suppression engenders; sectarian, nationalist and ethnic. What these authors of nation-making

fail to notice is that most of these movements are not secessionist in nature, but only seeking

representation in the national stream. Their fear of further cleaving of this cherished country

has led them to believe that denying regional, religious, ethnic and sectarian diversity will lead

to a united Pakistan. But closing access to the official medium of representation has led to

adoption of others, ranging from newspapers to new television channels and from street

protests to suicide bombings. It is when the last of these alternates surfaced, that society was

shaken out of its slumber – barely.

It cannot be sensibly claimed that suicide bombings are a direct outcome of the narrow

worldview taught in the official textbooks, for there’s obviously a broader religio-political

context to it. Pakistani youth has grown up in an age when there was one international Jihad

front or the other always active in this region: the US keeps launching military campaign in one

Islamic country after another and Islamic clerics have not given up all along that suicide

bombing is a legal means of Islamic warfare. But the ideological training imparted through this

curriculum need not be dismissed either. Zia’s Islamization process has brought a lot of

misfortune and disrepute to Pakistan. Whereas the veneer has been peeled off, structurally it

remains firmly embedded in the Pakistani state. While the constitutional tampering is still

prominent and the infamous ‘Hudood’ ordinance is still debated about, the remains of the

Islamized educational system and the curriculum have hardly been revised. If there is any true

concern for the rampant militancy and intolerance, the society and its intelligentsia need to rise

above the bare awakening they experiences today.

“At a time when the virus of national bigotry – religiously or territorially defined – is

assuming epidemic proportions, it is worth rethinking the terms of a discourse which

gratuitously celebrates collective imaginings that flourish by muzzling challenges from

within and threatening to crush, conquer, or convert targeted others140

”.

140

Ayesha Jalal. “Conjuring Pakistan: History as Official Imagining” International Journal of Middle East

Studies, 27, no. 1 (1995): 73.

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Appendix I: Screen image of the Board of Intermediate & Secondary Education, Lahore

website

Note the model papers given right in the middle of the page.

Accessed: 5th

July, 2010

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Appendix II

MY BOOK (Mairi Kitaab)

Grade/Class 2 (age: 7-8 years old)

Punjab Textbook Board – January 2005.

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Contents

Sr.

No. Titles

Page

No.

Sr.

No. Titles

Page

No.

1 Praise [for Allah], orig:

Hamd] (poem) 1 21 Etiquette of conversation 53

2 Our beloved Prophet (pbuh) 3 22 Let’s learn Arabic 55

3

Na’at [Praise for the Prophet

(pbuh) in the form of poetry]

(poem)

5 23 Means of transport 57

4 Pakistan 7 24 Faithful horse 60

5 Prize 9 25 Dog and reflection

(poem) 63

6 Book (poem) 13 26 Flood 65

7 Tales of great

men/personalities 15 27 Weather 67

8

Quaid-e-Azam – rh

[abbreviation of rehmat ullah

alaih]

19 28 Saving 71

9 Living in harmony [orig: mil

jul kar rehna] 21 29

Where did the butterfly

go? 74

10

Kabaddi [a youngsters game

resembling prisoner’s base.

Ref: Ferozson’s Urdu

English Dictionary] (poem)

23 30 Doll (poem) 77

11 City, town and village 25 31 Early morning 79

12 Result of deceit 28 32 Light and heat 81

13

“Chanda mamun door kay”

[a verse from a lullaby, can

be translated literally as

“Uncle Moon from

Faraway”]

30 33 Pictorial story 83

14 Brother Brother [orig: Bhai

bhai] 32 34

Whenever you have your

meal (poem) 84

15 Sweet Eid [referring to eid-

ul-fitr] 34 35 Humair and Huma 86

16 Beneficial animals 37 36 88

17 Punctuality 41 37 Love – Affinity

[muhabbat] 90

18 Parrot (poem) 44 38 Muslim children 93

19 Plants and trees 46 39 Prayer [orig: dua] (poem) 96

20 Walk/stroll [orig: sair] 49

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PAKISTAN (p. 7)

Our dear country’s name is Pakistan. Pakistan is an Islamic country.

Non-Muslims live here too who are less in number. There are two colors in our country’s flag.

White color represents the non-Muslims and green color represents the Muslim population.

Allah taala has made our country very beautiful. There are lush green grounds/meadows,

flourishing fields and gardens laden with fruits here. There are mountains like Nanga Parbat

and K2. There are salt mines. Ravi, Chenab, Jehlum, Sindh are its famous rivers. Small and

large forests are there. One famous forest’s name is Changa Manga. Pakistan’s villages and

cities are very beautiful. Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta are the big cities of our

country. Karachi is the biggest city of Pakistan. There is a sea near it which is called the

Arabian Sea.

We are proud of being Pakistani. We pray that Sindh, Punjab, NWFP, Balochistan and Kashmir

progress. These are all Pakistan. We love every nook and corner of Pakistan.

Exercise

1. Write the answers:

i. What are the names of the five famous cities of Pakistan?

ii. How many provinces are there in our country?

iii. Name any one famous mountain of Pakistan.

iv. Name any one famous river of Pakistan.

(p. 8) Activities

1. Deliver a speech in your class on “My beloved Pakistan”.

2. Recite the national anthem in the school assembly.

3. Join the words with the opposite meanings like morning, evening.

morning far

more Small

flatland Mountainous

high Low

big Less

near evening

4. Re-write these sentences by adding a ‘not’ like

a. This mountain is very high. This mountain is not very tall.

b. There is a sea near Karachi. __________

c. There is a forest near Lahore. ___________

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d. Jehlum is a famous river. ___________

For teachers:

1. Get it written in fine handwriting. What is the meaning of Pakistan, la ilaha illallah.

2. For dictation-writing. Area [orig: ilaqa], Quaid-e-Azam, belonging to a sandy desert

place [orig: Raigistani], Pakistan.

3. Tell the children the names of famous rivers of Pakistan.

4. Listen to the national anthem orally from the children and correct their pronunciation.

TALES OF GREAT MEN/PERSONALITIES (P. 15)

Ahmed and Ali’s Dada Jaan (grandpa) was resting/lying in his room. He was thinking that ‘its

children’s bedtime but they haven’t come to me for listening to the story’. In the meanwhile

Ahmed and Ali came running to Dada Jaan and said “Dada Jaan! We were talking to Daadi

Jaan (grandma). This is why (we) got late in coming. She was telling us that we should speak

the truth at any cost [orig: har haal (condition) main], be brave and make honesty a habit”.

Dada Jaan was very happy to hear this and said that ‘we find these traits in all great

men/personalities. We’ll be talking about these things today as well.’

Our beloved Prophet sala allah u alaih wassalam was the greatest person [orig: insaan (human

being) of this world. People trusted him so much that when the atrocities of infidels exceeded

limits and he ۖ had to leave Mecca, even then he ۖ had people’s deposits [orig: amanatain].

The infidels had surrounded his ۖ house and wanted to kill him. He made Hazrat Ali (rz) stay at

his place so that he could after returning people’s deposits. This tells how honest he (saw) was.

It also tells demonstrates Hazrat Ali’s (rz) bravery.

(P. 16) Hazrat Abu Hanifa (rz) was great scholar and accomplished (person). He was a big

trader. One day a woman came to sell him a silk piece. The woman asked for a hundred

dirhams for that piece. He said to her “this cloth isn’t worth less than five hundred dirhams,

you’re asking for a hundred dirhams only?” The woman took it as a joke but when she received

five dirhams, she was amazed that there are such honest people in this world as well.

Similarly there used to be a great revered man Hazrat Shaikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (rz). When he

was a child, at the time of leaving with a caravan his mother sew some gold coins in his shirt’s

inside pocket and advised him to always speak the truth. On the way, the caravan was looted by

dacoits. One of the dacoits asked him that ‘do you have something as well’ so he said all

truthfully. Then the leader of the gang asked him “Why did you lose your money by telling

about it yourself?” He said, “I have obeyed my mother and spoken the truth.” (p. 17) The leader

of the gang was very influenced by this. He and his fellows renounced robbery and returned the

booty.

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Then Dada Jaan said to the children “these are the great tales of great people”. Ahmed and Ali

said “Dada Jaan! We will become honest InshaAllah as well and will always speak the truth.”

Exercise

1. Write the answers:

a. Why did the children arrive late to listen to the story?

b. Who stayed in the house to return the deposits?

c. What was the name of the child who spoke the truth?

2. Make sentences from these words: honest, brave, honest, trader.

(p. 18) Activities

1. Fill in the blanks:

a. Ahmed and Ali listened to the …..

b. The tales of great people are also….

c. The woman …..for hundred dirhams for the piece.

d. The dacoits renounced from bad deeds. [orig: Daku’on nay buray say tauba …(kar)...

li.]

e. The dacoits ….the booty.

2. Join the following letters to make a word like K.A.P.R.A – kapra (cloth)

/…./

3. Join the antonyms with an arrow. Like night, day…

Truth tomorrow

Happy Muslim

Today Friend

Infidel Unhappy

Enemy Lie

For teachers

1. For dictation writing. Honest [orig: sadiq], guardian [orig: ameen], conviction [orig:

yaqeen], caravans [orig: qaflay], sum of money [orig: raqm].

2. Get it written in fine handwriting.

Our beloved prophet SAW was the greatest man of this world.

3. Make the children read the third paragraph of the lesson and correct their pronunciation.

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BHAI BHAI (p. 32)

Kamran’s Abbu used to go to Peshawar regarding his job. When he came from Peshawar

yesterday, his friend Gul Khan [Aneeq: the stereotypical name for a Pathan] and his

younger son Saeed was with him too. Kamran was very happy on seeing Saeed. Seeing the

two friends playing and talking about their books [Aneeq: hence these are the activities

what children should do when with friends], their fathers were happy as well. Kamran’s

Abbu said, ‘our children have become each other’s brother.”

Gul Khan said, ‘that is what Allah has instructed Muslims, “Allah’s men! Become brothers

with each other.” All of us Muslims are brothers with each other. Whichever family one is

from, whichever clan one is linked with, whether one is white or black, all are brothers with

each other. All are one.’

Our country was founded in the name of Islam. This relationship is stronger in its

inhabitants. Pathan or a Balochi, Sindhi or a Punjabi, all are one. Kamran said: “Abbu, the

way you and uncle Gul Khan are brothers, likewise I and Saeed are brothers. I want to give

a present to my brother.”

(P. 33) His Abbu spoke: “yes, giving gifts increases love. You should definitely give your

brother Saeed [Aneeq: “brother Saeed” this indeed resonates with the way IJT people or

any Jihadi org, people address each other!] a nice gift.”

Kamran embraced his brother Saeed and took him to the market so that he can get him a

nice book as a gift.

Exercise

1. Write the answers:

a. What has Allah taala instructed the Muslims?

b. What are Pathan, Balochi, Sindhi among each other?

c. From what city had Kamran’s friend come?

d. What gift would you like to give your friend? [An: and here by the way

I did think of the usual answer instructed at this age in children’s

magazines and textbooks as well perhaps: Quran majeed].

2. Write plurals of these words. Black, child, gift, small, relationship.

Activities

1. Complete the sentence by filling in the right word: Saeed, bhai bhai, Islam,

muhabbat (love).

a. Their younger son ___ , was with them as well.

b. All are ____ among each other.

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c. Our country was made in the name of ____.

d. ____ increases from giving gifts.

For teachers

1. Give brief information about all four provinces to the children.

2. Also tell them about Azad Kashmir.

3. The brotherhood Hazur SAW established between the emigrants and Ansaar in

Medina, tell them about it.

PUNCTUALITY (P. 41)

[An: the purpose for selecting this piece was its theme that punctuality is based upon the

timings of prayers….which, I was about to say is not practiced, but no observant, practicing

Muslims who pray regularly, often schedule their day this way]

Morning broke. Azaan’s sound came in. People went to the mosque to pray. The sun rose

from east. Light spread all over. Shadows became smaller gradually. The sun came right

above the head. To save themselves from the afternoon’s heat, animals and humans came to

sit in the shade.

Now the sun started falling towards west. Zuhar prayer was offered. Shadows became

longer towards east. Now Asr prayer has been offered.

See, the sun is setting. Redness has spread all over. The warmth has reduced. The time for

Maghrib prayer has come. Stars have started shining in the sky. The moon has come up.

Moonlight has been spreading. People went to sleep after Isha prayer. A quiet has took over

all.

The sun rises in the morning. Sets in the evening. A time is fixed for the five prayers. The

time to arrive at the school and for the school to close is set. Everything should be done on

time.

(P. 42) If punctuality is not observed, it causes loss to work. [An:!] If you get late for

school, instruction is affected. If the prayer is not offered on time, Allah’s order is not

obeyed.

Those who want to succeed in life, do everything on time.

Exercise

1. Write answers:

a. What direction do the shadows lengthen at Asr time?

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b. How many prayers are offered in the day?

c. If the punctuality is not observed what happens?

2. Complete the sentences:

a. When the sun is at its peak, shadows become the most ____. (small, big)

b. When the sun starts setting towards west, then the ___ prayer is offered. (Zuhr, Isha)

c. If one gets late for school then ___ is affected. (instruction, work)

(P. 43) Activities

1. Write the words with opposite meanings:

Morning

East

Sky

Loss

Success

2. Make plurals:

Animal

Human

Prayer

Sky

For teachers

1. Have some more discussion on the importance of punctuality.

2. Make the children write the prayer timings.

3. Dictate the second paragraph for writing.

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PLANTS AND TREES (p. 46)

[Aneeq: this lesson is about basic knowledge about different types of plants and their

parts like root, stem, branches and leaves etc. Then it goes on to talk about root-plants.

Finally it converges on how useful these are for human beings…]

Asad and Rehman went to their Chacha’s [father’s brother in Urdu] village. Chacha

took them to the fields. Many vegetables were grown there. There were big mango trees

there too. Mangoes hanging on them looked very nice. The two brothers asked a lot of

questions from Chacha.

/…/

(p. 47) Rehman: Yesterday a friend of mine was saying that people eat roots of some

plants as well.

Chacha: Yes. Carrot, radish, turnip, sweet-potato are all roots. We eat them as

vegetables.

Asad: We eat fruits as well. Some stems and roots also for eating. Tell us about leaves.

Chacha: Some plants’ leaves are also used as vegetables. /…/

Rehman: Chacha Jaan! That means Allah taala has created these different plants and

trees for humans?

Chacha: Yes! We should also be conscious about taking care of them.

[An: The point is the whole creation vs evolution debate is not even an issue here.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be, but we were never even let aware of all the work Darwin did in

any book (including science) till grade 12]

Exercise

/…./

ETTIQUETES OF CONVERSATION (p. 53)

Aisha and Ahmed were watching a children’s show on TV with their Ammi. There was

a knock on the door. When Aisha’s Ammi opened the door, she saw that Omer and

Amna have come from the neighbor’s. They said “Assalam-o-alaikum” while entering

the house. Aisha’s Ammi replied “wa alaikum salam”. [An: the point is that the proper

way to talk is the Islamic way]

Aisha and Ahmed were very happy to see them and started talking them loudly. Aisha’s

Ammi softly said, “Kids, it isn’t nice to talk at the same time. You should talk turn by

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turn. The other should be listened to intently and then should be replied to after careful

thinking.

Amna said” Yes! Our miss (teacher) also told us these things as well.” /…/

LOYAL HORSE (p. 60)

/…./ [Am: paragraph about the characteristics and uses of horses]

In the olden times, horse-riding was more common in Arab [An: This is my major

major concern with our curriculum. Our traditions, folk stories do not come from olden

Punjab and its rich history but all the way from Arab. Check out the question I quote

from the exercise…]. Once upon a time an Arab trader was going somewhere on his

horse. Robbers surrounded him on the way. They took the trader to their base. They tied

the trader with ropes and slept peacefully.

The horse put the rope in his mouth and pulled with full force and picked up his master.

It kept walking like this all night. By morning, he had got to the door of the master’s

house. It placed the master on the ground in front of the door. The master called his

servant and he came and cut all the ropes. The master had got home getting his freedom

(p. 61) but the horse was so drained from this tough journey that he fell on to the ground

with a bang and died. This is an animal’s memorable example of loyalty with his

master. What we need to think about is that if a horse can be so loyal to his master that

it gives away his life for him then why cannot us humans do this for our master i.e.

Allah taala. [An: sacrifice (of life) for Allah taught in grade 2!...]

Exercise

1. Answer these:

a. What use does the horse serve?

b. What special quality does the horse have?

c. In which country was horse-riding common? [An: Country!? = Arab?...]

/…/

For teachers

1. Get it written in fine handwriting. We are all Allah taala’s men.

/…/

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WEATHERS (p. 69)

/…/

[An: a discussion between Ammi and her two sons Usman and

Zahid about the four weathers we have and the enjoyable

experiences of each and concludes at…]

Ammi: Yes son! All these nice weathers, Allah taala has made for our benefit.

Exercise

/…/

SAVING (p. 71)

Asma and Junaid’s Abbu returned from office then he saw that in front of the door,

water has gathered in the street. He felt very bad. He asked the children why water has

gathered in the street.

Asma: Abbu Jaan! I opened the tap next to the door to wash my hands. Forgot to close

in a hurry and started doing school work. Much later I remembered suddenly that I have

left the tap open. I went running and closed the tap but a lot of water had spilled by

then.

Abbu: Water is a blessing of Allah taala. It should not be wasted. /…/

Exercise

/…/

For teachers:

1. Give more information to children about saving.

2. Tell the children about other blessings of Allah.

3. /….

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EARLY MORNING (p. 79)

[An: The chapter title written in the backdrop of a young boy

praying on a prayer-mat laid out in a middle-class house

setting]

The sun had not risen yet. Rafiq’s Abbu and Ammi performed ablution. Washed hands,

rinsed the mouth, washed the face, washed arms all the way till the elbow, stroked the

head with wet hand, washed feet.

Rafiq really liked this method of cleaning. He used to observe Ammi and Abbu perform

ablution earlier as well. Today he woke up quickly as well. Got done with the

washroom. Performed ablution like Ammi, Abbu and stood for prayer like them.

His Abbu and Ammi were very happy on seeing this. They expressed a lot of love

/fondled him after the prayer. They said that one should stay clean and pure. For the

cleaning of the body, ablution and bath with the required rites observed [orig: ghusal]

are very necessary. Staying clean and pure is very liked by Allah taala. Abbu said: “our

beloved Prophet SAW has declared hygiene/cleanliness to be half of Iman (belief)”.

Ammi said: “son! I put clean clothes on you. Do not let them get dirty. When you return

from school, put them away safely and wear clothes for home.

Abbu asked: When you wear clean and laundered clothes, you do like it, right(na)!

Rafiq said: When I wear neat and clean clothes after washing up, I like it very much.

My friends and teachers complement me. Ammi said: son! You are a good boy. You

say good things. Stay neat and clean. We should keep our bodies clean as well. Keep

our street and neighborhood clean. How nice would it be if we keep our village and city

clean cooperatively.

Exercise (p. 80)

1. Write answers:

a. What is the method for performing the ablution?

b. What has our beloved messenger SAW said about cleanliness?

c. How do you keep your body clean?

d. What did Ammi say to Rafiq?

2. Use in sentences: Wudhu, farigh, ga’on, khubsurat.

3. Write the words with the meanings of the following words: safai, acha, peechay,

adha.

For teachers

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1. Tell the children about the importance of prayer.

2. Tell the children what should be done to keep the street and neighborhood clean.

3. Dictate-write the first paragraph.

WHENEVER YOU HAVE YOUR MEAL (p. 84)

Wash your hands and rinse your mouth

lay the table-spread [An: on the ground, as the picture above suggests]

First you recite Bismillah

Then eat with the right hand

/…./

HUMAIR AND HUMA (p. 86-87)

[An: a lesson on personal safety etc and concludes at…]

Ammi said: “our body, life and all things for our use are blessing ofAllah. We should

protect them so that we can take full advantage of them.

/…/

MUSLIM CHILDREN (p. 93)

Muslim children speak of Allah taala’s greatnes.

[An: and it goes on to list basic Arabic phrases required in the daily life at various

times. The following are written in Arabic font followed by phrasal translations and

preceded by exigence, in this order: Allah-u-akbar, auzu Billah…, Bismillah…, La

ilaha…, Alhamdulillah, Subhanallah, Jazaakallah, Astaghfirullah, Rabbi zidni ilma (My

Lord, increase me in knowledge), SAW]

Now you memorize these two Surats of the Holy Quran.

Surat al-Asr

/…/

Surat al-Feel

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PRAYER [orig: dua] (p. 96)

Every heart, every life’s Protector

Your honor is distinct from all others

You are the Giver for all

Everything You have nourished

Everything praises You

Plants, stones, fruits and branch

Fill my (begging) sack with knowledge

Increase me in my status

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Appendix III

AIMS OF THE SCHOOL (Crescent Model Higher Secondary School – Boys Section)

The primary aim of the school is to develop to the full student's character, and to train their

intellect as well as their physique, that is, to educate the whole man. it aims at development of

the child's personality with special emphasis on the basic element of character, namely,

truthfulness, honesty, integrity, sense of duty, sincerity of purpose, justice and fair-play,

disciplined behaviour, above all, to make the students good Muslims and Pakistanis.

Efforts are made to impart knowledge of the ideology of Pakistan to generate a sense of

national pride and to develop a spirit of patriotism and loyalty. From time to time, senior boys

are given true perspective of the situation which led to the division of the subcontinent as an

ultimate resort to establish Pakistan. As an essential part of the development of self respect,

abiding faith in her future – a faith that must stimulate them to lead lives of service. From a

student's early years in school, efforts are made to try and establish in him habits of punctuality,

attention to obligation and honesty.

Islamic outlook is focused in the daily morning assembly in the Junior, Senior, and Girls

sections. By rotation, students recite selected verses from the Holy Quran with their translation

in Urdu. The Islamiat teacher delivers an address related to the recitation, concluded by an

appropriate "dua" in Urdu, English or Arabic. Then the staff and students sing the national

anthem.