The rights of minority students

The introduction of the book on ethics for Sindh’s non-Muslim students is a commendable effort

Good news emanating from the education sector anywhere in the country is rare indeed, even rarer when the good news comes with even better news for the religious minorities. There is a diversity of religious minorities in the country — Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu and Zoroastrian to name but five of them and their children share classrooms with the children of the Muslim majority. Muslim children are taught the fundamentals of their faith via Islamiyat, a section of the curriculum dedicated to inculcating the values of their faith. Children who are not Muslim are usually either offered an alternative of ‘ethics’ in schools in the private sector, but in government schools that is not always the case and they find themselves lumped in with everybody else, often to the considerable displeasure and discomfort of their parents.

The welcome news is that the Sindh Textbook Board (STBB) has introduced a book on ethics for non-Muslim children studying from class seven onwards. The book includes information on a range of faiths and practices and will become active in the 2016-17 school year. It is written in Urdu and will be provided free of charge. It is the product of two years of work and we see this as a commendable effort at every level, only sorry that this could not have become a reality decades before this. It goes some way both to recognising the rights of the children of minorities to have primary education in their own faith and to closing the gap on a glaring inequality. Hindu leaders have welcomed the development and commented that it is now for other provinces to do likewise, a move which this newspaper would also support. Primary education is the place where young minds are moulded, setting frameworks and attitudes and beliefs — and prejudices and misunderstandings — that then pervade the life of children everywhere. The faith-minorities of Pakistan have often and rightly complained of discrimination in every part of their lives. They are regularly victimised and marginalised. A move such as this will have far-reaching effects; it will be felt down the years as of benefit to all, and not only the faith-minorities.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 30^th,  2016.

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