Authenticity vs nationalism: History teachers dissatisfied with curricula

Talk about curricula being taught in Pakistan

LAHORE: “History being taught at pre-graduate level in Pakistan covers kings and not common people. It revolves around Agra, Taj Mahal and Delhi or other centres of power,” historian Tahir Kamran said on Saturday.

He was speaking at a session, titled Rethinking Pakistan’s History: Teaching and Learning, on the second day of Afkar-i-Taza Conference at Alhamra.

Kamran said history taught in Pakistan usually revolved around Sheikh Sirhindi, Shah Waliullah, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and the Quaid-i-Azam.

“It seems that history being taught is frozen. There is no mobility or historicity which is the essence of a discourse on history. When history is frozen, it becomes an ideology.”

Tahir Kamran said a problem with a national narrative was that it was top-down. It could be made more pluralistic, he said. “Most of our historians have focused only on political history. They should have written economic, cultural and religious history as well.”

Prof Ali Usman Qasmi said the two-nation theory, the ideological foundation of Pakistan, had emerged in northern India that had a “culture of elite”. Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan had never been familiar with this culture, he said. Even the Punjab, except Lahore, was not familiar with it.

Qasmi said that national history everywhere was selective remembrance and selective amnesia. “What is different in case of Pakistan is that the historical narrative has no acceptability here,” he said.

He said that history [as a subject] had not faced much problems until the Ayub era. He decided to separate India from Pakistan not only geographically but also ideologically. India was eliminated from the Indo-Pak history.

S Akbar Zaidi talked about the type of history being taught in Pakistan and what should be taught. “Is ideological or geographical history being taught?  Is it the history of Pakistan or of people living in the country?”

“Taj Mahal, Mohenjo Daro, Harappa and Gandhara civilisations were part of our geographical history and not ideological one.”

Prof Iqbal Chawla said it was important to discuss the origin of an ideology. He said it was important to discuss the Arya Samaj Tehreek.

Chawla said Gandhi was first to introduce religion in politics. About Gandhi’s political ideology of Swaraj, Chawla said that Gandhi had focussed on the east and ignored western India saying that the sun sets in the west.

Chawla said the history of Pakistan was incomplete without the Central Asia in context. He said the history of Pakistan was still unfolding.

“In Pakistan’s early days, the focus was on the governor general. After Ayub, first civil-military relations and then democracy versus dictatorship were the focus.”

Published in The Express Tribune, April 3^rd, 2016.