‘End religious intolerance in books’

Speakers at a conference points to intolerance in national educational curricula

LAHORE: Purging the textbooks taught at public schools of significant events in the country’s history can be dangerous for the state, Prof Mehdi Hasan, the noted academic, warned on Thursday.

He was speaking at a conference organised by the National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP) on evidence of intolerance in the school curricula. A booklet covering the commission’s research on the propagation of discrimination and religious intolerance in state-sponsored books was also launched on the occasion.

Hasan said a glaring omission of the kind was the censoring of the Quaid-i-Azam’s August 11, 1947, speech to the Constitutional Assembly in which he had said there would be no discrimination in Pakistan on the basis of religion.

NCJP executive director Cecil Shane Chaudhry said accounts of the contributions of citizens from minority community were bring removed from the version of history taught at schools. He said his father the late Group Captain Cecil Chaudhry, a decorated fighter pilot, had once been among the national heroes children were taught about at schools. “In textbooks published recently, he and others like him are nowhere to be found.”

Activist Bushra Khaliq said gender bias in the curriculum had disenfranchised three generations of Pakistani women. Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s Murad Raas said the issue needed to be talked about more in order to bring about reform. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s Azma Bukhari said she would try and raise the issue at the Provincial Assembly. NCJP executive secretary Peter Jacob said various committees set up by the government over the years for curriculum reform had been unable to resolve the issue. He said the delay in doing the needful was contributing to the decline of pluralism in Pakistan.

Advocate Shamim Malik pledged his support to any future legal ventures that the NCJP might undertake with regard to intolerance in the educational curriculum.

South Asia Partnership Pakistan executive director Muhammad Tahseen praised the efforts of the NCJP. He said publication of the booklet was a brave act given the social climate.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 29^th, 2016.