Pak`s true secularism vs India`s pseudo-secularism

By: V Sundaram
March 13, 2006
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Recently I saw a program on one of the Indian TV news channels relating to the so-called imperative public need for Government of India to reciprocate the warm and friendly overtures of Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. The interviewer went so far as to say that why should the Government of India be under the impression that every act of terrorism in India emanates from Pakistan. One of the Union Cabinet Ministers, who had earlier worked in Pakistan when he was a member of the Indian Foreign Service, enthusiastically welcomed the remarks by the interviewer and quoted some lines of Urdu/ Persian Poetry to demonstrate not only his profound and emotional appreciation of the psyche of an average Pakistani but also his boundless love for India and Indians. He wanted to show by the way in which he spoke with fervour and passion for Pakistan that he has been able to enter the jugular vein of an average Pakistani which ought to compel national attention, if not international notice. He is never tired of calling himself `a secular fundamentalist`. For him, Muslim India is fundamental and Hindu India is incidental even as Sonia Gandhi is fundamental and Mahatma Gandhi incidental.

It is in this context that I am rather shocked to notice that when a school student Mohammed Qasim participated in a declamation contest held to celebrate Pakistan`s Independence Day in August 2005, the topic he was given to speak on was: `Why Islam and Pakistan are integral to each other`. Deviating from the main theme given to him, this Class XI student of Lahore`s Government Central Model School lashed out against the Hindus, giving vent to his inexplicable anger and hatred. This was particularly shocking because the Hindu community, constituting an infinitesimally small percentage of Pakistan`s population, has never been an aspect of Qasim`s life. Asked to explain his outpouring in the contest, the 14-year-old boy said, `We hate Hindus because they are Hindustanis and the number one enemies of both Islam and Pakistan. We know it all through our history text books on Pakistan Studies. We learn what happened years ago all the time at school`.

The attitude of the Government of Pakistan towards India, the land of infidels and listless Hindus, is mainly responsible for this emotional outburst from a 14-year-old student. Most of the textbooks prescribed in High Schools in Pakistan are all primers of hate against Hinduism and India. History or biology, Pakistani students get anti-India and anti-Hindu lessons in their textbooks. School boy Qasim`s intellectual rationalisation illustrates vividly the deadly impact of school textbooks in Pakistan, where history is manipulated to foster national chauvinism. There, knowledge becomes a vital tool in the construction of national identity and the sense of nation is promoted through veritable lessons in bigotry, hatred and gross misrepresentation of history. The extracts culled out from textbooks taught in government schools clearly show how the ruling establishment, under the stranglehold of President Pervez Musharraf, is misusing school text-books to develop an anti-India, anti-Hindu mindset and also to fan Muslim sentiments against Christians, Jews and the West. Government`s control over the educational system in Pakistan is exercised through Lt Gen (retd) Javed Ashraf Qazi, who heads the Federal Education Ministry. As the head of the ISI between 1993 and 1995, Qazi supervised the recruitment of students from Pakistan`s madrassas for constituting the extremist Taliban militia.
These are extracts from government-sponsored textbooks approved by the National Curriculum Wing (NCW) of the Federal Ministry of Education:

General:
`Who is a Hindu? A Hindu is an enemy of Islam`
`Before the Arab conquest, people were fed up with the teachings of Buddhists & Hindus. Before the arrival of Islam in India, people lived in untold misery`.
`European nations have been working during the past three centuries to subjugate countries of the Muslim world`.
Class IV Text Book:
* The Muslims of Pakistan provided all facilities to the Hindus and the Sikhs who left for India in 1947. But the Hindus and the Sikhs looted the Muslims in India with both hands and they attacked their caravans, buses and railway trains. Therefore, about one million Muslims were martyred on their way to Pakistan.
* The Hindus treated the ancient population of the Indus Valley very badly. They set fire to their houses and butchered them.
* The religion of Hindus did not teach them good things, Hindus did not respect women.
Class V Text Book:
* After the war of 1965, India with the help of Hindus living in East Pakistan, incited the people of East Pakistan against West Pakistanis. In December 1971, the Indians themselves also attacked East Pakistan. As a result East Pakistan separated from us. We should all receive military training so that we can foil the designs of the enemy in the future. (By implication, not even a single Muslim in East Pakistan, including Mujibur Rehman, fought against West Pakistanis in 1971)
* The Hindu has always been an enemy of Islam.
Class VI Text Book:
* In the middle of the city of Deebal (Sindh), there was a Hindu temple. There was a flag hoisted on top of it. The Hindus believed that as long as the flag kept flying, nobody could harm them. Mohd bin Qasim found out about this. The Muslims began to catapult stones at the temple and at the flag, ultimately making it fall to the ground. The whole city became tumultuous and the Hindus lost heart. Some Muslims clambered up the walls of the temple and forced open the door. Qasim`s army entered the city and after conquering it, announced peace. The Muslims treated the vanquished so well many Hindus converted to Islam.
* Before the Arab conquest the people were fed up with the teachings of Buddhists and Hindus.
* The foundation of the Hindu setup was based on injustice and cruelty.
* The Hindus who had always been opportunists cooperated with the British.
* The Hindus used to please the goddess Kali by slaughtering people of other religions.
Class VII Text Book:
* Some Jewish tribes also lived in Arabia. They lent money to workers and peasants on high rates of interest and usurped their earnings. They held the whole society in their tight grip because of the ever-increasing compound interest.
* History has no parallel to the extremely kind treatment of the Christians by the Muslims. Still the Christian kingdoms of Europe were constantly trying to gain control of Jerusalem. This was the cause of the Crusades.
* European nations have been working during the past three centuries, through conspiracies or naked aggression, to subjugate countries of the Muslim world. Hindus always desired to crush the Muslims as a nation. Several attempts were made by the Hindus to erase Muslim culture and civilisation.
* The Hindus too wished to ruin Muslim civilisation and culture by destroying Urdu which has been closely associated with the Pakistan Movement.
Class VIII Text Book:
* During the Khilafat Movement Hindus and Muslims were completely united and like brothers and they started to cooperate and live in peaceful togetherness. But as soon as this movement ended, Hindu hatred of the Muslim re-emerged.
* Before Islam people lived in untold misery all over the world.
Class IX Text Book:
* The Hindus and the Muslims could not amalgamate each other`s way of life to become one nation.The main reason for this difference of cultures, civilisation and outlook was the religion of Islam which cannot be assimilated in any other system as it is based on the principle of...oneness of God....On the other hand, Hinduism is based on the concept of multiple Gods....There lies the difference between the Hindu and Muslim way of thinking.
* In connivance with the (British) government the Hindus started communal riots and caused loss of life and property. At the time of prayers the Hindus tortured the Muslims by playing music in front of the mosques. Before the commencement of classes the students saluted the portrait of Mahatma Gandhi and Muslim students were also forced to do so.
* Muslims promoted equality and social justice as against the division created by the Hindu caste system.
Class X Text Book:
* The ideology of Pakistan...was a revolt against the prevailing system of India in which Hindu nationalism was imposed on the Muslims.
* Islam gives a message of peace and brotherhood.... There is no such concept in Hinduism. Moreover Islam preaches brotherhood, equality and justice.... On the other hand, the Hindu society is based on caste system which downgrades the entire mankind.
* After the establishment of Pakistan the Hindus and Sikhs created a day of doom for the Muslims in East Punjab.
* The Hindus were encouraged by the (British) government to force the Muslims to join the Congress.
(These extracts have been translated from Urdu which is the standard medium of instruction in Government Schools in Pakistan)
Dr Mubarak Ali, the eminent historian, has rightly observed that the Westernised liberal elite in Pakistan, which had inherited power from the British in 1947, had given to education a basically secular and modern character. Subsequently, however, the self-seeking and opportunistic elite in independent Pakistan completely abandoned all liberal values on account of political and economic exigencies and this disastrous trend has adversely affected the educational system.
Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.
- Gauthama Buddha.

Government sponsored and Government approved school textbooks in Pakistan are playing havoc on the minds and hearts of impressionable youth in Pakistan. These textbooks sometime back came under the scanner of public scrutiny in the West following a story in the Los Angeles Times. The story highlighted the built-in tirade against non-Muslims being encouraged through State-sponsored Text-books in Pakistan.

Los Angeles Times reported: `Thousands of Pakistani children learn from history books each year that Jews are tight-fisted moneylenders and Christians are vengeful conquerors.` It expressed horrified bewilderment that such lessons are taught not in madrassas but in government schools of a country whose leader Pervez Musharraf is considered to be an ally of the US in the war against terror. The Los Angeles Times report had the effect of moving US administration to voice its grave concern to the Government of Pakistan over the textbooks filled with religious bigotry and hatred towards all non-Islamic faiths. US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told a news briefing in August 2005: `The issue is a matter of serious concern for Washington and the Bush administration would like the Pakistani leadership to effectively address it.`

In response to the stand of the Government of United States on this issue, the Pakistan Education Minister Javed Ashraf Qazi stated that suitable action has been initiated to revise and reform the public school curriculum. But the gigantic nature of the problem involved can be illustrated through the mindset dominant in the Islamabad-based National Curriculum Wing (NCW). Functioning directly under Qazi`s ministry, the NCW sets the guidelines for the four provincial textbook boards which publish course material for government schools. The NCW issued a directive in 2002 laying out the following objectives: nurture in children a sense of Islamic identity; instil pride in being a Pakistani; and to regard Pakistan as an Islamic country and to develop a deep love for it.

What was essentially ignored in this exercise was the possibility that a child in school could be a non-Muslim and might feel alienated because textbooks equate every Pakistani with a Muslim. Although the subject of Islam, or Islamite, is compulsory only for Muslims, the directive awarded an extra 25 per cent marks to a non-Muslim student, should he or she opt for the pro-Islamic course. The 2002 directive was issued a month after the then education minister Zubaida Jalal had directed the NCW to revise history books taught in public schools.

A distinguished Scientist and Educationist Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy is of the view that the ongoing redefinition of education, first initiated under President Zia-ul-Haq and now being carried to its logical conclusion by NCW will have drastically illiberal implications for Pakistan. To quote his appropriate words: `A new concept of education now prevails, the full impact of which will probably be felt when the present generation of schoolchildren attains maturity`.

It will be clear from the above that the Pakistan rulers view Education as an essential tool for Islamising the whole society and forging a new national identity. Dr. Parvez Hoodbhoy has categorically explained: `Important steps have already been taken in this direction: enforcement of chuddar in educational institutions; organisation of congregational afternoon prayers during school hours; compulsory teaching of Arabic as a second language from Class VI onwards; introduction of reading the Quran as a matriculation requirement; alteration of the definition of literacy to include religious knowledge; establishment of an Islamic university in Islamabad; introduction of religious knowledge as a criterion for selecting teachers; and the revision of conventional subjects to emphasise Islamic values.`

The pernicious role of the political class in Islamising the education system can best be illustrated through an example. In March 2004, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the fundamentalist alliance of five religious parties, disrupted the National Assembly proceedings and staged a walkout claiming that a certain reference to jehad as well as other Quranic verses had been excluded from the new edition of a state-prescribed biology textbook. The MMA threatened to launch a protest movement if the Quranic verses were not reinstated.

However, then education minister Zubaida Jalal clarified that no chapter or verses relating to jehad (holy war) or shahadat (martyrdom) had been deleted from textbooks, and that the particular verse referring to jehad had only been shifted from the biology textbook for intermediate students (Classes XI and XII, that is) to the matriculation level course (Class X). The education ministry never bothered to inquire, as most people familiar with the discipline of biology logically would, as to why there were references to jehad in the biology textbook in the first place.

The tragedy in India today is that the Congress Party (fully backed by the UPA Government) would treat the same subject in the same context as quite `secular` in a Muslim/Christian School in India and treat the very same matter in the same context as rabidly `communal` if some decent reference about Hindu God is made in any of the Textbooks in a Hindu School. To make my point in this context more clear, I would say that in India by birth every Muslim/Christian calling himself a Muslim/Christian is `secular` while every Hindu calling himself a Hindu becomes by birth automatically `non-secular` and `communal`. The Congress definition of a Hindu is that he is a non-Muslim and a non-Christian and by virtue of this fact alone he runs the risk of being dismissed as an `obscurantist`, and `superstitious` non-entity.

I was recently reading a report called `The Subtle Subversion: The State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan` brought out by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in Islamabad. This report has been jointly authored by A.H. Nayyar and Ahmed Salim and they have clearly shown how the educational system in Pakistan is contributing to the culture of sectarianism, religious intolerance and violence.

Some of the major findings of the SDPI are: `the current curriculum and textbooks are impregnating young and impressionable minds with seeds of hatred` to serve a self-styled ideological straitjacket; substantial distortion of the nature and significance of actual events in Pakistan`s history; insensitivity to the existing religious diversity of the nation; promotion of perspectives that encourage prejudice, bigotry and discrimination towards fellow citizens, especially women and religious minorities and other nations; a glorification of war and the use of force; and incitement to militancy and violence, including encouragement of loaded concepts like jehad and martyrdom.

Apart from making a frontal attack on the antiquated and primitive educational system in Pakistan, the SDPI report also graphically exposes American hypocrisy. Claiming that the concepts of jehad and martyrdom were incorporated into the Pakistani curricula after the start of the so-called Afghan jehad against the Soviet occupation troops, the SDPI report says, `At that point, it suited the US and its most allied of allies, Pakistan, to encourage and glorify the so-called mujahideen, or holy warriors, in the war against the Russians. An American institution of higher education was asked to formulate textbooks for Pakistani schools accordingly. The University of Nebraska at Omaha, which has a centre for Afghan Studies, was subsequently mandated by the Central Intelligence Agency in the early eighties to rewrite textbooks for Afghan refugee children. The new textbooks included hate material even in arithmetic books. One question asked, `If a man has five bullets and two go into the heads of Russian soldiers, how many are left`?` Should the Government of any country promote the production of textbooks of this sort only to generate glances of hatred that stab and raise a war cry of murder?

America`s hypocrisy apart, it is in Pakistan`s interest to delete from textbooks hate material and ensure today`s schoolchildren are groomed into liberal, democratic, secular Pakistanis, harbouring hatred for none and love for all. Malice can always find a mark to shoot at, and a pretence to fire. Hatred is madness of the heart. Only malice and hatred are being propagated through the school textbooks in Pakistan. The worst affected are the minorities belonging to the non-Muslim faiths like Christians, Hindus and Jews in Pakistan.

Against this factual background about the grim ground realities in Pakistan, should not the aching pseudo-secular hearts of vermin in high places like Sonia Gandhi, Arjun Singh, Ram Vilas Paswan, Lallu Prasad Yadav and Mani Sankar Iyer and others of the same ilk rest in non-communal peace without honour in the larger interest of UPA coalition `if not cohesion? Let the Congress Party in New Delhi and all the shady partners in the UPA coalition remember that Hindu-Muslim brotherhood is, in essence, a hope on the road ??the long road ??to fulfilment. To claim it to be already a full grown fact is to be guilty of pseudo-secular hypocrisy. To treat it always as a matter of fiction is to be guilty of fundamental cynicism. Let them avoid both in the larger interest of India`s mute millions.

Leo Tolstoy in his famous novel Anna Karenina had these small men in view when he wrote: `Hypocrisy is anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognises it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised`.

V Sundaram

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