Sarwech Saryo
U S Commission on International Religious Freedom has rightly
observed: “Text books in Pakistani schools foster prejudice and intolerance of
Hindus and Christians, while most teachers view religious minorities as
“enemies of Islam". It was observed after a study of reviewing more than
100 textbooks from grades 1-10 from Pakistan's four provinces and according to
Commission’s report researchers in February this year visited 37 public
schools, interviewing 277 students and teachers, and 19 madrasas, where they
interviewed 226 students and teachers.
Leonard Leo, the chairman of the US Commission on
International Religious Freedom also said that teaching discrimination has
increased the likelihood that violent religious extremism in Pakistan will
continue to grow, weakening religious freedom, national and regional stability
and global security.
The matter of fact is that only officially published
textbooks are used in Pakistan’s schools and colleges since the era of Ayub
Khan. This is used by Pakistani government to create a standard narrative of
Pakistan's history. Since 1970's Pakistani school textbooks have systematically
inculcated hatred towards India and Hindus through historical revisionism. Many
texts give an impression that ancient Indian heritage was not destroyed by
Afgans and Turks but Muslim heritage was destroyed by Indians, Pakistan was
created on that day when a South Asian became Muslim, Muhammad bin Qasim and
Mahmood Ghaznavi were great heroes of Muslim world who came in sub-continent to
save us. It is all in the contradiction of the theory of international
historians.These text books further states that Non-Muslims are curse on the
“pure land” of Muslims and must be eliminated because of Islam teaches us to
fight against the “forces of evil”. During the rule of dictator Zia, program of
Islamization of the country including the textbooks was started. US-backed
dictator Zia’s 1979 education policy stated as: "The highest priority
would be given to the revision of the curricula with a view to reorganizing the
entire content around Islamic thought and giving education an ideological
orientation so that Islamic ideology permeates the thinking of the younger
generation and helps them with the necessary conviction and ability to
refashion society according to Islamic tenets." To sum up, the main
objective of the textbooks is to indoctrinate children for a romanticized
Islamic state as conceptualized by Islamic theocratic. Religious intolerance,
extremism, bigotry, terrorism, violence against minorities and other all
degraded values and curses of this sort in our society are product of education
taught through our text books.
Our
textbooks are nursery of religious extremism and those must be changed,
otherwise voyage of our society will be continuing to worst destinations and
all of us will be lost.