Abuse of History in Pakistan: Bangladesh to Kargil
Reader comment on article: Red Mosque in Rebellion
in response to reader comment: Actually, spain did capitulate
Submitted by Yvette Rosser (India), Jul 25, 2007 at 15:41
In mid-June I traveled from India to Pakistan during the height of the Kargil crisis. I made the trip on the Delhi-Lahore "diplomacy" bus. The rhetorical and ideological distance at the Wagh boarder crossing between India and Pakistan was like traveling a million miles and one hundred and eighty degrees in less than fifty meters. It was certainly an interesting time to be crossing that boarder. While in Pakistan, I felt as if I was experiencing history in the making, and the use of twisted history for nationalist justification.
I delivered a paper in Islamabad, in July arranged by the Islamabad Forum for Social Sciences. This paper discussed how Pakistani textbooks practice history by erasure and embellishment and how these distorted historical "facts" are used to corroborate contemporary political perspectives and justify current military adventurism. I cited examples from Pakistani Studies textbooks and compared these to the headlines which appeared in Pakistani newspapers during the Kargil crisis.
My lecture was discussed in a newspaper article published in "The News," a daily in Islamabad, (quote): "Yvette drew examples from state-sponsored textbooks used in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan to illustrate the appropriation of history to reinforce national philosophy or ideology wherein historical interpretations are predetermined, unassailable, and concretized." History by erasure can have its long-term negative repercussions. In Pakistani textbooks, which narrate the 65 War with India, Operation Gibraltar is never mentioned. Operation Gibraltar and the recent events in Kargil are products of the same processes.
The mistakes made in Kargil are a legacy of the lack of information that citizens have about the real history of their country. During the "war-like-situation" in Kargil, a headline in a Pakistani newspaper read, "Kargil: Revenge for ?71." This point of view can only be propagated by someone who is unaware of the real facts that led the Bengalis to secceed from the western part of the country, by someone who blames the breakup of Pakistan on India Gandhi and "Hindu influences" in East Pakistan rather than on 24 years of Panjabi-perpetuated internal colonization.
While I was out of the USA last year, I also spent six months in Bangladesh where I made several presentations. The first was in May 1999, entitled "Hegemony and Historiography: The Politics of Pedagogy." I also delivered a paper in Dhaka in late July when I returned to Bangladesh after a trip to Pakistan. That paper was called, "The Pakistani Historian and the Bangladesh War of Liberation." This talk received wide coverage in the Bangladesh media. Here is a message sent from Dr. Ratan Lal Chakravorty, a history professor at Dhaka University. This message describes some of the news reports about that talk:
"1. The news coverage about you appears in a Daily Newspaper which is very much popular at the present moment. It?s name is the Janakanta (Voice of the People) which I am a life subscriber. On 8 August, your photographs appeared with news in four columns of half a page. The paper appreciated you to such an extent that we had seldom received. The main topic covers your findings about the historiography and historical studies of Bangladesh and it suggests to follow your methodology to understand the things going at present.
"2. The second also appeared in the Janakanta (Voice of the People) on 11 August, 1999, where an analytical and critical assessment of your work and objectives were done in a very sophisticated way using metaphor. The writer appreciated you very much for speaking the truth and the reality."
Here are some observations about current events in Pakistan as they relate to the use of history in justifying current governmental and military actions and also about the psychological health of the nation:
Pakistani nationalism is characterized by ironies and contractions. Its ideology and national mythos have not been substantiated by its historical realities. In the last fifty-two years the vision or ideal of Pakistan, as a secure homeland where the Muslims in the subcontinent could find justice and live in peace, has not been realized by the citizens. There is a shared experience of disappointment and dissatisfaction among the populace that has not abated since the restoration of democracy in 1988, and in fact the feelings of betrayal and a collective mental depression have increased dramatically in the last decade. This intellectual fatalism and depression about the state of affairs is not something new, as can be seen in an excerpt from the book, Breaking the Curfew, A Political Journey Through Pakistan, published ten years ago by a British journalist, Emma Duncan, where she wrote, and I quote,"[. . . .] many Pakistanis I talked to seemed disappointed. It was not just the disappointment that they were not as rich as they should be or that their children were finding it difficult to get jobs; it was a wider sense of betrayal, of having been cheated on a grant scale. The Army blamed the politicians, the politicians the Army; the businessmen blamed the civil servants, the civil servants the politicians; everybody blamed the landlords and the foreigners, and the left and the religious fundamentalists blamed everybody except the masses.
"More than anywhere I have been - much more than India - its people worry about the state of their country. They wonder what went wrong; they fear for the future. They condemn it; they pray for it. They are involved in the nation?s public life as passionately as in their small private dilemmas. . . " (end quote).
In the ten years since this observation was written, the passion that the people in Pakistan have for their country has not abated, but the shared feelings of betrayal and disappointment have increased exponentially. A friend of mine who is a professor, the principal at a woman?s college in Lahore, confided that she and most of her colleagues felt not only disillusioned, but abjectly hopeless about the condition and future prospects of their beloved country. She said that she had lost all hope. She did not see that the nation could survive given the current situation and there was no alternative in sight.
Here is a dynamic woman, a sincere practicing Muslim, a patriotic Pakistani whose father was an officer in the Education Core. She serves on the boards of directors of numerous institutions and works with the government to develop and implement various educational projects. She gives generously of her time and devotes herself professionally and personally to her students, her colleagues and the educational organizations of Pakistan. Yet, though she is totally committed to her country, and by nature a jolly and friendly person not prone to any type of self pity or despondency, she is overwhelmed by feelings of loss, failure, and depression when she thinks of her beloved nation.
I was intrigued and disturbed by this expression of depression, which, regardless of Emma Duncan?s observations did not seem as profoundly obvious when I was in Pakistan two years ago. Since my dear sister working in Lahore informed me that many of her friends and colleagues also felt the same, I decided to ask the professors and scholars with whom I had scheduled interviews if they shared this feeling of depression and sorrow regarding their nation. I was astounded to find similar feeling of disempowerment coupled with a dissatisfaction which offered no solutions.
Many of the social activists and progressives with whom I spoke expressed this same helplessness while at the same time they counteract their feelings of loss by publishing journals, holding seminars and discussion groups?many work with NGOs to develop educational opportunities for girls in rural areas or contribute their time to other altruistic and progressive endeavors. They remain active?their work belies the futility which they expressed to me. They continue working, pouring their efforts and souls into positive activity aimed at improving the social and intellectual climate of their country, and they survive by not dwelling on the fact that ultimately, they feel powerless to effect any positive change.
It distressed me that these very people who could help Pakistan the most and whose voices should be heard and heeded are the very same people who, because of their political perspectives and social critiques, are often harassed by the authorities, denied jobs and otherwise discriminated against by the establishment. The current democratically elected government continues to make it difficult for intellectuals with alternative viewpoints to do research and even to travel abroad, not to mention what has happened lately to prominent journalists. Several professors at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad informed me that a recent decree by the government mandated that professors must now obtain an NOC (No Objection Certificate) when planning to travel abroad even for a family vacation.
One well known and respected Physics professor, Dr. Parvez Hoodbhoy is a vocal critic about Pakistani affairs and writes magazines articles and essays about issues such as corruption, the unequal availability of educational opportunities and lately about the folly and danger of the nuclear option. Recently, Dr. Hoodbhoy was denied an NOC when he was invited to lecture in the Physics Department at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). He was able to leave the country only through the intervention of the Vice-chancellor of his university, Dr. Tariq Siddique, who also taught at the Civil Service Academy and served as the education minister under Zulfikar Bhutto.
Dr. Tariq Siddique is well-known for supporting his staff and helping his former students. However, his intervention on behalf of Dr. Hoodbhoy, I was informed, risked provoking official ire. However, this type of potential threat is not something new to Tariq Siddique, since he had been dismissed from Bhutto?s cabinet for too zealously advocating teacher empowerment and merit-based promotion.
Many scholars at the university level expressed resentment that research was discouraged and intellectuals were often seen as a threat by the establishment. They complained that mediocrity was encouraged and original research impeded. Surrounded by a completely corrupt system, which they felt powerless to change, yet endowed with self respect and moral conscientiousness, many of these caring and intellectually brilliant individuals lamented about their hopelessness and depression regarding the condition of their nation.
As I was disturbed by this shared expression of depression, I interviewed a psychiatrist and asked him his opinion about this phenomenon. He first pointed out that the depression was a tangible reality and could be quantified by the huge increase in the number of suicides in Pakistan in the last few years. He said that there are 20 to 30 suicides per day in Pakistan which occur primarily among the young between the ages of fifteen and thirty, mostly upper-class urbanized females and newly educated rural or newly urbanized lower middle class males.
Dr. Inayat Magsi, from the Civil Hospital in Karachi, explained that most of these suicides are the result of the loss of hope for the future. But he also pointed out that the dramatic rise in clinical depression which he has observed even among citizens with ample economic opportunities can be partly attributed to the fact that even though democracy has been practiced now for over ten years, there has been a decline in the development of civil society, a death of collective vision, of enthusiasm to change the system from within, a certain resignation.
During the time of Martial Law, the iron rule of General Zia-ul-Haq, the intellectuals and socially conscious scholars, along with large segments of the common people, had something to fight against, a mission and a purpose to rid their country of authoritarian rule. Dr. Inayat Magsi pointed out that this struggle against the military government and the hope for democracy united the people with a vision which kept them enthusiastic about the future potential of their country.
Once democracy was restored, the level of corruption certainly did not decrease, the practice of fomenting regionalism which was practiced by General Zia increased, promises of a better future rapidly died as the political parties fought a propaganda war for their ascendancy instead working for the good of the country. The often disenfranchised polity was once again dismayed and depressed by the inability of their officials to focus on the needs and priorities of Pakistan. Dr. Inayat Magsi added that now that there is no military government to rebel against, they can only blame themselves for the lack of leadership and since they are powerless to create other alternatives, they are disheartened. . depressed.
Pakistan is a land that is torn by ethnic differences and is seemingly unable to achieve unity within its diversity. It was founded on the principle that Islam, as the great leveler of class and caste, was a sufficient force to tie the Sindhis, the Pathans, and the Balouchi tribes, and also the Bengalis together with the dominant Panjabis to form a cohesive and stable national identity which would supersede regional loyalties and ethnicities. Through the years, this mission to create a strong centrally controlled government has been pursued by various methods including realignment of political associations between its minority groups, usually based more on gains for provincial party bosses than nation cohesion, and by the use of military coercion, which as in the case of the Bengali majority, resulted in the split up of the original country.
Even today the central government operates under the assumption that Pakistan is a unitary entity, though the rhetorical idea of "One Unit" was only abandoned immediately before the Bangladesh war of liberation. The Pakistani military and bureaucracy are still grappling with the problems that the contradictions inherent in the Ideology of Pakistan continue to create within the varied cultural landscape of the nation.
The powers at the center, usually more intent at retaining the profitable reins on the government, are inevitably unable to make equitable policies which can reverse the decentralized loyalties nor reconcile these tendencies with the imperatives of a highly centralized state apparatus. As Feroz Ahmed in his book Ethnicity and Politics in Pakistan, published by Oxford University Press in 1999, wrote, "The state and its ideologues have steadfastly refused to recognize the fact that these regions are not merely chunks of territory with different names but areas which were historically inhabited by peoples who had different languages and cultures, and even states of their own. This official and intellectual denial has, no doubt, contributed to the progressive deterioration of inter-group relations, weakened societies cohesiveness, and undermined the state?s capacity to forge security and sustain development." (end quote)
Denial and erasure are the primary tools of historiography as it is officially practiced in Pakistan. There is no room in the official historical narrative for questions or alternative points of view which is Nazariya Pakistan, the Ideology of Pakistan?devoted to a mono-perspectival religious orientation. There is no other correct way to view the historical record. It is, after all, since the time of General Zia-ul Haq, a capital crime to talk against the "Ideology of Pakistan."
According to A.H. Nayyar from Quaid-e-Azam University, "What is important in the exercise is the faithful transmission, without any criticism or re-evaluation, of the particular view of the past which is implicit in the coming to fruition of the ?Pakistan Ideology.?" Rahat Saeed of the Irtiqa Institute of Social Sciences in Karachi explains that school level history teachers are often aware that what they are teaching in their Pakistani Studies classes is at best contradictory and often quite incorrect. They usually do not attempt to explain the "real" history regarding such events as the civil war in 1971, because to do so might jeopardize their jobs, and, as Rahat explains, the teachers are afraid "to corrupt their students with the truth."
In contemporary Pakistani textbooks the historical narrative is based on the Two Nation Theory. The story of the nation begins with the advent of Islam when Mohammed-bin-Qazm arrived in Sindh followed by Mahmud of Ghazni storming through the Khyber Pass, 16 times, bringing the Light of Islam to the infidels who converted en mass to escape the evil domination of the cruel Brahmins. Reviewing a selection of textbooks published since 1972 in Pakistan will verify the assumption that there is little or no discussion of the ancient cultures that have flowered in the land that is now Pakistan, such as Taxila and Mohenjo-Daro, though this lack seems to have been partly addressed in the very recent editions of several history textbooks published for Oxford-Cambridge elite schools.
In most textbooks, any mention of Hinduism is inevitably accompanied by derogatory critiques, and none of the greatness of Indic civilization is considered?not even the success of Chandragupta Maurya, who defeated, or at least frightened the invading army of Alexander the Great at the banks of the Beas River where it flows through the land that is now called Pakistan. These events are deemed meaningless since they are not about Muslim heroes. There is an elision in time between the moment Islam first arrived in Sindh and Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
This shortsighted approach to historiography was not always the case.
Up until 1972, the history textbooks included much more elaborate sections on the history of the subcontinent, while adopting the colonial frame of periodization?the books described the Hindu Period, The Muslim Period and the British Period. History textbooks, such as Indo Pak History, Part 1 published in 1951, included chapters with titles such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata Era, Aryans? Religion and Educational Literature, the Caste System, Jainism and Buddhism, Invasions of Iranians and Greeks, Chandra Gupta Maurya, Maharaja Ashok, Maharaja Kaniska, The Gupta Family, Maharaja Harish, New Era of Hinduism, The Era of Rajputs. This same basic table of contents, which also included the history of Islam, was prevalent in textbooks until post 1971.