What has been taught to us is mostly not true
Draped in white and green, students in my university were full of passion and enthusiasm on 22nd March. Painting their faces with white and green, blowing up balloons of the same color and chattering around cheerfully, they were celebrating what is termed as ‘Pakistan Day’ in advance.
I watched them doing this while reading ‘The Murder of History’ to extract some important points for this very column. Upon asking a student about what the day means, I got to hear the textbook version which the students have been parroting since the first grade, ‘Resolution for the creation of Pakistan was passed this day.’ The answer was blank face when I asked what did the resolution say or mean.
This is the probable response of an average student with or without some additional information – from the textbooks. I too had the same understanding of Pakistan Movement and its history two years ago until I came across ‘The Murder of History’. Written by prominent historian K K Aziz, it is a detailed analysis of our history textbooks and points out the fallacies being committed by the writers.
Reading on, I realised how the governments through the years have systematically morphed our history to justify its creation, as well as its ideological standing – a practice common all over the world. Prominent historian Dr Mubarak Ali noted in his recent column for Dawn, “During the Congress party rule, the contents of textbooks become liberal and tolerable to the religious minorities of India. In 1998, during BJP’s government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a major change occurred in textbooks when the Hindutva ideology was propagated and Hindu symbols were depicted.”
Coming back to 23rd March, Aziz notes in his book that the event has been constructed into a historical falsehood. All the newspapers and documents from that time agree on the fact that the Annual Session of All India Muslim League commenced on 22nd March, 1940, as Jinnah gave a long speech. The next day, on 23rd March, Fazl-ul-Haq presented the resolution as other leaders spoke to the attendees. It was on 24th March, after the leaders of AIML had spoken, was the resolution presented for voting and passed unanimously.
Although K K Aziz doesn’t provide any possible explanation behind the blatant misrepresentation of facts but it has been well established now that it was 1956 Constitution which triggered the celebration of ‘Republic Day’ on 23rd March. It was after Ayub Khan took over the government and started tearing apart the constitution that led to falsification of as important a historical date as this. He faced the issue of celebrating 23rd March as Republic Day to commemorate the constitution he himself had violated.
He ultimately changed Republic Day into Pakistan Day in remembrance of what is now called ‘Pakistan Resolution’.
Content of the resolution, which according to Aziz is highly ambiguous and badly-written, has been interpreted into something entirely different.
Aziz explains how the meaning of this resolution has been morphed, which says, “That geographically contiguous units are demarcated into regions which should be constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority as in the North Western and Eastern Zones of (British) India should be grouped to constitute ‘independent states’ in which the constituent units should be autonomous and sovereign.”
Few of the claims which our textbooks make are (i) It demanded two independent states; (ii) a separate homeland; (iii) An independent state to be called Pakistan; (iv) a separate homeland for Muslims of India; and (v) dividing India into two separate states.
Aziz asks if the above said text justifies the tall claims made by the textbooks – to which the answer is no. He goes on to ask, “If the textbooks can fabricate facts in the course of paraphrasing a definite, published, easily available document, what atrocities on truth they must have perpetrated in the field of Pakistan’s political developments?”
Creation of Pakistan was never on the cards until Nehru showed stubbornness (which many believe was deliberate) to accept the Cabinet Mission Plan. Thus, to justify its creation, an ‘ideology’ was propagated as a public discourse by the government itself. Historians were asked to write about how Muslims were a different nation altogether and which resulted ridiculous analogies.
In my previous columns, I have discussed how this ideology has been attributed to various personalities. Muhammad Bin Qasim, an Arab warrior who attacked Sindh, is said to be the founding father of this country. His role is later furthered by Mahmud Ghaznavi, who attacked India 17 times to loot and plunder its wealth. Sheikh Ahmed Sirhindi tops the list of the many spiritual founders of Pakistan.
The effort continues until today as recently a ‘historian’ made fresh revelations about another invader, Ghauri, to have laid the foundation of Pakistan.
An interesting pattern observed on Twitter as a hashtag about the Ideology of Pakistan was trending on 23rd March. A mix of religious fundamentalists, especially from JuD, and pro-army accounts was the reason behind this trend. Although it is being said that state’s narrative towards jihadists has changed in the past few months, it was ironic to see both sides toeing the same lines.
It seems that despite the tall claims of paradigm shift, no serious efforts will take place by the responsible authorities to change the narrative of textbooks. Young minds will keep learning a fabricated and highly perverted version of our history and will grow up being high on ‘patriotism’.
Ultimately, their ideology meets with that of jihadist groups like JuD at one point, which obviously have been the children of those claiming to be the defendants of our ‘ideological frontiers’.