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Prejudice and Pride is
most appropriate at this juncture, when children are made aware
of their caste, religion and its rituals even before they learn
how to spell. These children, growing up on either side of the
border — India or Pakistan — will never realise that they
have a common past and their ancestors fought for a common cause
before they were torn asunder to become sworn enemies.
The author has
ventured to tread ground hitherto ignored. He has researched
history textbooks that Indian and Pakistani children study at
school. A single-minded focus on the goal of inculcating a
national consciousness often makes the teaching of history a
means of ideological indoctrination.
An interesting
dichotomous development in both societies is the diminishing
focus on the study of history as a subject, though there are
tremendous controversies which have been stoked, allied to
historical syllabi and their interpretation.
Though both
countries have been discussing the interpretation as well as the
rewriting of history. In Pakistan, during the regime of Zia-ul-Haq,
it became one of the major vehicles to construct a full-fledged
ideological apparatus under the banner of "Islamisation".
Moves of a similar nature are now afoot in India, but mercifully
there have been enough protests, particularly by historians, so
the inherent strength of democracy persists.
This book is
pathbreaking because no historian or writer has cared to study
or analyze historical portrayal and interpretation in textbooks
in juxtaposition of India and Pakistan.
The author has
covered a wide range of issues related to the interpretation of
history, ideologies, textbooks and the freedom struggle as
perceived by the two sides. The best part of the study is how
every point of view juxtaposes perceptions on the two sides of
the border. He truly laments studies of Partition. Reflections
on it would constitute a huge storehouse if we included Indian
and Pakistani works in history, politics, biography, literature
and journalism. Modest attempts have been made recently to make
sense of rival perspectives, but we are quite far from reaching
the point where a student might have access to sufficient
material for developing a holistic view of Partition.
In a study of
ideology and textbooks, the author says: "The textbooks of
both countries suffered from the post-colonial syndrome, a moral
assessment of the colonised by the coloniser, a substantial part
of the epistemology of colonial educational practices was
structured around a moral critique of the society and
culture."
The most
innovative part of the author’s work is the scanning of the
145 essays of school children from Delhi and Lahore; these are
from a wide range of schools, both elite as well as government.
The conclusion that he arrived at is heartening—that children
on both sides of the border want peace despite the subtle
indoctrination or prejudiced elements in textbooks.
"If we
pool together all the essays written by children of both the
countries, we would find a sense of tiredness as an overarching
theme, forming a kind of bridge between the children of the two
countries. This feeling finds expression in different idioms,
but the sources are remarkably similar."
Though it may sound rather far
fetched and idealistic in this belligerent atmosphere, why can’t
the intellectuals of the two countries meet more often, thrash
out controversies, and liberate texts from the elements of false
pride and prejudice in which mutual hatred is seeded.
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