Education minister’s revelations
ACCORDING to a report, the federal education minister, Jahangir Ashraf Qazi, made a ‘hard-hitting’ speech recently. He said it was wrong to think that the history of Pakistan began with the invasion of Muhammad bin Qasim. “It started with Moenjodaro...we should learn to face the facts. The defeat in 1971 is also a fact” (Dec 14).
While the part about Moenjodaro was obviously aimed at the Islamists because they tie Pakistan’s history to Muhammad bin Qasim’s conquest of Sindh, the bit about the 1971 war is unclear.
Mr Qazi spent a lifetime in becoming a lieutenant-general and also the chief of the ISI. However, he never before enlightened us about our history or that we had lost in 1971. As an army man he should have acknowledged the ‘defeat’ long ago, although I don’t think any Pakistani claimed otherwise, after the fall of Dhaka. It is only after being charged with secularising our educational system that he has adopted this course.
He should be more aware than a lay person like me that the terrain of former East Pakistan was very similar to that of Vietnam, where even the superpower America faced a shattering defeat by the Vietcong guerillas in spite of its phenomenal firepower, manpower, technology and money. So, what chances did our army have, deployed without supply lines 1,000 miles across forbidden territory, with the ongoing guerilla warfare joined by Indian commandos, a hostile populace and an Indian military invasion? Even then, Gen Maneckshaw, the Indian army chief had praised our troops for fighting very bravely.
If we had been forced to surrender in West Pakistan, that would rightly be a defeat, though by a seven-times larger enemy. Instead of explaining things on these lines, the education minister has tarnished the image of our armed forces and demoralised the nation.
When Columbus ‘discovered’ America, there already were the Eskimos and Red Indians living over there, who presumably had originated in Siberia and Mongolia. There also were the Hispanic peoples, including Muslims, who would have come from Spain. However, the Christian/Caucasian American majority does not identify itself with them even now and their history only begins in the 15th century.
The Celtics had conquered the pre-historic people of Britain around 500 BC. Then, in AD 43 the Romans conquered these Celtic people they called Britons. They left in AD 410, after which there were forays by the Angles from northeastern Europe, who called it Angleland, which later became England. The Welsh and Scottish remained thoroughbred Celtics and in many ways don’t like the English, But they all look at themselves as Christians and Britons, not as Romans or Celtics. We could probably trace our roots to ancestors living in caves, but that wasn’t Pakistan, nor was Moenjodaro.
If the Muslims hadn’t come here, there would be no Pakistan. So, if the Pakistani Muslims choose to identify themselves with their Islamic roots, why blow hot and cold about it?
We all read the history of pre-Islamic Pakistan in schools and it can continue to be taught, but we shouldn’t be forced to see it as our main identity or to stop taking pride in our Islamic one. The sudden shift in the policy of Gen Musharraf after 9/11 when, to please the West, he started distancing himself from Islam as most Pakistanis know it, has led to all sorts of distortions.
A CONCERNED MUSLIM
Karachi
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