Reddit reviews What Shall We Tell the Children? International Perspectives on School History Textbooks

For a long time, I've been interested about the teaching of fabricated history in Pakistani schools. There is a book on the topic - What Shall We Tell the Children?: International Perspectives on School History Textbooks. It has a chapter dedicated to Pakistan.

The Pakistani Studies curriculum was hurriedly introduced in 1972, a year after the loss of East Pakistan. With the aftermath of a disastrous war with India, a frenzy of panic gripped the nation and the powers that be in Pakistan feared that its raison d'etre was crumbling. Teaching contorted and fabricated history to impressionable children is their attempt at nation-building.

Here are some excerpts -
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1) Introduction

All students in Pakistan are required to take courses called Pakistan Studies
and must pass standardized tests. There are numerous textbooks published
under this title for the 9th class to the BA level. The curriculum
is a composite of patriotic discourses, justification of the Two-Nation Theory,
hagiographies of Muslim heroes, and, endemic in the discourse,
polemics about the superiority of Islamic principals over Hinduism. The
rubric in these textbooks must be learned by rote in order for students to
pass the examination.

The social studies curriculum in Pakistan, as both product
and propagator of the “Ideology of Pakistan,” derives its legitimacy
from a narrow set of directives. The textbooks authored and altered during
the eleven years of General Zia-ul-Haq’s military rule between 1977 and
1988, are still in use in most schools—they are decidedly anti-democratic
and inclined to dogmatic tirades and are characterized by internal contradictions.

In the thirty years since the “fall of Dhaka” the government controlled
curriculum still does not include a historically circumspect version of the
causes of the civil war that dismembered the nation. It is no wonder that
during and in the aftermath of the Kargil crisis in the summer of 1999,
newspapers ran stories referring to the occupation of the heights above
Kargil as “revenge for 1971.” There is a chronic shortage of objective information
available to the majority of Pakistani citizens that can adequately
explain the actual events that led to the three wars with India. Kashmir in
1948, the war with India in 1965, and the Bangladesh War of Independence
have become national metaphors for betrayal within and a
reminder of the constant threat looming from Hindu India. The split-up of
the nation and the creation of Bangladesh remains a potent symbol of
Pakistan’s disempowerment and a constant reminder of what will happen if
the Muslim ummah does not remain vigilant.

During the war-like situation in the summer of 1999 at the Line of Control
near Kargil, the Pakistani government claimed that the Mujahideen
were not physically supported by Pakistan, that the combatants were indigenous
Kashmiri freedom fighters. However, the presence of satellite television,
the internet, and newspapers that are now more connected to
international media sources, offered the possibility of broader exposure
than during the two previous wars fought over Kashmir. Perhaps there is at
least one positive outcome of the tragic Kargil crisis where hundreds of
young men lost their lives; in the aftermath there was an outpouring of
newspaper and magazine articles in Pakistan that attempted to analyze the
brinkmanship from various angles.

Although some of the essays in Pakistani newspapers prophetically
called for the military to take over the government in the wake of Nawaz
Sharif’s sell out to Clinton, most of the discussions were more circumspect
and many authors looked at the Kargil debacle through a lens of history,
trying to understand the cause of Pakistan's repeated failures arising from
military brinkmanship. Many of the observations made after Kargil, such as the inadequacy of Pakistan’s international diplomatic missions, are interestingly,
also cited in Pakistan Studies textbooks regarding India's perceived
manipulation of world opinion during the 1971 war and Pakistan's inability
to counter it.

2) Manipulation by omission

Pakistani textbooks are particularly prone to historical narratives manipulated
by omission, according to Avril Powell, professor of history at the
University of London, such erasure can have its long-term negative repercussions.

Another example of this is the manner in which the Indo-Pak
War of 1965 is discussed in Pakistani textbooks. In standard narrations of
the 1965 War there is no mention of Operation Gibraltar, even after four
decades. In fact, several university level history professors whom I interviewed
claimed never to have heard of Operation Gibraltar and the repercussions
of that ill-planned military adventurism which resulted in India's
attack on Lahore.

In Pakistani textbooks the story is told that “the Indian
army, unprovoked, inexplicably attacked Lahore” and that “one Pakistani
jawan (soldier) equals ten Indian soldiers,” who, upon seeing the fierce
Pakistanis, “drop their banduks (rifles) and run away.” Many people in Pakistan
still think like this, and several mentioned this assumed cowardice of
the Indian army in discussions with me while the fighting was raging in
Kargil. The nation is elated by the valiant victories on the battlefield, as
reported in the newspapers, then shocked and dismayed when their country
is humiliated at the negotiating table. Because they were not fully
informed about the adventurism of their military leaders, they can only
feel betrayed that somehow Pakistani politicians once again “grabbed diplomatic
defeat from the jaws of military victory.” Operation Gibraltar, the
recent debacle in Kargil, and especially the tragic lessons that could have
been learned from the Bangladesh War are products of the same myopic
processes. The Kargil crisis was a legacy of the lack of information that citizens
have had about the real history of their country.

3) Fabrication of geography

Pakistani textbooks have a particular problem when defining geographical
space. The terms South Asia and Subcontinent have partially helped to
solve this problem of the geo-historical identity of the area formally known
as British India. However, it is quite difficult for Pakistani textbook writers
to ignore the land now known as India when they discuss Islamic heroes
and Muslim architectural monuments in the Subcontinent. This reticence
to recognize anything of importance in India, which is almost always
referred to as “Bharat” in both English and Urdu versions of textbooks,
creates a difficult dilemma for historians writing about the Moghul Dynasties.
It is interesting to note that M.A. Jinnah strongly protested the Congress’
appropriation of the appellation “India,” but his arguments were
dismissed by Mountbattan. Because Pakistani textbook writers are constrained
by the imperative to represent all facts and events in the historical
record of South Asia so as to prove the inevitability of the Two Nation Theory, there are, by necessity of this agenda, numerous misrepresentations.
Geography also falls prey to this ideological orientation, as can be seen in
this quote from one of the many textbooks titled, Pakistani Studies:

> During the 12th century the shape of Pakistan was more or less the same as it
is today. Under the Khiljis, Pakistan moved further south-ward to include a
greater part of Central India and the Deccan. In retrospect it may be said
that during the 16th century “Hindustan” disappeared and was completely
absorbed in “Pakistan.”

4) Editing political narratives on the fly

Another recent example of alterations made in textbooks to conform
the narrative to the current political jargon can be seen by comparing two
editions of the textbook Pakistan Studies for Secondary Classes, published by
the Punjab Textbook Board. First, the 1997 edition states on page 206-207:

> India is very advanced in its nuclear energy program and has performed an
atomic test in 1974. To divert world attention from its nuclear plans, Bharat
launched a propaganda campaign against Pakistan to the effect that Pakistan
was manufacturing nuclear weapons. Pakistan categorically contradicted
these baseless allegations and proposed that both the countries should adopt
such limitations with mutual consent as may be acceptable at international
level, putting an end to the possibility of proliferation of nuclear arms in
South Asia. Bharat is not prepared to accept any restriction in this respect and desires
that Pakistan should give up its peaceful nuclear energy program. Obviously this is an
unrealistic demand.

After the nuclear tests in May of 1998, pages 206-207 of this textbook
were changed in the 1999 imprint and the substituted comments added in
a different font:

> India is very advanced in its nuclear energy program and has performed an
atomic test in 1974. To divert world attention from its nuclear plans, Bharat launched a propaganda campaign against Pakistan to the effect that Pakistan
was manufacturing nuclear weapons. Pakistan categorically contradicted
these baseless allegations and proposed non-proliferation of nuclear arms in
South Asia. On May 11 and 13, 1998 India detonated five nuclear explosions and
threatened the strategic and security balance in the region. Pakistan was compelled to
respond in the same language and it conducted its six nuclear explosions on May 28
and 30 of 1998 at Chagai.

The day following the nuclear tests, public servants in Pakistan, without
their consent, were docked a day’s pay to help offset the cost of exploding
nuclear devices. Subsequently, Yome Takhbeer Day is celebrated in Pakistan on May 28. The revised curriculum guide suggests that school children draw posters and march in parades to mark the date of Pakistan’s
ascendancy to nuclear status.
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Edit: Improved the formatting to make it easier to read.

https://www.amazon.com/Children-International-Perspectives-History-Textbooks/dp/1593115091