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partha wrote:I think it is more about TRPs. Imran Khan is a celebrity, a former cricketer. Everybody in India knows him and our news channels love celebrities don't they? btw, Have any of the government channels reported about Balochistan? Just curious.
If you don't agree with http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 4#p1194274, please consider this equal equal guboing from thappad, especially the bolded part and tell me what it is. Cowardice? Self loathing? Treason?
"I grew up hating India because I grew up in Lahore and there was so much...the massacres of 1947, so much bloodshed and anger.
"But as I started touring India, I got such love and friendship there that all this disappeared," Khan said in an interview to Karan Thapar for CNN-IBN's 'Devil's Advocate' programme to be aired tonight.
How indoctrination on both sides of the border has created hatred over the years.
partha wrote:I think it is more about TRPs. Imran Khan is a celebrity, a former cricketer. Everybody in India knows him and our news channels love celebrities don't they? btw, Have any of the government channels reported about Balochistan? Just curious.
If you don't agree with http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 4#p1194274, please consider this equal equal guboing from thappad, especially the bolded part and tell me what it is. Cowardice? Self loathing? Treason?
"I grew up hating India because I grew up in Lahore and there was so much...the massacres of 1947, so much bloodshed and anger.
"But as I started touring India, I got such love and friendship there that all this disappeared," Khan said in an interview to Karan Thapar for CNN-IBN's 'Devil's Advocate' programme to be aired tonight.
How indoctrination on both sides of the border has created hatred over the years.
CRSji, When Indian media gives free platform to IK types, they will exploit it for their propaganda. The discussion was about Indian media entertaining good for nothing celebs rather than do some serious on the ground reporting.
Dipanker wrote:
So a handful of F-16 has restored balance of power in Indian subcontinent???
Yes, not only is this a balance, the pendulam is in TSP's favor given its nukes and 1000s of yahoos willing to go to 72. If not, India would not have stooped so low as to equate 26/11 with Samjotha, and many other equal equal equivalences.
It's a free country, believe whatever you want! I am guessing you also believe that Pakistan won all the wars against India!
Too many here sound too Freudian - international relations are increasingly characterized by metaphors like GUBO, whores, the raped and the rapists, Hindu mother complexes and the softness of "Mother India" instead of "Father India". And so on. Not clear to me if these are arrived at after great thought, or are merely a substitute for thought.
CRamS
Only one simple question.
What would make you happy?
India should have nuked Islamabad after 26/11? Because anything less and you would have blamed that India does not have spine and US being a super world power manipulates India and Pakistan. Trust me no body stopped us and no body can stop us the day we open our third eye. US just plays bully even though he realizes his act will not last long.MMS is an overly cautious government servant suited to 1960's when our economic status was very fragile and had many problems. It is generation gap. The generation was in a mindset when we were pushed around and we played because of obvious prevalent world issues. Fear can be a powerful motivator for many actions. I see fear more than anything else in MMS actions. He is aware of what he is doing but he cannot get out of the corner he got himself into. Unfortunately he is surrounded by leftist b@stards who should be executed point blank without blinking an eyelid. Good news is Indian politics will change into a nationalistic form of government with a formidable Airforce,Army and Navy in this decade itself and I promise you my friend you will remember me.Mark my words. So, please stop your reverse jinxing.
Altair
A_Gupta wrote:Too many here sound too Freudian - international relations are increasingly characterized by metaphors like GUBO, whores, the raped and the rapists, Hindu mother complexes and the softness of "Mother India" instead of "Father India". And so on. Not clear to me if these are arrived at after great thought, or are merely a substitute for thought.
Oh yeah, I guess many of us who see MMS in action are not as "thoughtful", non-Freudian types, who can derive self satisfaction at India's capitulation to TSP by casting it as the equivalent of US's TSP guns & butter strategy. No wonder US finds it so easy to box "thoughtful", non-Freudian SDREs in a "South Asia", India == TSP framework.
RoyG wrote:^^Wow, that was a great clip! Note how they speak of hindu nationalism being a cultural aspiration and hindu civilization being tolerant of other religions. None of that communal BS. Seems like slowly people are waking up. Kudos to Fatah.
Why was this kind of talk not done 10 years ago or even 20 years ago. This is all psy ops but nothing is being done.
US universities fixed the tex books inside Pak in the 70s and they have helped them to continue it
CRamS wrote:
Oh yeah, I guess many of us who see MMS in action are not as "thoughtful", non-Freudian types, who can derive self satisfaction at India's capitulation to TSP by casting it as the equivalent of US's TSP guns & butter strategy. No wonder US finds it so easy to box "thoughtful", non-Freudian SDREs in a "South Asia", India == TSP framework.
Acharya wrote:
Why was this kind of talk not done 10 years ago or even 20 years ago. This is all psy ops but nothing is being done.
US universities fixed the tex books inside Pak in the 70s and they have helped them to continue it
Afghan textbooks, not Pakistani textbooks, as far as I know.
Acharya wrote:
Why was this kind of talk not done 10 years ago or even 20 years ago. This is all psy ops but nothing is being done.
US universities fixed the tex books inside Pak in the 70s and they have helped them to continue it
Afghan textbooks, not Pakistani textbooks, as far as I know.
Even Pakistan.
Pakistan studies came based on this inspiration during Zia.
University of Montana is the major studies program
I was taken aback by FZ today when he asked the question I wanted asked for a long time. Some WSJ hawk called Seth something was braying for Iranian blood, when FZ asked him how come he is not so concerned about TSP nukes given that TSP is more unstable or as unstable as Iran. This Seth monkey, living up to his reputation as bumbling establishment mouthpieces had the gall to say that TSP has a civilian govt and hence nothing to worry. Once again FZ surprised me with his follow up comment that TSP's civilian govt is a joke and has zero control over TSP nukes. To which the Seth moron said TSP already has nukes and proves his point that Iran must be prevented from getting nukes. He sure graduated from Columbia or wherever with an art of spinning 101 degree.
As far as I know, no Pakistani textbooks have been written by America or any US university. Do you have any details on this Acharya? First time I'm hearing of University of Montana in this context.
Read the official report on education by the ministry in Pakistan. This is in the web.
Also the Pakistan education ministry was quoted as saying that "they" asked us to change the text book.
I heard of Greg Mortenson who is from Montana (not of uni of Montana, though) and he was into building schools and supplying text books etc. in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But then he was discredited, wasnt he?
The literature justifying jihad against the Soviets came out of the University of Nebraska (not Montana), which may be an oversight by Acharya above. But I am extremely curious about this Pakistani textbook thing... I would like to know more.
The literature justifying jihad against the Soviets came out of the University of Nebraska (not Montana), which may be an oversight by Acharya above. But I am extremely curious about this Pakistani textbook thing... I would like to know more.
Yes it is University of Nebraska (oops...) and they copied the Afghan material to Pak text book - changing Russians to Hindus as enemies.
With 3million Afghan refugees in Pakistan in 1980s it will spread to Pak for sure.
When Pakistan FO says "they" it means their masters - GOTUS.
This discussion as all the links for Pakistan text book
By the time Ayub Khan launched the first military coup in 1958, 11-year-old Pakistan had been ruled by seven prime ministers. His finely clipped moustache and fondness for scotch whiskey led outsiders to view him as a great moderniser. Indeed, Ayub's first major act as president was to commission the construction of a new capital city. A Greek firm of architects was tasked with the job. On 24 February 1960, Ayub gave the city its name: Islamabad, the City of Islam. Fittingly, while the parliament and the supreme court built by the Greeks are frequently forced into abeyance, the one building that is always open for business in today's Islamabad is a mosque named after a Saudi despot who funded it.
A new constitution was promulgated in 1962. Pakistan's official name was changed to Republic of Pakistan, dropping the "Islamic" that the 1956 constitution had introduced. But this was superficial at best. The constitution created a greater role for religion – and religious policing. It established an Advisory Council of Islamic Ideology to bring Pakistanis "into conformity with the teachings and requirements of Islam". It called for the creation of an Islamic Research Institute to "assist in the reconstruction of Muslim society on a truly Islamic basis". The first amendment to the constitution restored the country's old name: the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
Pakistan's pluralistic heritage was subsequently erased in order to create a malleable monolith. Education was the principal target – the study of Islamiyat was promoted at universities; a new discipline called Pakistan studies, locating the country's origins in the history of Islam, was created; and the army, particularly Ayub, was portrayed as its saviour. India, meanwhile, was demonised as a "Hindu" state.
Ayub launched a war against India in 1965. At the battle of Badr in the 7th century, the prophet's tiny band of Muslim soldiers claimed to have vanquished the Quraysh with the help of white-turbaned angels sent by Gabriel. Ayub's propaganda machinery borrowed directly from that legend, reaffirming Pakistan's position as the defender of Islam. Stories about Pakistan's forces being assisted by green-robed angels who deflected Indian bombs with a wave of their hand were circulating, as were legends about Pakistani soldiers shooting down Indian aircraft with Enfield rifles. Pakistanis weren't just being invited to celebrate the valour of their soldiers – they were being told that their side had received celestial sanction.
I went through all five pages of that thread. No indication about Americans writing any Pakistani textbook...
Whether Pakistanis were inspired by the Nebraska literature is another matter, and I don't think we can make a direct connection. Zia was an Islamist and would have taken the country in the direction he did without any American help in the education sphere in terms of Islamisation and minority demonisation (at least so far there is no evidence for it). I don't think the Paks needed any help in bigotry from the Americans.
But I'm open to the possibility. They may well have done it. If for Afghanistan, why not for India. We need some evidence though, otherwise making such claims will leave us with egg on our own faces and looking very Paki indeed.
Conclusion
The change in character of Pakistani education, and the rewriting of Pakistan's history, coincide with the change in nature of the ruling elites and altered needs. The Westernised liberal elite, which had inherited political power from the British, had given to education a basically secular and modern character which might have eventually created a modern, secular-minded citizenry. But the self-seeking and opportunistic nature of this elite forced it progressively to abandon liberal values in the face of exigencies, political and economic. Discriminatory laws against non-Muslim minorities were passed, the feudal structure of rural society was left intact, and quality education was limited to a tiny minority. The ambient corruption in society gradually diffused into institutions which could have transformed and modernized Pakistani society. By the time of the 1977 army coup, liberalism was already moribund.
The recasting of Pakistani history is an attempt to fundamentally redefine Pakistan and Pakistani society and to endow the nation with a historic destiny. Islam is the integrative ideology, its enforcement a divine duty. Viewed from this angle, it becomes essential to project the movement for Pakistan as the movement for an Islamic state, the creation of which became a historic inevitability with the first Muslim invasion of the subcontinent. The revised history of Pakistan uses much the same idiom, and the same concepts of Islamic state and of politics in Islam, as the Jamaat-i-Islami. Its wholesale dissemination through educational institutions demonstrates both the influence of the Jamaat on education as well as the confluence of interests and philosophy of military rulers and the Jamaat.
What is interesting is that major change in education came in Pakistan from 1977. The same year Indian education was changed in secular education by the ministry of education.
Year=1977
India=secular
Pakistan=more Islamic
There is the hand of Uncle is both of these change. This is the real secret work done on both countries
Genesis of the 'Ideology of Pakistan'
The 'Ideology of Pakistan' occupies a position of central importance in all post-1977 Pakistani history textbooks. This ubiquitous phrase permeates all discussion, serves as the reference point for all debate, and makes its appearance at the very outset in all textbooks: 'As citizens of an, ideological stateÖ it is necessary to first know the basis upon which Pakistan was founded, the ideology of Pakistan.' [3]
In stark contrast to modern textbooks, no textbook written prior to 1977 contains mention of the 'Ideology of Pakistan'.
This strict economy of words is in striking contrast to the extensive coverage given to Islamisation after 1977. Nevertheless, this small paragraph invites more than just cursory reading.
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Pakistan’s existential battle is inextricably linked to the poison of these textbooks. Without a concerted effort to purge our curricula of xenophobia, jingoism and Islamo-fascism, we are simply doomed. The political elites have a small window of opportunity. If they are not going to forge a consensus on textbooks’ reform, their relevance in the long term remains uncertain. This is why K K Aziz’s legacy is formidable and needs to be reiterated every now and then.
The Subtle Subversion
The State of
Curricula and Textbooks
in Pakistan
Urdu, English, Social Studies and Civics
(DRAFT COPY)
Summary
Pakistan’s public education system has an important role in determining how successful we
shall be in achieving the goal of a progressive, moderate and democratic Pakistan. A key
requirement is that children must learn to understand and value this goal and cherish the
values of truthfulness, honesty, responsibility, equality, justice, and peace that go with it.
The identity and value system of children is strongly shaped by the national curricula and
textbooks in Social Studies, English, Urdu and Civics from Class I to Class XII. The
responsibility for designing them lies with the Curriculum Wing of the Ministry of Education
and the provincial Text Book Boards.
However, a close analysis by a group of independent scholars shows that for over two
decades the curricula and the officially mandated textbooks in these subjects have contained
material that is directly contrary to the goals and values of a progressive, moderate and
democratic Pakistan.
The March 2002 revision of curricula undertaken by the Curriculum Wing of the Ministry of
Education did not address the problems that existed in earlier curriculum documents. In
some cases, these problems are now even worse.
Our analysis found that some of the most significant problems in the current curriculum and
textbooks are:
• Inaccuracies of fact and omissions that serve to substantially distort the nature and
significance of actual events in our history.
• Insensitivity to the actually existing religious diversity of the nation
• Incitement to militancy and violence, including encouragement of Jehad and Shahadat
• Perspectives that encourage prejudice, bigotry and discrimination towards fellow
citizens, especially women and religious minorities, and other nations.
• A glorification of war and the use of force
• Omission of concepts, events and material that could encourage critical self-awareness
among students
• Outdated and incoherent pedagogical practices that hinder the development of interest
and insight among students
To give a few examples:
The books on Social Studies systematically misrepresent events that have happened over
the past several decades of Pakistan’s history, including those which are within living
memory of many people
This history is narrated with distortions and omissions. The causes, effects, and
responsibility for key events are presented so as to leave a false understanding of our
national experience. A large part of the history of this region is also simply omitted, making it
difficult to properly interpret events, and narrowing the perspective that should be open to
students. Worse, the material is presented in a way that encourages the student to
marginalise and be hostile towards other social groups and people in the region. The State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan
ii
The curricula and textbooks are insensitive to the religious diversity of the Pakistani society.
While the teaching of Islamiat is compulsory for Muslim students, on average over a quarter
of the material in books to teach Urdu as a language is on one religion. The books on
English have lessons with religious content. Islamiat is also taught in Social Studies classes.
Thus, the entire education is heavily loaded with religious teachings, reflecting in this respect
a very narrow view held by a minority among Muslims that all the education be essentially
that of Islamiat.1
There is an undercurrent of exclusivist and divisive tendencies at work in the subject matter
recommended for studies in the curriculum documents as well as in textbooks. Pakistani
nationalism is repeatedly defined in a manner that is bound to exclude non-Muslim
Pakistanis from either being Pakistani nationals or from even being good human beings.
Much of this material would run counter to any efforts at national integration
Acharya, I'm quite familiar with Pakistan's education system... What I'm looking for is indication that the US actually did the text books... There's much worse stuff than what you've posted above actually... I think Shiv has posted a few documents in the past. But if the Americans actually produced the textbooks as you mentioned above, then it is a different ball game. That is the evidence I'm looking for.
JEM If you know what you are looking for why not look for it yourself and bring to the table. Its difficult when links are presented if more is asked. He has posted what he found.
Acharya made a claim. I asked for a link. The links provided do not substantiate the claim, which is not a small one. Plus I think Acharya can deal with the issue himself. Is there a need for your interjection?
Challenge? It was a request to substantiate a claim, which was clear from the beginning. Once again, I'm not sure what your point is. A number of links were provided not to mention a thread, but do you see the claim substantiated there?
If you or I make this claim somewhere, like in the case of the University of Nebraska literature, we need to substantiate it. If not we will end up looking like Pakis who make various outlandish claims as well. We cannot afford that. Actually, I really do wish to see something that says that the Pak textbooks were produced by the US - it will be a useful thing to throw in the face of uncle sham. But if it's not there, no need to go on a wild goose chase... The Paks are doing a fine enough job without American help.
This is pretty straightforward. What is your issue with it?
The University of Nebraska produced textbooks for Afghanistan glorifying violence during the jihad against the Soviets. E.g, this story from the Washington Post, March 22, 2002: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dy ... -2002Mar22
The books were in Dari and Pashto.
Now, Pakliberals use this as an excuse for the jihadization of their own textbooks - namely "Unkil did it to us" - but as far as I know, there is no evidence of the US writing Pakistani textbooks, in particular, Urdu textbooks.
USAID paid the University of Nebraska $51 million from 1984 to 1994 to develop and design these textbooks, which were mostly printed in Pakistan. Over 13 million were distributed at Afghan refugee camps and Pakistani madrasas (religious seminaries where Muslim priests are educated and trained) where students learned basic math by counting dead Russians and Kalashnikov rifles. After the war ended, these textbooks were still used in Afghan schools. Even the Taliban found them suitable.
The idea of Jehad was incorporated into the Pakistani Curriculum after the start of the Afghan war. This “is not a coincidence”, as Pakistani academic A.H. Nayyar notes. At that point it suited Washington, and its most allied of allies, Pakistan, to encourage and glorify the “Mujahideen”, or holy warriors, in the war against the Soviets – and an American institution of higher education was asked to formulate textbooks for Pakistani schools accordingly, says Dr Nayyar. “The institution was University of Nebraska at Omaha, which has a center for Afghan studies which was tasked by CIA in the early eighties to rewrite textbooks for Afghan refugee children. The new books included hate material even in arithmetic. For example, if a man has five bullets and two go into the heads of Russian soldiers, how many are left, kind of stuff. This was exposed in a research thesis from the New School, New York in about 2002.”
Since the Soviets are no more, the “Mujahideen” have not only mutated into “Taliban” but have also outlived their usefulness, the same American university has been given an additional grant to “re-re-write textbooks, taking out material on jehad, etc”, as announced by none Laura Bush, wife of US President George W. Bush in early 2002, adds Dr Nayyar. “But the funny thing is that the books of early eighties were very acceptable to the Taliban, except figures and pictures. So they continued with them, only blackening the pictures. After the rout of the Taliban, because the new books could not arrive in time, the Karzai government (read the Americans) was forced to use the earlier books already available, but perhaps now perhaps the newer books have arrived in sufficient quantity to make the older books redundant.”….
Last edited by svinayak on 14 Nov 2011 04:50, edited 1 time in total.
I have been thinking about TSP quite a bit. From all indices its a failed state and normally would be forced by the world to shape up. Yet the world doesn't do that. Most indices assume that the world is normally distributed.
I have also been reading Taleb's Black Swan and Mandelbrot statistics and Gladwell's What the Dog Saw.
I then realized that TSP is not a normal state. Its a power law state. Just as only a very few recalcitrants, contribute to making the homeless problem very bad, so does TSP contribute to making global terrorism, nuke proliferation and drugs distribution very bad. Its basket case of wrongs.
Gladwell writes about some successful programs that manage power law issues like homelessness, polluting cars and other egregious cases on principle of least expense. And this appears to be contradictory to normal distribution cases where solutions that apply to all cases are prescribed. Power law cases need appeasement to keep them from becoming a more expensive problem. It goes against normal solutions and appears morally bankrupt.
Does this make sense? It can explain the molly coddling of TSP and its elites by US and India to manage to keep it going and not become a become a bigger problem for others.
Unfortunately that link does not have anything about textbooks for Pakistan schools either.
But it has some useful information, nevertheless. Now we can say millions of jihadi textbooks were produced in Pakistan for Afghanistan, but who knows probably a couple of million were used in the madrassas in Pakistan - and these were funded by USAID and contained objectionable verses from the Koran, etc. That is useful. Here is the appropriate section:
"On January 29, 2002, as the U.S. bombing campaign on Afghanistan slowed down, USAID awarded the Center $6.5 million to provide books and training for Afghanistan’s interim government to resume schooling. The Center, which has a textbook publishing operation in Pakistan, was to print 8 million books and train 4,000 teachers for an estimated 750,000 students by the schools’ starting date, March 23.
USAID employee Chris Brown told the Omaha World Herald that the Center was uniquely positioned to meet the textbook challenge. After USAID stopped funding the Center in 1994, Thomas E. Gouttierre, dean of International Studies and Programs and director of Afghanistan Studies at UNO, had continued to raise money privately in order to keep the Pakistan publishing operation open. Thus, in 2002, the Center was already prepared and ready to start printing the textbooks.
However, the content of the books, which UNO developed in the 1980s with USAID funding, had to be censored. Critics contended the books’ content, which included drawings of guns, bullets and mines, promoted and strengthened an era of jihad violence. So before distributing any more of the books to Afghan students, workers at the Pakistan operation started a “scrubbing” effort to remove violent pictures and references.
Yaseer said the Center printed and delivered about 15 million books on time.
But even without the violent images, the content of the books sparked controversy because they still contained Muslim tenets and verses from the Koran."
I didn't know the books were produced in Pakistan. Buggers made money there too. I thought it was shipped from the US.
>>as far as I know, there is no evidence of the US writing Pakistani textbooks, in particular, Urdu textbooks.
This is exactly my point. And if we could find some info confirming the above, it would be worth its weight in gold. But it isn't there (at least not in public domain) so far. It would be hard to hide that sort of thing...
I know about the Nebraska operation. Doesn't help our case, except by association.
Claiming that the Pak curriculum changed at the start of the Afghan war is not saying much, as Nayyar does. Of course it was not a coincidence. But Zia was a bloody Islamist nutcase who would have done it anyway. It's the smoking American gun that is needed. Because if that is there, then it's a whole different ball-game. But I suspect it is not there, otherwise the Pakis would already have used it to tell the Americans "see, it's your fault. You even wrote our jihadi textbooks and now you are blaming us for becoming jihadis"...
ramana wrote:Power law cases need appeasement to keep them from becoming a more expensive problem. It goes against normal solutions and appears morally bankrupt.
I think that this is very likely right; and also the Pakistanis are well aware of this and use it to their own benefit, i.e., they will do everything they can to avoid coming in the scope of normal solutions.
The social engineering started during the Zia rule has transformed the next generation of Pakistani. Dr Hoodbhoy says since Zia the Pakistani society had become more “Islamised”. The changes made in textbooks during his regime had taken effect and the young generation was extremely conservative. He said in his physics class there were 13 girls, seven of whom remained burqa-clad, three donned hijabs and only three retained a normal appearance. The change had been profound and it had penetrated to the roots, he added. The military had changed too and its slogan given by Zia and retained today was jihad in the cause of God. This social engineering done on the Pakistani society was initiated and influenced by the western think tanks and universities in a covert manner. The Indian elite and experts failed to comprehend the scope and breadth of the social engineering being done inside Pakistan for more than 30 years leading to a dangerous vacuum in understanding the threat to India and its society. From available information it is the RAND Corporation which has been the lead think tank in the social engineering project for the last 30 years primarily in Pakistan and Muslim world at large.
