Frontline
February 1999
Cover Story

PAKISTAN
‘Non–Muslims nursed enmity against Muslims’

The Muslims treated the non– Muslims very well (when they ruled the province). Yet the non–Muslims nursed in their hearts an enmity against the Muslims. When the British invaded the area (ilaqa) the non–Muslims sided with them and against the Muslims. So the British conquered the whole country (mulk). 

The Hindus wanted to control the government of India after independence. The British sided with the Hindus. But the Muslims did not accept this decision. Allama Iqbal and Quaid–i–Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah said that a Muslim government should be established in the areas where the Muslims constituted the majority of the population.... The Pakistan Resolution was adopted on 23 March 1940 in a big meeting of the Muslim League held in Lahore. In 1946, before the creation of Pakistan, when the people of NWFP were asked their opinion, all them voted in favour of Pakistan. 

To say that “the British sided with the Hindus” is only a half–truth. Iqbal and Jinnah were not the only persons who asked for a Muslim state; nor, in chronological terms, were they the earliest to make the demand. Iqbal argued for separation in 1937 and Jinnah in 1940. Dozens of people had suggested a solution by partition long before this. The Lahore resolution was adopted on 24 March, not by “a big meeting of the Muslim League”. In 1946 all the people of NWFP did not vote for Pakistan. For fuller details on all these points). (Mu’ashrati Ulum, Class 4,  NWFP Text–book Board, Peshawar).

There are 11 pages of history at the opening of the book under 4 headings: Differences in Muslims and Hindu Civilizations, Need for the Creation of an Independent state, The Ideology of Pakistan, and India’s evil Designs against Pakistan. The three quarters of a page essay on Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan has no dates, but asserts that he declared that “the Muslims should organize themselves as a separate nation”. Iqbal was the first person to present to the nation the idea of Pakistan in 1930, and his suggestion was to create an “independent and free” state made up of “all those areas where the Muslims are in majority’. The 1971 break–up of the country is dismissed in four atrociously distorted lines: “India engineered riots in East Pakistan through her agents and then invaded it from all four sides. Thus war lasted two weeks. After that East Pakistan seceded and became Bangladesh.” 

In the same chapter, wars with India are mentioned in patriotic not historical terms. In 1965, “the Pakistan Army conquered several areas of India, and when India was on the point of being defeated she requested the United Nations to arrange a cease–fire...... After the 1965 war, India, with the help of the Hindus living in East Pakistan, instigated the people

 living there against the people of West Pakistan, and at last in December 1971 herself invaded East Pakistan. The conspiracy resulted in the separation of East Pakistan from us. All of us should receive military training and be prepared to fight the enemy.” 

The last 12 Lessons treat with the same personalities as are included in the NWFP textbook for the same class (see above), with two changes: Aurangzeb is replaced by Ahmad Shah Abdali and Sultan Tipu is omitted. (Mu’ashrati Ulum, NWFP Textbook Board, Peshawar).

(From The Murder of History — A critique of history textbooks used in Pakistan; by K.K. Aziz). 


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