Teaching and Research on India in Pakistan - A Conspicuous Absence

This really is very surprising......


such complete turning ... a Blind eye....

this is a very Ostrich Like behaviour...

I wonder whats the cause of it.... simply dismissing it ...... and attributing. this

behaviour to the shenagins of INTEREST GROUPS theory Like Military / Establishment


Does Not explains it......


After all Whats the educated masses ... Like in Karachi University were doing...

from 1958-2002 just 239 Papers None on India....

At least Prior to 1965 and then 1971 ... Situation was Not Bad...

Zia entered in 1977..... So what were the DanishMand Elite of Pakistani`s doing..

till then...


Can any one explain this Outright .... Strange behaviour.... in a more rational


manner...

Thanks Omar!

samina not sure if he reads this board -- this article is article the first part of a two part series we published on our education page in dawn -- second part came on sunday Aug 22 and will be accessible on the Dawn website till next Sunday -- i had told the chowk editors that it would be in two parts but for some reason i think they are content with the first one since they didnt carry the `to be continued` proviso at the end of this piece. akbar zaidi`s email should be at the end of the article in Dawn -- you can get it from the dawn site -- the complete article is over 8,000 words longs -- we edited it down to roughly 5,600 words -- also though he would be a better person to responded, i can safely say that u wont find anything on south asian americans in pakistan`s higher education system --

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Mr. Zaidi,

Absorbing work. A few questions:

1. What is the role of South Asian American and British research in the current pedagogy re: the Pakistani mainstream educational system`s representation and engagement with India and vice versa?

2. Could you please write about the project you are currently working in (that engendered this paper), the Indian and Pakistani institutions that are also involved in this project, and finally UPenn`s Institute of Advanced Study of India?

3. How can one access this paper in its entirety?

Thanks.

Very helpful article; thanks!

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tt singh -- yes i agree

kkkandk -- hahahaha

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o r qureshi, yes I sort of realised later that the author was probably focusing on the public system, but nevertheless, the work done at LUMS has added significantly to the body of scholarship on Indian history, so I figured it ought to be counted in that capacity, though not, of course, as something with a very wide immediate impact, or that was reflective of a big trend in Pakistani scholarship as a whole.
secondly, and this is less important, you`d be surprised at the provincial worldviews professed by some of the O and A levels crowd. If they have worldviews to start with. What I`m getting at is that even for those of us who only took the compulsory history courses to complete the breadth requirements, it was a big learning experience.

Pakistani universities are mostly teaching institutions and small statistical data about research subjects and topics carry large margin of error. If

[Of the 184 PhDs awarded by the University of Karachi, more than thirty percent are on Urdu, 12 each are on Arabic, clinical psychology and philosophy. ]

is the statistical anaylisis, every discipline should be unsatisfied except may be Urdu and Arabic. So what is so special about India more than biology, geography, sociology, anthropology etc etc? Only reason I see is that author presented this in some workshop held in New Delhi dealing with the topic.

Pakistani actually teach, unnecessarily, more about Indian hisotry than it should be. Pakistanis know more about Golconda and Awadh than Talpurs, Soomras and Khoro dynasties from area included in Pakistan. They teach and Pakitanis know more about Hyderabad, AP and Nizam than Jam of Las Bela or Nawabs of Bahawalpur, Swat, Dir etc.

Actually in the hstory taught in Pakistan ahs little mention of the hisotry of the people of the area now constitutes Pakistan. History in Pakistan means only political history and that too of Turko-Afghan empires over subcontinent. The source of historical informations are about 10 books, 5 of them start with name Tareek-e- , such as Tareekh-e-Firozshahi, Tareekh-e-Akbarshahi and other five have Nama as last name such as Babar Nama, Zafar Nama etc.
The history written by court historians has not be researched for verification and taught as is. Moving on to British period`s hisotry, it is also unilaterally by anti-British either for Islamic or by nationalistic writers. The history since 1947 is well-known but military governments make sure that military takeovers are not presented in bad light. Ayub Khan went farthest and included his takeover as great revolution in history textbooks.

Neither Pakistan nor India wishes to teach people`s chemistry at par with history of empires because people histry show no evidence of any special bonding between different people of subcontinent except in civilizational and religious aspects. It is almost 100 percent regional which is bad for both nationalisms. Additionally, people of the region now Pakistan have hard time taking interest in the Tamils of India and not taking interest 40 miles away Sri Lanka. Only political history of empires and modern India would dictate Pakistanis to teach and research on Malayalis or Tamils leaving out Sinhalis. Not surprisingly there is more to know about subcontinent than empires and India/ Pakistan.

Author is asking to do everything according to national political interests of two national governments. That is fine but national interests change and we find that all interests evaporate overnight. Take for example Bangladesh. Until 1971, they learned, taught and took interest in Kashmir but now, I am sure, Kashmir is not on their minds and its importance in hisotry must be reduced to couple of pages.

So the expansion of teaching and research and unfettered access to learning should not be confined within limits of nation states India / Pakistan, civilizational and religious aspects. Please be sure to teach all people of subcontinent that Tamils, Sindhis or Sikhs in their long history never looked for expansion beyond their natural geographical and political boundries. An make sure to teach that besides Turk-o-Afghan invaders and Congress party hardly anybody was ever interested in uniting people (by conquering, converting and indoctrination) and creating nationhood between diverse people of subcontinent.

The simplest option is actually reducing the importance of all history otherwise people once start learning wish to know more than who ruled them during such and such period.

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#15 by veeresh on August 17, 2004 11:00pm PT
``While I like the article for adding to my knowledge...``

shri veeresh jee, u mean an article published in a pakistani newspaper like Dawn and on India actually ``added to your knowledge`` ? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

how did that ever happen

or a more serious note -- t t singh

yaar most people who are even slightly informed would know that LUMS has a reasonably okay social science dept -- the problem is with pakistan`s public sector universities where the bulk of the students are enrolled -- many students who come to lums come from O and A level backgrounds and their worldviews, esp vis a vis india, are quite different compared to those coming from the matric stream --

Date:18/08/2004 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mp/2004/08/18/stories/2004081800370100.htm

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Metro Plus Bangalore Chennai Hyderabad





The Great Escape


It was the daring act of a father that saved one-year-old Karvina who slipped from the balcony of their third floor flat








THIS IS the season of Toby Maguire, but Vinayagamurthy is an unlikely Spiderman. For one, he cannot defy gravity and for another, he does not have any special sticky webmaker shooting from his wrist. But Vinayagamurthy did something that would seem impossible to most people, something that would make Spiderman take notice. He dived from the third floor balcony of his apartment in the police housing complex, all of 36 feet, seconds after his one-year-old daughter fell from his arms. Father and child landed on the ground with a thud, but in what would seem to be a miracle, the baby, Karvina, escaped unscathed, while Vinayagamurthy, a constable who had held her closely during the fall, suffered fractures.

``I only knew she had slipped and on sheer impulse I leaped and caught her. I don`t remember anything. When I regained consciousness I found myself lying on a hospital bed,`` says Vinayagamurthy. Sundari, Karvina`s mother, found her lying in the arms of her father after the fall, even as neighbours rushed her husband to hospital. ``Vinayagamurthy has suffered fractures in his spinal cord, pelvic region and heel and we are giving him the best treatment. He will be better soon,`` says senior orthopaedic surgeon Mayil Vahanan Natarajan.

Precious child

Hugging her wide-eyed daughter, who has become a sort of celebrity in the crowded second block of the Government General Hospital, Sundari gets emotional while talking about the incident. ``Karvina is a precious child and she was born after 11 years. My elder son Rahul is in the sixth standard. On August 11 around 5 p.m. my husband was playing with Karvina in the balcony and I had just entered the kitchen to complete some work. A loud thud jolted me. I ran out and was shocked to find my husband and child lying on the ground. I could not even react. I grabbed my wailing child from my husband`s arms as neighbours rushed him to hospital.``





Waiting for papa to recuperate. — Pic by K.V. Srinivasan

Relatives who come to enquire about Vinayagamurthy comfort Sundari who still reacts with disbelief to the whole episode. ``Even the name of my child is special. According to her horoscope, her name should start with a `K ` and her grandfather wanted Vinayagam in it. So we named her Karvina.``

Vinayagamurthy, who is described as a duty conscious constable, downplays his heroic act by saying any father would have reacted in the same way to save his precious daughter. However, there is another lesson to be drawn from the story. Take care while playing with children, especially in high rise buildings.

S. SHIVAKUMAR


© Copyright 2000 - 2004 The Hindu

kkkandk # 24

MQM may have had some old skeletons in its cupboard, but I am fully with the reformed MQM. They have changed their Manifesto & stance for the better.

They are now Muthahida Quami movement, they call themselves the New Sindhis and they have the closest relationship with Sindhi nationalists. They speak for Sindh`s rights and hate the guts of Mulla Parties. They are on the way to become a national party and have a liberal and a principled stand on almost every issue. They have saved Karachi from dark ages.

Muhajars that went to other provinces have been completly absorbed and no one even talks about them. You have a point in Quota system which can be reformed but perhaps not eliminated otherwise people from Thar, Northern Areas, Tribal Baluchistan will never stand a chance.

The three smaller Provinces must have an equal say in national affairs - otherwise the picture is bleak. I am a Punjabi but the Punjabis have a habit of selling themselves cheap & letting every military ruler settle down.

NHK