South Asia Citizens Web

The women of Pakistan have been suffering greatly due to this patriarchal mindset of our so-called religious scholars and conservative politico-religious politicians, who use faith as a tool to gain state power.

(Editorial in Daily Times, 1 November 2014) Oblivious of the world’s progress, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government appears to insist on taking society backwards by reintroducing the doctrinaire Islamist items in textbooks that Ziaul Haq fused into the national curriculum. Since the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) joined the coalition government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) in KP last year, education has been at the centre of its agenda to assert its conservative dogmatic mindset. Now it seems it has managed to implement its project, as KP school textbooks will now include jihad, eliminate pictures of unveiled women, and delineate a strong anti-India narrative. They have gone as far as depicting the 1971 parting of East Pakistan as an Indian conspiracy.

A series of press reports indicating the attempts to influence the education ministry to re-set the textbooks and syllabi based on suggestions by the Hindutva circuit in India in the aftermath of the 2014 Modi govt.

This is a conversation with Professor Emeritus CM Naim (UChicago) conducted on Oct 28, 2014 with Professor Emerita Frances Pritchett (Columbia), Professor Allison Busch (Columbia) and Professor Manan Ahmed (Columbia)