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MMA against teaching pre-Islamic history in schools
ISLAMABAD, Feb 22(Dawn): Religious parties in the National Assembly were on
Wednesday up in arms against teaching Pakistan's pre-Islamic history in schools
to find Speaker Amir Hussain willing to keep the issue burning in a house
committee, ignoring some dissenting voices in the ruling
coalition.
Members of the six-party Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal also staged a
token protest walkout over the inclusion of chapters about Hinduism, Buddhism
and ancient emperor Chandragupta Maurya in the history textbooks for classes VI
to VIII after a heated discussion, before a listless and inconclusive debate on
the law and order situation in the absence of the boycotting People's Party
Parliamentarians, the main complainant in the matter.
The government used
the second PPP boycott after the question hour – in protest against violence
during the Feb 10 by-election for a National Assembly and a provincial assembly
seat in Sindh – to push through a bill seeking to establish a National Institute
of Oceanography without any debate.
Five MMA members had raised the
history textbook issue through a call-attention notice, but their claim that the
inclusion of chapters they considered objectionable had caused a "grave concern
amongst the public" was disputed by Minister of State for Education Anisa Zeb
Tahirkheli and some other ruling coalition members, who accused the religious
parties of seeking to keep students ignorant about glorious periods of the
sub-continent's history such as the Indus Valley or Gandhara
civilisations.
But the authors of the notice seemed unimpressed despite
some interjections from the chair to justify the teaching of pre-Islamic history
for the sake of knowledge and described the changes as part of what they saw as
a government attempt to secularise the educational curricula.
"That may
be your history, (but) ... our history (starts) from Makkah and Medina," MMA
member Farid Ahmad Piracha shouted as he led his alliance's walkout when Bushra
Rehman of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League, then chairing the proceedings,
allowed party colleague Ali Akbar Vaince to voice his support for the chapters
even after the speaker had referred the matter to a house standing committee for
more discussion as he did with another call-attention notice of five PPP members
regarding changes in the examination system for classes IX and X.
PML
member M. P. Bhandara staged his own protest walkout earlier after Speaker
Hussain rejected his plea to disallow the MMA call-attention notice for what he
called not being of immediate importance and seeking to erase 5,000 years old
history starting from Moenjodaro from the textbooks.
The speaker
repeatedly said there was no harm in studying pre-Islamic history for the sake
of knowledge as he and his contemporaries did in schools, colleges and
universities but, to an apparent surprise of the treasury benches, accepted an
MMA demand to refer the matter to the standing committee, which the alliance
members could use to continue the controversy.
Ms Tahirkheli earlier told
the house that the decision to include the new chapters –
the like of
which existed in old history books but were excised at some later stage – was
taken by an inter-provincial committee which also included ulema and rejected
allegations that Islamic chapters were being deleted or curtailed from the
curricula.
"If you don't regard the history of Moenjodaro and Harappa as
your heritage, then you may delete it. But if you are proud of it then students
must know about it," she said.
Muttahida Qaumi Movement member Israrul
Ebad saw the MMA call-attention move as an attempt to provoke a "fight between
Muslims and non-Muslims" and asked the chair to "take notice of this
notice".
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| Education News | | Updated: 24 May, 2012 |
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