Towards a shackled society, perhaps

I reiterate. As detestable as they are, the illiterate Mullahs are NOT the problem. Rather, it is the so-called ``educated, liberal, quasi pro-western, progressive`` Pakis who have led the nation to ruin. The debacle of `71 was entirely created by them. This struggle has nothing to do with Islam, Pakistan, Kashmir, or anything else. It is a simple case of looting the poor country. These progressives want to get in power and establish their oligarchy. English for them, Urdu for the poor. Whiskey for them, polluted water for the poor. Meat for them, daal roti for the poor. US/UK higher education for them, madrassas for the poor. Comfortable heaven on earth for them, 72 houris in paradise for the poor. Servants for them, servitude for the poor. Birds of paradise for them, what the bird left on the rock for the poor.

Salim

Manto#118:

:-)

dost mittar sahib -- i am also for rule of law and for upholding the constitution -- however i also know that a following and implementing a so-called law such as the hasba bill would be tantamount to violating the spirit of the constitution

Omar Q #various: I am not sure if, ``reforming`` a madrassah is possible. At most they can be registered with the govt. And be forced to declare their source of funding. Some of which may come from Saudi Arabia. The govt. could provide them with funds to teach IT (for example), but it cannot force them to do so. The govt. can, at best, refuse to recognize their degrees.

What else could the government do?

It could attack them and shut them down forcefully. It could do what it just did, i.e. four British citizens set off a bomb in London, and the Pakistan govt., all of a sudden, goes and rounds up 400 people in Pakistan who teach at madrassahs. It seems quite a ridiculous action to me. When Tim McVeigh set off a bomb in Oklahoma, the Irish govt. did not round up 400 people in Dublin, even though he was of Irish ancestory.

The Pakistan govt. should have gotten info from the British authorities, about the places visited by the two who entered Pakistan, and carried out their investigations there, in a low-key manner. And if something was discovered, it should have apprehended the guilty party. If not, it should have informed the British govt. that they just visited Pakistan and went back.

If 400 people were to be rounded up, one would think they would be rounded up in UK, since that is where the terrorists were from and studied. Yet the UK govt. did not randomly round up 400 of its own citizens. Just goes to show up the differences between the two countries. UK places the personal rights of its own citizens, even after a terrorist act, above anything else. And it does not distinguish between citizens it likes or hates.....

The amount of anger such forceful rounding-ups generate far outweighs any benefit they may generate. One does not see the results on Chowk, because (us) Chowkies are part of a tiny group in Pakistan. Most Pakistanis, financially, belong to the madrassah crowd. And to them, it is an, ``us vs. them`` scenario with Chowk crowd being the, ``them.``

The whole reason MMA came into power in the first place, is because it was the only party that opposed the USA`s bombings of Afghanistan. Any forceful action against madrassahs will only make them more popular.

Madrassahs are not as ubiquous as everyone thinks. A Harvard study showed that. Of all the commentators on Chowk, I doubt any more than a tiny minority has ever visited one. I doubt any of our Indian colleauges has visited one. Yet everyone declares themselves an expert on the subject.......

Most importantly, madrassahs are a social phenomenon. They are not a religious phenomenon. Very few things in the world are actually a religious phenomenon. Religion is only the vehicle through which social and political desires - both good and bad - are channeled. For example, MMA is a actually a political party, which is using relgion as a channel. It only tries to portray itself as a religous party that is trying to achieve religion through politics.

The solutions for reforming social phenomenons are also social. The solutions are not religious, nor can they be achieved through force. Force will only create an even more powerful counter-force.

What then is the solution:

The solution is to provide better access to non-madrassah eduction to the poor class of Pakistan. And to raise the living standards of the poor class so that they can afford the education that you and I could afford. Build a good free English medium free school, next to every madrassah, and then wait for a few years. Nearly every poor parent will be sending his kid to the English medium school.

I am involved with a children`s charity in Pakistan. We provide scholarships for poor kids, of all ages, from elementary school to college. For every available scholarship, the charity gets an awful lot of applications. To this day, I have not seen, nor heard of, a single application from any student who wanted to attend a madrassah. Not one. They all want to go to Cadet Colleges, and Convents and UET, and NUST and what not. This includes some very poor applicants.

Similarly you may be familiar with Citizens foundation. Poor folk readily send their kids to those schools. Open one of those next to every madrassah and see what happens.........

Omar Saheb:

Thanks for the two posts. If some people here are foolish enough to venerate this old fogy, do not blame me. I am an ordinary baba who has the usual biases and prejudices that babas usually have. But I can assure you that I am not averse to be better informed.

I confess that I do not read all articles in Dawn but I have read enough of yours to say that I like your writings there, as I said in my original comment. The two of us are on the same page regarding an ideal society, but I do believe in the rule of law and would hope that the Supreme Court`s opinion is against the Hisba bill. But if it is not, I am enough of a democrat to accept the verdict of a chosen legislature as long as the Bill is not unconstitutional. And I do believe that the best way to immunise the society against another such bill is a reform of the educational system and you seem to agree with that as well, n`est pas?

Re: # 116

Dear Dost Mittar,

In complete agreement with your post. And I am foolish enough to venerate you as an old fogy and a babaji :).

i do not know what kind of expansive fantasy land does dost-sahib reside in but i do persuade you to confine such thoughts to the hallowed walls of your neanderthal cave; i mean first of all telling people that the islamic way of life is the only justified and prudent way to live is not only introvertedly pedagogical but downright idiotic. The pathetic situation that Pakistani society has gotten itself into is because of this exclusive reverence towards an islamic way of life rigidly enforced by holier-than-thou buddhas and adhered to by the subservient sheep. For all those who follow a similar line of thought.... please pleaseeeee open your eyes and look around you; for all these pretentious mosque-hoppers are doing nothing but assmbling masses for intrepid control of the people and disseminating their deranged ideologies into them.

I myself have experienced this when a regular mid-day mosque visit morphed into a call for God`s duty bequeathed to me by gun-trotting, belly-scratching and oh-so-pious `mufti shujaat who has a penchant for young sindhi boys. Of course, he had to be taught by none other than maulana dost muhammad-famous for his transsexual exploits; all this while two armed gunmen at the door made sure that possible young recruits like me were compelled to listen to the absurd fanaticism. Fearing my life. and to a larger extent my butt, I got out of there after a couple of hours of brainwashing and vowed never to return until i had acquired a big enough gun to kill all such wretched influences on our society.

SO get out of your misguided conception that there is such a thing as a perfectly islamic society (or state; although i think both are mutually exclusive) optimally modrenized for progressive muslims; reading your posts i highly doubt there is even a stint of progression in your political thinking. Ideas and philosophies about political organisation have flourished since the 6th century and would do us all good if you were to read them. Any exclusively islamic society may have made sense in the 7th or 8th centuries but now it just seems plain stupid.

As for oq it is good to know that yr $40k a year education is being put to good use. It is nice that we have at least we have some people battling against the antiquated notions of these gray-haired devotees ...and yeah next time I will definitely read the footnote.

ahsan hilal wrote; ``I hope to see many such articles in the future. I have a question for oq though; why dont such articles get published in the mainstream media? I know journalism in Pakistan has its constraints but I am sure that you can go under the radar by saying at least a few things against the general apathy and misinformation.``

ERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRr -- AHSAN BHAI DID YOU BOTHER READING THE FOOTNOTE -- this article appeared on Dawn`s editorial page -- Is that mainstream enough for you ?

sheesh -- people need to open their eyes here -- and i mean literally

dm sahib -- seems quite odd that someone who is apparently so highly venerated by some here on chowk should be so misinformed -- esp when the following article also appeared in the same publication where mr kaiser bengali`s article was published


Dawn, April 17, 2005

The need to purge history of ideology




By Omar R. Quraishi


The 20th Pakistan history conference, held at the University of Karachi this past week, managed to raise quite a few relevant issues, especially with reference to historiography. Participants at the conference also said that it was about time an ``objective history of the subcontinent was created.

Speaking on the first day of the conference, Sindh`s Education Minister Dr Hamida Khuhro said that if people like Gandhi and Nehru could be critically analyzed by historians next door in India, then why couldn`t the same be done here? She might have had in mind historians like Romila Thapar, who has had to face much criticism and ostracism from many of her fellow Indians for her sharp and critical analyses of the roles played by various figures of the freedom movement.

Then on the second day of the conference, there was debate on the issue that history needed to be kept away from ideology. This is particularly relevant to Pakistan where ideology and often propaganda have been passed off as incontrovertible historical fact over the years to students as part of the mainstream national curriculum. The participants also said that historians who fail to distinguish between the two are not historians in the true sense of the word.

In that case, it would be fair to say that most teachers of history in our colleges and universities are continuously failing to do their jobs, because they disseminate without too much questioning or analysis the `history` contained in textbooks approved by the curriculum wing of the ministry of education. Students are taught by their teachers - something that the examination system powerfully reinforces - that it is in their own interest to learn by heart this history and to not enter into any debate or discussion on its content or to take a critical look at it. Doing so is often equated with having an unpatriotic bent of views and hence students are conditioned to dispense with such thinking from a very early age.

A few days before the history conference was held in Karachi, a student convention was organized in Islamabad by the Higher Education Commission. What the historians talked about at their conference seemed to have a connection with what happened at the convention. While the government leaders who addressed the students told them that they should become more tolerant and equip themselves with an education with which they could get good jobs and compete with the rest of the world, many students in their own speeches chose to concentrate on religious or very nationalist themes.

The convention was addressed by various academics and President Pervez Musharraf, Federal Education Minister Lt. Gen. (r) Javed Ashraf Qazi, HEC chairman Dr Attaur Rahman and UCLA professor Stanley Wolpert, author of two well-known books on Jinnah and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Professor Wolpert told the students that Jinnah`s ideal for Pakistan was for it to be a progressive homeland for Muslims, a point which was apparently quite hotly contested by some of the students present. And according to ruling party Senator Tanvir Khalid, who attended the final day`s closing session, while the president talked of the need for enlightened moderation and for Pakistanis to become more tolerant of other people`s views and faiths, most of the speeches by the students on that day had overtly Islamic themes or motifs as if there was nothing more to education than religion.

Such a response from many of the students present (and the contingent present was apparently the creme de la creme of our public and private sector universities) is only to be expected given the content of history and Pakistan studies textbooks that most of them learn their history from. Fifty-seven years have gone, the country has entered the 21st century, and many of us are still trying to figure out the rationale for its creation was and whether it was meant to be a liberal progressive state or a theocratic one.

The link obviously is with what the historians discussed at their conference in Karachi. For a generation, especially after the 1965 and 1971, the history and Pakistan studies taught to students became a mish-mash of ideology, religion, propaganda, unbridled nationalism, jingoism and occasional historical fact. Stung by the bitter experience with India, the civil-military bureaucracy that rules this country wanted to make sure that from then on, young Pakistanis would see their greatest enemy in India - an impression that India did nothing to correct - and the textbooks were changed to reflect that official government line.

This should help answer the question as to why we don`t have historians in Pakistan who are willing to take a critical look at leaders of the freedom movement without always automatically praising them and frowning upon any student or researcher who tries to raise questions regarding such personalities or their roles.

Years of state-led ideology-driven history and Pakistan studies teaching characterized by a culture of tolerating no dissent and fostering no inquiry whatsoever created a stifling situation where any historian who wanted to challenge the official version (of the country`s history) would have to do so at risk of wrecking his/her career (especially if teaching in a public-sector institution). The result was/is that most Pakistanis, especially the younger generation, have a pretty one-sided view of the their country`s history especially important issues like the political and economic reasons that led to India`s partition, the reasons for the secession of East Pakistan, or the impact of Zia`s Islamization drive on Pakistan`s economy and society.

So even if the president wants the country to now adopt a more moderate path, it cannot happen overnight and certainly not with the kind of curriculum that is taught in government schools. Ironically, the institution whom the president represent as army chief had a pivotal role in making the curriculum what it is today. His government`s flip-flops on crucial issues like curriculum revision and registration/monitoring of madressahs and the continuing reluctance to take any sort of initiative on them is not going to help the cause of enlightened moderation either.

As for most of our historians, it has to be said that the blame for the sham history has become today in government colleges and universities rests partially with them. In many countries with pasts and presents similar to Pakistan - take a look at Argentina, Chile or even Iran - it is the scholars, the academics, the historians, the teachers, the professors, the intellectuals so to speak, who rise against the dictates of the state and form pressure groups to challenge the state-sponsored/written version of history.

That is what has been and is happening in India for over a decade now with a generation of academics (mostly of the Marxist or Communist bent) leading the way in the formation of a new genre of history of India in which the oppressed such as those from lower castes, labourers, women, minorities, peasants and farmers have been given a voice to present a sort of alternative localized history as a counterpoint to the national history. The advantage that this new breed of scholars and researchers has is that they havehad considerable exposure to and training in the West - many such as Dipesh Chakravarty, Gauri Viswanathan, Gayatri Chakrovarty-Spivak teach in some of America`s best and most prestigious universities - which means that they have been quite successfully in raising their genre of history as a credible alternative to mainstream history in India.

Themselves influenced by people like Roland Barthes, Michel Foucalt and Edward Said, the influence of the work of this group of academics, which has strong links with many universities in India especially JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) in Delhi, is such that it has caused a major impact on the study and teaching of history in American and European universities. The result has been the creation of a whole new genre of multi-disciplinary study - `subaltern studies` - which draws not only from a mostly Marxist reading of history but also cultural anthropology, ethnography, comparative literature, political science, comparative religion and linguistics.

It seems history, its study and its teaching in Pakistan has a long way to go before any of the issues and concerns raised and suggestions made at the University of Karachi conference are actually implemented and history in Pakistan is purged of ideology and propaganda. That is the only way that young Pakistanis will get to know of all the warts and pimples of our past, something that is necessary for a fuller understanding of one`s present as well as future.

Email: omarq@cyber.net.pk

dost sahib -- once a baba, always a baba -- the problem with self-righteous old fogies like you is that they need to be better informed -- thanks for quoting kaiser bengali`s article for me -- published on a page where i am published almost every day mind you -- but you needn`t worry about what the likes of me need to or not need to do -- esp with madressah reform or textbook curriculum --


This is from Dawn, July 25, 2005


The chequered history of madressah reform

Madressahs in Pakistan seem to be in the spotlight again. Three of the alleged suicide bombers in the London attacks reportedly came to Pakistan a few months before the attacks and are said to have visited some madressahs in Lahore and Faisalabad.

The focus of the entire British media, according to an interesting report filed with BBC’s online edition, seems to be on these institutions with correspondents arriving in Lahore asking cabbies to take them to the nearest madressah. The view for a long time among many western journalists and observers, and some inside Pakistan as well, has been that madressahs in Pakistan are jihad factories, churning out thousands of religious militants and potential suicide bombers every month — a perception that the London attacks have obviously only reinforced.

All sorts of political leaders have gotten into the act in this country led by none other than President Pervez Musharraf himself who told a youth convention in Islamabad early this week that some madressahs were in fact producing militants and that their curriculum was fanning sectarianism and religious extremism. A day later, while speaking to journalists during a joint press conference with the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that his government was in touch with the government in Pakistan, that he had spoken to President Musharraf and that he, and Mr Musharraf, were both quite concerned about the madressahs in Pakistan and the fact that they provided an ideal breeding ground for such extremists.

Quite ironically, the same day, the chief of the ruling PML, before leaving for a foreign trip, told this newspaper’s correspondent in Lahore that madressahs were not involved in any such activities and that they had not produced any militants or extremists.

At around the same time as well, was reported the arrest of five senior officials of the former Taliban regime, including a former governor of Nangarhar and Kunar province, from Akora Khattak. Akora Khattak is the town which houses a rather well-known madressah operated by Senator Samiul Haq, leader of his faction of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam and which has known to produce several important leaders of the former Taliban regime of Afghanistan.

So, it would be fair to say that since the July 7 attacks, authorities in Pakistan seem to be under great pressure to do something about the madressahs. In fact, the pressure seemed to have gotten so much that the president, in his address to the nation on July 22, also said that the UK needed to do its bit to rein in religious extremism. He also set a deadline by the end of this year for the registration of madressahs.

Interestingly enough, what the president has been saying post July 7 on the madressah reform issue is nothing new. On January 12, 2002, he made what was then hailed by many a ground-breaking speech in which he called for fighting rising religious extremism and intolerance in Pakistan and said that one crucial way of dealing with that would be to launch a drive for registering, and then reforming, the country’s madressahs. On various occasions since then he, and other senior functionaries of the government, have highlighted the need for revamping and modernizing the curriculum taught in the madressahs and to include subjects like computer science and others taught in mainstream schools.

On February 13, 2002, in a joint press conference with US President George W. Bush at the White House, President Musharraf and his host were asked the following question: “Mr. Bush and Mr Musharraf, should secular schools be the standard to prevent jihad in Pakistan and other terrorist attacks like those of September 11 [2001]?”

Mr Bush responded first. He alluded to a previous meeting that he had had with Mr Musharraf in New York saying that one the topics of that meeting was education reform in Pakistan. Mr Bush also spoke highly of Pakistan’s then education minister Zobaida Jalal and praised the Pakistan president for having such an individual heading the education ministry. He also praised what he said was the president of Pakistan’s “visionary statement about education”.

Then came Mr Musharraf’s turn. He said that his government was engaged in a “jihad-i-akbar” (greater jihad) in Pakistan against “illiteracy, poverty, backwardness and hunger”. He said further, specifically with reference to madressah education in Pakistan: “Now within this jihad, education forms a focal area.... I would like to focus on the madressah education Basically, there are about 600,000 to 800,000 students in these madressahs. Now the positive aspect of these madressahs... is that they have humanitarian and welfare aspect to them. They feed and house the poorest of the poor children.... Now the weaknesses of some of the madressahs, only teaching religious education to the children, have to be removed and the children in these madressahs need to be brought into the mainstream of life. That is what we are doing. We have asked the madressahs to introduce four subjects and these are science, English, Pakistan studies and mathematics. We have also created a board for them to take their examinations from, and, once they take their exams through this board, it will make them eligible to transfer to any college or university.... The basic idea is to utilize their strength; the strength of their giving free board and lodge to such a vast population of the poorest of the poor and eradicate their weaknesses so that they are drawn into the mainstream of life in Pakistan. This is the strategy we are following.”

That was over three years ago. Since then, the government’s much-trumpeted

— at least initially — to register the thousands of madressahs operating in the country, to bring them into the ambit of official regulation (just like the rest of the mainstream schooling system) failed to get off the ground. To many it seemed as if the motive for taking such steps was not — as it should have been — that they were in Pakistan’s own interest but rather that the events of 9/11 had changed the world and Pakistan could no longer be seen to be doing nothing about the madressahs operating inside its borders.

In due course of time, it emerged that many in the government, including those at senior levels and in crucial posts such as the minister for religious affairs, did not seem to share too much the views of the president on madressah reform. On more than one occasion, the minister (who seems to be nowhere now post the July 7 attacks) would make public statements that there was nothing wrong with the kind of education that the madressahs were imparting. The education minister, however, would make exactly the opposite statement, in support of the president.

However, not much happened and what the president said before the US media at the White House on that day in February 2002, or to the Pakistani nation on January 12, 2002, pretty much remained empty rhetoric. The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, which would later go on to vote in favour of a constitutional amendment allowing the president to keep his military uniform, said that it would oppose any drive by the government to register madressahs. In all of this, quite ironically, the voice of mainstream academia and intellectuals in Pakistan remained resolutely silent — perhaps those who are part of it did not want to anger the religious/right-wing parties and organizations who were vehemently opposed to madressah reform or their registration.

For a long time, this issue remained dormant, that is, till the attacks in London on July 7, 2005. Now again, the perception among many (including even those who had always been in favour of official regulation and modernization of madressahs) is that the government is only doing this under foreign pressure. After all, it should have been known to the government and its intelligence agencies that activists of many banned sectarian and extremist outfits have had close links with madressahs and that such groups also had links to foreign terrorist groups. In that context, why wait for something to happen in London or New York to act against madressahs, especially when the action is not even punitive in nature but rather regulatory, to bring them, like the rest of schools in the country, under the ambit of government monitoring.

However, even now, some senior government politicians such as PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain are saying that the madressahs do not produce extremists or militants. That in itself, even without the alleged links some of the London attackers are said to have with madressahs, is a debatable point. For the sake of (a fanciful) argument, even if not a single madressah has produced a suicide bomber, the point still remains that the kind of teaching, with no kind of questioning whatosever, that goes on in madressahs is such that it is likely to condition the mind of a student in a way that he becomes receptive to be being indoctrinated and brain-washed.

WIth a deadline for madressah registration given by the president, it remains to be seen how sincere the government is on this issue this time around.—Omar R. Quraishi

Writer’s email: omarq@cyber.net.pk

---

like i said once a baba, always a baba

Mohar11,

I am going to let you in on a little secret. For Muslims, at the present, there is no escape of Islam. Those who want to reform, modernise and even secularise Islam have to invoke the Islamic message. So what you call cynical use of Islam is actually any thing but.

The issue my friend is very simple. Albert Hourani has written about the Muslim World entering the modern age in 1930s where Muslim Nationalism (not just in South Asia) emerged on the planks of modernity, women`s rights and reform ... it had to as a matter of necessity appeal to the reformist activism of the Islamic message. It is not this nationalism that was the problem (for after all an identity is always imagined) but the movement within Islam that stood as a counter to it... the Islamic revivalist movements of Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen and Jamaat-e-Islami... not to mention Deoband`s own political Islam. The issue here is that... the Congress actively pursued the latter instead of the former in its quest to make a composite nationalist plank. That is my only point.

Now ... it is anyone`s guess where MMA stands on things.

Re: # 110
//.... am going to let you in on a little secret. For Muslims, at the present, there is no escape of Islam. Those who want to reform, modernise and even secularise Islam have to invoke the Islamic message. ...//

Gee, thanks for the secret. Here is another secret - you can sell Brooklyn Bridge, but you cannot ``secularise`` Islam.

But that`s NOT what I am talking about - you really have to pay attention to what I am saying here boy ...... I am talking about mis-use of islam to form racist ideologies and fulfill other grand agendas - ``pakistani ideology``, ``stragetic depth``, ``war of thousand cuts``, ``kashmir banega pakiland`` and more ....

++++
//....the Congress actively pursued the latter instead of the former in its quest to make a composite nationalist plank....//

Yeah - Congress did it to you pakis - Congress f***ed your ``Muslim Nationalism`` royally in the a$$ and now you pakis are holding the baby :)......

Congress, Gandhi did what they had to do .... they didn`t like the ``Muslim Nationalism`` and they sought to kill it.....I personally don`t approve their use of islam for that purpose, because such practice has continued till date....but you have to grow out of your congress, gandhi, jinnah fixation .... you should not be going back to 1930 to invent boogeymen to chew on .... You should not keep blaming Congress/Gandhi forever - Remember, they had to protect hindu interests, above all.

At the end of the day - pakistan is the Islamic Republic of Jihadis International. Blaming congress/gandhi won`t take you far, that won`t stop hasba bill being clamped right on your secular-a$$ :)

Dost-mittar #108: ``Kaiser Bengali was trying to seek the root cause of Islamic extremism in Pakistan and did not make any comparison with the US, India or any other country. Neither did I. If you think that Pakistan does not have any special or unique problem of extremism, then more power to you.``

I never said Pakistan does not have a problem of extremism. Though I don`t think it to be unique. There are many countries with problems of extremism - religious, ethnic etc. If you think religoius extremism is unique only to Pakistan then I am afraid, you and I have quite different views of Pakistan.

At the same time, I think both you and Kaiser are incorrect on narrowing it down to educational memos. Am I allowed to disagree with you on that?...........I think the core of the problem is economic. It will be solved primarily by giving people jobs............

Romair#107:

Kaiser Bengali was trying to seek the root cause of Islamic extremism in Pakistan and did not make any comparison with the US, India or any other country. Neither did I. If you think that Pakistan does not have any special or unique problem of extremism, then more power to you.

Dost-mittar #102: ``I take it that you do not agree with the author that ``Education plays a key role in shaping concepts, ideas, opinions and worldviews. In this respect, education in Pakistan has been conspicuous more for its role in indoctrination than in promoting pedagogy or learning``; and presumably see no need for change on the educational front. As far as I am concerned, Pakistan has every right to develop whatever education system it wants for itself.``

Not at all. Quite the contrary....I do agree with the author. But not to the extent that you seem to be agreeing with him, specifically in the case of teaching history and indoctrination.

I think Pakistani education indoctrinates students, much like education of other countries does. And I gave examples, clearly indicating that there isn`t as much indoctrination as the author or you maybe thinking, when it comes to Pakistanis. I think Americans, Indians etc. are equally indoctrinated.....

I also think education in Pakistan has taught me more about learning than it has indoctrinated me, in any direction. Unlike what the author seems to indicate.

So the indoctrination part is there, and should be removed. But, it is not nearly as much as you seem to think. In addition, I think mass media (movies, press, TV etc.) has far more affect on indoctrinating someone than history classes..........

As an example, I have never shown religious discrimination, hate etc against anyone on this site. If I were indoctrinated, as you seem to be suggesting, then I certainly would show this hatred. However, I could publish a book on the amount of religious hatred that has been thrown in my direction.

My objections, are thus not in regard of improving Pakistan`s educational system and its affects on indoctrination. That needs to be done. My objections are on specifically singling out Pakistan, when social commentary indicates that other coutries/individuals are equally, if not more, indoctrinated...........

Talking about Sholay dialogue-baazi, here is a bad joke where Gabbar is terrorizing the poor programmers of Ramgad...............

Gabbar sends Kaalia and two others to Ramgad to collect the loot-maar software he had ordered.

They reach Ramgad and start shouting: ``Abe O thakur! Kahan hai woh loot-maar software?

Last date to kab ka nikal gaya``.

Thakur [with anger]: ``Chillao mat! jaakar Gabbar se kah do ki

Thakur Software walon ne paagal kutton ke liye software banana bund kar diya hai.``

Kaalia: ``Bahoot garmi dikha rahe ho thakur? Koi naye programmers hire kiye hain kya?``

Thakur: ``Nazar uttha ke dekh, Kaalia, tere sar par powerbuilder chal raha hai.``

Kaalia looks up and sees Viru (Dharmendra) working on a PC on one Water tank and Jay (Amitabh) on another, using a laptop.

Kaalia Starts Laughing and says: ``Ha ha... thakur ne freshers ko liya hai ye log Programming karenge? In ko to DOS commands bhi nahin aate.``

Veeru shouts: ``Chup-chaap chala ja kutte. Hum log consultants hain, Kuch bhi kar sakte hain.``

Jay hits his keyboard,then says:``jaao kaalia, Gabbar se kahna ki uska server down ho gaya.``


AT GABBAR`S DEN...

Gabbar: ``Kitne bugs the?``
Kaalia: ``Do sarkaar.``

Gabbar: ``Wo do! Aur tum teen. Phir bhi fix nahi kar sake?

Kya soch key aaye the? Gabbar bahoot khush hoga?

Naya assignment dega ...aur increment bhi? Iski saza milegi... barabar milegi.``

[Snatches an X terminal from Sambaa]. ``Kitne sessions hain is machine mein?``

Sambaa: ``Chhey sarkaar.``

Gabbar: ``Session chhey aur programmer teen. Bahoot naainsaafi hai.`` [logout -logout - logout].

``Haan ab theek hai... ab tera kya hoga, Kaalia?``

Kaalia: ``Sarkaar, maine aapka code likha tha.``
Gabbar: ``To ab documentation kar!