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Who do you think is responsible for this extreme radicalization of our youth? Why do you think we have attached the feeling of hatred to the name ‘India’? Why do we always portray Pakistan as the ‘innocent one’ and India as ‘the villain’?
The answer to all above questions and much more others is that, we have been studying biased books throughout our life. Our textbooks are replete with biases and foster biasness. I am especially talking about our ‘Pakistan Studies’ books and its portrayal of partition of sub-continent. These books give us one-sided facts of the events of sub-continent’s history and therefore our views and ideologies are based on partial information.
For instance, we have always studied about the asperities and sacrifices of our primogenitors, how we were under the tyrannous charge of Hindus and how they used to carry out butchery and carnage etc. But don’t you think that ‘it takes two hands to clap’. I think we were equally involved in the struggle for freedom as they were. We were equally atrocious as they were. We were also appalling. I am not blaming the whole thing on Pakistan and nor on India for that matter. Because I am not mentally mature enough to give a viewpoint or stance on my own, I will only believe what I read and have been reading since I was in 6th grade because it is the time when Pakistan studies is introduced to students as a separate subject.
When a child is admitted to school, his mind is an empty cup, which is gradually filled up with his course of education. And in this scenario, we are only filling the cup with a bitter fluid of detestation and loathing. And then we are complaining about the aggressive and short tempered nature of our youth. Why don’t we just educate them about the reality and let them decide on their own who should be tagged as oppressor and who should be the oppressed. I think it is the responsibility of our state to ensure unbiased and unprejudiced education. All I desire is that we stop filling our youth with such negativity and then expect them to be tolerable adults, we should stop conflicting their minds. But it’s never too late, all we need is just a slight change in textbooks and we’re good to go.
