Murder of History

Adnan Aamir

Khur­shid Kamal Aziz, com­mon­ly known as K. K. Aziz, was a renowned Pak­istani his­to­ri­an. Dur­ing his illus­tri­ous career, he taught at many reput­ed uni­ver­si­ties home and abroad includ­ing Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge. He authored many books about his­to­ry, the most famous of them being Mur­der of His­to­ry. This book is pri­mar­i­ly a cri­tique of the school text­books taught in Pak­istan. Mr. Aziz has iden­ti­fied errors taught in his­to­ry and tried to cor­rect them. This is a must read book for every Pak­istani, espe­cial­ly for those whose only source of his­to­ry has been the school text­books. Author has uncov­ered the major dis­tor­tions of his­to­ry in school text­books and also pro­vid­ed a cor­rect ver­sion of his­to­ry.

K. K. Aziz car­ried out the painstak­ing work of thor­ough­ly study­ing 66 text­books. These books were on sub­jects of social stud­ies, Pak­istan stud­ies and his­to­ry from grade 1 to 14. After study­ing all these books in detail, the author has fig­ured out some fre­quent errors and list­ed them in the first chap­ter of the book. This chap­ter, titled as Pre­scribed Myths, talks about the fables which are taught to the stu­dents as plain objec­tive facts. After study­ing this chap­ter, one real­izes the scale and mag­ni­tude of these errors because the most basic facts taught in school books are noth­ing but mere myths. It might be ini­tial­ly hard to con­front such chal­lenge to accept­ed ‘facts’ but after read­ing author’s account of the same events pre­sent­ed with evi­dence, one real­izes the mam­moth blun­der that is being com­mit­ted in the name of teach­ing his­to­ry.

The list of myths point­ed out by the author is too long; here I will men­tion a few cho­sen ones to indi­cate the scale of the prob­lem. Debunk­ing the 1857 War of Inde­pen­dence, K. K. Aziz elab­o­rat­ed that it was actu­al­ly not a war of inde­pen­dence but a small scale mutiny only affect­ing Indi­an provinces of Del­hi and U.P. When All India Mus­lim League was formed in Dha­ka in 1906, one of its objec­tives was to gen­er­ate among Mus­lims sen­ti­ments of loy­al­ty towards the British. While stat­ing rea­sons for the cre­ation of Mus­lim League, this fact is con­ve­nient­ly over­looked in all offi­cial text­books. It is also taught in text­books that Alla­ma Iqbal pre­sent­ed the idea of a sep­a­rate home­land in his famous Alla­habad address in 1930. Guess what, this is also untrue. He mere­ly demand­ed the for­ma­tion of autonomous units of Mus­lim provinces with­in the fed­er­a­tion of India. In his let­ter to The Times, Alla­ma Iqbal con­firmed this asser­tion. How­ev­er, the poor stu­dents in Pak­istan are taught a dif­fer­ent and incor­rect his­to­ry alto­geth­er.

Like­wise, it is com­mon­ly believed that Pak­istan Res­o­lu­tion was adopt­ed on 23rd of March 1940 in which the idea of Pak­istan was put for­ward. That’s also incor­rect, the res­o­lu­tion was adopt­ed on 24th march not on 23rd. Sec­ond­ly, the word of Pak­istan was not men­tioned in the res­o­lu­tion and it was called Lahore Res­o­lu­tion. Third­ly, it demand­ed the for­ma­tion of inde­pen­dent Mus­lim states (More than one) each hav­ing sov­er­eign and autonomous con­stituent units. This is a huge dis­tor­tion of his­to­ry and not many peo­ple know the truth, thanks to the dis­tort­ed school books. Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, Pak­istan was formed on 15th of August not on 14th. The Indi­an Inde­pen­dence Act 1947 of the British stat­ed that both new coun­tries will be inde­pen­dent at the mid­night hour of 14th and 15th of August. So, Pak­istan came into being on 15th August just like India. More­over, the text­books also state that Pak­istan won all wars fought with India. That is wild­ly untrue and recent­ly much light has been shed on this top­ic, and this book also indi­cates this dis­tor­tion. Last­ly, the text­books also hold India respon­si­ble for the fall of Dha­ka which is again not true accord­ing to the author. The fall of East Pak­istan was due to the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry poli­cies of rul­ing elite of West Pak­istan and India mere­ly exac­er­bat­ed the process of for­ma­tion of Bangladesh.

After read­ing such remark­able facts one tends to explore the rea­sons behind such crim­i­nal dis­tor­tion of his­to­ry. For­tu­nate­ly, K.K Aziz has also shed light on this top­ic in ample details. Accord­ing to him, unlike in a civ­i­lized coun­try, school books in Pak­istan have been used as a tool for polit­i­cal indoc­tri­na­tion rather as a source of knowl­edge. The fairy tales taught as facts in text­books defy com­mon sense and there­fore they also cre­ate among stu­dents an aver­sion towards the text­books, accord­ing to the author. These books have indoc­tri­nat­ed more than one gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple of Pak­istan lead­ing to a tun­nel vision and a state of denial. No won­der why do peo­ple always blame for­eign­ers for the wrong­do­ings whose caus­es are indige­nous.

Mur­der of His­to­ry is a trea­sure of infor­ma­tion for the his­to­ry lovers and for those who want to know the truth behind his­tor­i­cal con­tro­ver­sies. There are a lot of peo­ple who will out right­ly deny all the afore­men­tioned dis­tor­tions in his­to­ry and declare this book a for­eign attempt to malign Pak­istan. It is prob­a­bly not the fault of these peo­ple who have grown up study­ing the dis­tort­ed his­to­ry and school books are their only source of his­tor­i­cal infor­ma­tion. They seem unable to accept any­thing which is against what they have been read­ing and believ­ing for years. Any­how, this book is a work of thor­ough research and author has quot­ed all the ref­er­ences of the orig­i­nal sources of his­to­ry. After K.K Aziz many oth­er authors have embarked on the path of cor­rect­ing the errors in his­to­ry and now there are plen­ty of books avail­able on this sub­ject. How­ev­er, Mur­der of His­to­ry was first of its kind and will always be remem­bered as pio­neer in this sub­ject.

Adnan Aamir is a Free­lance writer and Blog­ger. He tweets at @iAdnanAamir