HYDERABAD: Renowned historian Dr Mubarak Ali has criticised the syllabus being taught at educational institutions of the country and called for rewriting it to make it more realistic.

“The existing syllabus is meant for [producing] people of a particular mentality. If we teach such things to our young generation then what do we expect from them,” he said while delivering a lecture on ‘Role of youth in the country’s development’ organised by the Centre of Excellence in Art and Design of the Mehran University of Engineering and Tech­n­ology at Jamshoro on Saturday.

He said that educational institutes should be free from law enforcement agencies personnel but the situation in Pakistan, particularly in Sindh, was different. Many countries had developed only through education and it still remained the only weapon to bring about a revolution in a society, he said.

He said that he was proud of being a student and teacher at the Sindh University but at the same time expressed disappointment over the fact that SU, Sindhi Adabi Board and other educational institutions were not delivering as was expected from them in the fields of culture, history and education with the result that today’s students were unaware of their rights.

“If we look at history, students have produced great leadership in the world. In Pakistan and Sindh students have played a vital and productive role in the past even during the rule of military dictator Ayub Khan,” he said.

He said that students played a central role in the freedom struggles in Bangladesh, Germany and several other countries and they were playing a similar role to bring about change in Pakistani society when Gen Ayub imposed a ban on student unions. But they led from the front and forced him to take back his decision, he said.

He said the countries like Germany where education was free right from primary to university level were developing by leaps and bounds as they knew they needed skilled youth to maintain the progress but Pakistanis did not pay the attention to education it required.

About pitfalls of writing fragmented history, he said, for instance people quoted examples of Quaid-i-Azam and Allama Iqbal without giving necessary details to enable youth to make their own opinions about them.

MUET Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Mohammad Aslam Uqaili said that Dr Mubarak had contributed enormously to the history of Pakistan and Sindh and his books were guidelines for the youth.

He said that unfortunately people’s attitudes had hardened and no one was ready to listen to the other’s point of view and accept him as he is. “Sindh is a citadel of Sufi teachings but prolonged Afghan war has had a bad impact on its dwellers’ behaviour, which needs to be changed to promote harmony,” he said.

CEAD director Prof Dr Bhai Khan Shar said that it was an honour for Sindh and Pakistan to have towering scholars like Dr Mubarak Ali.

The CEAD would continue to organise such informative and highly enlightening lectures to educate its students, he added.

Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2015

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