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Pakistan Day: Freeing the Colonized Minds of the Elites
Pakistan achieved independence from the British colonial rule 70 years ago. However, the minds of most of Pakistan's elites remain colonized to this day. This seems to be particularly true of the nation's western-educated "liberals" who dominate much of the intellectual discourse in the country. They continue to look at their fellow countrymen through the eyes of the Orientalists who served as tools for western colonization of Asia, Middle East and Africa. The work of these "native" Orientalists available in their books, op ed columns and other publications reflects their utter contempt for Pakistan and Pakistanis. Their colonized minds uncritically accept all things western. They often seem to think that the Pakistanis can do nothing right while the West can do no wrong. Far from being constructive, these colonized minds promote lack of confidence in the ability of their fellow "natives" to solve their own problems and contribute to hopelessness. The way out of it is to encourage more inquiry based learning and critical thinking.
Orientalism As Tool of Colonialism:
Dr. Edward Said (1935-2003), Palestine-born Columbia University professor and the author of "Orientalism", described it as the ethnocentric study of non-Europeans by Europeans. Dr. Said wrote that the Orientalists see the people of Asia, Africa and the Middle East as “gullible” and “devoid of energy and initiative.” European colonization led to the decline and destruction of the prosperity of every nation they ruled. India is a prime example of it. India was the world's largest economy producing over a quarter of the world's GDP when the British arrived. At the end of the British Raj, India's contribution was reduced to less than 2% of the world GDP.
Education to Colonize Minds:
In his "Prison Notebooks", Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist theorist and politician, says that a class can exercise its power not merely by the use of force but by an institutionalized system of moral and intellectual leadership that promotes certain ideas and beliefs favorable to it. For Gramsci "cultural hegemony" is maintained through the consent of the dominated class which assures the intellectual and material supremacy of the dominant class.
In "Masks of Conquest", author Gauri Viswanathan says that the British curriculum was introduced in India to "mask" the economic exploitation of the colonized. Its main purpose was to colonize the minds of the natives to sustain colonial rule.
Cambridge Curriculum in Pakistan:
The colonial discourse of the superiority of English language and western education continues with a system of elite schools that uses Cambridge curriculum in Pakistan.
Over 270,000 Pakistani students from elite schools participated in Cambridge O-level and A-level International (CIE) exams in 2016, an increase of seven per cent over the prior year.
Cambridge IGCSE exams is also growing in popularity in Pakistan, with enrollment increasing by 16% from 10,364 in 2014-15 to 12,019 in 2015-16. Globally there has been 10% growth in entries across all Cambridge qualifications in 2016, including 11% growth in entries for Cambridge International A Levels and 8 per cent for Cambridge IGCSE, according to Express Tribune newspaper.
The United Kingdom remains the top source of international education for Pakistanis. 46,640 students, the largest number of Pakistani students receiving international education anywhere, are doing so at Pakistani universities in joint degree programs established with British universities, according to UK Council for International Student Affairs.
At the higher education level, the number of students enrolled in British-Pakistani joint degree programs in Pakistan (46,640) makes it the fourth largest effort behind Malaysia (78,850), China (64,560) and Singapore (49,970).
Teach Critical Thinking:
Pakistani educators need to see the western colonial influences and their detrimental effects on the minds of youngsters. They need to improve learning by helping students learn to think for themselves critically. Such reforms will require students to ask more questions and to find answers for themselves through their own research rather than taking the words of their textbook authors and teachers as the ultimate truth.
Summary:
The minds of most of Pakistan's elite remain colonized 70 years after the British rule of Pakistan ended in 1947. They uncritically accept all things western. A quick scan of Pakistan's English media shows the disdain the nation's western educated elites have for their fellow countryman. Far from being constructive, they promote lack of confidence in their fellow "natives" ability to solve their own problems and contribute to hopelessness. Their colonized minds uncritically accept all things western. They often seem to think that the Pakistanis can do nothing right while the West can do no wrong. Unless these colonized minds are freed, it will be difficult for the people of Pakistan to believe in themselves, have the confidence in their capabilities and develop the national pride to lay the foundation of a bright future. The best way to help free these colonized minds is through curriculum reform that helps build real critical thinking.
Here's an interesting discussion of the legacy of the British Raj in India as seen by writer-diplomat Shashi Tharoor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN2Owcwq6_M
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Alam vs Hoodbhoy
Inquiry Based Learning
Dr. Ata ur Rehman Defends Higher Education Reform
Pakistan's Rising College Enrollment Rates
Pakistan Beat BRICs in Highly Cited Research Papers
Launch of "Eating Grass: Pakistan's Nuclear Program"
Upwardly Mobile Pakistan
Impact of Industrial Revolution
Hindutva: Legacy of British Raj
Dr. Edward Said (1935-2003), Palestine-born Columbia University professor and the author of "Orientalism", described it as the ethnocentric study of non-Europeans by Europeans. Dr. Said wrote that the Orientalists see the people of Asia, Africa and the Middle East as “gullible” and “devoid of energy and initiative.” European colonization led to the decline and destruction of the prosperity of every nation they ruled. India is a prime example of it. India was the world's largest economy producing over a quarter of the world's GDP when the British arrived. At the end of the British Raj, India's contribution was reduced to less than 2% of the world GDP.
Education to Colonize Minds:
In his "Prison Notebooks", Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist theorist and politician, says that a class can exercise its power not merely by the use of force but by an institutionalized system of moral and intellectual leadership that promotes certain ideas and beliefs favorable to it. For Gramsci "cultural hegemony" is maintained through the consent of the dominated class which assures the intellectual and material supremacy of the dominant class.
In "Masks of Conquest", author Gauri Viswanathan says that the British curriculum was introduced in India to "mask" the economic exploitation of the colonized. Its main purpose was to colonize the minds of the natives to sustain colonial rule.
Cambridge Curriculum in Pakistan:
The colonial discourse of the superiority of English language and western education continues with a system of elite schools that uses Cambridge curriculum in Pakistan.
Over 270,000 Pakistani students from elite schools participated in Cambridge O-level and A-level International (CIE) exams in 2016, an increase of seven per cent over the prior year.
Cambridge IGCSE exams is also growing in popularity in Pakistan, with enrollment increasing by 16% from 10,364 in 2014-15 to 12,019 in 2015-16. Globally there has been 10% growth in entries across all Cambridge qualifications in 2016, including 11% growth in entries for Cambridge International A Levels and 8 per cent for Cambridge IGCSE, according to Express Tribune newspaper.
The United Kingdom remains the top source of international education for Pakistanis. 46,640 students, the largest number of Pakistani students receiving international education anywhere, are doing so at Pakistani universities in joint degree programs established with British universities, according to UK Council for International Student Affairs.
Teach Critical Thinking:
Pakistani educators need to see the western colonial influences and their detrimental effects on the minds of youngsters. They need to improve learning by helping students learn to think for themselves critically. Such reforms will require students to ask more questions and to find answers for themselves through their own research rather than taking the words of their textbook authors and teachers as the ultimate truth.
Summary:
The minds of most of Pakistan's elite remain colonized 70 years after the British rule of Pakistan ended in 1947. They uncritically accept all things western. A quick scan of Pakistan's English media shows the disdain the nation's western educated elites have for their fellow countryman. Far from being constructive, they promote lack of confidence in their fellow "natives" ability to solve their own problems and contribute to hopelessness. Their colonized minds uncritically accept all things western. They often seem to think that the Pakistanis can do nothing right while the West can do no wrong. Unless these colonized minds are freed, it will be difficult for the people of Pakistan to believe in themselves, have the confidence in their capabilities and develop the national pride to lay the foundation of a bright future. The best way to help free these colonized minds is through curriculum reform that helps build real critical thinking.
Here's an interesting discussion of the legacy of the British Raj in India as seen by writer-diplomat Shashi Tharoor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN2Owcwq6_M
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Alam vs Hoodbhoy
Inquiry Based Learning
Dr. Ata ur Rehman Defends Higher Education Reform
Pakistan's Rising College Enrollment Rates
Pakistan Beat BRICs in Highly Cited Research Papers
Launch of "Eating Grass: Pakistan's Nuclear Program"
Upwardly Mobile Pakistan
Impact of Industrial Revolution
Hindutva: Legacy of British Raj
Riaz Haq
A Pakistani Ivy League University in the Making?
By Akhtar Mahmud Faruqui
https://www.pakistanlink.org/Opinion/2023/June23/09/01.HTM
Beaconhouse National University is Pakistan’s first not-for-profit Liberal Arts University, founded in 2003 to provide tertiary education in the arts, design, architecture, media, humanities and social sciences, business and information technology. It was established through significant donations from a number of benefactors including the Kasuri family, the Dawood family, Dr Parvez Hassan, Mr Izzat Majeed and the Government of Punjab, to name a few.
BNU’s mission is to foster empowered and impactful global citizens in a diverse, socially sensitive, cross-disciplinary, liberal arts environment. BNU retains its identity as an apolitical, equal-opportunity, truly national higher-education institution, fast-emerging as a world-class Liberal Arts university.
Below is a piece highlighting the establishment of the university and written earlier during its formative phase.)
ABC’s Nightline program years back was a pack of distortions about a country that remained steadfast in its support for the US. Entitled ‘The most dangerous country in the world,’ the program conveniently ignored the country’s march in different fields and the progressive outlook of Pakistan society.
Yet, there was one positive comment that seemed to have unwittingly slipped from Ted Koppel’s lashing tongue: Some of the world’s best schools are in Pakistan! As the compliment was paid the ABC camera panned across a classroom full of young boys and girls. Their uniforms looked familiar. Was it a Beaconhouse School chapter? I was not sure. Yet the compliment - ‘some of the world’s best schools are in Pakistan’ - reechoed in my ears, and justifiably so. My own son, Jahanzeb, had studied at the PECHS Chapter of Beaconhouse. He was later to win a full university scholarship and excel in studies on migration to the US. His entrepreneurial successes were applauded by Forbes Magazine years later.
Over the years, the Beaconhouse School System has seen marked growth. Its branches dot the country’s landscape, and their number precipitously multiplies. Founded by Mrs Nasreen Kasuri and Mian Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri, the System is the largest private network of schools with well over 40,000 students This wholesome trend testifies to the fact that private schools today play a complementary, nay, catalytic role in strengthening the education sector in Pakistan. They have a chain-reaction effect and, in this enterprise, Beaconhouse’s example stands out, thanks to the painstaking strivings of Mrs Kasuri who has been at the helm of the School System since its inception.
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Dr Isa Daudpota, an IT expert who belongs to a distinguished family of educationists of Sindh and is an outstanding academic in his own right, speaks candidly about the BNU. “The effort is to impart quality education over and above what is offered by other universities. The closest to us is LUMS but we offer a more diverse menu. We offer subjects which are not taught in different universities.
“The way to teach would be different. There will be more open discussions. Indeed, it would be discussion-based education, giving a student the chance to design his/ her course. BNU will be closer to an American Arts University.” ....
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If PINSTECH (Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology) could win accolades and be described as ‘best of both the worlds’ by TIME magazine, thanks to the vision of the late Dr I.H. Usmani, Chairman, PAEC, would it be too much to expect that the BNU would emerge as the equivalent of an Ivy institution - if not today, 10-20 years hence? If some of the best schools of the world are in Pakistan, why shouldn’t we succeed in establishing some of the world’s best universities in the country? – afaruqui42@yahoo.com
Jun 11, 2023
Riaz Haq
Sadanand Dhume
@dhume
In India, critics of the 19th century statesman Thomas Macaulay portray him as some kind of cartoon villain out to destroy India. In reality, he was a brilliant man who wished Indians well. [My take] v
@WSJopinion
https://x.com/dhume/status/1996428594680381501?s=20
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/western-education-has-lifted-india-3888...
India’s prime minister is mad at an Englishman who died more than 150 years ago. In recent weeks, Narendra Modi has taken aim at Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-59), a scholar and statesman best known in India for introducing the country to Western education.
“Macaulay broke our self-confidence,” Mr. Modi said in a speech in New Delhi last month. “He instilled an inferiority complex within us.” A week later, while hoisting a flag at a prominent new Hindu temple in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya, Mr. Modi reupped his charge that “Macaulay laid the foundation of mental slavery in India.”
Mr. Modi’s criticism of Macaulay may make for useful political theater, but the prime minister is dead wrong. Far from hurting India, Macaulay helped it enormously. If not for access to Western education, India today would probably look less like an aspiring global power and more like an outsize backwater. And if not for the English language, which links educated Indians from vastly different backgrounds, tensions between the politically dominant Hindi-speaking states that account for about 45% of the country’s population and the rest of the country would be harder to manage.
The current debate can be traced to 1835, when the dominant power in India was the London-headquartered East India Co. That year, Macaulay won an argument among company officials about the best language in which to educate Indians. He wanted the British to support education in English and cease funding schools that taught in Sanskrit and Arabic.
In India, the case against Macaulay is built on a combination of misinformation and selective outrage. A widely circulated WhatsApp message claims erroneously that Macaulay gave a speech before the British Parliament in which he vowed to “break the very backbone” of India by replacing its “ancient education system.” Macaulay made no such speech, according to the Hansard archives, which hold historical parliamentary records. He wasn’t even in Britain at the time it was allegedly made.
Some of the animus directed at Macaulay is based on things he really said. Macaulay laid out the case for English education as a civilizing mission, which some Indians understandably find offensive. “We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect,” he said. He also said that “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”
Some Indians use these statements to caricature Macaulay as a cartoon villain. The reality is more complex. Macaulay was a self-made man elevated to the pinnacle of Britain’s ruling class, thanks to his precocious intelligence and scholarly brilliance. Before he was 8, he had completed an outline of world history and a poem in the style of Sir Walter Scott. He reportedly knew seven languages, including ancient Latin and Greek.
A man of his time, Macaulay didn’t question the cultural and intellectual preeminence of Britain. But this didn’t make him unsympathetic to Indians. On the contrary, he thought it was England’s duty to quicken Indian progress. In his biography of Macaulay, Bombay-born author Zareer Masani notes that Macaulay compared India with Russia, still something of a feudal backwater at the time, but one that, in Macaulay’s view, was catching up with advanced Western European nations.
on Thursday
Riaz Haq
Sadanand Dhume
@dhume
In India, critics of the 19th century statesman Thomas Macaulay portray him as some kind of cartoon villain out to destroy India. In reality, he was a brilliant man who wished Indians well. [My take] v
@WSJopinion
https://x.com/dhume/status/1996428594680381501?s=20
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/western-education-has-lifted-india-3888...
Macaulay hoped that India would foster an educated class that could match the best in the world. He believed that Indians exposed to Western education could gradually improve native languages by infusing them with modern concepts, including scientific terminology. While this may sound condescending today, at the time it was a broad-minded position. For a 19th-century racist, it would have been impossible to imagine an Indian who was “English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” Unblinded by prejudice, Macaulay saw potential in Indians at a time when this was relatively rare.
If not for Macaulay, India today might be very different. Those who point to Japan or China as examples of countries that have modernized without widely adopting English misunderstand India. Compared with India, Japan and China are much more linguistically homogeneous. India houses more than a dozen major languages. If you’re a Punjabi speaker who wants to open a bank account in Kannada-speaking Karnataka, your best bet is to do it in English.
Over time, Hindi, the predominant north Indian language, has become more widely understood across the country. But making it the sole national language would set up perpetual conflict with non-Hindi speakers, who resent the idea of being dominated by the economically laggard Hindi belt. In a pan-Indian context, English is an equalizer, not an oppressor.
Fortunately for India, English isn’t going anywhere. More than 1 in 10 Indians speak it to some extent. In the higher reaches of professional, commercial and intellectual life, fluency is common. The ghost of Macaulay may face criticism in modern India, but his legacy is in no danger of disappearing.
on Thursday