‘Every Pakistani has right to stick to their cultural roots’

Karachi
Humiliating Pakistanis who wish to stick to their cultural roots is a great hurdle in uniting the nation, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan chairperson Zohra Yusuf said on Saturday.
“The State must give importance to individuals and give them their due rights to end the prevailing identity crisis in the country,” she added.
Yusuf was speaking at a session titled “Nationalism and Identity in Tomorrow’s Schools” at the two-day “School of Tomorrow Educational and Cultural Festival 2015” organised by the Beaconhouse Schools System.
“As someone can be both Pashtun and Pakistani, similarly they can also be both Pakistani and Muslim,” she noted.
“It’s not about holding multiple identities, but setting priorities for the progress and development of the country.”
She said the struggle for rights in Balochistan was often confused with insurgency. “It’s a tragedy that it is seen as a security issue rather than a struggle for achieving rights.”
She said the numbers might vary but people in Balochistan had been whisked away and they were still missing.
“Unfortunately, we haven’t learnt our lessons from the fall of Dhaka.”
Anchorperson Shahzeb Khanzada, also a panellist, said the late military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq was responsible for the prevailing confusion among Pakistanis as he had mixed national identity with religion.
“This left the nation perplexed as history that only showed a one-sided and unrealistic picture was included in textbooks,” he added.
“He [Zia] did not help the Islamic ideology. Islam is a religion of peace and forgiveness, but a distorted picture of the religion was portrayed during his dictatorship by misusing its interpretations like whipping opponents in public.”
Pointing out a chapter, “Somnath Ki Fatah”, in the Urdu textbook of the 10th grade of the Sindh Text Board, he said it was a disaster to teach such texts to the youth.
“After reading Somnath Ki Fatah in matric, I have read about six or seven books on Mahmud Ghaznavi and I came across a very different depiction of him than what we were taught in our textbook,” he added.
He believed that the history should not be merged with religion.
“Unfortunately, we have been using religion emotionally to justify our history, which is a disservice to the religion as well.”
Countering the argument made a panellist that Pakistani students had become more aware about the currents issues of the world, he said a vast majority of students in the rural parts of the country were still unaware of the real situation.
“During my visits to the interior parts of the country, I found a person with baseless arguments over terrorism,” he noted.
Educationist Saima Zaidi believed that teachers at universities could make an effort to teach history in a broader way, discussing multiple sides of it to let students use their own intellect and reasoning process.