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Shaping a Nation: An Examination of Education in Pakistan by Stephen Lyon & Iain R. Edgar

Reviewed by Irfan Muzaffar

Pakistani state, politicians, and other stakeholders have never denied the importance of universal quality education for all children. Pakistan�s burgeoning population can be both a resource and a curse depending on the success or failure of its educational institutions (Bari, 2010). Recent constitutional amendment that declares education compulsory for all children up to the age of 16 is hailed by many as a step in the right direction. But arguably, an increasingly loud rhetoric to universalise education and improve its outcomes is also accompanied by a progressive deterioration in the capacity of the state to deliver on this rhetoric. With a burgeoning private sector in education enrolling over 40 per cent of all school going children, and with over 15 million children still out of the school, the public sector schools lie in shambles, unable to retain and educate an increasing school age population. There continues to be a debate about whether [or not] the private sector can provide an alternative to the usual mechanism of state funded and administered public schools. So far, however, the commentators agree that only by improving the educational outcomes of public sector schools would the state be able to equal the challenge of universal education(Andrabi, Das, & Khwaja, 2008; Muzaffar, 2010; Muzaffar & Bari, 2010). When education is indeed a matter of life and death for Pakistani state and society, why is it that the state persistently fails to improve it? What is critically wrong with the systems of curriculum and instruction as well as with the administration and financing of education in Pakistan? What is the proper role for religion in education? Why has

Oxford University Press 302 pp +xxii

ISBN 978-0-19-547709-2, Hard cover Rs. 695 External Research Fellow, Development Policy and Research Center, Lahore University of

Management Sciences

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education, specifically the religious or madrassa-based, come to be associated with the rising tide of militarism? These questions do not have simple answers. Nevertheless, they must be subjected to systematic multidisciplinary investigation to illuminate and inform policy and advocacy for education.

The recently published collection of papers in the edited volume being a part of a series titled Oxford in Pakistan Readings in Sociology and Social Anthropology [editor: Ali Khan of Lahore University of Management Sciences] is one such welcome attempt to raise and respond to critical questions about ways in which education, or its absence thereof, is being shaped in and in turn shaping the character of Pakistani nation. The contributions in the volume are made by both Pakistani and foreign observers of education in Pakistan. The disciplinary focus on sociology and anthropology in the series title may be misleading as the contributions go well beyond these two disciplines. They are multidisciplinary and bring to bear various disciplinary perspectives including the historical, anthropological and discourse-analytical to this much needed debate on education. The chapters in this book address the present educational concerns as well as examine Pakistan�s educational inheritance, the latter particularly with reference to madrassas and the role of religion in education.

A significant portion of the book is devoted to madrassas and a discussion on the role of Islam in education. The discussion begins with an insightful history of Deoband madrassa by Barbara Metcalf. Metcalf is a keen observer of Indian madrassas, particularly the Deoband Dar-ul-Uloom. Her earlier book length study of Dar-ul-Uloom is a comprehensive history of its early establishment and expansion (Metcalf, 1983). The claims presented in this contribution are based on her earlier work. Two of her claims mainly interest this reviewer: 1) Deoband madrassa was an �apolitical� enterprise, and 2) it made good use of modern administrative structures used by the British formal education system. Both of these characteristics, she argues, helped it grow and expand across British India. Metcalf�s description of madrassa as a modern form of educational organization should be seen in relation to its purposes, which were clearly not to adopt but resist the English influence in education. This recognition, I believe, is important to understand the present tension between the so-called mainstream and religious education.

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The emergence of a specific system of madrassas in the Sub-continent was based on a different set of aspirations than the education system promoted by the British Raj. As the introduction to Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband puts it: �[English Education] scheme of the Company was a very noxious and deadly weapon for the Muslims' religious life, communal traditions and arts and sciences that they could never bring themselves round to accepting under any circumstance�The padres' preaching activities had made conditions more perplexing and the time was not far off when the old generation of the Ulema educated in the former seminaries would have gradually vanished�These were the circumstances under which our thinkers and savants had to perceive that with political decay and debacle and deprivation of sovereignty, the Muslims' learning, religion and communal life too would soon fall into serious jeopardy.1 Thus, although Deoband was not overtly political, its establishment was substantively a political act par excellence. Deoband avoided the intervention by state by relying on donation from the community. This financial independence from the state is not just the hallmark of Deobandi madrassas, but is an abiding characteristic of madrassa systems of all stripes. The present concerns about mainstreaming of madrassas largely focus on regulating them and stop short of financial support and intervention. Thus madrassa and other so-called mainstream schools are fundamentally different inasmuch as the conditions of their birth and sustenance are concerned. A serious debate is needed to conceive viable ways of bringing the two types of education in a harmonious and productive relationship.

In the chapter immediately following Metcalf�s, her claim about the apolitical nature of Deoband is challenged by Aziz Talbani. Using the notion of �regimes of truth� drawn from the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault, Talbani describes madrassas as instruments for establishing a particular regime of truth � the so-called Islamization. He defines Islamization as consisting of fundamental changes in the power structures and social controls that legitimize and regulate knowledge and meaning in a society. Such a project, however, cannot be 'apolitical.' Talbani argues that madrassas� education project in the pre-colonial era was different. The nature of madrassa shifted under the transformation to the British colonial rule.

1 http://www.darululoom-deoband.com/english/aboutdarululoom/prev_religion.htm

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From being a supplier of human resources to the Mughal governments, the madrassa undertook the task of promoting resistance to the colonial rule. That such centres of resistance to English education, which ought to include Deoband by definition, could thrive and multiply during the British rule is a testimony to the success of their strategy of keeping the state away from their internal affairs. One wonders if the apparent omission by the post-independence education policies of Pakistan to attend to the problem of mainstreaming madrassas also be related to madrassa�s financial independence from the state?

The predominant contemporary image of madrassas is no longer that of apolitical religious seminaries. In the aftermath of the cold war and particularly after 9/11, many observers of madrassas, both inside and outside Pakistan, accuse them of promoting militaristic and extremist ideologies. Chapters by Saleem Ali and Ayaz Naseem explore connections between militarism and religious education. Ali unpacks various types of ideas about jihad that reverberate in the current curricula of madrasas. Three come across prominently: Domestic jihad against oppression and the reluctance of the state to allow for implementation of Islamic law; Pan-Islamist jihad, to help fellow Muslims in need and preserve the vitality of the Ummah; and jihad to establish theological purity and prevent adulteration of the Islamic doctrine. Of course, these are not the only interpretations of the term jihad and a deeper analysis of various interpretations taught in madrassas of different denominations could provide further insights into its discourse. However, Ali's chapter stops short of such an analysis and moves on to a rather fragmented discussion of several topics of interest. Ali�s work may, therefore, be read as a less-than-exhaustive description of a potpourri of issues surrounding the purported connection between militarism and religious education in Pakistan.

Naseem Ayaz�s chapter is concerned with the ways in which militarism is normalized through textbooks, especially by recourse to religious notions. The dominant discourses, he argues, provide the individual bodies with 'subject positions' that they are led to occupy. That is to say, individuals are educated into understanding what it means to be, say, a hero or a villain in a particular society. The militaristic, masculine and nationalistic articulation is normalized by the educational texts, thus making

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it acceptable for [male] individuals with such subject positions to be more prone to violence. Ayaz argues that once one occupies the subject positions so offered, one becomes a docile body unable to question the ways of militarism. Thus militarism comes to be seen as normal. This may be true, yet the project to normalize militarism and produce docile bodies has never really been a total success. This is evident in potent critiques of, and resistance to, the military dictatorships and democratic authoritarianisms that arise in spite of the official normalizing discourses. Laclau and Mouffe (2001), in their seminal post-structural reading of political movements, suggest that no subject position is ever complete. That is to say, it is always haunted by what it excludes. This recognition raises some important questions about the instruments through which people of Pakistan have resisted the dominant official discourses. Typically, they would be found in the cultural domains outside of the formal education. Their role in providing the Pakistani people with their much acknowledged resilience remains unexplored and untapped. Ayaz�s investigation is more concerned with normalization and less with resistance to normalization.

In the chapter on interrogating the role of Islam in education, Marie Lall describes the ways in which a pro-West foreign policy in the wake of 9/11, as well as the domestic need to project Islam as a binding force for a diverse people, has influenced the permeation of particular religious ideas in [mainstream] education curricula. Lall points out the tensions between the secular and religious impulses that shape education in Pakistan. General Zia-ul-Haq, according to her, �was aware of the discrepancies in an education system led in part by the state and in part by the mosques and pushed for the integration of both systems so that there would be one Islamic vision.� Thus, she argues, began the Islamization of the curriculum in the state funded school. The chapter seems to have been written during the reign of Musharraf, who is portrayed as walking a tight rope in his attempts to reform madrassa and mainstream education. But what is meant by reforming education in the Pakistani context? She also suggests that the balance has largely tilted toward the latter since the reign of Zia and effort to regain the balance have not been successful. I would caution the reader against a possible interpretation of her argument as suggesting a linear development of Pakistan�s education toward alignment with a particular essence. Bose and Jalal point out, �Instead of tracing the linear

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development�of authoritarianism and Islam in Pakistan, the spotlight is best focused on the historical dynamics of the transition from colonialism. This should allow for a better appreciation of the interplay between state consolidation and political processes as it was fashioned and refashioned�� (Bose & Jalal, 1999, p. 169).

Robina Saigol�s chapter on representations of 1857 reminded me of a lecture by French philosopher Bruno Latour, who, speaking about the relationship between one�s history and identity, said that we did not inherit a past but rather chose from a multiplicity of pasts available to us, our choice being guided by our present concerns. Saigol's chapter A Tale of Two Communities: Pakistani Textbook Representations of 1857 reinforces this notion by describing ways in which the uprising against the British forces in 1857 is presented as primarily a "Muslim tale of heroism and victimhood," with Hindus disappearing from the narrative altogether (p.119). As she puts it: "The textbooks...tend to reflect the greatest degree of communal and religious interpretations of history and in particular of historical struggles. The state tells ruptured tales that obscure the fact this was a war that both Hindus and Muslims fought together.� Her fascinating analysis of representations of the events of 1857 in official texts is disrupted, however, when she shifts the focus to the current social and political movements, and the chapter ends abruptly by a call for another 1857 that she hopes will lead to the development of a more democratic Pakistan, unlike the previous one that resulted in the consolidation of the Raj. In reading Saigol, it is also important to note that a textbook of history writing is an extension of the �identity� politics. Construction of identities is always a political articulation based on exclusion. The representations of Muslims and Hindus are distorted in the official histories taught in both Pakistan and India. However, textbook representations cannot be detached from the articulation of identities in sub-continent. The history texts are contested when identities also come under contestation. The conflict between multiculturalists and conservative education reformer in the US is one example of such contestation that has led to different standards for history texts in different states.2

2 I gratefully acknowledge the readings and comments by Dr. Safdar Sohail in thinking

about the relation between identity politics and the official textbook histories.

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In the chapter titled �Ruled by the Pen� Nadeem Omar Tarar asks: What does it mean to be literate? Why literacy is defined the way that it is? He describes the ways in which the Raj privileged writing over orality in its definition of what it meant to be literate. Tarar thinks that the entire apparatus of school was associated with privileging of writing: "With writing's associated with literacy, there emerged a disciplinary apparatus, the school, and intended not only to drill students to master the technique of writing and reading but also to inculcate in them the norms of the dominant." (p.177). Orality, Tarar argues, was denigrated and undermined. However, perhaps Tarar�s emphasis on this binary between literacy [with a focus on writing] and orality obscures other ways in which writing and orality existed side by side in India even before the British arrived. This analysis, based on a binary distinction, runs the risk of essentializing both the 'orality' and the 'nativeness�. It might be that writing was also privileged, though in a narrow way, within the norms of what it meant to be educated before the onset of British colonial rule in both Muslim and Hindu traditions.

The chapters by Groot, Lyon and Rehman direct the attention of readers to the disconnection between formal education and the lives of children, and the inequities in access to quality education. The ethnographies by Afke dr Groot and Stephen M. Lyon show the ways in which formal education is disconnected with the local needs and aspirations. Reading them made me recall an experience of visiting a school in a high poverty area run by a local NGO, where children were reading a lesson on �poor children,� without any indication that the lesson was also referring to their own situation. Groot and Lyon are on the mark. So is Tariq Rehman�s chapter on the enormous inequities in our education system. The lack of relevance and prevailing inequities suggest a certain rationality of public education. When the perpetuation of colonial modes of government is taken into account, the inequities pointed out by Tariq Rehman can also be interpreted as an uninterrupted legacy from the past.

Finally, Uzma Hussain�s chapter on public private partnerships (PPPs) and Rukhsana Zia�s chapter on social justice somewhat fall outside the main thrust of the volume. Hussain�s chapter seems to have been written at a time when Musharraf�s government was rolling out the

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Education Sector Reforms (ESR). She justifies PPPs with reference to the inability of the government to meet the ESR goals. A discussion on PPPs remains incomplete if it does not address the issue of scale. A description of good performance of ten schools adopted under a PPP program, which is provided by Hussain, does not help the reader see ways in which these accomplishments can help in the reform of public schools at large. Publicly expressed opinions on PPP do not usually take the scale of interventions in account, and Hussain�s chapter is no exception. Zia�s chapter takes up the important issue of social justice in relation to education. It also rightly emphasizes the importance of making quality education accessible to all children. This emphasis, as I argued above, has always been part of the rhetoric of education policies in Pakistan. It will become increasingly so in the wake of the 18th Amendment that has declared education as the fundamental right of all Pakistani children between the age of 5 and 16. Someone, however, will have to pay for financing the implication of the 18th Amendment. A deeper analysis of social justice issues will need to focus on the behaviour of Pakistan�s political economy that persistently succeeds in preserving the gap between the state�s rhetoric and reality. This, however, does not seem to be within the scope of Zia�s chapter.

The contributions in this book are useful in as much as they have raised important questions about Pakistan�s education system. There are some cons as well. The book could certainly do with a bit more editing and proof reading. An entire chapter mentioned in the introduction is missing from the main text, and the book could also do without the chapters on Public Private Partnerships and Social Justice. Nonetheless, given the rarity of quality publications on education in Pakistan, we should be thankful to OUP and the editors for bringing out this compilation.

Finally, what we learn from the volume is eerily familiar. That is to say, we are not likely to be surprised to find it that in Pakistan education is fragmented; the curriculum is irrelevant; the provision of schooling is inequitable; competing ideas about what it means to be educated are circulating within our curricula; the mainstream curriculum is contributing to the normalization of militarism; our definitions of literacy are constituted by the strategies of Pakistan�s erstwhile colonial rulers. However, if education does indeed shape the nation and thus could make or break

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Pakistan, we do need much more than a mere description of its failures. What else we need, especially in the wake of 18th amendment, is to complement such analyses as presented in this volume with positive solutions for all our myriad problems in education sector.

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References Andrabi, T., Das, J., & Khwaja, A. 2008. A Dime a Day: The Possibilities and

Limits of Private Schooling in Pakistan. Comparative Education Review, 52(3), 329-355.

Bari, F. 2010. Education Emergency, But How? The Daily Times. November 12.

Bose, S., & Jalal, A. 1999. Modern South Asia: History, Culture. Political Economy, New Delhi: Oxford.

Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. 2001. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso Books.

Metcalf, B. 1983. Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860-1900. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Muzaffar, I. 2010. Education in Pakistan: The Nickel and Dime Route to Ruin? CQE Working paper. Available online at: http://www.cqe. net.pk/pdf/The_Nickel_and_Dime_Route_to_Ruin_26.pdf

Muzaffar, I., & Bari, F. (2010). Educational Debates in Pakistan: Barking up the Wrong Tree. LUMS Social Science and Policy Bulletin, 1(4): 2-6.