Censorship in Pakistani Urdu Textbooks : Ajmal Kamal

The authorities’ initiative to impose censorship through legislative means dates back to the Public Safety Act Ordinance imposed in October 1948, and later, in 1952, ratified by the first Constituent Assembly of Pakistan as the Safety Act. Apart from numberless political workers, newspapers, and periodicals, the leading literary journals too fell victim to this oppressive piece of legislation which was only the first in a long series of such laws. In fact, Savera (Lahore) has the dubious honor of being the first periodical of any kind to be banned, in 1948..


The infamous Safety Act had well-known literary people on both sides. On the one hand, literary critics such as Muhammad Hasan Askari found the law perfectly justifiable...On the other hand, there were writers and editors who were prosecuted under this law, Saadat Hasan Manto perhaps being the most prominent among them. (For details of Manto’s trials, see his Lazzat-e Sang, Lahore: Naya Idara, 1956.) Manto’s writing had had a history of attracting the wrath of the authorities for its downright honest and realistic portrayal of life and its stinging moral and political comment. He had been prosecuted under the British colonial government for publishing the short stories “Dhuvan” and “Kali Shalvar.”.


A particularly harmful expression of this intolerant and myopic policy has been felt in the field of education, more specifically in the preparation and dispensation of textbooks for Pakistani students...In his commendable work, aptly named The Murder of History in Pakistan, Dr. Aziz has painstakingly carried out a detailed analysis of the revolting mixture of half-truths, distorted facts, harrowing omissions, blatant lies, and ugly governmental propaganda dished out as “history” to scores of unsuspecting students...In an ideological state such as Pakistan, the revision of history to further the aims of those who happen to be in power at a given time should surprise no one. The rewriting of texts is not limited to the technically non-existent subject of “history” alone. It frequently spills over into other fields as well—for instance, literature. Needless to say, the respectable compilers and editors, contracted by the Board for the purpose, tacitly know what is expected of them, their submissive and unquestioning cooperation matched only by officials working for government departments..

I would like to give three significant examples of this process of officially sanctioned revisionism—two examples that appear in Part I of the Gulzar, and one more, in some detail, from Part II. My aim is to show that literary texts are unhesitatingly censored, without any kind of indication or explanation, to make them conform to the official outlook.

In Part I, Premchand, who was included in the textbook for Class XI before it was revised, has been dropped altogether. Given his pioneering contribution to the development of modern Urdu fiction, one can think of no reason for Premchand’s exclusion except that he was a non-Muslim. This exclusion may be regarded as analogous to attempts made by several literary historians and critics who, ashamed or unable to accept a Hindu as the first short story writer of Urdu, have replaced him with a writer of more acceptable beliefs, if not of comparable merit. Lacking both the means and the intention to defend Premchand against these learned efforts, I would nevertheless point to his more secure status as the first Urdu fiction writer of any consequence. The other victim of the revisionist hatchet in Part I is Khvaja Hasan Niizmi. In his case, certain key words and phrases have been unwarrantedly removed from his piece “Thhele-wala Shahzada.” .. Read more at :<http://sacw.net/article2348.html>

More articles on ideological censorship and propaganda in Pakistan:
The ideology of thought control: <http://sacw.net/article2216.html>
Pakistan: When hatred seeps into classrooms <http://sacw.net/article2328.html>

Textbooks as primers for extremism <http://sacw.net/article1876.html>