The Murder of History : A Critique of History Textbooks used in Pakistan By K K Aziz

Khursheed Kamal Aziz (11 December 1927, Ballamabad, British India – 15 July 2009, Lahore, Pakistan) better known as K. K. Aziz, was a Pakistani historian, admired for his books written in the English Language. However, he also wrote Urdu prose and was a staunch believer in the importance of the Persian language to enhance one's knowledge about the world.

Aziz was born to Abdul Aziz, a barrister and a historian in his own right. He received his early education from the M.B. High School in Batala and then went to Forman Christian College and finally Government College Lahore for graduation. Later he completed his studies at Victoria University in Manchester, UK.

Aziz taught at various reputed institutions such as the universities of Cambridge, London, Heidelberg, Khartoum and the Punjab University in Pakistan. He also delivered occasional lectures at universities in Pakistan: Karachi, Peshawar, Islamabad; Bangladesh: Dacca; United Kingdom: Hull, New Castle upon Tyne and Oxford; Switzerland: Geneva and Bergen.

He worked as an advisor to Z. A. Bhutto and was the chairman of the National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research. His career came to an abrupt halt when Z. A. Bhutto was deposed and he was ultimately made to leave the country. He returned his "Sitara e Imtiaz" in protest of this treatment.

Few Examples from the books is given below.

SIR MUHAMMAD IQBAL

He took his doctorate in philosophy in England (NWFP, classes 5 and 7). He received his higher education at Cambridge and London Universities (private, Lahore, English, class 3). He took a degree in Barristery in England (NWFP, claa5;Sind,class5; NWFP, class 7).He took his degree in law in England (private, Lahore, B.A.).

In the Order in which wrong information is imparted:

(1) He took his doctorate in philosophy from the university of Munich in Germany.

(2) The Universityof  Cambridge gave him a certificate of Research, which is not a degree. He never studied at university of London.

(3) To be called to the bar at inn of court is not to earn a degree. A barrister is neither a graduate nor the holder of any other degree.

(4) He did not take any degree in law in any country . He was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1908, and that was that.

THERE ARE NO MUSLIMS IN INDIA

Bharat is the country of Non-Muslims (private, Lahore, English, class 3).

I don’t have exact figures available to me as I write this, But I am sure the no. of muslims in India is larger than the total population of Pakistan; which makes India bigger “Muslim Country” than Pakistan. I don’t understand logic or necessity of making this statement, except to convince class 3 students that India is an enemy state.

MUHAMMAD ALI JINNAH

He earned a degree in law in England (West Punjab, Class2; NWFP, class 7; private, Lahore, English, B.A.). He earned a superior and high degree in law in English (NWFP, class 4; Sind class4). He received his higher education in England (private, Karachi, class 2). In August 1947 a grateful nation made him the Governor General of Pakistan (private, Lahore, English, class7).

Corrections:

(1) He did not take any degree in law, in England or elsewhere.

(2) The “superior and high degree in law” is a figment of the textbook’s imagination.

(3) He did not receive his “higher education” in England. He was merely called to bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1896. Why can n’t Pakistani professors understand that to become a barrister is not to earn a degree?

(4)  The grateful nation did not make him the Governor general either through nomination or by election. He selected himself for the office, and he was appointed by the British King.

Our Ancestors arrived from Arabian Peninsula

This claim has been made by the Ghairat Brigade since long. They have tried to downplay the linkages that we have with our subcontinental ancestors and tried via popular media and textbooks to somehow prove that our ancestors were not people living in the Subcontinent for thousands of years rather they came from the Arabian Peninsula.

A look at the genealogies of two of our founding fathers i.e Jinnah and Iqbal tells us that Mr. Jinnah belonged to a Sindhi family that had migrated to Gujarat.(Akbar S Ahmad, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity; Routledge, 1997; Chapter 1,page 1 ) while Iqbal belonged to a Kashmiri Sheikh family. Also, there was a considerable population consisting of Jatts and Gujjars before Islam came to our part of the world. Most of us are descendents of those early converts. The people most likely to have come down from Arabia are the Syeds who claim to be direct descendents from the Prophet (PBUH). Interestingly, in a research conduted by University College London, Y chromosomes of self-identified Syeds from the Indian subcontinent show evidence of elevated Arab ancestry but not of a recent common patrilineal origin For more on the castes of our country.

Jinnah was born Mahomedali Jinnahbhai,[a] most likely in 1876,[b] to Jinnahbhai Poonja and his wife Mithibai, in a rented apartment on the second floor of Wazir Mansion, Karachi. Jinnah's birthplace is in Sindh, a region today part of Pakistan, but then within the Bombay Presidency of British India. Jinnah was a Gujarati Khoja Muslim of Lohana ancestry. His forefathers were Hindus whom converted to Islam. His father was a prosperous merchant who had been born to a family of weavers in the village of Paneli in the princely state of Gondal (Kathiawar, Gujarat); his mother was also of that village. They had moved to Karachi in 1875, having married before their departure. Karachi was then enjoying an economic boom: the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 meant it was 200 nautical miles closer to Europe for shipping than Bombay. Jinnah's family was of the Ismaili Khoja branch of Shi'a Islam. 

The French Revolution : The Abolition of Slavery - Haitian Revolution

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Since the revolutionaries explicitly proclaimed liberty as their highest ideal, slavery was bound to come into question during the French Revolution. Even before 1789 critics had attacked the slave trade and slavery in the colonies. France had several colonies in the Caribbean in which slavery supported a plantation economy that produced sugar, coffee, and cotton. The most important of these colonies was Saint Domingue (later Haiti), which had 500,000 slaves, 32,000 whites, and 28,000 free blacks (which included both blacks and mulattos). Some free blacks owned slaves; in fact, the free blacks owned one-third of the plantation property and one-quarter of the slaves in Saint Domingue, though they could not hold public office or practice many professions (medicine, for example).

The slave system in the colonies was regulated by a series of royal edicts, the most important of which was promulgated by Louis XIV in 1685. Taken together, the edicts constituted the Code noir, or slave code. This code prescribed a harsh regime of penalties for slaves who resisted their captivity, especially if they tried to harm their masters in any way. Saint Domingue provided extraordinary sources of wealth to the French. To protect their investments, French slaveholders had to learn at least a minimal amount about their slaves. One of the most astute commentators, Médéric-Louis-Elie Moreau de Saint-Méry, wrote a massive two-volume work on life in Saint Domingue in the 1780s. He described many of the features of slave life that worried slaveholders, including voodoo imported from Africa, the presence of many people of mixed race (mulattos), the threat of slaves becoming Maroons (runaways), and the intense fear among slaveholders that their slaves would try to poison them. After the French Revolution broke out, planters looked back on pre-1789 conditions, trying to understand how slavery might have been better organized. Their observations provide yet another contemporary perspective on the plantation and slave system.

The Caribbean colonies were quick to respond to the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789. The white planters of Saint Domingue sent delegates to France to demand representation at the new National Assembly, as did the mulattos. Several prominent deputies in the National Assembly belonged to the Society of the Friends of Blacks, which put forth proposals for the abolition of the slave trade and the amelioration of the lot of slaves in the colonies. When these proposals fell on deaf ears, some deputies sympathetic to blacks turned to arguing that full civil and political rights should be granted to free blacks in the colonies. Before long, radical journalists in Paris began to take up the cause of black slaves, pushing for the abolition of slavery, or at least for a more positive view of the Africans. The pioneering feminist and playwright, Olympe de Gouges, also wrote a pamphlet challenging the colonial pro-slavery lobby to improve the lot of the blacks.

As the agitation in favor of granting rights to free blacks and abolishing the slave trade gathered steam, the colonies became filled with uncertainty and expectations began rising, especially among the free blacks and mulattos. In response, the white planters mounted their own counterattack and even contemplated demanding independence from France. Less is known about the views of the slaves because hardly any of them could read or write, but the royal governor of Saint Domingue expressed concern about the effects of the Revolution on the colony's slaves. In October 1789 he reported that the slaves considered the new revolutionary cockade (a decoration made up of red, white, and blue ribbons worn by supporters of the Revolution) a "signal of the manumission of the whites . . . the blacks all share an idea that struck them spontaneously: that the white slaves kill their masters and now free they govern themselves and regain possession of the land." In other words, the black slaves hoped to follow in the footsteps of their white predecessors, freeing themselves, killing their masters, and taking over the land.

Most deputies feared the effects of the loss of commerce that would result from either the abolition of slavery or the elimination of the slave trade. Fabulous wealth depended on slavery, as did shipbuilding, sugar-refining, and a host of subsidiary industries. Slaveowners and shippers did not intend to give up their prospects without a fight. The U.S. refusal to give up slavery or the slave trade provided added ammunition to support their position.

References:

https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/chap8a.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution (Best on this issue)
The white planters who derived their wealth from the sale of slave-produced sugar knew they were outnumbered by slaves by a factor of more than ten; they lived in fear of slave rebellion. White masters extensively used the threat of physical violence to maintain control and limit this possibility for slave rebellion. When slaves left the plantations or disobeyed their masters, they were subject to whipping, or to more extreme torture such as castration or burning, the punishment being both a personal lesson and a warning for other slaves. Louis XIV, the French King, passed the Code Noir in 1685 in an attempt to regulate such violence and the treatment of slaves in general in the colony, but masters openly and consistently broke the code, and local legislation reversed parts of it throughout the 18th century.

Which Metal Alloys Used for Euro Coins ?

On January 1st, 2002 the euro became the single legal currency in twelve European countries; since that date, several other nations have also joined the European monetary union, and have adopted the euro as their official currency. Euro coins are minted in eight different denominations: 2 and 1 euros, as well as 50, 20, 10, 5, 2, and 1 cent euros. Each coin has a common design on one face, whereas the reverse face design is one of several chosen by the monetary union countries. 

In deciding which metal alloys to use for these coins, a number of issues were considered; most of them centered on material properties.

1. The ability to distinguish a coin of one denomination from that of another denomination is important. This may be accomplished by having coins of different sizes, different colors, and different shapes. With regard to color, alloys must be chosen that retain their distinctive colors, which means that they do not easily tarnish in the air and other commonly encountered environments.

2. Security is an important issue—that is, producing coins that are difficult to counterfeit. Most vending machines use electrical conductivity to identify coins, to prevent false coins from being used. This means that each coin must have its own unique “electronic signature,” which depends on its alloy composition.

3. The alloys chosen must be “coinable” or easy to mint—that is, sufficiently soft and ductile to allow design reliefs to be stamped into the coin surfaces.

4. Also, the alloys must be wear resistant (i.e., hard and strong) for long-term use, and so that the reliefs stamped into the coin surfaces are retained. Of course, strain-hardening occurs during the stamping operation which enhances hardness.

5. High degrees of corrosion resistance in common environments are required for the alloys selected, to ensure minimal material losses over the lifetimes of the coins.

6. It is highly desirable to use alloys of a base metal (or metals) that retains (retain) its (their) intrinsic value(s).

7. Alloy recyclability is another requirement for the alloy(s) used.

8. The alloy(s) from which the coins are made should also provide for human health—that is, have antibacterial characteristics so undesirable microorganisms will not grow on their surfaces.

Copper was selected as the base metal for all euro coins, inasmuch as it and its alloys satisfy the above criteria. Several different copper alloys and alloy combinations are used for the eight different coins. These are as follows:

Value	Image (2007 - present)	Main Colour		Secondary Colour		Diameter (mm)	Thickness (mm)	Mass (g)	Shape	Composition	Edge
€0.01			Bronze		None	16.25	1.67	2.30	Round	Copper-covered steel	Smooth
€0.02			Bronze		None	18.75	1.67	3.06	Round	Copper-covered steel	Smooth with a groove
€0.05			Bronze		None	21.25	1.67	3.92	Round	Copper-covered steel	Smooth
€0.10			Gold		None	19.75	1.93	4.10	Round	Nordic gold	Shaped edge with fine scallops
€0.20			Gold		None	22.25	2.14	5.74	Spanish flower	Nordic gold	Plain
€0.50			Gold		None	24.25	2.38	7.80	Round	Nordic gold	Shaped edge with fine scallops
€1.00			Silver		Gold	23.25	2.33	7.50	Round	Outer part: nickel brass Inner part: Layers of copper-nickel, nickel, copper-nickel	Interrupted milled
€2.00			Gold		Silver	25.75	2.20	8.50	Round	Outer part: copper-nickel Inner part: Layers of nickel brass, nickel, nickel brass.	Edge lettering, fine milled

2 euro coin: This coin is termed “bimetallic”—it consists of an outer ring and an inner disk. For the outer ring, a 75%Cu–25%Ni alloy is used, which has a silver color. The inner disk is composed of a three-layer structure—high-purity nickel that is clad on both sides with a nickel brass alloy (75%Cu–20%Zn–5%Ni); this alloy has a gold color.

1 euro coin: This coin is also bimetallic, whereas the alloys used for its outer ring and inner disk are reversed from those for the 2 euro.

50, 20, and 10 euro cent pieces: These coins are made of a “Nordic Gold”alloy—89%Cu– 5%Al–5%Zn–1%Sn.

5, 2, and 1 euro cent pieces: Copper-plated steels are used for these coins.

Reference:

http://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/coins/common/html/index.en.html

Book: Materials Science and Engineering William D. Callister, Jr

CONSTITUTION OF INDIA: Fundamental Duties and Fundamental Rights of Citizen

CONSTITUTION OF INDIA

Part IV A (Article 51 A)

Fundamental Duties

Fundamental Duties – It shall be the duty of every citizen of India —

(a) To abide by the Constitution and respect its ideals and institutions, the National

Flag and the National Anthem;

(b) To cherish and follow the noble ideals which inspired our national struggle for

freedom;

(c) To uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India;

(d)To defend the country and render national service when called upon to do so;

(e) To promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people

of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities; to

renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women;

(f) To value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture;

(g) To protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers,

wildlife and to have compassion for living creatures;

(h) To develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform;

(i)To safeguard public property and to abjure violence;

(j) To strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity so

that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of endeavour and achievement;

(k)Who is a parent or guardian, to provide opportunities for education to his child or,

as the case may be, ward between the age of six and fourteen years.

CONSTITUTION OF INDIA

Part III (Articles 12 – 35)

(Subject to certain conditions, some exceptions

and reasonable restrictions)

guarantees these

Fundamental Rights

Right to Equality

• before law and equal protection of laws;

• irrespective of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth;

• of opportunity in public employment;

• by abolition of untouchability and titles.

Right to Freedom

• of expression, assembly, association, movement, residence and profession;

• of certain protections in respect of conviction for offences;

• of protection of life and personal liberty;

• of free and compulsory education for children between the age of six and fourteen years;

• of protection against arrest and detention in certain cases.

Right against Exploitation

• for prohibition of traffic in human beings and forced labour;

• for prohibition of employment of children in hazardous jobs.

Right to Freedom of Religion

• freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion;

• freedom to manage religious affairs;

• freedom as to payment of taxes for promotion of any particular religion;

• freedom as to attendance at religious instruction or religious worship in educational

institutions wholly maintained by the State.

Cultural and Educational Rights

• for protection of interests of minorities to conserve their language, script and culture;

• for minorities to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice.

Right to Constitutional Remedies

• by issuance of directions or orders or writs by the Supreme Court and High

Courts for enforcement of these Fundamental Rights.