LAST year I felt a bit stumped when students in my news media literacy class told me they knew who Altaf Hussain was but didn’t really believe the stories about his rule in Karachi in the 1990s. Did he really order the city to shut down on a phone call, that too a rotary dial phone? How did that even work in a mobile-less, internet-less time? Did I ‘actually’ experience it?

You may be tempted to berate them for not knowing this but pause for a moment and ask: how would they know this if Altaf Hussain has been banned from screens most of their lives and, more importantly, where would they have learned this? A cursory look at how they’re taught history makes for a depressing read — it’s likely you were taught the same stories about Mohammad bin Qasim landing in Sindh or that Pakistan was made for Muslims, etc, etc. The denial of the country’s multi-religious and multicultural past has done irrevocable damage and created so much of the confusion around identity. I don’t think it’s possible to break the idea that ‘Pakistaniyat’ — even the one packaged as ‘naya’ — is firmly tied to one religion.

Instead of beating up young people for not knowing about history........

© Dawn