KARACHI, Oct 20: Speakers at the inaugural session of the Pakistan History Conference, celebrating the golden jubilee session of the Pakistan Historical Society, on Saturday stressed the need for teaching history, particularly Muslim history, in an effective manner, deploring the fact that the reason why history as a university subject had lost favour with students was that it was not job-oriented.

The PHF is organizing a two-day conference in collaboration with the Hamdard Foundation Pakistan, Hamdard University and the University of Karachi.

Delivering the welcome address, the president of the Pakistan Historical Society and the Hamdard Foundation Pakistan, Sadia Rashid, said the PHS had been publishing history books and translating source material for the past 50 years. She saidthe PHS was considering initiating a research and publication plan under which a one-volume history of the Pakistan Movement, as well as an authentic history of South Asia, would be written.

The PHS general-secretary, Prof Dr Ansar Zahid Khan, presented a report on the achievements of the PHS. He said the PHS, which had been established in 1950, had published 85 books in the form of monographs, texts of original sources and translations, such as Bahr al-Asrar, Kotwal’s Diary of Happenings in 1857 and Tabaqat ibn Sa’d.

The vice-chancellor of Karachi University, Prof Dr Zafar Saeid Saify, said it was heartening to know that as many as 50 scholars were taking part in the history conference.

He congratulated the organizers of the conference on going ahead with the conference at a time when a large number of events had been postponed due to the situation in Asia.

The KU vice-chancellor said the Muslims had contributed greatly towards history-writing.

The vice-chancellor of Hamdard University, Prof Dr Ismail Saad, said the late Hakim Mohammad Said had been both a visionary and a practical person.

Hakim Said had been perturbed over the fact many old books written by Muslim luminaries were present in the libraries in the West. He had taken upon himself the task of publishing those books in the country.

The Hamdard University vice-chancellor stressed the need for a greater cooperation between the University of Karachi and private-sector universities.

Prof Riazul Islam, emeritus professor, Institute Central and West Asian Studies, University of Karachi, said the neglect of history as a branch of knowledge was not a good sign. He cited the examples of India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka where history was still a popular subject. He added that in Iran history-reading was immensely popular.

He said there were various reasons for the decline of Muslim history as a subject. One of the reasons was that most sources were in the Persian language which was no longer understood by students.

Reading out his paper, titled “Foundations of Talpur Power in Sindh”, the vice-chancellor of Sindh University, Prof Dr N.A. Baloch, said the colonial rulers had painted a dark picture of their predecessors during more than one hundred years (1843-1947) of their occupation of Sindh. They, he added, in their writings and record tarnished the image of the Talpurs, who had ruled Sindh for more than 60 years, beginning from AD 1782 to AD 1843.

“An example may be cited of the views expressed by the learned Dr H.T. Sorely who was known to be fair-minded among the colonial bureaucrats. Writing in the Gazetteer of Sindh in 1954, long after the eclipse of the Talpurs, while he pays compliments to them occasionally he discredits them more frequently.

“After complimenting that in 1795 the Talpurs recovered Karachi from the Khan of Kalat, in 1813 they wrested Umarkot from Jodhpur and in 1804 took back Shikarpur from the Afghans, he further said: ‘By the possession of Shikarur and Sukkur and the neighbouring territory, the Mirs completed their design of making Sindh one single unit under their control. Thereafter, they maintained their authority in a manner which Sindh had not known for centuries.’

“And yet he continues to refer to the Baloch-Sindhi differential, even though it was created by the colonial ruler to divide the hitherto integrated Sindhian society for strengthening their own hold on the country,” said Dr Baloch.

He quoted another example of Richard Burton, the author of ”Sindh and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of the Indus”. He said: “...the learned Richard Burton who recognized the spread of education during the Talpur period...and yet when he wrote of the Talpurs he chose to caricature them crudely.”

The PHS gave fellowship mementos to 13 scholars in recognition of their research. Prof Dr Shariful Mujahid, Prof Dr Inamul Haq Kausar, Prof Sher Khurshid Hasan, Prof Hasnain Kazimi, Prof Dr Yousuf Abbas Hashmi, Prof Shafqat Hussain Rizvi, Prof Dr Ansar Zahid Khan, Prof Dr Riazul Islam, Prof Dr N.A. Baloch received the fellowship mementos.

The PHS also launched the following five books: Letters to the Quaid-i-Azam Book II (1940-43), Kitab al-Jamahir fi Ma’rifat al-Jawahir by Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, A Brief History of Mediaeval History Muslim Egypt 639-1517 AD, Muhammad The Messenger of Allah, and Bachon kay Hakim Said.