02 January 2005	Sunday	20 Ziqa'ad 1425

ISLAMABAD, Jan 1: The curriculum wing of the federal education ministry is working on a project to include Quaid-i- Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's political thoughts in the curriculum in the form of separate chapters, an official source told Dawn.

"The ministry has decided to include separate chapters on Mr Jinnah's political thoughts, which so far intentionally or unintentionally have not been explained accurately in the curriculum.

"Instead a few of his sayings were briefly touched upon by the curriculum developers," the source said.

At present, a student has to take Pakistan Studies as a compulsory subject to complete his/her graduation level studies.

Syllabus of Pakistan Studies starts with the independence movement and only gives a cursory sight of various events leading to the creation of Pakistan.

As far as Mr Jinnah's political wisdom was concerned, there is not enough material on it which otherwise should have been explained extensively, the source said.

For example, he never wanted a theocratic state and repeatedly through his speeches and discussions at various forums expressed that he foresaw Pakistan as a liberal and democratic Islamic state, the source added.

Whereas curriculum developers only narrated a couple of his famous addresses such as his historical speech to the constituent assembly on August 11, 1947 and never explained what he meant by that.

He (Quaid) had extensively spoken on politics, social justice system, banking sector and role of military and civil bureaucracy in the country.

"The ministry has decided to let the younger generation of the country know about his political wisdom, his contributions, his ideology so that they could follow him both in letter and spirit," the source said.

Taking into account all these deficiencies, the ministry with the help of scholars who over the years had developed expertise on Quaid-i-Azam would develop new separate chapters to be included in Pakistan Studies.