July 17, 2004

My column today is essentially about some Unesco publications on the heritage, for the beauty of which and the labour that has gone into them, no praise would be enough. In fact no words can sufficiently do justice to their contents and their get-up. But before I introduce them I would like to say something by way of background.

Some weeks ago I had submitted at the end of my article on efforts to preserve old private buildings inside Lahore’s walled city that, regrettably, our people are not conscious of the value of the national cultural heritage, that our nation as a whole suffers from lack of this consciousness. I ended the piece with the rhetorical question, “Who will educate a whole nation?”

This question will continue to overshadow all ideas about culture and cultural values in the country for a long time. It arises out of the stark fact that it is only when we grow up and come into contact with the life around us that we become aware of the importance of cultural expressions in adorning our individual personalities. It is at that time that we choose our favourite manifestation of culture — music or painting or ancient monuments and archaeology or some religious aspect. Before that, our acquaintance with culture, particularly with the heritage, is almost zero.

Writers like me continue to deplore the fact that, at the formative stage, no attempt is made to educate young boys and girls about the cultural background of Pakistan and its inhabitants. They only get a smattering of our religious culture through Islamiyaat, but even that is confined to observances and rituals and the lives of early Muslim leaders. There is no reference, for example, to the beauties of calligraphy and book illumination or the grandeur of Muslim architecture in the subcontinent and elsewhere.

I think I have said this before, but it is worth repeating. Ask any student of an English-medium school in Pakistan (what to say of a British schoolboy) to name the architect of London’s landmark, the 17th century St.Paul’s Cathedral, and he will tell you it was Sir Christopher Wren. But ask any highly-educated Pakistani grown-up, or even a scholar or writer, to tell you who designed Lahore’s magnificent Badshahi Mosque, or even the Taj Mahal and he will look blank. Why such a wide disparity in what children are taught here and what young people learn in any country of Europe?

From their earliest days in school, little ones in all advanced countries are kept informed of the cultural heritage of the nation. This is not done through a separate subject but through the normal courses on various subjects. I can never forget the “Highroads” series of books for successive classes that were used in English schools and convents before independence. I can only recall three at the moment — Highroads of history, geography and literature. Each of these books was profusely illustrated, not with photographs but well-known paintings made over the centuries, to go with the written texts. It was at once an education in the three subjects and a lesson in great art.

I don’t know what is the practice in India’s system of education but Pakistan is woefully deficient in this respect. History is taught in schools, but it is the history of monarchs and their wars and conquests and the murderous squabbles of their sons. No attempt is made to dilate on the cultural achievements in their time. Somehow Shah Jehan’s son Dara Shikoh comes to mind. He was a philosopher, a sufi, a writer and poet, in fact a great cultural personality and promoter of the arts, but history only tells us about his political rivalry with Aurangzeb.

There have been many education commissions in Pakistan which made good of foolish recommendations. But never did any of them, or any educational expert, suggest that, from the earliest classes, there should be some chapters in school books on the cultural heritage of the nation, and how to protect it and preserve it. All that school and college boys have to do with historical monuments is to go there for and spoil the ancient plaster on the walls by scratching on it their name and date of the visit, or the name of an imaginary girl friend.

I have the two Unesco publications before me: one a book and the other a set. The book is the Urdu version of “World Heritage in Young Hands,” and has been got prepared by that international body at a considerable expense and almost herculean labour such as rarely witnessed in Pakistan’s publishing world. This 159-page book is actually part of the kit for teachers on the world heritage. I praise it so profusely because translation of a semi-technical volume into good, readable and comprehensible Urdu is not an easy task. I have gone through it minutely and find not one word that is inappropriately rendered or out of place. The translation is by outstanding educationists and would do credit to a body of scholars.

Every page of the kit is full of the minutest details that a teacher must keep in mind and convey to his/her students in order to acquaint them with world heritage, with particular reference to the Pakistani sites on the World Heritage List. There must be hundreds of questions, with innumerable work sheets for students of 15-18 age to fill in on the basis of the 39 prescribed activities. As Ms Ingeborg Breines, Unesco director in Pakistan says, “It was an arduous task with many linguistic challenges... It will give young people in Pakistan an opportunity to understand their culture and to be involved in protecting and preserving it while learning to respect other cultures of the world.”

The illustrations and drawings are faultless, the printing on art paper to match the best anywhere, and the details would be mind-boggling for most teachers in this country who are as unaware of the heritage and its importance as the students. But the 64,000-dollar question is: Where are the teachers who will use this kit? Where does it fit into the education system in vogue in Pakistan? Will it ever be employed fruitfully? Why did Unesco at all take the trouble with an Urdu kit? I ask these questions because there is yet on the anvil no scheme of the culture and education ministries to incorporate chapters on the heritage in the syllabi of the connected subjects.

The other Unesco presentation, equally beautiful and competently produced, is individual brochures in Urdu on each of the seven Pakistani sites on the World Heritage List. The method is innovative and I have found even small children in my family eagerly lapping up the contents. It consists of a group of young boys and girls visiting the site in the company of their teacher who not only describes the numerous details of the site but also acquaints them with its historical background. In the many questions asked and the answers given it is the awe and excitement of the children that strikes the reader.

I have said all that I wanted to say on the subject. Let us now wait and see when the government wakes up to the need for educating schoolchildren on Pakistan’s cultural heritage. Without that whatever it does for the protection of the heritage will remain meaningless.