ISLAMABAD, April 29: A conference here on Saturday stressed the need for rewriting the South Asian history distorted by states to build up a sense of exaggerated pride in their achievements and spread hatred against each other.

The South Asian Journal Conference of the South Asian Policy Analysis Network here on Saturday also expressed its grave concerns over the inability of the region’s scholars and social scientists to address each other’s work and share common intellectual space. They said there was nothing to bring them together: no common journals, debates or events.

Visalakshi Menon, Reader, Department of History at the Jesus and Mary College, New Delhi, highlighted the role of states in distorting regional history. She stressed the rewriting of textbooks and evolving of a common history for the region which was unbiased and true. She also discussed the hurdles in the way of such a process.

Since 2000, she added, India had made a lot of progress in reforming its texts amid massive public debate. The example should be followed by other states to achieve the ultimate goal of regional integration in terms of history and social sciences.

During group discussions, educationists and experts said students in Asia had started regarding history as a useless subject, which was really disturbing.

Baela Raza Jamil, an educationist, stressed the need for a marathon public debate on the issue of changes in the curriculum in Pakistan. She said during the ongoing process of curriculum changes initiated by the present government, no public voice was included in the decision-making process. She feared that the end products of such a process could not be acceptable to the people.

In Pakistan, she said, the objective of teaching history, especially since the Bhutto era, was to develop an abiding love for Pakistan and Islamic culture. Mr Bhutto replaced history with Pakistan Studies and made it compulsory, a subject which portrayed India as an enemy state sitting at the fountainhead of Pakistan’s river system and Hindus as backward and superstitious.