Have you ever wondered why the landscapes of real Pakistan are absent from the textbooks designed for our children? Pakistan is what its federating units offer as a concrete reality. Sadly, the constructed reality of Pakistan in the textbooks doesn’t seem to have contemporary relevance as it’s based on a self-perception born of ideological strait-jacket. Scan the stuff meant for our school-going students to know the veracity of this assertion. It neatly keeps clear of our geography, rivers, wildlife, bird life, seasons, animals, and flora and fauna. Above all it shuns our history as if it’s a contagion.

The country, we all know, has diverse geographical features. It has some of the highest peaks, snow-clad mountains, hilly regions and plateaus, large swaths of flat and fertile land, sizzling deserts with large tracts of shrub, the bush, and hauntingly enchanting coastal areas. None of this is depicted and portrayed in our children’s books. It’s not mentioned even in passing.

We have one of the most important river systems gifted by nature. Sindhu is the longest river in the subcontinent fed by scores of rivers and streams in its run from north to south. Only Punjab has eight rivers if we don’t fail to add to the list the river Soan and the river Dharab. Our rivers are not just bodies of water; they have created our cities – such as Harappa, Multan, Lahore, Sialkot and Mohenjo Daro. They helped us build Harappa civilisation which was contemporary of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. It was in fact superior in terms of its human vision as it did not revolve around centrality of religion and weapons of war. It emphasised the crucial importance of agrarian production, crafts, organised urban life and trade. But it never gets a mention in the textbooks. It is as if it never existed. And this is because of our self-perception. We live happily in a world of delusion created by our view of selective history. By doing so we in fact deny the process of change/transformation which is the motive force of history.

We have historically been a region with a vast array of wild and bird life which is dwindling fast in the current hyperactive anthropocentric age. Our diverse geographical features and climatic conditions offered natural sanctuaries to wild animals and birds. From the snow leopard to the monitor lizard, from the elusive Markhor to the black bucks with their spring steps, from the Siberian cranes to the houbara bustard we had a large variety of animals and birds. Exponential population growth has destroyed their natural habitats. What is left of it is neither cared for nor introduced to our children who live in boxes made of lifeless concrete.

We have weather extremes in our terrain. In the northern region we have places that have minus temperatures round the year. In our south the temperature may go up well to 50 Celsius at times in summer. Diverse climatic conditions support a large number of crops, vegetables and fruits that form the backbone of our economy. But our children remain totally uninformed about them, especially the ones in the cities. Children in rural areas are exposed to them by default. No textbook talks of such mundane things. Remember we inherited a dynamic tradition of poetry on weather and its vagaries. The genre of classical ‘Baramah (Twelve months)’ in Punjabi literature vividly describes the subtle changes each month brings about in nature and human life.

Baba Farid, the pioneer of Punjabi literary tradition, says in one of his couplets: “ In the month of Katak, the cranes, in the month of Chet the riot of colours, in the month of Sawan the lightnings and thunder / In winter arms embracing the beloved look enchanting.”

Our children look at animals and cattle, photographed and illustrated, in the children’s books imported from the West. Only a small number of our children can afford to buy them or have access to them. Secondly, they talk of animals and cattle which are usually found and loved in the West. You will not find buffalo that has buttered our bread in Punjab and Sindh for thousands of years and is still a vital source of milk produced in the rural area and supplied to the cities. And flora? Forget it. Our indigenous flora, diverse and fragrant, never ever adorn the pages of textbooks. A child in the city can hardly name five local plants or flowers. Political and bureaucratic class has played a criminal role in ejecting our trees, creepers, wildflowers and shrubs from our city landscapes. They continue to discard local flora in favour of imported one because such a business apart from appeasing their colonially conditioned mind can offer hefty kickbacks. Local trees, bird friendly and shady, have been replaced on our boulevards and streets by imported trees which scare away birds with their poisonous secretions.

Apart from the convoluted ideological vision, absence of natural languages/mother languages from our textbooks and schools play a crucial role in alienating our children from all the natural and historical assets we as a country have. The natural language of country’s each region is subliminally connected with and expressive of its identity as a physical and historical entity.

By relegating our languages to the bin of history we cut our umbilical link with our existence as an evolved human society. The situation is the same across the country except in Sindh where mother language is taught to an extent. The end result is that our children after their schooling are no longer the members of the communities their elders belong to. In a nutshell, we lose our children by educating them. Bulleh Shah, rebel poet and saint, expressed his fear of such education in the 18th century. “ Maen pa parhiyan ton darda haan / I dread the undereducated,” he subtly warns. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2025