The Truth is Out There

Throughout history, notable events have occured when people have found a way to challenge the status quo often by opposing (even breaking with) social customs and the law. I'm not on that level of opposition so in some respects, I am to blame for developing a sense of 'switchedoffness'. I should challenge what is not right or what conflicts with my inner beliefs. I have the power of protest because of where I live and should use it, I remind myself. I was raised in a democracy and presumably I have the freedom of speech that others don't. Privileges that make me fortunate as well as responsibilities that come with those privileges.

And yet a few days back, I sat through a very uncomfortable meeting on the matter of 'extremism'.  You know, the whole argument about anti-establishment information being drip fed into young minds by anti-state agents. Typically, Islam comes up (in truth, isn't Islamic ideology what this is all about?) though they throw in the other objectionable - right-wing Nazi-sympathy - (a late addition to the topic) as some kind of neutralising factor so that the Muslims in the audience don't feel that they are under seige.

It's true; extremists exist. And they do much damage - take a look at Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria etc. There must be a counter narrative to challenge blinkered thinking - a free education system that allows people to make up their own minds in these places - sometimes backed with counter actions (intelligence). But on this occasion I sat through this meeting, democracy, freedom and all, and I felt like the most disempowered person there is. I remained silent, unable to speak up but also torn between what I know/feel is happening to what I am being told. My problem is that continually, the freedom to speak out in protest of government policy, to voice an alternative view, is being marginilised under the weight of the media that cherry picks its commentary when reporting major world events. Remember, they filter the news for us and as most people passively consume, we don't often think about the after effects.

Why is it that the popular counter narrative to extremism (headed by the likes of Malala Yousafzai etc.) now feel like the conflict of an old establishment with its own less-than-benevolent interests against newer forms of protest against them? Why is it, that despite my clear revulsion at the tactics employed by militants (Taliban, Boko Haram* etc.), I think that there is an argument that they should be part of the dialogue for building long term peace? Why is it that I just don't trust the media, the motives of governments driven by capital interests and their third world stooges when they claim that they are fighting for 'freedom' and 'democracy'?

Damn it. I live in a democracy, but dare I speak in favour of something that runs counter to the popular narrative, then I'll be lumped with the extremists that I object. Despite the hundreds of TV channels, most converge at the same place. And despite the millions of websites, the vast majority again, spout a narrative that has been predecided. Dare anyone seek an alternative view? IPs are tracked, web-searches are indexed and profiles are built. It begins, over time, to erode one's confidence to speak up and certainly affects my confidence in state instutions. I'm reluctant now to believe in much of what I'm being told and have learned the art of silence. Extremists/counter-extremists; I don't think that we are in a safer, better world, but not for the reasons that we are told. In a way, my freedom of thought is my most precious freedom, but it is isolating and useless without the freedom to speak up.

The truth, as they say, is out there.

 Image: The Haunted Man

*Read here for an alternative on the Nigeria situation: 'Dear World, Hashtags won't #BringBackOurGirls'

'Free' Schools

I learned a long time ago to trust my own judgement and instincts and this has been at odds with the system I have found myself in over the recent past. In fact, over the last year, one of the things I have increasingly noticed about schools is how conditioned teachers can be. I don't know about others, but I resent operating within a straight-jacketed learning environment. So, last week, when I was offered another role at another school outside the state system, I confess to some sense of relief. It remains to be seen how much there will be an attempt to quash individuality, but having worked in three continents in many schools delivering different curricula, I think it is fair to say that I am able to pick and choose with some sense of informed accuracy and experience.

The demand for alternative types of schooling indicates how many of us believe that there are many forms of education that offer a much wider (or specific) set of experiences for acquiring skills and knowledge. Within this broad range, in schools that do not operate under direct state or local authority control (such as free schools, academies, home-schooling, independent schools etc.), a 'teacher' may not have a state-issued certificate or teaching license.

How important is this? In short, a teacher is someone who inspires, motivates, cares, and is willing to impart their skills and knowledge. By virtue, anyone who does this, from parent, to a highly-skilled artist, to a classroom practitioner or a colleague, is a teacher. It is not necessarily someone who has spent hours studying at an institution being trained in pedagogy and educational ideology. In fact this process of training may institutionalise them and narrow them as teachers by removing their openness and passion.

It is rather surprising then that the Deputy PM, Nick Clegg should have spoken this week about ensuring that all teachers in free schools needing to be 'qualified' (i.e.'certified'). Do we mean ideologically programmed to lack an alternative view? This too, from a man who was educated privately (that is, outside the state system) where there are more creative educational freedoms? It all sounds rather hypocritical, both for him to speak and for him to expect. I speak as a 'certified'/'qualified' teacher (UK/EU) who is passionate about the rights of educators for sound pay and conditions where clearly that is not what he is speaking of.

There has been something of an understandable media backlash over the past few weeks on 'free schools' following investigations into mismanagement, quality of service or misappropriation of budgets. I am not here to defend this or previous government's educational policies and understand that there is that element of controversy when it comes to public money being spent on alternative education. That is a completely separate issue. I strongly believe, however, in the principle that freedom in education is what makes it so appealing and worth fighting for and that many of the most enriching experiences for children/students do not necessarily stem from the institutionalised forms of education.

Still from: Another Brick in the Wall Pt 2 (Education) by Pink Floyd
Further Opinion: Nick Clegg and his thoughts on Qualified Teachers

Two-Nation Theory II

... continued from previous posting ... 

Despite its vociferous campaign Muslim League could not ignite fears of Hindu domination in the support base of Bacha Khan. His comrades won the land mark elections of 1946 with a thumping majority. He opposed the Partition on the basis of religion, but it happened. His democratically elected government was dismissed 8 days after the independence, on 22 August, 1947 when Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the Governor General and Liaqat Ali Khan was the Prime Minister.

Nawabzada Liaqat Ali Khan was five-years younger to Bacha Khan. He was born in 1895 to a Muslim aristocrat family whose jagir starting at the eastern edge of Punjab (now Haryana) stretched into Uttar Pradesh. His family had cordial relations with the British. Some say the family gained fortunes and earned intimacy with the Raj, when his grandfather extended support to the British during the hard times of 1857. His father earned many a titles and honors too.

Liaqat Ali went to Aligarh and then to Oxford. On his return from London in 1923, he joined Muslim League. He contested his first elections in 1926 on a seat reserved for Muslims in the UP Assembly (Muzaffarnagar constituency) and comfortably won. He grew into an eloquent parliamentarian, pleading mostly for the causes of Muslim landlords who were a minority in that province.

He became one of the most important members of the Muslim League’s vanguard. Nawabzada is, in fact, credited to have convinced a dejected and disappointed Muhammad Ali Jinnah to end his ‘self-imposed exile’ in London and lead the movement for a separate homeland for Muslims. Liaqat Ali Khan was made the General Secretary of the Muslim League in 1936.

The party’s parliamentary committee did not award him the ticket for the 1936 elections for his home constituency which he valued highly. Despite holding a high office in the Muslim League, he contested as an independent from his home constituency and faced criticism of fellow party men.

He contested the 1946 elections for the Central Legislative Assembly on the Muslim seat of Meerut that is situated in Uttar Pradesh. Following this victory, Nawabzada won a place in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan and at independence was made the first Prime Minister with the additional charge of Foreign Affairs and Commonwealth Relations and Defense. He remained the longest serving prime minister in the history of Pakistan till Yousuf Raza Gilani exceeded him by a few weeks recently.

Prime Minister Liaqat Ali is accredited with a number of ground breaking contributions. He decided to ally with the US in the Cold War divide; quashed a coup attempt by communists; promoted General Ayub to the highest rank and fought a war with India over Kashmir to name just a select few. His government ruled on ad hoc basis under temporary laws as it could not formulate and build a consensus on a constitution for the country.

Reasons were simple. They could not dig out a monarchy to rule the country nor could they install a Caliph. The constitution has to be based on democracy. But the problem was that Meerut was now in India. The most powerful Prime Minister serving for one of the longest periods in the history of Pakistan had no constituency in the country to contest elections from. A committed democrat and an active parliamentarian, he  knew well that he and his political class had no, or at best a very shaky, future under a democracy. In contrast, Bacha Khan’s was a completely secure political position. It was impossible to democratically uproot him from his constituency. He had voters, volunteers and diehard loyalists.

The ad hoc powers were thus used to change the rules of the game.

Six months after the death of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan moved the Objective Resolution in the Constituent Assembly that introduced Islam as the raison d’être of the new country. Religion was pitched against ones linguistic and cultural identity and faith was made to rival political interests. Those loving their culture, defending their language and demanding their democratic and political rights on these bases became heretics conspiring against the last citadel of Islam in the Subcontinent. Ideological boundaries of the country became more important than the limits of electoral constituencies and principles of democracy were contrasted to injunctions of Islam as defined by the select ulema.

Bacha Khan who enjoyed a hard earned and unflinching popular support in a vast constituency went down in our official gazettes as an anti-Pakistan traitor. Red Shirts were hounded and hunted. Politicians were jailed and elections were rigged.

By declaring the entire country as one constituency and setting ones perceived Islamic credentials as the only qualification, Liaqat Ali Khan tried to create a constituency for his class – the politically insecure Muslim elite that had migrated from the Muslim minority provinces of India. But ironically, they could not sustain their hold on this constituency for long. Within a decade they were outdone by the Army in the game they had pioneered. They were declared incapable of defending the citadel of Islam. The army took over the ‘responsibility’ of keeping the country united in the name of Islam and secure from the conspirators who had strong democratic constituencies in the country.

The army did not feel the need to redraft the national narrative that was scripted in those initial years. It was found to be in perfect harmony with the Army’s own scheme to block or cripple democracy and sustain its direct or indirect rule for decades to come. The narrative persists with all its detail and corollaries and insists on its refusal to recognise Bacha Khan as a great national hero.

Two-Nation Theory I

This write up is taken from an article in the Dawn newspaper by Tehir Mehdi. It challenges the Two-Nation Theory that is cited as the raison d'être of Pakistan. Interestingly it makes the point that despite Bacha Khan remaining a pious Muslim he did not harbour the antagonisms that fuelled partition. For this reason and the cultural closeness to Afghanistan, the Khudai Khidmatgars were viewed as having not accepted the Two Nation theory. Bacha Khan and Pashtoons of the Khudai Khidmatgars were systematically jailed under charges of treason and their contributions to the Free India movement were written out of the texts of Pakistan history.

When someone says ‘Muslims of Indo-Pak subcontinent’ with reference to our history, does this refer to one unanimous, monolithic block of people with no shades and diversity? I think it’s a big folly to ignore how divergent the political interests and ambitions of Muslims were in the period that ended on this day 65 years ago. A reintroduction to these groups and how the new state of Pakistan responded to their political aspirations might help us understand where we stand now.

Pre-partition Muslims can be classified in many ways. For now I would put them into two larger groups and instead of laboring over an academically-sound definition of each, I will demonstrate my point by offering example of one person from each of these two groups.

Abdul Ghaffar Khan was born in 1890 to rural middle-class Pakhtun parents of Utmanzai, a small town in the present day district of Charssadda. At the age of 20 he opened a school in his village. He had woken up to the fact that his people have no future if they don’t educate themselves and their children. The tall, young man proved to be a zealous missionary. He would walk for miles from one village to the other with his simple message – educate yourself and abstain from violence. He was a devout Muslim, a five-timer namazi parhaizgar and would draw heavily from Islamic history and the Prophet’s sayings to rally fellow Pakhtuns. People joined him in droves. His arcane appeal matured into charisma, some would even give him a halo.

In his 30s, he founded a social reform movement named Khudai Khidmatgar (Servants of God). By now he was named Badshah Khan or Bacha Khan. The movement, like many others of that era, gave its volunteers a uniform that was red and organised them on the pattern of a militia that was, in his words, armed “with the weapon of the Prophet – that is, patience and righteousness. No power on earth can stand against it.” It was only Bacha Khan who could unarm Pakhtuns who otherwise were considered quarrelsome and trigger-happy.

The Red Shirts, as the volunteers of the movement were known as, were against the British rule and demanded self government. For the British, the then province of NWFP had great strategic importance. It was a so-called buffer against the Afghan government that was not friendly with the Raj and also against the Russians whom the British dreaded as their rivals.

The Bolshevik revolution of Russia in 1917 was emerging as a huge challenge for Imperialism. It had a natural affinity with the nations oppressed by the British. The Russian revolution was colored red. The sight of a Red Shirt in the Peshawar valley gave the British a fright. At Qisa Khani Bazar in 1930, the frenzied British forces fired directly at a protest rally of unarmed Khudai Khidmatgars killing many hundreds. The movement and its committed cadre did not budge. They stood fast. Many estimate that at its peak there were as many as a hundred thousand Red Shirts.

When the British adopted a cautious policy of sharing power with local political forces and initiated limited franchise elections, the group allied with Indian National Congress. It contested successive elections, won majority and formed governments in the province. As the British hated them, they would conspire against the Red Shirts and jailed Bacha Khan frequently and for long periods but could not undo the politicisation of the Pakhtun middle class that he had initiated.

Pakhtun Muslims felt comfortable with Congress and that didn’t bear out of some personal friendship between the top leaders. Congress accommodated politics of budding smaller sub-national groups, offered them space for growth and opportunity to integrate with others without giving much consideration to religion. On the other hand, Bacha Khan did not owe his ‘fearlessness’ vis a vis Hindus to Pakhtun chivalric traditions, instead he had earned this confidence through successive electoral victories. He had a large constituency where Muslims were in majority. There were Hindus too but Pakhtun Muslims did not see Pakhtun Hindus as threat to their religion or politics.

... continued in the next post ...

Keep Calm and Carry On

Freedom Is In Peril. Defend It With All Your Might

Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory

and

Keep Calm and Carry On

I don't care much for propaganda and the organised public hysteria that is generated to support a war, but the impact of the words, the lettering, the style and layout are what draw my attention. The Keep Calm and Carry On poster, appeared in 1939 and was a series of three propaganda posters by the British Ministry of Information designed to garner support for the war. Click here to view a sample. The posters have now passed on into popular culture and just recently a version of this appeared* on my iPad. As such, the poster is the inspiration for today's post.  

 Tor_Khan تور خان

 Click here to customise your own version of this.

*courtesy of someone very dear

Thou Art An Eagle

"Thou art an eagle, thou doest belong to the sky and not to the earth, stretch forth thy wings and fly." — Paul H Dunn

The months leading up to what would be a traditional summer break presented a series of minor challenges, a test of my ability to cope with change, disappointment, expectation and balancing family needs. In life many things change, and right now, I find myself, having side-stepped from the education advisory role that I'd had for the past couple of years, back into the classroom as the deliverer of excellence - once again, metaphorically speaking, at the chalk-face. Long term, I look in many different directions and seek the inevitable pursuit of my dreams and ambitions; the desire to complete my MA and to be like an eagle.

... Deep within, I wish to fly ... for now I roll ahead solo, but change awaits ...

Farcebook

The recent Facebook contoversy has generated a lot of interest, not least because Pakistan and Muslims are in the news yet again. And whereas, there's nothing wrong being Muslim, it's a typical hysteric reaction from many different sides.

The Muslims, in the main, oppose this rather provocative trend of drawing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad PBUH that has gained pace since the Danish cartoon controversy. The government of Pakistan decided to ban Facebook, Youtube, Twitter etc. in a gesture to control the spread of this, particularly after a "Draw Mohammad Day" was announced and promoted via some of these mediums.

I guess, the rights and wrongs of the ban are one thing. The greater wrong has been the media momentum with which the "draw" brigade has gained voice. There is absolutely no such thing as complete free speech and whereas, I too, use this blog to voice thought and opinon, I know that I concisously filter before I write. I know that there will be an audience somewhere that will read this - and that I can choose to write to inflame or not.

Facebook or Not

The Internet represents a window on the world, that is both cruel and fascinating and as such is the home of many undesirables. Pakistan's decision to ban Facebook, controls only parts of that. The country continues to have problems at home, not least with it's over-dependency on the US, chronic power and supply shortages, a restless population and a real sense of seperation between population and state in the Pashtoon and Baloch belt. In the latter there is an armed resistance movement that opposes the state and in the former, a people divided - with evidence to suggest that paid agents of the state have inflitrated and embedded within local populations so that everyone is caught in the quagmire that is the war on terror.

The cartoonist at the centre of the controversy - has apologised - but in terms of negative publicity, heightened alarm, and entrenched positions ... well the damage is deep, and that isn't as easily undone.

Caution: Nanny State Strikes Back

To PC or Not PC

Ah, every now and then, I stumble across a news item which reminds me why schools in the UK are becoming increasingly irrational places to work in. Whilst, quite rightly, teachers are concerned about violence (directed towards them and their pupils), the focus on welfare is directed towards some more far out examples of Health and Safety. Take, for example, the following list of rules:

• Wearing goggles to put up posters
• Five-page briefing on the dangers of glue sticks
• Ban on running in the playground
• Wet grass stopping PE lessons
• Ban on playing with conkers
• One person at a time in staff kitchen
• Ban on sweets because of choking risk
• Buoyancy aids for capable year 11 swimmers on a school trip to France

Can you imagine what it's like to be nannied to the point of complete loss of freedom to think?