Re: End of the past?
Nope. It is only in this post that you have changed you position to something a bit more reasonable and sensible. Otherwise in all your previous posts, you have clearly indicated that – just like the Mullah and RSS fascists – you advocate an ethnic cleansing of Pakistan’s History in a different way. This may not necessarily apply to you, but some people’s views here as just as bad as RSS and BJP goons with their impenitent disdain for oh so foreign ‘Muslimisation’ of sub-continent. If you want to go down this bigoted native good and foreign evil classification of sub-continent, then follow method of BJP/RSS’ madness and start off by shunning the foreign religion of Islam in the land of Ashoka.
You want a King who surrendered in front of Alexander the Great in 340 BC era to be taught as hero in modern age because he supposedly shared your ethnicity? Really? That’s your ‘better’ history? I’m speechless. That’s far from saying ‘we should learn about pre-Islamic past’ (which is all well and fine), but what likes of you are propagating here – in the name of ‘improving’ history – is to replace one type of dumbed down hero worshipping with another. Replacing one type of xenophobia with another. It is so depressing that in Pakistan, if it is not the religion that causes problem, it’s the issue of race that snowballs into a great hurdle and overtakes common sense. Can you believe it, in even in modern day Greece, Alexander is not celebrated as ‘hero’, yet we want to order Pakistanis start elevating the status of Raja Porus, because? God blimey.
Next one is Raja Ranjit – yes let’s blindly hero worshipping him because he was supposedly son of soil without really considering the fact how series of Sikh invasions and attacks ravaged Punjab. If Raja Ranjit can be hailed as hero for ravaging Punjab, then I don’t see why Governors like Shah Alam and Abus Samad Khan cannot be hailed as ‘heroes’ for keeping the Sikh depredation at bay? Now which side of history you want to glorify for your children? A person with genuine understanding and appreciation of history would say that let’s critically assess the past and be informed by various kinds of arguments and analysis based on different sources, without giving moral verdicts and romanticising any particular perspective to suit a wider political agenda of the existing time.
I would like to hope that you are now beginning to see the fundamental flaws and brewing dangers with teaching our children history just as means of ‘creating’ heroes. Learning history should always be about learning about past to know our present.
Point the posts where I have been calling for ethnic cleansing of people. I am standing where I was. It’s your old habit to jump the gun and assume things, when nothing works start calling names.