Maulana Muhammad Alam, may Allah have mercy on him, was born in 1935. By the time he reached the age of twelve, British rule was ending in the region and there was a fervor of imperialism everywhere. It is as if his childhood, boyhood and youth belonged to a period when not only Britain but also its virtues were a symbol of hatred, that independent thought could not even like the virtues of the occupying force. The merits or demerits are judged when the stage of choosing something is faced. The mere possession of the possessor is its total introduction. And this introduction only demands that it be rejected. Childhood, boyhood and youth are most involved in human thought. So our father’s hatred towards Englishness was so deep in his mind that he even looked at the modern education given by Britain with hatred. If we had been in that era, maybe we would have thought the same.
We are not born in the British era. The memory of the first political movement in our consciousness was “Britishers! Quit India!” Not of the slogan but of the slogan of “Bad head will be plowed ! Aaj nahi to kal chale ga” which was echoed against former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. In such a situation, when the time came that we had children ourselves and we faced the stage of making decisions about the educational matters of our children, the education left behind by the British had undergone many changes. For example, see that during the time of the British in India, the emphasis in this education was not on knowledge but on culture. This is the reason why this era did not produce any great names in the field of medicine, engineering, or technology. Rather, through misleading propaganda, we were given the lollipop of poets, writers, or cultural figures. And no one said that India produced more poets in the pre-British era. The stronger the British period became, the more Eastern poetry fell.
When the British left, the situation remained the same until the Bhutto period, when in modern educational institutions, all the emphasis was on laxity in the name of “culture”. Even today, our commercial liberals heave a cold sigh at the memory of this period. There used to be nightclubs in the city where famous people of the city used to do the mixed dance. During Zia-ul-Haq’s reign, this laxity was controlled and for the first time, the debate began that “Is our curriculum effective?”
It was a great question that arose for the first time fifty years after the creation of Pakistan. The importance of the question was still Muslim. From the British era to the seventies, the situation was that if one wanted to do a specialization or get a higher degree, the only option was to go abroad. Thus, every person’s visiting card and nameplate of this era would have the major degree obtained and the name of the country from which it was obtained in bold letters. And these degrees were theoretical to such an extent that the Reds would go to Moscow to get them, while the lovers of the West would go to Oxford, Adambara or different cities in America. When did the question start to arise among us whether our curriculum is effective? So, as a result, the focus began to be on education instead of westernization. And the wonder is that this question was raised not by the teachers but by the students.
It is the result of this debate that in today’s history, the universities of Pakistan are producing engineers, doctors and experts in other arts who are ready to be employed by the institutions of the West. The educated students of our colleges and universities are also qualified for the stages of PhD etc. in the university of any country including America, but it is not necessary that they go abroad for specialization in any case. Going abroad for higher education is now only the preserve of the rich. Once we had “Achisun” as a reference, today there are references to UET, and many other educational institutions. He went away when Punjab University or Government College Lahore used to be the proud capital yesterday despite not shooting any arrows in modern sciences. Now, hearing the name of a government university, the HR department of multinationals starts looking at the job candidate with suspicion.
Our father had seen the British as an occupying force in his childhood and boyhood. When children were born to them, modern education was a monument of this occupying force and the emphasis in its educational institutions was on something else instead of education, so the only option they had was to enroll the children in madrassas. By our time, some other kind of education was prevailing, with the result that in this family the first surplus of modern science emerged in the field of engineering. This is just one door that opened in this family of dozens of clerics. Even today, many children of this family are becoming religious scholars out of their passion. But at the same time, there is no dearth of children who are going to emerge in the coming years, making progress in fields like science and technology and business administration. Although the atmosphere outside is that clerics who are university educated are misguided and university-educated clerics are stereotypical.
But it has no effect on our children. Our children who are studying in madrasas look down on our college kids and neither our school college kids have any bad idea about our madrassa kids. Whether it is from a seminary or a college, it is still knowledge.
