Prejudice And Pride

School Histories of the Freedom Struggle in India and Pakistan.

Though India and Pakistan have a common past, the story of the freedom struggle is recounted in their school textbooks in vastly differing ways. In Prejudice and Pride, Krishna Kumar explains how the history texts of both countries selectively narrate their histories for various ideological and cultural reasons.

To show how widely the two perceptions vary, the author compares the textbooks currently used in Indian and Pakistani schools. He examines the representation of major episodes—like the 1857 rebellion, Independence and Partition—and the portrayal of personalities like Gandhi, Jinnah and Iqbal.

In the last part of the book, the author analyses essays written on Partition by Indian and Pakistani schoolchildren. Not blighted by stock responses, the essays, vibrant and spontaneous, touch on diverse topics like Kashmir, the futility of war and cricket.

By focusing on education and the young, Prejudice and Pride holds out hope of reconciliation between India and Pakistan. Original, objective and full of surprising insights, the book will appeal to academicians and laymen alike.

‘‘ ‘Kumar’s book inspires us to think on a range of issues that go far beyond the purported title of the volume.’—Dipankar Gupta, India Today‘One of the most important books published in India, a superb combination of thoughtful analysis and lucid style, and uncannily timely. It should be read by every educated South Asian.’—Narayani Gupta, tehelka.com‘It is a refreshing call to write and teach the history of the freedom struggle not as a saga, but by applying the historical method to narrate a past whose endpoint was not predetermined by the contours of our two nation states.’—Shahid Amin, The Hindu‘A pioneering comparative study, Professor Krishna Kumar’s Prejudice and Pride reveals ways in which school texts on the history of nationalism often inculcate chauvinistic, mutually hostile stereotypes about each other in both India and Pakistan . . . I found particularly interesting, and at times somewhat hopeful, the section on student responses, in the form of essays on Partition written by pupils of select high schools in Delhi and Lahore. Illuminating and highly relevant.’—Sumit Sarkar, eminent Indian historian‘This is a timely and well-executed study of the deep-seated biases that inform the teaching of history in India and Pakistan . . . One has to strongly endorse Professor Kumar’s plea to liberate the history of India’s and Pakistan’s contested nationalisms from the deadweight of unrelenting hostility and turn it instead into a vehicle for mutual understanding and lasting peace in the subcontinent.’—Ayesha Jalal, renowned Pakistani historian and author of The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan‘Given the continuing conflicts between India and Pakistan, and the cultural politics of memory involved in the Indian and Pakistani diasporas, work such as Kumar’s takes on an even more pressing significance if we are to think about how such conflicts can be understood and honestly confronted by the youth of these and other nations.’—Michael W. Apple, University of Wisconsin, Madison