[Reader-list] Pakistan kids on reality show face MNS ire

[Kshmendra Kaul]

Dear Rakesh
 
Please dont mix up issues. That brings neither understanding nor clarity.
 
What was being spoken about is 'school instruction' (Textbooks) and not the propaganda indulged in over Media (State controlled or Non-State) of which there is no doubt that both sides dole out.
 
For a DD on one side there is a PTV on the other and one should see 'Kashmir File' on PTV to compare.
 
Media does not indoctrinate unless all of it is under a single control and all of it puts out identical analyses and opinions. Media on both sides of the border is now quite free and you get a variety of perspectives ranging from the jingoistic to verging on what some see as anti-national (on both sides). Viewers/Readers (mostly adult for such fare) can in turn make their own judgements.
 
Textbooks are an entirely different matter. The propaganda or intention of (hate) indoctrination contained  in textbooks is addressing impressionable minds.
 
I hope you can appreciate the difference between the impact of Textbooks and Media.
 
There is a serious problem of hate-indoctrination in Pakistani Textbooks which (whatever I as an Indian might say) is worrying many Pakistanis themselves. Textbooks have been revised but they are finding it difficult to introduce them.
 
As long as such hate-indoctrination of the children in Pakistan continues, it is the very foolish who will expect there can be durable peace between the two countries and a mutuality in being acceptive of each other.
 
And understand this, if the hate-indoctrination through textbooks stops today it will be another 50 years or so before there will be a 'calling the shots' generation that will be free of such hate-indoctrination through textbooks.  
 
Kshmendra 

--- On Sun, 8/1/10, Rakesh Iyer <rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com> wrote:


From: Rakesh Iyer <rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Pakistan kids on reality show face MNS ire
To: "Kshmendra Kaul" <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com>
Cc: "Subhash" <subhachops at gmail.com>, "sarai-list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Date: Sunday, August 1, 2010, 1:29 PM



Dear Kshamendra


I don't know about Indian textbooks, but I do know about Doordarshan, which is used by the Indian govt. covertly as its own propaganda channel, irrespective of the govt. in power. 


Under the Congress rule during 1991-1995, I myself remember my father and other family members talking about and also seeing the show 'Pakistan diary', which was nothing short of a propaganda on Pakistan. Infact, as I later read, I later found that it was supposedly a counter to a similar show in Pakistan. The DD also ran something called 'PTV ka Jhooth (Lies of PTV)' which was a kind of advertisement running off and on on DD, particularly after both 9/11 and the Parliament attack. 


Ideological indoctrination need not require textbooks. The US is a classic example of this. Media and even newspapers can be used to bring about indoctrination of people to make them pro-Israel and also pro-capitalist. Communism has been totally abhorred in US to the point where anybody can't be a communist because a Communist is also an anti-national as far as US is concerned. The indoctrination continues in India where the media(the dominant discourse) brings about trivializing of issues in the name of solving them. 


The few examples are lack of focus on farmer's suicides, focus on IPL and spending of wealth rather than other plaguing issues, focus on terrorism of the upper castes in villages amidst other things. What about this ideological indoctrination, forget that of India and Pakistan on Kashmir?


Rakesh