Weaponizing Education: How Distorted Histories Poison Young Minds

Post-independence, the South Asian education systems through its textbooks have been weaponized as a tool to indoctrinate and poison young minds from a tender age. Pakistan and India have made use of a toxic strategy of fabricating or omitting historiography for malicious ends.

The major factor influencing the content of textbooks in both countries has been their governments with their pressive agenda. India has had only two ideological forces in government; the secular-nationalist Congress and the Hindutva-right BJP. Pakistan has suffered from dictatorships and weak civilian government with the establishment having the strongest hold over its ideological foundations.

In the decades since partition, both nations have grappled with the challenge of constructing cohesive national identities while addressing the socio-political divisions inherited from colonial rule. School textbooks, as instruments of state-sponsored historiography, have played a pivotal role in shaping collective memory and perpetuating narratives about Partition. However, rather than fostering reconciliation, these textbooks have often exacerbated internal social and communal tensions by promoting exclusionary ideologies, vilifying ‘the other’.

Historian KK Aziz in his work The Murder of History (2020) has analyzed 66 Pakistani textbooks for schools and colleges and concluded through ‘natural ignorance and contrived strategy’ the contents promote values to follow the government in office, support military rule, glorify wars, hate India, fabricate an anti-colonial past, give the entire credit to Aligarh and the united provinces, impose a new culture on Pakistan, and tell lies.

Textbooks, though prepared under the authority of provincial textbook boards, hardly have any autonomy for ideological freedom. Pakistan’s textbook development can be divided into 5 major periods. The first All Pakistan education conference was held in 1947 that advocated for Islamic morality, Urdu as national language and partition as a culmination of the two-nation theory.

After Ayubs first military takeover (1958-69); textbooks praised authoritarian leadership and portrayed India as the aggressor in the 1965 war. In the Bhutto era (1971-77), the breakup of Pakistan was blamed on Indian conspiracies, with little attention to the role of West Pakistani elites. Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization drive (1977–88) ushered in a curriculum aligned with Sunni-Hanafi orthodoxy, emphasizing Pakistan as a “fortress of Islam” and framing India as an existential threat. Post-2000’s, Musharaf softened jihadi rhetoric but maintained the anti-India stance.

This ideological trajectory has produced a deeply selective view of history. Some textbooks, trace Pakistan’s origins to unfathomable epochs, glorify invader-plunderers such as Muhammad bin Qasim and Mahmud Ghaznavi. An ideology is imagined desperately justifying the country’s existence and erase the shared history with the now India.  As scholar Ian Talbot notes, history is often made to begin with the advent of Islam, omitting centuries of syncretic, pluralistic heritage. Minorities such as Hindus, Christians, and Ahmadis are barely acknowledged, despite their roles in the region’s development. 

Partition narratives are similarly one-sided. Pakistani textbooks depict Partition as the inevitable consequence of Hindu oppression, portraying the Indian National Congress as a Hindu supremacist organization. Regional leaders who opposed division, such as Abdul Ghaffar Khan, are erased from the national story. Historian Ayesha Jalal criticizes Pakistani textbooks for Jinnah’s portrayal as infallible and for ignoring his secular speeches.

Students are taught in binaries of black and white, good and evil; ignoring the grey and the context, complexities, circumstances and compromises that brought about partition in the form it took place. By framing historical events through communal lenses, textbooks contribute to the internalization of sectarian biases. This not only affects domestic communal relations but also perpetuates mistrust and hostility between India and Pakistan.

Indian textbooks, though different in tone, have their own distortions. They often blame the British ‘divide and rule’ policy and portray Jinnah as a divisive figure, while Gandhi and Nehru are romanticized as visionary unifiers. Both narratives erase uncomfortable truths. Some shared flaws are that partition violence is downplayed, neither mentions systematic sexual violence against women, or the refugee crisis with millions displaced.

Textbooks remain battlegrounds for historical memory, weaponizing education to forge exclusionary identities and foster a youth suffering from historical amnesia. Both systems suppress dissent, perpetuate stereotypes and neglect marginalized voices. Sustainable peace requires decolonizing curriculum, embracing diversity and fostering critical historiography.