Mubarak Ali

Mubarak Ali khan
مبارک علی
Born April 1941
Tonk, British India

Mubarak Ali (Urdu: مبارک علی) is a Pakistani historian, activist and scholar.[1]

Ali was born in Tonk, British India in April 1941. He wrote in one of his books (Dar Dar Thokar Khaaey) that he made up his birthdate because his parents did not know it accurately.

Career

Ali received a M.A. in History from Sindh University, Jamshoro, in 1963. In 1972, he went to London and then Germany for higher studies and in 1976, attained a PhD (on the Mughal Period of India) at Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany. He later became head of the History Department at the University of Sindh. He was the Director of the Goethe Institute in Lahore until 1996. He is currently the editor of the quarterly journal Taarikh ("History") and has been widely interviewed by electronic and print media in India, Pakistan and the Middle East.

In 1999, while speaking at a seminar in Mumbai organised by the NGO Khoj, Ali referred to fundamentalism's effects on historical scholarship in his country. He described how after 1965, ancient history stopped being taught in Pakistan, barring a mention of the Indus Valley Civilization. The official line is that anything outside of the syllabus "is not part of our history." He further stated that the official historiography in Pakistan is committed to the two-nation theory. Questioning it can lead to ten years of imprisonment under the Pakistan Ideology Act of 1991.[2]

Speaking at the "National Seminar on Rani Kot," he called for the reading and writing of history from a different angle, in which invaders should not be acclaimed as "great." He said that archaeological sites do have their own significance, referring to the discovery of Mohenjo-daro, reflecting a great civilisation of the region which played a dominant role in the independence movement of the subcontinent, because until its discovery, people of this part of the world were not considered literate or civilised.[3]

He has written a number of books and articles on Indo-Pakistani history, and has been widely acclaimed as an anti-establishment thinker and historian. He stated in an interview that "No authentic history has yet been written about Pakistan and its independence. There is a lot of confusion among the so-called pro-Establishment historians and educationists. Whatever has been written so far is distortion of history and entirely unbalanced."[4]

Dr Mubarak Ali has called for the rewriting of the subcontinent's history and correction of what he called "historical aberrations," so that the hatred and misunderstanding prevailing between the people of India and Pakistan could come to an end. He said textbooks in the two countries had been systematically distorted and that the time had come to reverse the trend.[5]

Ali has said that "any system based on oppression, coercion and authoritarianism [is] the first problem in the way of writing history." Pakistan's history has been dictated, he said, by politics and the personal ideologies of autocratic rulers. He also reiterated his call for "history to be analysed and rewritten from the perspective of the masses instead of the viewpoint of rulers."[6]

In 2005, Ali claimed that police were harassing him and investigating him to "verify his learning," and that he was considering leaving Pakistan forever.[1] Four First Information Reports were lodged against him in Lahore.[1]

In 2007, Ali published three books: Qadeem Hindustan ("Ancient India"), Ahd-i-Wusta ka Hindustan ("India of the Middle Ages") and Bartanvi Hindustan ("British India"), published jointly by the NGO ActionAid and the Fiction House. These books were targeted towards younger readers. Speaking at the launch, Ali stated that the Pakistani curricula did not contain any citation about Ashoka the Great, whose reign witnessed peace and religious harmony. According to Ali, "it was the British who destroyed the harmony and sowed the seeds of hatred among Hindus and Muslims as the Mughals' policy of religious harmony continued to be applied despite all sorts of hiccups".[7]

According to Ali, textbook reform in Pakistan began with the introduction of Pakistan Studies and Islamic studies by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1971, which became a compulsory subject in the national curriculum. Former military dictator Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, as part of a general drive towards Islamization, started the process of historical revisionism and exploited this initiative. "The Pakistani establishment taught their children right from the beginning that this state was built on the basis of religion – that's why they don't have tolerance for other religions and want to wipe out all of them."[8]

Speaking at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan office in May 2009, Mubarak Ali said, "democracy in Pakistan had an imprint of martial laws and what we were witnessing today could at best be described as 'feudal democracy.' It's the third generation of feudals who are ruling Pakistan." Although Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) lost the elections, Ali argued that religiosity had grown in Pakistan to such an extent that "every political party in the National Assembly is an MMA and it's the assembly that approved Nizam-e-Adl regulation."[9]

His most recent comprehensive book in Urdu, Taareekh Ki Daryafat, is considered his most concise work. The first part of the book deals with heroism and society, historiography in the 20th century, how we should write history, and autobiography, while the second part comprises a large number of topics. These interpretations highlight national controversies, for example about Mughal Muslim India, the relationship between Ottoman and Mughal, religion and its political use, Islamic Scholars and modernism, French revolution, Indus Civilization, imperialism and fundamentalism, history of coil and coffee, honour killing, forgetful men and the latest trends in historiography.

Books

(All books are available at Fiction House Urdu Bazar Karachi and Lahore)

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Dr Mubarak Ali says police harassing and humiliating him, Daily Times, 24 October 2005
  2. ↑ Our History, their history, Daily Excelsior, 11 November 1999
  3. ↑ Committee formed to explore history of Sindh, Dawn, 1 December 2006
  4. ↑ History is different from farce: Dr Mubarak, Dawn, 9 July 2008
  5. ↑ Can history be rewritten?, Dawn, 26 September 2007
  6. ↑ A distorted history, Dawn, 10 July 2008
  7. ↑ Unbiased record of history must for enlightenment: Dr Mubarak Ali’s books launched, Dawn, 29 May 2007
  8. ↑ The threat of Pakistan's revisionist texts, The Guardian, 18 May 2009
  9. ↑ ‘Interior ministry greatest violator of human rights’, The News International, 6 May 2009

External links