ABSTRACT
It is known that Pakistan's government curriculum and textbooks contain historical errors, biases, omissions, and a distorted, one-sided view of history, and also impose Islam on non-Muslims. States use educational curricula for ideological purposes around the world (Apple 2004). The Pakistani government uses this course to indoctrinate students in a state-defined concept of nationhood and identity. Pakistan's first textbooks also cast a wider lens on history: they included the pre-Muslim past of the areas that later went on to form Pakistan, the Hindu empires of the subcontinent. This chapter compares a complete set of current and recent Pakistan Studies Matric textbooks from all four provinces with the current O Level texts. It focuses on the recommended book for the Cambridge exam, a denser volume, by Farooq Naseem Bajwa. The Cambridge exam rewards additional reading, questioning the material, and drawing deductions. The O Level book also mentions jihad beyond Islam in the context of an anti-colonial resistance.
