New Delhi: To add insult to injury of its largest minority community, the Hindus, the Pakistan government has deliberately ignored the Hindu community and refused permission to publish religious textbooks for the school curriculum, while allowing Christian and Sikh religious texts to be published. including other minority communities have been approved. , Pakistan’s National Curriculum Council Secretariat, which comes under the Federal Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, through a notification issued on March 3, 2023, allowed the Christian community to publish its religious textbooks for grades 1 to V. “This will enable Christian minority students to study Christianity in schools who are till now studying Iqhlaqiyat (morality) and not their own religion,” said Anjum James Paul, president of the Pakistan Minority Teachers Association (PMTA). Said.
Similarly, the Government of Pakistan has allowed Sikhs to publish textbooks for students in grades 1 to 3. James said the books would be published soon and would be introduced in both private and government schools from the next session.
Questions are being asked as to why the Hindus, the largest minority community, have not been allowed to publish their religious textbooks, while the Sikhs, with a population of less than twenty thousand, have been allowed to. Other minority communities such as Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Kalash and Bahá’ís have also been denied publication of their religious textbooks.
Pakistan has always supported the Sikh insurgency in India and its infamous intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has been actively involved in training Sikh terrorists and funding terrorism in Indian Punjab.
As the voice of Khalistan once again started rising from Punjab, the sleeper cells of ISI got activated and suggested to the concerned ministry to facilitate the Sikhs of Pakistan to show sympathy with the community and deliberately ignore the Hindu community.
In recent times, Pakistan’s ISI has adopted a multi-pronged strategy to promote terrorism in India and is smuggling heroin, arms and ammunition to finance the separatist movement.
Given the timing of allowing the Sikh community to publish its religious textbooks, sources believe that this was also part of a multi-pronged strategy of Pak ISI to destabilize peace in Indian Punjab.