Mubarak Ali
| Mubarak Ali Khan مبارک علی |
|
|---|---|
| Born |
April 21, 1941 Tonk, Rajasthan, British India |
| Nationality | Pakistan |
| Occupation | Historian, activist and scholar |
| Known for | writing over 60 books on history of Pakistan |
Mubarak Ali (Urdu: مبارک علی) is a Pakistani historian, activist and scholar. His main theme, in most of his books, has been that some history books written in Pakistan had been 'dictated' by the ruling class (the so-called 'Establishmint in Pakistan') and, in his view, those history books represent 'perversion of facts'.
Ali was born in Tonk, Rajasthan, British India in April 21, 1941. Ali received a M.A. degree in history from Sindh University, Jamshoro in 1963. In 1972, he went to London, then Germany to pursue higher studies and in 1976, he attained a PhD degree (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. In 2005, he is 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 the 1965 war with India, ancient history was de-emphasized in Pakistan by some historians. The official government rule stated 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 in the Indian subcontinent. In other words, Hindus and Muslims in pre-1947 era British India essentially were 2 different and distinct nations and, therefore, the British needed to divide old India into 2 different countries, based on this fact, before they ended their colonial rule in British India. This was called the Pakistan Movement and it succeeded in its effort with the support of the majority of the Indian Muslims under the leadership of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and an independent Pakistan was created in 1947. Although later, after independence of Pakistan in 1947, many history book writers ignored the Pakistan public's need for the truth and keeping a balanced view of history when writing their history books. Instead, some historians went to the other extreme and started to confuse the Pakistani public about whether Pakistan's known history begins from the 5000 years old Indus Valley Civilization or from the Arab Muslims Muhammad bin Qasim (31 Dec 695-18 July 715)] and his attack on Sindh in 712 A.D. or from the Independence of Pakistan in 1947.
...
Wikipedia