Pakistan bans over 100 textbooks over ‘objectionable content’, not showing PoK part of country

Lahore, July 24: Pakistan’s Punjab government has banned over 100 textbooks taught at schools after finding in them “blasphemous and objectionable content” such as not showing Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as part of the country.

Some books had not even printed the correct date of the birth of Pakistan’s founder 'Quaid-e-Azam’ Muhammad Ali Jinnah and national poet Allama Muhammad Iqbal, and some had the content against the two-nation theory, Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board (PCTB) Managing Director Rai Manzoor Nasir said.

Nasir said that some 10,000 books taught at public and private schools have been reviewed by 30 committees. “Over 100 of them including those published by Oxford, Cambridge, Link International Pakistan, Paragon Books, have been found containing objectionable content, therefore, they are banned on the recommendation of these committees.

“The banned books had blasphemous and anti-Pakistan content and missing of (Pakistan-occupied) Kashmir from the Pakistani map,” he said.

The board has issued an order to confiscate these books from the market. “The government will not tolerate this objectionable content to be taught to Pakistani children. We will conduct a complete inspection of other textbooks within the next six months,” he said. Last month, the Punjab provincial government, in light of the Punjab Assembly resolution, banned two books by British-American author Lesley Hazleton for allegedly containing blasphemous content.