Daily Times

Education is big business these days. Education is money for the providers and path to more money for the recipients. This is surely what would be considered real growth by most of us here in Pakistan. However, for the more intellectual, education is propaganda and mind control tool, which when scientifically implemented for specific purpose of indoctrination, would not just bring more money but also more power. It is this aspect of education that our colonial masters successfully exploited.

“Men are born ignorant, not stupid… they are made stupid by education”.

Lord Bertrand Russell

In the area of education, the British to their surprise, had found the Indian people to be quite literate even without the skill of spoken English, though it would seem impossible for us today to even comprehend literacy without the Queen’s English language skills. A case in point is Punjab as the records compiled by the British can still be found in the Quaid-ay-Azam Library in Lahore, which indicate the literacy was over eighty percent in Punjab, and this literacy was not just confined to mere writing of one’s name but the ability to write an entire letter.

The British replaced this Indian education system and put their education structure instead, to truly rule the minds of the Indian people. It is precisely because of this change of education and training system that the British created ‘babu’, who is incapable of appreciating anything non-British and non-western including his own pre-British education system. Most babus would not even try to find out about their own history as they are convinced beyond doubt their own history only offers them cave-dwellings and stone-age progress.

The British other than replacing the Indian education system prevalent in India before them, also set about creating the impression possibly through earliest of the babus and oral propaganda that there was no real education in India before the British. The likes of Lord Macaulay also played their part in promoting this concept.

This new British education system was meant to train local Indian people so that they would learn the skills of executing tasks and completely follow instructions but creativity, concepts, critical thinking and questioning authority were carefully blocked out. Do we all not remember the words of the application we were taught to write in school – “Respected Sir, I beg to state that I am suffering from…”. The real emphasis was put on creating mindless but honest clerks who with all necessary skills and expertise would follow instructions meticulously, who would be grand courtiers in front of the grander British power, and who would act as oblivious clowns when it came to their own culture and identity. These roles were precisely what the British Empire required for those Indian subjects who were eager to work for the British and climb up the ladder of material progress and power as “brown sahibs” over their fellow-Indians.

The British other than replacing the Indian education system prevalent in India before them, set about creating an impression possibly through the earliest of the faux english and oral propaganda that there was no real education in India before the British. The likes of Lord Macaulay also played their part in promoting this concept

These babus were to play their role even after the British would leave India, from the peak of the British Empire to its end at partition, and to the current times – a role exactly as the farsighted British had envisaged for them.

Thus the Babu in most of us, created and reinforced by the British system of education for India, believes to this day that it was entirely due to the British that the Indians were able to get out of their pre-historic stone age caves, and while the British were making Oxford and Cambridge universities, we could only make the ordinary Taj Mahal. Of course babu fails to appreciate the vast knowledge of sciences and arts that go into the making of a marvel like the Taj Mahal, currently a UNESCO world heritage site. Again we need western validation to know if Taj Mahal or Lahore Fort is truly great or not, and UNESCO certification provides that validation. Babu also does not merit the almost nine thousand years of prominence and dominance of the Indo-Pak Subcontinent as one of the world leading regions in sciences, arts, trade, economics, theology and philosophy enough to overwhelm the ancient Greeks. No civilization can be expected to remain at its peak for an indefinite period. However, Babu remains ruthless in judging his region and himself.

The babu in us accords more merit to his western masters and everything that belongs to them than they deserve, and allocates more morbidity to his own people and things than they deserve. It might be worthwhile for readers to get in touch with their own feelings while going through this article and see for themselves how much they agree with babu deep within.

Education can play a substantial part in development of human beings, and usually has an everlasting impact on its recipients. Once the first line of babus had been successfully trained by this specially designed British education system, these babus would ensure the sustainability of the babu manufacturing system, and go on to train and educate the next line of babus. As time passed there were babus in every corner of the Sub-Continent, especially in areas under British rule where British influence naturally was the strongest.

Mind control experts consider education as a form of propaganda and mind conditioning tool that would create specific personality traits like those of babu in case of Pakistan. It is only after understanding this link that we would be able to truly recognize babu, his institutions, his training system, and understand the role these continue to play in politics as well as in our daily lives. Most helpful for this purpose is to see how education and media are linked to social engineering and mass psychology and how they can affect us when employed by powers and governments for specific indoctrination.

Lord Bertrand Russell was associated with the Frankfurt School which was working in the area of mass social engineering. It is interesting to consider what he had to say about social engineering, media and education. In his book, “The Impact of Science on Society”, written in 1951, he explained the connection of education and media as mind control tools and their impact on mass psychology and social engineering, “The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate it is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray. Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.”

Hence, once the babu training and education systems are in place, they keep churning out more babus and this becomes a vicious cycle. For anyone to become a non-babu, he or she would have to first unlearn their deeply imbedded babu filters and conditioning. Unless the babu education and training systems are revamped with a non-babu mindset, we will continue to produce more babus – the “glorified clerks” who continue to rule us from within for the benefit of external and highly exploitative forces.

With extremely low self-esteem, it is also very easy for anyone to demoralize babu if s/he wishes to do so to make babu lose battle in every field even before it begins. In case of Pakistan at the mercy of such babus, this could have serious implications. However, first we need to be convinced if our education system and holistic personality development of our children are indeed flawed, and our identities are really confused or not, for remedy can only follow diagnoses.

Talha Ali Kushvaha is a visiting professor at the National College of Arts, and has taught and designed history and culture courses at various universities in Pakistan for over fifteen years. He is a board member at Hast.o.Neest – Institute of traditional studies and Arts in Lahore. He is a guest speaker on history, culture, and identity at ‘Dabistan-ay-Iqbal’ and other universities. He is a member of the AUTAQ Policy Think Tank on culture under Lok Virsa and has co-authored the book, ‘Folk Heritage of Pakistan’. He is currently working on his book on the colonial-cultural history of Pakistan.
He can be contacted at takshila.pk@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, March 3^rd 2019.