Does anybody ever wonder why we hate each other so much? Why we have such an outrage for each other? During our years in school we were taught Mahatma Gandhi as our national hero, Congress Party as the leading Party to uphold the flag of freedom struggle and abusing Muslim League or more specifically Jinnah for being the anti-national element and evoking the two-nation theory. Krishna Kumar’s Prejudice and Pride brings forth the history narratives presented in Indian as well as Pakistani history textbooks. Despite the fact that the two nations have common history, the two perspectives are in contrast with each other. Krishna Kumar in his book provided several instances where a particular incident of history has been presented in contrastive light. The historians writing history textbooks portrayed people as either black or white. Gandhi and Nehru have been glorified in the entire narrative while Jinnah and Muslim League’s contribution to the freedom struggle is completely neglected. The Pakistani narrative repeatedly referred to Congress party as a Hindu Party overlooking the fact that there were a lot of Muslims who were part of Congress Party. There have been instances in the history textbooks where a specific event is totally omitted in one perspective while the same event is elaborated in the other perspective.
The narratives are heavily influenced by the historians own perspectives which resulted in highly biased historical narratives. Such historical narratives are responsible, to a great length, for the jingoistic attitude of the people of the two nations towards each other. Krishna Kumar did not claim that the history narratives are solely responsible of inculcating such attitudes but if we try to recall our school days when we were adolescents struggling for an identity and when provided with such perspectives, the hostility for Pakistan did emerge. Neither our schools nor our textbooks encourage self expression which results in the political socialization of the children and they imbibe the political ideology without any rational thought. In the wake of terrorism attacks in both nations, it has become extremely important to understand the political nature of these terror attacks. Instead of spitting venom for each other we need to reckon that the terrorists are neither Hindus nor Muslims, they are just an instrument to spread hatred and if we continue to fight amongst each other then they will succeed in obliterating humanity from the face of the earth.