The Ulema, Sufis and Intellectuals

Description

The role of the Sufis, Ulema and Intellectuals has been pertinent to the developmet of our society. It has widely influenced social and political aspects of the Indian sub-continent. This book attempts to trace the history of Sufis, Ulema & Intellectuals and shows that their conservative and regressive outlook kept the people alien to the modern challenges. From Wikipedia: Ali obtained an M.A. in History from Sindh University, Jamshoro in 1963. In 1972, he went first to London and then to Germany for higher studies and attained a PhD (on the Mughal Period of India) at Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany in 1976. Later he became head of the History department at the University of Sindh. He was the director of the Goethe Institute in Lahore until 1996. He is also the editor of the quarterly journal Taarikh ("History"). He 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 organized by the NGO Khoj, Ali referred to fundamentalism's effects on historical scholarship in his country. He described how after 1965, ancient history stopped being taught in Pakistan, barring a mention of the Indus Valley Civilization. The official line is that anything outside of the syllabus "is not part of our history". He further stated that official historiography in Pakistan is committed to the two-nation theory. Questioning it can lead to imprisonment for ten years under the Pakistan Ideology Act of 1991. Speaking at the “National Seminar on Rani Kot”, he called for reading and writing history from a different angle, in which invaders should not be acclaimed as “great”. He said that archaeological sites do have their own significance and referred to the discovery of Mohenjo-daro, reflecting a great civilization of the region which played a dominant role in the independence movement of the subcontinent, because until its discovery, people of this part of the world were not considered literate or civilised. He has written a number of books and articles on Indo-Pak history, and has been widely acclaimed as an anti-establishment thinker and historian. He stated in an interview that “No authentic history has yet been written about Pakistan and its independence. There is a lot of confusion among the so-called pro-Establishment historians and educationists. Whatever has been written so far is distortion of history and entirely unbalanced.”