Monopoly of knowledge, Urdu syllabus and cultural identity | Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF)

Pakistan Press Foundation

Monopoly of knowledge, Urdu syllabus and cultural identity

Pakistan Press Foundation

Confining knowledge to the powerful class as a means of maintaining political and economic clout is known as monopoly of knowledge. This theory was first suggested by Harold Adam Innis (1894-1952), distinguished Canadian thinker and political economist.

In one of his theories of communication, Innis applied the economic theory of monopolies to the concept of knowledge. He wrote in his book ‘Changing concepts of time’: “The overwhelming pressure of mechanisation evident in the newspapers and the magazines has led to the creation of vast monopolies of communication. Their entrenched positions involve a continuous, systematic, ruthless destruction of elements of permanence essential to cultural activity”. One of Innis’s favourite maxims was: “The more the technology of communication improves, the more difficult human communication becomes”.

Of course, he was talking about the then ‘new’ technologies but one feels that it equally applies to today’s mass media where it is becoming more and more difficult to differ and convince others amid an overwhelming, peculiar cultural agenda propagated through media, social or otherwise.

But this trend of cultural monopolisation is not new and the colonial powers had begun their knowledge monopolies and culture monopolies along with the political and economic invasion centuries ago. Knowledge and education had become a powerful weapon in the hands of colonial powers and this is evident in the syllabi taught in the sub-continent during the British Raj as well.

Dr Nasir Abbas Nayyar is among those researchers and critics of Urdu who not only keep themselves abreast with the new developments in the realm of literature but also love to evaluate Urdu literature and language in the light of new information. Dr Nayyar teaches Urdu at Punjab University Oriental College, Lahore, and had a chance to carry out post-doctoral research at Heidelberg, Germany’s oldest university, a few years ago. His new book ‘Saqaafati shanaakht aur istemaari ijaaraadaari’, or cultural identity and colonial monopoly, is the outcome of that post-doc research.

The topic of Dr Nayyar’s research at Germany’s oldest university was ‘the study of Urdu syllabi during the colonial times’. It was a post-colonial study of a colonial phenomenon. In Germany, the tradition of oriental studies is quite old and the scholars like Goethe gave it a fillip in the 19th century, though Heidelberg University’s South Asia Institute was established in 1962. But Germany’s inclination towards orientalism had different motives and, as Dr Nayyar has put it, unlike the French and the British oriental studies Germany’s orientalism was not meant what some other institutes, such as The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), (created in 1916) , were established for: to convert knowledge into political and cultural monopolies.

Dr Nayyar’s point of view in the book is that it is the syllabi that install a specific world view in the minds of the students. Nascent minds cannot differentiate between facts and opinions and are moulded in a particular way. It is this very aspect of educational psychology, which made the spread of colonial mindset possible. After setting their feet firmly on the sub-continental soil during the second half of the 18th century, the British planned for a cultural monopoly and the education was the most effective way of ensuring that hegemony. The British colonial rulers, as Dr Nayyar has put it, formulated educational policies that made sure that a new elite class of locals was created who looked like locals but in essence were Europeans. Thus a new cultural identity for the natives was to be created through syllabi.

An important aspect of the policy was to patronise local languages and literatures and then use them for establishing a cultural monopoly. Dr Nayyar has given the example of Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali that how his literary beliefs changed during the Punjab Government Book Depot’s job where he was assigned the work of editing the texts published by the colonial rulers. Hali says that during this job he gradually developed a liking for the English literature but the love for the oriental literatures, especially Persian, began to wane. This, comments the author, is exactly the technique that is used to dethrone a cultural value to be replaced by another one.

Published recently by Lahore’s Sang-e-meel publications, the book surveys Urdu textbooks published in India during the British rule and pinpoints the portions of textbooks that aim at degrading the local culture, local values and praise the “kind and benevolent” British government (read colonial masters) that “has bestowed upon us a number of blessings”. The book is a “must-read” for those interested in cultural studies, educational philosophy, communication theory, literatures and languages.

Daily Dawn