The World Humanities Report is a project of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), in collaboration with the International Council for Philosophy (original) (raw)

2023, The Humanities in Pakistan

The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines the humanities as "those branches of knowledge that concern themselves with human beings and their culture or with analytic and critical methods of inquiry derived from an appreciation of human values and of the unique ability of the human spirit to express itself. As a group of educational disciplines, the humanities are distinguished in content and method from the physical and biological sciences and, somewhat less decisively, from the social sciences. The humanities include the study of all languages and literatures, the arts, history, and philosophy." 2 However, this definition of the humanities seems unsuited to the academy in Pakistan. For one, the term "humanities" is not commonly used in Pakistani discourse. Instead, the humanities, social sciences, and languages are all lumped together under the vague title "the arts." The binary characterization of "arts versus science" is still prevalent in Pakistan, with the result that the arts are misconstrued as inferior to the sciences, and this false belief plagues the way that the humanities are taught. In most universities, language and literature departments are combined and placed under the faculty of arts, while subjects like history and philosophy are considered "social sciences." Students opt to study literature, history, and philosophy not to become scholars in these disciplines, but to pursue careers outside academia. In fact, in Pakistan most students who enroll in these departments do so with a view to scoring well on civil service entrance examinations, which allows them to enter the state bureaucracy. Students in the sciences and in finance, on the other hand, are much clearer about wanting to pursue careers in their chosen academic fields. Unlike in the United States and United Kingdom, the humanities are neither clearly articulated nor well organized in Pakistan's academic institutions. Even though humanities departments exist in almost all the 220-odd universities in Pakistan, in many places their teaching is limited to such "compulsory" subjects as functional English, Pakistan studies, and Islamiyat (Islamic studies, with focus on the fundamentals of Islam). If the decline in the humanities reflects social decline over the past three decades, as I believe it does, it also represents the simultaneous decline in the university. Since the presidential reign of military dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (1977-88), 3 Pakistani universities have seen a continuing decline in 2 Encyclopedia Britannica Online, s.v."humanities," accessed November 13, 2020, https://www. britannica.com/topic/humanities. 3 Zia (1924-1988) seized power from Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in a bloodless coup on July 5, 1977, and became chief martial-law administrator while retaining his position as army chief of staff. After assuming the presidency, Zia had Bhutto executed, suspended political parties, banned labor strikes, imposed strict censorship on the press, and declared martial law. After the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, he expanded the country's military with support from the United States. For details see Tahir Kamran, Democracy and Governance in