PAKISTANI TEXTBOOKS AND ORIENTALISM IN REVERSE

Abstract

The research investigates the textbooks as a key site for national identity construction in the postcolonial state of Pakistan. The study is a qualitative content analysis of textbooks of three textbooks of Pakistan Studies, which are taught in all public schools across the country. Through the lens of “orientalism in reverse”, the research explores the issues of national identity construction, its imagining through the use of historical narrative, and the elements used to define group members (self) and the outsiders (other). It is argued that the construction of social identities in the textbooks is implicated on the same “oriental” forms of understanding the world, which takes the existence of ontologically different East and the West as a starting point of a social inquiry. However, there is an important distinction. While in classical orientalism, the Occident enjoyed a superior status in every respect vis-à-vis Orient, in “reverse orientalist” framework, this role has been inverted in favor of the East.