When an Indian textbook courted controversy by listing Musharraf among world’s ‘six great personalities’

PTI, Feb 5, 2023, 5:31 PM IST

Credit: Reuters photo

Former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf, who died on Sunday, was once listed among ”six great personalities” of the world in a Class 3 textbook in India which was withdrawn following a controversy. The book — ”Naitik Shiksha, Samanya Gyan Evam Yoga” — being taught at a private school in Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur featured the former military dictator, considered the architect of the 1999 Kargil War with India, among ”six great personalities” in one of the chapters and also carried his picture.

The District Bar Association (DBA) had strongly objected to the chapter and complained to the district authorities in this regard, following which Christ Asha School at Awadhpuri withdrew the book in 2015.

”This is highly objectionable. Under the Musharraf regime in Pakistan, the Kargil War took place, in which many Indian soldiers lost their lives,” the DBA had said.

”It is a folly on the part of the state and central education departments that a lesson is being taught to children at this tender age, which shows Musharraf as a great personality. This amounts to playing with the future of the children”. A DBA delegation had filed a petition to the district magistrate (Collector), seeking action against the writer of the book as well as its publisher.

The Delhi-born General, who seized power in 1999 in a coup and served as Pakistani president from 2001-2008, died at the age of 79 in Dubai after a long illness.

He lived in self-imposed exile in the UAE to avoid criminal charges against him in Pakistan.

After his failed misadventure in Kargil, Musharraf deposed the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup in 1999 and ruled Pakistan from 1999 to 2008 in various positions – first as the chief executive of Pakistan and later as the president.