Pakistan Studies

Seven records, but fewer than seven books. Punjab publishes separate class-9 and class-10 volumes numbered as one continuous eight-chapter course. KP does the same, and its class-10 book exists in both English and Urdu — the Urdu twin was catalogued but never analysed, with no extracted text and no scores. Sindh publishes a single combined thirteen-chapter IX-X volume, and its "class 9" Urdu file and "class 10" English file are that same book in two mediums, scored once. The boards therefore do not even package the subject the same way, and Sindh has no English class-9 edition at any price.

Vintage separates them further and cannot be controlled away. Punjab's are 2023-24 Experimental Editions reaching the 2018 elections and CPEC. KP's class-9 is a text approved by the Federal Curriculum Wing in 2010 and printed for academic year 2024-25 — a print run, not an edition — and its class-10 carries a 2011 NOC and stops at the 2008 transition. Sindh's was approved on 9 October 2004 and is still in print for 2023-24; its maps were updated post-2019 while its political history was not. A Sindh matriculant learns nothing from this book about Bhutto's government, Zia, Islamisation, the Hudood Ordinances, the 1998 tests, Musharraf or terrorism: a fifty-year hole.

Where they agree is diagnostic. All three open with an identically titled chapter, Ideological Basis of Pakistan. All three quote the same Iqbal Allahabad passage and Jinnah's 23 March 1940 address, and paragraph-level wording is shared between the 2004 Sindh book and the 2023 Punjab one — these are divergent editions of one federal master text, which is precisely why their differences read as editorial choices. All three keep a "Role of Hindu Teachers" cause of 1971, the single most durable othering element in the corpus, surviving 2004, 2023 and 2024-25 editions alike.

Where they diverge is 1971 and whom it is about. Punjab externalises entirely: the army "had to intervene to crush the revolt", the defeat is "India succeeded in its nefarious designs", and the surrender is never named. KP indicts a "never ending military dictatorship", records innocent citizens killed in the military action, and prints a counterfactual in which the last governor's advice to seek a political settlement was ignored — while adding a unique claim that America secretly supported the separation. Sindh leads with internal governance failure and alone prints that Pakistani soldiers surrendered on 16 December 1971. Punjab alone eternalises the Two-Nation Theory to "the arrival of Muslims in the subcontinent"; Sindh and KP both date it conventionally to Sir Syed and 1867.

The scored picture is stark. A3 is 5 for every board's class-9 volume — zero source-criticism vocabulary, a handful of inquiry verbs in tens of thousands of words. A4 runs Punjab 5 and 4 against KP 3 and 3 and Sindh 3; the Punjab-KP class-9 pair is the corpus's cleanest vintage-matched comparison and the gap survives it. A6 on Hindus is Punjab 5 (the keyed MCQ option is "Hindus are not our friends"), KP 4, Sindh 4 — yet Punjab's class-10 volume is the corpus maximum for inclusion, with a full minorities honour roll and the 11 August 1947 speech quoted including the passage usually cut. What each board adds where its history stops tells you its priorities: Punjab a Women's Empowerment chapter, Sindh a five-chapter civics and rights block reproducing the UDHR article by article, KP an Afghan Jihad and refugees section. Absent from all: Partition violence, and any economic critique of colonialism. Confidence is high for five of the six analysed volumes; Sindh's Urdu twin is theme-grade only, and KP's class-10 Urdu twin remains unanalysed.