Blatant lies taught through Pakistan textbooks?

 

By Herald Exclusive in The Dawn

Updated 42 minutes ago

The backdrop of a stage shows portraits of Former President Ayub Khan and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. — Photo by WhiteStar

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Nationalism and patriotism in Pakistan are contested subjects. What makes us Pakistanis and what is it that makes us love our land and nation?

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The answers to these questions vary widely depending on who is being asked. A large part of our national identity stems from our sense of history and culture that are deeply rooted in the land and in the legacy of the region’s ancient civilisations. Religion has also played a big part in making us what we are today. But the picture general history textbooks paint for us does not portray the various facets of our identity.

Instead it offers quite a convoluted description of who we are. The distortion of historical facts has in turn played a quintessential role in manipulating our sense of self. What’s ironic is that the boldest fallacies in these books are about the events that are still in our living memory. Herald invited writers and commentators, well versed in history, to share their answers to what they believe is the most blatant lie taught through Pakistan history textbooks.

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The fundamental divide between Hindus and Muslims

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The most blatant lie in Pakistan Studies textbooks is the idea that Pakistan was formed solely because of a fundamental conflict between Hindus and Muslims. This idea bases itself on the notion of a civilisational divide between monolithic Hindu and Muslim identities, which simply did not exist.

The stress on religion ignored other factors that could cut across both identities. For instance, a Muslim from most of South India had far more in common, because of his regionally specific culture and language, with Hindus in his area than the Muslims in the north of the Subcontinent.

Similarly, the division of the historical narrative into a ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ period, aside from the ironic fact that this was actually instituted by the British, glosses over the reality that Islamic empires also fought each other for power. After all, Babar had to defeat Ibrahim Lodi, and thus, the Delhi Sultanate, for the Mughal period to begin.

Therefore, power and empire building often trumped this religious identity, that textbooks claim, can be traced linearly right to the formation of Pakistan.

These textbooks tend to have snapshot descriptions of the contempt with which the two religious communities treated one another. This is specifically highlighted in descriptions of the Congress ministries formed after the elections of 1937.

Other factors that contributed historically to these shows of religious ‘contempt’ in South Asian history are often ignored. Indeed, Richard Eaton’s classic study of temple desecrations shows that in almost all cases where Hindu temples were ransacked, it was for political or economic reasons.

In most cases, it was because the Muslim ruler was punishing an insubordinate Hindu official. Otherwise, the Mughals protected such temples. Jumping ahead, this sort of inter-communal cooperation aimed at maintaining political control could also be seen in the Unionist Party, which was in power in Punjab all the way up until 1946.

As Pakistan was formed barely a year later, the notion that its formation was based on a long-standing and fundamental conflict between Hindus and Muslims is deeply problematic.

— Anushay Malik holds a PhD in history from University of London and is currently an assistant professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences

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Eulogising leaders

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In his preface to the Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun warned of seven mistakes that he thought historians often committed. One of the seven is “the common desire to gain favor of those of high ranks, by praising them, by spreading their fame.”

This particular mistake, or lie rather, has plagued history writing for school texts in Pakistan since the 1950s and has been used as a political tool to project successive rulers – whether civilian or military – in a eulogistic format.

Moreover, another mindless inaccuracy is the absence of the ‘other’, where India and Congress are needlessly ignored and a one-sided version of history is deemed necessary for creating a nationalistic mindset.

This gap continues in the historical narrative for school students post-partition. Hence, some of the most blatant lies and subversion of historical facts exist in the textbooks mandated by the federal and provincial textbook boards.

Furthermore, maligning the ‘enemy’ is done quite overtly and mindlessly in official history school texts which, unfortunately, is also the case with some Indian school texts documented by discerning authors on both sides of the border.

Most nation states during the 19th and 20th centuries used official versions of history in order to create a homogenous and nationalistic identity. Pakistan’s first education minister, Fazalur Rehman, set up the Historical Society of Pakistan in 1948 so that history for the new nation could be rewritten in a fair and balanced manner using authentic and reliable sources.

Successive governments did not further this goal and history written for schools in Pakistan became the victim of fossilized textbook boards ratifying the work of unethical and unscholarly authors for public school consumption. Vested interests continue to triumph despite the open door policy since 2004 for private publishers to bid for quality textbooks.

— Ismat Riaz is an educational consultant and author of the textbook, Understanding History

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Excluding and manipulating historical periods

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The most blatant lie in textbook accounts of Pakistan’s history is by virtue of omission, which is in effect the denial of our multicultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious past. It is a common complaint that Pakistan’s history is taught as if it began with the conquest of Sindh by the Umayyad army, led by the young General, Muhammad bin Qasim in 711 AD.

Most textbooks in Sindh at least do mention Moenjodaro and the Indus Valley civilization, but it is not discussed in a meaningful way and there is no discussion about its extent and culture. Important periods and events during subsequent centuries are also skimmed over, like the Aryan civilization which introduced its powerful social system and epic poetry (Mahabharata in which Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa play important roles), the Brahmin religion, a thousand years of Buddhism with its universities and the Gandharan civilization which was spread throughout present day Pakistan.

No students of Pakistani schools can tell us that Pakistan was once part of the empires of Cyrus the Great and Darius of the Achaemenid Dynasty and later of the Sassanian Empire with the legendary rule of Naushirwan, “the Just”. Similarly, hardly anyone would be aware that Asoka whose capital was in Pataliputra in the east of the subcontinent also counted Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab as part of his domain.

The result of these omissions is disastrous on the minds of the youth in Pakistan. Instead of seeing themselves as heirs of many civilizations, they acquire a narrow, one-dimensional view of the world. This is contradicted by what they subsequently see in this global world of information technology and shared knowledge. That this is also in direct contravention of Islamic teachings does not occur to the perpetrators of a lopsided curriculum in our schools.

The first assertion in the Holy Quran is Iqra bi Ism I Rabik [and no restrictions are put on the acquisition of knowledge].

Instead, we have bans on books, digital platforms such as YouTube and even newspapers in this Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

— Hamida Khuhro is a historian and former education minister for Sindh

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The other view

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Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan accompanied by members of Muslim League.

To say a large part of Pakistan’s history is shared with India would be stating the obvious. Yet it is this period of both our histories, or the portrayal of such, that is tampered with the most and has been used as a political tool by either side. The Herald invited renowned Indian historian and currently a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow, Mushirul Hasan, to give his take on the lies taught through textbooks on both sides of the border.

History is only of use for its lessons, and it is the duty of the historian to see that they are properly taught. Very few in the subcontinent heed this advice. Both in India and Pakistan the intellectual climate has thrown the historical profession into disarray.

Such is the power and influence of the polemicists that a growing number of people are abandoning the quest for an objective approach. With the recent appointment of a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-oriented Chairman of the Indian Council for Historical Research, liberal and secular historians are worried about the future of their discipline.

The diversity of approaches has been the hallmark of Indian historiography. As a result, the making of Pakistan and its evolution as a nation state is interpreted differently in various quarters.

The ghosts of partition was put to rest and not exhumed for frequent post-mortems. Moreover, the liberal-left historians did not repudiate the idea of Pakistan. On the contrary, they criticised the Congress stalwarts for failing to guide the movements they initiated away from the forces of reactionary communalism.

This was true of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Ram Manohar Lohia, the Socialist leader. The Maulana, in particular, charged Nehru for jettisoning the plan for a Congress-Muslim coalition in 1937 and the prospect of an enduring Hindu-Muslim partnership.

Tara Chand’s three-volume History of the Freedom Movement in India held its ground until the Janata government decided, in 1977, to rewrite the secular textbook. With the establishment of the BJP-led government in October 1999, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-RSS combination began its subversion of academia through its time-tested method of infiltration and rewriting of textbooks and ‘fine-tuning’ of curricula.

Saffronization of education will breed fanaticism, heighten caste and communitarian consciousness, and stifle the natural inclination of a student to cultivate a balanced and cautious judgement. Increasingly, it may be difficult for some of us to establish historical truths or to defend the cult of objective historical inquiry.

As the radical currents are being swept aside by the winds of right-wing discourse, it is pertinent to recall the Saidian (Edward Said) dictum that “nothing disfigures the intellectuals’ public performance as much trimming, careful silence, patriotic bluster, and retrospective of self-dramatizing prophecy.”

The story in Pakistan runs on different lines. Starting with I H Qureshi and Aziz Ahmad, scholars in our neighbours have tenaciously adhered to the belief that the creation of the Muslim nation was the culmination of a ‘natural’ process.

They have pressed into service the ‘two-nation’ theory to define nationality in purely Islamic terms. In the process, they have turned a blind eye to the syncretic and composite trajectory of Indian society, which began with Mohammad Iqbal’s memorable lines Ae Aab-e-Rood-e-Ganga! Woh Din Hain Yaad Tujh Ko? Utra Tere Kinare Jab Karwan Humara [Oh, waters of the river Ganges! Do you remember those days? Those days when our caravan halted on your bank?].

The same poet talked of “Naya Shiwala”, a temple of peace and goodwill. Again, the same poet gave lessons of religious understanding and tolerance in yet another poet.

Sadly, these thoughts are hardly reflected in our textbooks. We don’t emphasize the virtue of living with diversity and sharing social and cultural inheritances. We don’t introduce our students to the vibrant legacy of Kabir, Guru Nanak, Akbar, and Dara Shikoh. Instead, we dwell on the imaginary kufr-o-imaan ki jung, on the destruction of temples and forcible conversions. Increasingly, young students are introduced to the Islamist or the Hindutva world views that have caused incalculable damage to State and civil society.

Saadat Hasan Manto described an existentialist reality – the separation of people living on both sides who had a long history of cultural and social contact – and the paradoxical character of borders being a metaphor of the ambiguities of nation-building. He offered, without saying so, a way of correcting the distortions inherent in state-centered national histories.

Ayesha Jalal is right in pointing out that as “old orthodoxies recede before the flood of fresh historical evidence and earlier certitudes are overturned by newly detected contradictions”, this is the time to heal “the multiple fractures which turned the promised dawn of freedom into a painful moment of separation.”

In the words of the poet Ali Sardar Jafri:

Tum aao gulshan-e-Lahore se chaman bardosh, Hum Aayein subh-e-Benaras ki roshni le kar, Himalaya ke hawaaon ki taazigi le kar, aur uss ke baad yeh poochein ke kaun dushaman hai? .. [You come forward with flowers from the Garden of Lahore, We bring to you the light and radiance of the morning of Benaras, The freshness of the winds of Himalayas, And then we ask who the enemy is?].

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Wars with India

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The most blatant lies in Pakistani history textbooks are about the events that are still in our living memory. Among the many examples, the three given below are about the wars of 1965 and 1971, and the partition carnage of 1947. The reason for the falsehood lies in our distorted view of nationalism. Rather than let children learn from our historical mistakes, we show them a false picture. Thus we are doomed to repeat the mistakes generation after generation.

The following excerpt regarding the 1965 war is taken from fifth grade reading material published by the NWFP Textbook Board, Peshawar in 2002 — “The Pakistan Army conquered several areas of India, and when India was at the verge of being defeated she ran to the United Nations to beg for a cease-fire. Magnanimously, thereafter, Pakistan returned all the conquered territories to India.”

The Punjab Textbook Board published the following text on the causes for the separation of East Pakistan in 1993 for secondary classes — “There were a large number of Hindus in East Pakistan. They had never truly accepted Pakistan. A large number of them were teachers in schools and colleges.

They continued creating a negative impression among students. No importance was attached to explaining the ideology of Pakistan to the younger generation.

The Hindus sent a substantial part of their earnings to Bharat, thus adversely affecting the economy of the province. Some political leaders encouraged provincialism for selfish gains. They went around depicting the central Government and (the then) West Pakistan as enemy and exploiter. Political aims were thus achieved at the cost of national unity.”

“While the Muslims provided all sorts of help to those non-Muslims desiring to leave Pakistan [during partition], people of India committed atrocities against Muslims trying to migrate to Pakistan. They would attack the buses, trucks and trains carrying the Muslim refugees and murder and loot them.” The latter except was taken from an intermediate classes textbook — Civics of Pakistan, 2000.

Some more examples of totally contorted and misleading, yet ingenious and amusing, narrations of the history of Pakistan can be extracted from a single text, A Textbook of Pakistan Studies by M D Zafar.

“Pakistan came to be established for the first time when the Arabs led by Muhammad bin Qasim occupied Sindh and Multan. Pakistan under the Arabs comprised the Lower Indus Valley.”

“During the 11th century the Ghaznavid Empire comprised what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan. During the 12th century the Ghaznavids lost Afghanistan and their rule came to be confined to Pakistan”.

“By the 13th century Pakistan had spread to include the whole of Northern India and Bengal. Under the Khiljis Pakistan moved further South to include a greater part of Central India and the Deccan”.

“During the 16th century, ‘Hindustan’ disappeared and was completely absorbed in ‘Pakistan”.

“Shah Waliullah appealed to Ahmad Shah Durrani of Afghanistan and ‘Pakistan’ to come to the rescue of the Muslims of Mughal India, and save them from the tyrannies of the Marhattas…”

“In the Pakistan territories where a Sikh state had come to be established, the Muslims were denied the freedom of religion.”

“Thus by the middle of the 19th century both Pakistan and Hindustan ceased to exist; instead British India came into being. Although Pakistan was created in August 1947, yet except for its name, the present-day Pakistan has existed, as a more or less single entity for centuries.”

— A H Nayyar is a physicist and retired professor. He co-edited an SDPI report titled “The Subtle Subversion: The State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan.

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Pakistan was made for Muslims

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Dawn newspaper announces the death of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. on September 12, 1948.

The most blatant lie that covers page after page of history textbooks is that Pakistan was created for the promotion and propagation of religion. In fact when the Muslim League was established in Dhaka in 1906 one of the foremost principles was the creation of loyalty to the British rulers and to promote greater understanding between Muslims and the British government.

The idea of religion barely entered the discourse of the Muslim League until the elections of 1937, when the League lost elections and the Congress won decisively. It was at that time that religious nationalism was invoked vigorously to create a feeling of unity among the Muslims of Uttar Pardesh (UP), Bengal and Punjab in order to provide the League an ideational basis of support.
Pakistan was mainly created for the protection and promotion of the class interests of the landed aristocracy which formed the League. The meeting at which the League was formed was attended mainly by the landed elite which feared that if the British left India and representative government was established, the traditional power of the loyal Muslim aristocracy would erode, especially since the class composition of the Congress reflected the educated urban and rural middle classes seeking upward mobility and a share in political power.

The peasant movement in Bengal was mobilised for purely political purposes since its aims and ideology conflicted radically with those of the landed aristocracy.

The urban educated middle classes of UP which joined the League later and enunciated the Hindu-Muslim difference argument in 1940, eschewed Muslim nationalism soon after independence because it had outlived its political use. The nature of the state outlined by the educated urban class in 1947 was based on a pluralistic vision of a state based on religious and citizenship equality.

— Rubina Saigol is a scholar and has authored several books on education and society and co-edited books on feminism and gender.

Arming people and bombing them at the same time: that’s some strategy

By Mark Steel in The Independent

At last the West has developed a coherent strategy for Iraq. It goes, “No, hang on, maybe if we arm THESE blokes on the backs of trucks, make up THESE stories and bomb everyone on THIS side of the mountain, maybe THAT will work.”

There can’t be many people in the Middle East who haven’t been bombed by America for using the weapons given to them by America. Millions of people out there must be psychological wrecks, not because of shell shock but because when a Western army arrives, they don’t know if they’re going to be tortured with garden shears or given a palace and told they’re the new king.

The poor sods who ruled Iran must all need counselling, telling a therapist, “America kept saying it wanted to bomb me, now it says that when it told me I was a rabid, lying, filthy piece of squalid medieval vermin building nuclear weapons so I could destroy the universe and make flowers wear burkas, it was only being ironic. And if we really haven’t got any nuclear weapons they’ll lend us a couple, as long as we use them against the Islamic State people. I’m so confused I’ve started barking like a dog.”

We support anti-Assad forces in Syria, but some of them support Isis, who now call themselves Islamic State, so now we want to arm them and bomb them at the same time. If we can supply them with rocket launchers that they fire against Assad in the morning, then in the afternoon use them to blow themselves up, maybe that will keep everyone content. 

With similar skill we armed Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein, and Colonel Gadaffi, and there must have been times when we’ve swapped sides during an air strike, between a bomb being launched and when it landed, so we’ve had to try and get all the armies on the ground to move round as we’re now on the side of the militia we were about to wipe out.

Former US presidential candidate John McCain is a master at this art. Since losing the election McCain has called for so many wars he’s been like those people who try to visit every football ground in the league,  aiming to call for every single country in the world to be bombed, ticking each one off as he goes. Eventually he’ll call for air strikes on Liechtenstein and the occupation of Barbados and he’ll be finished. 

In May of this year McCain went to Syria to pose for photographs with Syrian rebels who he insisted we supply with weapons. But the rebels he befriended are now part of Isis. This is a slightly unexpected turn for the right wing of the Republican Party – that it now supports holy jihad and the destruction of the West – but it’s a shrewd politician who knows how to move with the times.

It makes you realise if they hadn’t hanged Saddam and shot Bin Laden, they’d probably both be back on our side by now, and occasionally reviewing the papers on the BBC News Channel. There certainly seems to be nostalgia for Bin Laden, as politicians and commentators have insisted the current enemy is “far worse than al-Qa’ida. Because say what you will about the fundamentalist rascals, at least they were gentlemen, and the basements they made their videos in were always impeccably tidy, not like this lot you get these days”.

So a more efficient method of arranging our Middle Eastern wars might be to line everyone up when we get there, and pick sides, like with football teams at school. A general and a jihadist can take turns to select soldiers until there are only the useless ones left, then each side can wear yellow bibs so everyone knows who to fire at and who to call despicable savages that have to be stopped as we can’t stand by and do nothing.

To be fair there are some areas in which we’ve tried a more stable approach. For example, Saudi Arabia is always seen as a friend, and we’ve just agreed to sell them another £1.6bn worth of arms. But that can’t do any harm because at least they’re a modern nation with decent liberal values, like a little bit of Brighton in the desert. 

And Israel is always a close ally, with £3bn of arms a year from America, which goes to show if a country keeps its nose clean and doesn’t behave unpleasantly in any way it will be rewarded now and then with little treats.

That’s why one of the most confusing aspects of all is those people most keen to start another military campaign in Iraq, seem to dismiss the idea that the current mess has anything to do with the last military campaign in Iraq. And they may be right, because although we invaded the place on the insistence that there were weapons that didn’t exist, killing so many people we somehow made things even worse than they’d been under Saddam, we left there 18 months ago so I don’t suppose anyone still remembers that now.

So politicians will explain that we have to send our armies again, because these people are “pure distilled evil, the most appalling creatures, far worse than Satan”, before it’s pointed out to them that six months ago they invited them all to the White House for a barbecue and as a present gave them a flamethrower and a tank.

On writing a column - Credibility of political pundits is low but voters’ need for punditry high

By Vinod Mehta in The Times of India

Soon, the NDA government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chalk up 100 days in office. For some mysterious reason this magic figure is considered an appropriate moment by the media to take stock. It is a rite of passage.

One expects that the verdict on his performance will be sharply divided. One take on the report card will show BJP scoring a century in as many days. The other take will give the party half a ton, and another will award the government less than pass marks. In a robust democracy with a lively media, all three perspectives must be seriously examined before final evaluation is made. The difficulty for citizens is they lack the tools and instruments to make an informed judgment.

So, what options does the voter have? He can speak with friends. He can go online. He can tap a person who has a reputation for being knowledgeable in such matters. But most, i suspect, will rely on the media pundit in the shape of the opinion page writer. I would go so far as to say that political commentary is the main resource available to most people to help them make up their mind.

So far so good. Unfortunately, at this precise moment a problem arises. Recently, i was talking to an old colleague, and i told him i had read an article by Mr X which i liked. “Oh, he is not to be believed,” he replied. “He gets all his information from xxx” And he then mentioned the name of a minister in the present government. My interlocutor added that the gentleman we were talking about had an axe to grind, an `agenda`. Accordingly, what he wrote needed to be taken with a shovel of salt.

Frankly, we live in such ‘interesting’ times that it is virtually impossible to locate a commentator without an agenda. An agenda-less commentator is an endangered species. Which brings us back to the luckless citizen looking for views and positions he can put his faith in. Who does he turn to if all public affairs gurus are openly partial?

I will not be revealing any secrets when i say the credibility of the pundit is at an all-time low, if you exclude the Emergency. The prevailing atmosphere of suspicion and conspiracy theories is so toxic we should not be surprised by the strong inclination towards negativity in the people. As a result, even while he is perusing a 900-word column, the reader is wondering, “Why is this lying bugger lying to me?”

These days anyone who has spent a couple of years in the profession feels qualified to become a pundit. Nothing wrong with that, but the question is, what preparation did the said journalist make before he walked into the hallowed editorial space? When i became an editor in 1974, for over a decade i never dared to write an opinion piece. I was terrified because i felt too raw and too naive. Instead, i embarked on a course of self-education.

Sadly, there were, and are, no textbooks on column writing, no mass communication institutes which can teach you the craft. The sole guide: read pundits you admire — those with a standing for honesty and objectivity.

By objectivity i am not suggesting you abandon your prejudices and preferences, but keep them in check. And, sometimes, restrain them if the message on the wall is too clear. Pseudo-secularists and assorted Modi-detesters could not ignore the hawa blowing in his favour across the country in 2013. Whatever your predilections, you had to take note of the wind whose intensity was growing by the week.

If i can identify one quality the reader is looking for in an opinion column it is ‘trust’. The reader is aware from where the columnist is coming from, what his leanings are. Despite that, he needs to ‘trust’ the writer. He must feel confident the column, at the least, will acknowledge reality, not deny reality. In my 40-odd years of editorship the highest compliment paid to me, among zillions of abuses, went, “I don’t like your opinions but i don’t think you will deliberately mislead me.”

At a time when the entire media is increasingly perceived with suspicion, why should the column-writer remain uncontaminated by partisanship? After all, the pundit is a creature of the environment we all inhabit. He does not live on Mars.

The challenge for those privileged to contribute to the ‘heart of a newspaper’, then, becomes even more daunting. In a society where columnists and editors play favourites, the victim is the reader. Who looks after his interest? Media people day in and day out affirm their commitment to the reader, and the reader alone. Alas, the commitment doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

In short, truth and readability are essential for a column. Remember you don’t want to tell the truth in a way which puts your reader to sleep.

Is there any solution for the present depressing situation? I cannot easily think of one. However, if a solution exists it lies in the hands of the reader. He must reject those columnists (and the papers they write for) that flagrantly violate the basic canons of trust. The reader will be doing the media a favour and also the pundit, who must know he has been caught out.

Spin bowling: Just grab your pocket as quickly as you can with your non-bowling arm

Moeen Ali reveals secret that umpire Kumar Dharmasena told him which has transformed his off-spinning fortunes

Umpire Kumar Dharmasen's hint has revamped 27-year-old's off-spinning and turned him in to a potent weapon for England

Man in the middle: Moeen Ali has become one of the most recognisable and popular England players since making his Test debut earlier this summer Photo: AFP

By Nick Hoult in The Telegraph

4:00PM BST 13 Aug 2014

  

Cricketers have concealed many things in their pockets over the years from dirt to lucky hankies but Moeen Ali has found a novel use for his that has trousered him 19 Indian wickets with power to add at the Kia Oval this week.

As Moeen, 27, was casting around for ideas to help his bowling before the Lord's Test against India, the umpire Kumar Dharmasena, an off spinner who played 31 Tests for Sri Lanka, provided the moment when it all clicked.

"After the first Test at Trent Bridge, where I went for quite a few runs, I sat down and analysed it and felt the need for change. Then Belly [Ian Bell] took me to one side on the practice day at Lord's and said: 'Look, this is what you've got to do to be consistent in the Test side, this is what Swanny [Greame Swann] did, bowl quicker and straighter, especially on a first-day pitch.'

"Then I went into the nets and the umpire Kumar Dharmasena was there and I asked him, as a former off-spinner, how could I bowl quicker without it being flat. I didn't want to bowl one-day stuff. And he said to me: 'Just grab your pocket as quickly as you can with your non-bowling arm.' As soon as I bowled one ball I knew it would work. That, for some reason, allows me to bowl quicker and straighter without being flat.

"I knew that was how I needed to bowl from then on. It's completely different from county cricket. I bowled there in the eye line, as people say, and I didn't have consistency. As soon as I bowled that way for England I got hammered, especially by India and Sri Lanka because they use their feet so well. Even slightly good balls disappear. So I had to bowl quicker and straighter and to my field a bit more." 

By grabbing his left pocket with his left hand Moeen introduces more momentum in to his action and is bowling around five miles per hour quicker than he did when he made his debut against Sri Lanka in June.

The result is a bowler considered a part-time off-spinner just a few weeks ago is now the fourth most successful spinner in a series against India outside Asia. He has taken six wickets in this Investec Series, more than Swann managed against India at home three years ago and a record that should mark him out now as a front-line spinner.

"I don't feel that way yet. I don't want to get carried away," he said. "But I do feel I've taken a big step towards being a decent Test spinner. I feel like I have more control, and that my captain and team-mates can trust me. But I don't want to speak too soon in case I get hammered on Friday but I feel very confident."

The Indians are unsure how they let Moeen dominate. MS Dhoni felt they paid Moeen too much respect at the Ageas Bowl, and fell to balls that did not turn, apart from last man Pankaj Singh. In Manchester they attacked, none more so than Dhoni who hoicked to midwicket in his team's desperate Saturday afternoon collapse.

"They felt I was an easy target, a guy they could get easy runs from, which has helped me quite a bit. If they attack me, now I'm bowling well, I've got a chance. But they're very good players of spin. I don't know how I'm getting these wickets but I'm happy to! I feel like I'm on top and I feel I can get players out."

Moeen's performances with the ball have eclipsed the attention he received during the third Test for wearing wristbands supporting the people of Gaza, a rare public display of personal opinion by a sportsman.

"I didn't think it would be such a big deal. I just totally forgot I had them on when I went in to bat. Obviously it all came out but it didn't bother me one bit, the media and what people say. Even if I get criticised it doesn't bother me because I just try to get on and do the best I can," he said. Moeen had been photographed a week earlier fundraising for charities working in Gaza but he reveals the background to the picture was not quite so straightforward.

"Actually that picture with that guy was when I was going to ASDA with my family and he obviously recognised me and asked to pose for a picture. I was like: 'Alright then.' I do like to do charity work but that particular day I wasn't actually doing it, I was just going shopping."

It is a sign of Moeen's rising profile both as an England cricketer and a representative of his community, a role he is relishing.

"A lot more people obviously recognise me and ask me for autographs. It's good because I get a lot of Asian kids especially coming and asking me 'what's it like playing for England?' and 'how do people treat you?' and that kind of stuff.

"That's the kind of barrier I want to try and break down – that people think it is tough and will treat you badly if you're a practising Muslim or whatever. Previously a lot of them wanted to play for India and Pakistan but now I get a lot more Asians coming up to me saying they're supporting England. That's what I want and that for me makes me happier than anything – a lot of people are supporting England and want us to do well."

Couple's week-long sailing trip turns into 16-year round-the-world voyage

Clive and Jane Green returned to the UK last week, 16 years after they left for a week-long sailing trip to Spain

Clive and Jane had intended to travel to Spain, via Ireland, to see how they coped together before tackling an ocean crossing Photo: Wales News

By Claire Duffin in The Telegraph

 13 Aug 2014

When Clive and Jane Green set sail from Wales, their intended destination was Spain, a relatively short hop over the Atlantic.

Sixteen years later however, and they have only just returned home, having turned their experimental seven-day getaway into a 58,000-mile round-the-world voyage.

Their journey has seen them visit 56 countries, swim with sting rays in Tahiti, navigate through pirate-infested waters off the East African coast and survive 23 days at sea without fresh water, desalinating seawater to stay alive.

“We have been very lucky so see our planet in such an amazing way - we didn't ever plan to sail around the world it just happened," said Mrs Green, 60.

"We would sail to a place and then through word-of-mouth from other sailors hear about somewhere else to go on to.

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• Sailing holidays: Ten of the best 
  24 Jul 2009

"That has been our life for the last 16 years - it's been an amazing experience."

^{Clive and Jane Green during a trip to a glacier in New Zealand (Wales News)}

The couple, keen sailors all their lives, bought their 1981 Trident Challenger yacht in 1997 for £16,500. They then spent several months,and £20,000, doing it up.

On July 11, 1998, having taking early retirement, they set sail from Pembrokeshire destined for Spain, via Ireland.

They had rented out their home in Wales but wanted to see how they coped together before tackling an ocean crossing. They were also unsure if they had enough money, and wanted to see how much they would need to live on the yacht.

But their maiden voyage was a success and the couple decided to carry on.

From Spain they sailed to the Cape Verde islands and across the Atlantic to Barbados before island-hopping through the Caribbean.

They then sailed up the east coast of America, stopping in New York for a three-day shopping and sight-seeing trip.

After four years at sea, they sold their home meaning there was no turning back. They invested the money into two smaller properties, and used the rental income to help fund the trip.

But it meant Mr Green, 60, who worked for a utility company, and Mrs Green, a hospital microbiology technician, had to survive on £130 a week, bartering their few belongings for supplies, even swapping one of Mrs Green’s Marks and Spencer bras for a sack of fresh fruit and vegetables on a small island off Fiji.

"The tribe didn't speak any English so it was difficult to find out what we could trade,” Mrs Green said.

"But one of the women suddenly lifted up her jumper to expose her bare breasts and I realised she needed a bra.

"I gave her a spare one of mine and we left with enough fruit and veg to last us a month."

From America, they headed north to Canada before journeying down to the Panama Canal, crossing the Pacific to Australasia, then up through Indonesia to South East Asia, over to India and through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean where they have spent the last couple of years.

During their trip, they saw orangutans swinging from the trees in Borneo, swam with seals off the Galapagos Islands and watched sparks shooting into the night sky from an active volcano in Fiji.

They also encountered turtles and even a giant Sei whale - bigger than their 35ft yacht called Jane G.

But they said meeting different people was the highlight of their journey and that they had been helped along the way by members of the sailing community.

When they left the Galapagos Islands they were given a bunch of 79 bananas which they hung from the stern of the boat to ripen, taking one each a day during the next leg of their journey.

“We have seen some wonderful sights but it is the people that we remember,” Mrs Green said.

They even called in to Florida and moored up there to have a couple of days at Disney World but Mr Green, 62, said it was not a typical holiday.

“We were on a strict budget so that took some getting used to,” he said.

"If we had a problem with the boat we had to fix it ourselves - Jane is just as capable as me, there's nothing on this boat she can't do.

"And she's a lot better at sewing sails than I am."

During the trip, the couple, who do not have children, spent two years in two years in Australia and another 18 months in New Zealand where they bought a van for £180 to tour both islands for six weeks.

^{Jane during a camel ride in Egypt (Wales News)}

While at sea, Mr Green suffered from a tooth abscess and also sliced off the tip of his finger on the galley table but otherwise they survived without a scrape.

Their biggest scare, they said, was when they discovered they were being followed by a boat in waters inhabited by Somali pirates.

But it turned out to be an Eritrean fishing boat with crewman on board who had a severe gash to his leg.

Mr Green said: "It wasn't very brave of me but I watched as Jane hopped onto their boat to clean and dress the wound before we waved them on their way."

Mrs Green said: “We didn’t come across anything that we could not cope with. We are both very resourceful.

“We had such a fabulous time. People say to us ‘you should write a book’ but the thing is, disasters sell books and we haven’t had any disasters – we have had good weather, we have met wonderful people everywhere we have been – we can’t fault it.”

The couple arrived back in Neyland Marina, near Milford Haven last week to be greeted by friends Wendy Abbs and Ian Bevan who had cast them off 16 years, one month and two days earlier.

Mr Green said: "We really had gone full circle - all the way around the world at an average speed of 4.5mph.

"It is good to be home to see all our family and friends and we have promised ourselves to spend a few months getting to know them all again."

They plan to spend the winter on their boat in Wales with the view to beginning their next adventure next year, this time on a wide beamed boat through the canals of Europe.

“But if it does get too cold, we might set off again somewhere sunny before then,” said Mrs Green.

Good friends are hard to find – and even harder to keep

If millions of us have no mates it could be because enduring friendships require care and humility

• 
• • Tim Lott
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 13 August 2014

‘A significant number of ordinary people just don’t know how to maintain good friendships.’ Photograph: Pierre Desrosiers/Getty Images

A survey by Relate rather shockingly suggests that as many as 10% of people in the UK don’t have a single friend to turn to. That translates into nearly 5 million adults who are, in effect, friendless.

Even factoring in that many of these unfortunates may be elderly people whose friends have died, or inadequates who lack functional social skills, that is still a significant number of ordinary people who just don’t know how to maintain good friendships.
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Also read:

One in 10 do not have a close friend and even more feel unloved 

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I am fortunate to be able to claim at least four friends, of both genders, who stretch back nearly 40 years, and a number of other more recent ones that are close and durable. But I have also lost enough to understand that friendships are difficult, and the closer they are the more difficult they become. This is also true of family relationships, but it’s very hard to escape your family. With friends, if you annoy them too much, they can just drop you. Within this simple fact lies one of the first principles of friendship – tread carefully. Friends are precious, even irreplaceable, but they are also fragile.

Treading carefully is easier said than done. Part of a good friendship is honesty, and sooner or later one is forced to choose between being amenable and giving a friend the honesty you think the relationship merits. But honesty is always a risky strategy, whether it’s asking “Do you like my new dress/suit?” or “Do you like my new girlfriend/boyfriend?” Sometimes you are forced to find out what your friendship rests on, and sometimes the foundations prove insubstantial.

Friendships can be rooted in a number of different impulses. Unhealthy elements like need, the desire for borrowed status, and the wish for flattery are as common as the more healthy ones like mutual interests, sense of humour and natural compatibility. The healthy and unhealthy are often mixed together, the latter concealed under the myth of “friendship”, which suggests, more than marriage, a certain (unrealistic) perfection of sensibility.

The thing with friends is that because they tend to be bit-players in one’s life – “let’s meet for drinks/a meal/a game/a movie” – it’s easy to build up a false idea about someone with whom you share a friendly relationship.

Generalisations along gender lines are always tricky, but – and this is a purely personal observation – I think women sometimes struggle with friendship in the long run as they seem to have an unspoken pact that a friend should always be supportive. They just invest so much in each other. Men often accept a little grit in the ointment – one can tell a male friend to fuck off without losing his friendship. Female friendships can struggle when the faults in either party begin to surface. Friends, like marriage partners, love each other, but they must also be allowed to hate each other sometimes.

I do not know what I am doing right to have kept such good friends for so long, but it is certainly worth pointing out that none of them have got to the present point without negotiating moments of crisis. In each of my closest friends there have been moments when the friendship has nearly foundered – but we somehow came through them to a relationship that was stronger than it was before the crisis.

The nature of friendship changes, and you have to change with it. Once, hopefully, I fascinated my friends and charmed them. After 40 years, I am sure I often bore them – and that is inevitable. A good friendship, like a good marriage, ceases after a while to be a mutual entertainment society and becomes instead a sorority or fraternity of battle-scarred veterans. We are still here, we still enjoy being around each other, and we treasure our shared histories. This is something precious, even if it isn’t always a laugh riot.

Is there a secret to long friendships? Simply this – an absence of pride. Too many falter on stubbornness or the determination to hold on to offence. Successful ones rely on humility and the recognition of human fallibility. These are not merely useful attributes. They are the heart and soul of friendship.

Mark Simmonds’ story is not about him, but a broken housing market

We need to find a radical solution to this inflated market, in which even the top 1% can’t afford to house their children in the capital

• 
• • Zoe Williams
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 13 August 2014

'In central London, the only viable markets are the ones that are subsidised by the government – either by housing benefit or MPs’ expenses – or the ones for the super-rich.' Illustration: Belle Mellor

All in it together? Mark Simmonds, conservative MP for Boston and Skegness, has resigned, citing the intolerable pressure of trying to live in London on an MP’s expenses. He wants his family to live in London, which is understandable. For this, a rental allowance of £20,600 plus £2,425 for each child (he has three) is insufficient. “Of course if MPs want to get into the business of travelling extensively from Westminster to the outer reaches of London to rent a flat then that’s up to them,” he told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme on Monday. “But that’s not the lifestyle I want and it’s not the lifestyle I have chosen for myself or I want for my family.”

Here, he starts to become less sympathetic as a character. He earns almost £90,000, and pays his wife up to £25,000 from his parliamentary office. He is on record as the most expensive MP in Lincolnshire, having claimed £173,000 in expenses in 2013.

He is also a vocal proponent of the benefit cap, finding it disgusting that some families can claim more in benefits than the average person earns, even while he finds it intolerable that he can only claim in accommodation expenses £2,000 more than the cap. Every time some new detail emerges, his obnoxiousness swells like a mudbath, ready to break its banks. To wallow in it would be fun but sullying, and also obscures the fact that Simmonds has done us a favour.

To qualify to be a member of the top 1% in the UK, you need a total household income before tax of £160,000 a year. Simmonds, let’s not forget, fell foul of the transparency rules in 2012 when he failed to declare his £50,000 salary from Circle Healthcare before he weighed into health debates in favour of privatisation.

So without even venturing into the territory of whether or not he’s a disgrace to public life, we can assume that by a combination of “freelance” work and the benefits in kind that must surely accrue from his expenses, his household income probably puts him in the top 1%.

There is broad agreement now, whether you love equality or hate it, that the top 1% isn’t really the story; the story is the top 0.1%. Nevertheless, when a man in the top 1% who has his rent paid still can’t afford to house his children in the capital, it is no longer a story about what kind of a person he is: this is a story about a broken system.

In central London, the only viable markets are the ones that are subsidised by the government – either by housing benefit or MPs’ expenses – or the ones for the super-rich. In Westminster, where Simmonds wants to live, the average house price was £1.3m in June last year (prices have gone up by 6% since then). Two things are striking when you look for rental properties for a family with three children at Simmonds’ cap of around £2,300 per month – as newspapers everywhere will spend this week doing.

What hits you first is how few properties are available, only a handful on any website, even if two of his children would be prepared to share a room (as children are required to do, incidentally, by the government’s bedroom tax, which Simmonds voted for). This is commensurate with the fact that central London has been largely bought up by investors who, at the higher price points, are just looking for a currency haven and leave their properties empty, having little interest in rental income (75% of new developments in central London are not open to the UK market).

The second striking thing is the outlandishness of central London prices: penthouses available for £50,000 a week. Poor Simmonds doesn’t have a hope.

Two main trends dominate the housing debate (though not noticeably in the Conservative party – they still think the answer to this madly inflated market is to keep it buoyed up with government money, via the Help to Buy scheme). There is broad agreement that this is a London problem and only bleating metropolitan elites are troubled by it. In fact, the disparity between earnings and property prices spreads from Bristol in the west to Cambridge in the east; ultimately, the only places immune from a property boom will be those with no jobs, and that doesn’t help anybody.

There is also the sudden unison that all we need to do is build more houses. If this just means throwing more money at private developers, for private buyers, with the proviso of a few social units that can be accessed through a pauper’s entrance, that’s not going to help.

The country needs houses that are owned by the government, not just so that it can stop the frivolity of housing benefit, but because a contractor isn’t going to build the houses we need.

We have the technology to do something radical with housing. We could build flats that are not just carbon-neutral, but energy-neutral through solar power, and with their own food growing up the walls that everybody would bite your hand off to live in. The ghettoisation of social housing would be a thing of the past. These places may embody so much ambition and possibility that we could get over our obsession with whether or not we owned or part-owned or rented them (look at the vision of the Green Cities Foundation or the Future Cities Catapult).

We don’t have to be stuck in this broken system, battling a faceless and impossible market with pleas for one that is fractionally better and marginally more accessible. We could be on the brink of building something together and, ironically, it could be Simmonds, featherer of no nests but his own, who drove us to it.