Intellectual Sclerosis

People look at things as they are and ask why. I dream about things that are not there and ask why not?            

George Bernard Shaw

We the Indian Muslims are perfectly alright except for one problem i.e. intellectual sclerosis (abnormal hardening of tissues). No roadmap will solve this problem.  Introduction of a course on critical thinking may not solve it either (we should introduce the course, anyway).

The hardened tissues are our greatest enemy. Not the RSS. Not the BJP. Not all the communal forces put together. Who will fight with this syndrome and who will fix it? I don’t know this. But I could see that unless we change our thought patterns, we won’t be moving any further.

Where is our hope? Our hope is in the AMU students who have become members of our Forums. They are the stake-holders, in fact, as it is all for them. If I have come across certain aspects of the subject under discussion at an advanced age, the youngsters who will be exposed to it much earlier will go a longer way. It will be very good if more and more students (both male and female) join our Forums. It will create a momentum and might set the things in motion. These students will become what I cannot imagine of and Sharjeel has a far clearer idea about.

What we are experiencing at the Forums is very little as compared to the environments that I was brought up in. But I have a faith which is well expressed by Faiz Ahmad Faiz:

qafas hai bus meiN tumhaarey, tumhaarey bus meiN naheeN

chaman meiN aatish-e gul kay nikhaar kaa mausam

and

balaa se hum ne na dekhaa to aur deikheiN ge

faroagh-e gulshan-o sawt-e hazaar kaa mausam