Gift a Book

This Friday evening, I came across an attractive poster on social media  that read ”SAY NO TO APRIL FOOL, GIFT A BOOK”. It was being widely shared and appreciated by people for the beautiful and novel idea it carried, of gifting a book instead of making a fool of someone on April 1, celebrated as All Fool’s Day. This is actually a weeklong campaign  run by a students’ organisation of J&K, from April 1 to April 7. The purpose is to promote knowledge, literacy and decency.

This campaign, rare of its kind, signifies the awakening and awareness in our youth vis-à-vis the urgent need to encourage the reading culture that we lack in our society at large. These awakened youth who cherish knowledge and through this Book-Gifting campaign intend to spark the curiosity,  boost the imagination and creativity levels of new generation and enable them improve their understanding  of world. A nation fighting a battle for its existence cannot allow the death of reading habits, as they realise what Ray Bradbury, American author says “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them” . 

   

Where this is globally known that ”Kashmiri students are sharp and inquisitive’, quoting Dr. Shahid Jameel, CEO – The Wellcome Trust/DBT India, and former Assistant Professor at University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, we are witnessing an unfortunate trend wherein the reading culture is rapidly dwindling in our society. And this is a very unhealthy sign for any society. Reading is being taken over by instant and short content on the social networking sites, and we thus miss out the imaginative world of books that enable us to enrich ourselves, and infuse creativity in our minds. 

In this backdrop, while our institutions have failed to build a vibrant reading culture and spread the enthusiasm for books in our youth, this campaign if successfully run could be very helpful in this direction. It can set a precedent for others to run campaigns on similar lines. The novelty of the idea behind the noble campaign lies in its timing to coincide with the day commemorated by playing tricks, jokes, cheating and spreading hoax, and thus replace these alien traditions with celebrating it by gifting books that marks respect, decency, quest for truth and spreading knowledge. The organisers deserve all appreciation for such noble endeavours that help us grow as a society. It is great to see a ‘Reading Campaign’ being run after ‘Go Green’ (Environmental Awareness Campaign), earlier this month.  I wish them all the best for all such endeavours in general, and this campaign in particular.

Author is student of M.A Economics at Jamia Millia Islamia.

basit.learner@gmail.com

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