SYED SHAHAB U DIN ANDRABI
andrabi2865@gmail.com
Human existence itself, if vetted with a fine-tooth-comb, is befuddling. With the inception of humans on earth, besides the clandestine and obfuscated evolutionary process, human beings constantly go through changes in the world. Whether or not the changes are desirable, we are bound to face them. These changes are cardinally a part of the evolutionary process which culminates in humans understanding life and things around them holistically with mature instinct. Haplessly, the commonly inculcated perception about life is parochial, inadequate and depraved. The reason is the universal inadequacy of educational institutions.
Everyone knows the pathetic state of educational institutions all over the globe, generalizing it here-however, exceptions do abound. Getting a degree, a PhD or any other specification is motherhood and apple pie. However, beyond this there exists a world on which these specifications have no bearing. I don’t know of others but so far, I have witnessed a lot of people who possessed or were pursuing honourable specifications, miserably failed in the test of life.
Mere educational qualifications or degrees don’t succour in handling the tests that life throws at us. Our educational institutions don’t help us achieve that level of dexterity which is needed to combat disparate huddles hurled by life at us. The contemporary educational institutions by and large teach us only two things-one is adeptness at grade acquisition, the second is cramming. These two things have severely hampered us. With the unfair pre-eminence given to a piece of paper that we receive after a defined time, the process of actual learning has been sabotaged outright.
There are three main reasons that have contributed to the pulverization of the entire educational edifice. One is commercialization of education, the second, astounded lifelong nexus of knowledge with money and lastly extreme secularization of knowledge. Knowledge is a blessing of the creator; He bestows it to whomever he desires provided the aspirant is sincere in seeking, persistent in its dissemination and honest towards the field of knowledge he/she has been endowed with. The Holy Prophet (SAW) said, “One learned scholar is harder on Satan than a thousand worshippers.”
We live in a society where deference for knowledge and knowledgeable is dissipating very swiftly. Information holders are given primacy over the experts. In certain instances, the plight is so weird that the experts of a particular field don’t live their field honestly. Let us take the case in point of Doctors. Each one of them knows that smoking kills, yet a large section of them are chain smokers and other intoxicant consumers. What is the reason? Again, what comes to my mind is the commercialization of knowledge. Doctors smoke despite being mindful of the venom they imbibe, what more is needed to substantiate the case of ‘knowledge dishonesty.’
The second case in point to substantiate the betrayal of knowledge is connected to the legal experts. Let me give a disclaimer at the outset itself, I don’t have any surveyed documented evidence regarding this, still I sense it comes about every now and then. Many depraved lawyers take up the cases where they in utmost honesty know the case they are taking up is fallible and unwinnable. Despite that, they contrive deceitful arguments and evidence that help in sinfully proving ‘innocent guilty and guilty innocent.’ Why do they do it? The answer is crystal clear, iterating it may irk a myriad.
Dolefully, not dissemination of knowledge but trading of knowledge is happening everywhere. And when things are traded, after a particular time period, their need, importance and pertinence wither away. When the essence is lost, what remains there is futile, burden and ludicrous. Dr Iqbal (RA) once wrote, “I have cut myself aloof from this value of dust, where bread and water constitute man’s major quest.” To my mind, this couplet of Iqbal should be inculcated among the youth at both academic and parental levels. They shouldn’t be commanded to run blindly after money and material desires, rather the approach should be to root out their passions and field or fields of interest and enrich and buttress them in accomplishing those dreams, so that they become helpful in future to refurbish the social fabric at all levels.
Undoubtedly wealth has a pivotal importance for sustenance. But for sustenance, we need a constrained amount of wealth. Being enslaved to wealth acquisition all your life is an incurable malady and stark oblivion to reality. At the end of the day, how much wealth do you take away with you? You take nada. Only your beliefs, your doings and your lifetime ideological disposition accompany you.
Author is a law student, JMI University, New Delhi